Scouring the skies over Gadsden County, we had an unmarked surveillance plane, the Air National Guard was involved, the high tech-gadgetry being used was described as enough to "fill a Tom Clancy novel." We had fliers on the Internet. Foot patrols, searching the woods, contacted through a mobile command post, and assisted with heat-seeking scanners from three helicopters.

We had what Leon County Sheriff Larry Campbell described as "forward-looking infrared sensing equipment" doing what the Tallahassee Democrat described as sweeping "electronic swaths through the woods."

Exciting, huh? Impressive. But, for my money, what we needed was not forward looking infrared, but some plain old backward looking good sense.

I mean, how many warning signals could we have had of disaster than were present in the Carl Clausen case?

Here, you had a man who had just experienced a frustrating and probably humiliating pass over for a job he wanted and thought he was going to get. In response, he quit and there were financial problems. Foreclosure activities had already begun on his townhouse.

You had a man who spent his life around guns, who possessed a houseful of guns, a man who would suddenly appear in the woods out of nowhere carrying weapons and surprising, if not scaring the beJesus, out of his neighbors. You had a man who was said to be a weapons and explosives expert. You had a man who either was involved in arms and violence training in Latin America, or who claimed to have been. He told people he participated overseas in covert activity operations, although he listed no such income in a financial statement he filed with divorce papers. Covert activity or bravado - either way, this is not your average Joe.

And, the man had a history of domestic violence. The Gadsden County Sheriff, said that the day Carl Clausen shot his wife was not the first time deputies had been to the Clausen home, although earlier he maintained that he knew of no previous domestic-violence calls to the Clausen's. According to news stories, the Clausens were married, divorced and then remarried. Then, Carl Clausen filed for divorce again, although he dropped the petition.

News reports said that the couple "argued bitterly and often throughout their marriage." And, both Clausen and his wife mentioned marital problems to friends and colleagues. Before the killing, Cynthia Clausen reportedly told a coworker that the couple had been arguing for three weeks.

How many warning flags do we need?

Why are we willing to spend an enormous amount of money on the manhunt, the "back end" as Jesse Jackson calls it rather than the "front end" of domestic counseling and intervention?

If we had spent a tenth of the money that was spent on that macho manhunt of Carl Clausen on trying to deal with the problems evident in that relationship, Cynthia Clausen might not be dead.

As Lynn Rosenthal, executive director of the Florida Coalition Against domestic Violence, pointed out at the time, the story of Cynthia Clausen was lost in the Tom Clancy manhunt.

It was as if the real test of the effectiveness of the criminal justice system was whether or not it could hunt down a fugitive, especially this fuguitive who represented a real macho man challenge, and who not unimportantly shot law enforcement officers, instead of just his wife.

The real test, though, of the effectiveness of the criminal justice system should have been whether or not it could have kept this killing from happening at all.