Endangered (19 page)

Calvin discreetly pulled out his cell phone and leaned toward Roger. On the screen was a text message—

JONATHAN KING ARRESTED FOR KILLING MICHAEL GAINES

The return number belonged to Margaret's CPHR issued cell phone. The time stamped showed that the message had been received moments before the hearing began.

Calvin straightened his body and turned fully toward the judge. “Before we go any further, I think it is important to immediately get a copy of the affidavit for the arrest warrant on Jonathan King.”

The judge raised his hand to stop him. “I already have my clerk on it. We are also looking into the bullet analysis while we are at it.”

“Your Honor, this is a waste of the court's time. These things have nothing to do with the hearing today,” said the irritated ADA.

“Have a seat, Counselor. Better yet, is there any additional evidence you plan to submit to establish a prima facie case against the defendant?”

“No, Your Honor.”

The judge turned to Calvin. “Are you ready to proceed?”

Calvin stood to his feet, buttoning his suit jacket. “I am, Your Honor. But before the defense calls its first witness, there are a few stipulations that the prosecution and the defense have agreed to. First, we stipulate and agree that Malik Williams was fifteen years old on January twentieth, which is the day of the alleged homicide. Second, we stipulate that Malik Williams was actively enrolled at University High School, where he maintained a C-plus average. The final stipulation, Your Honor, is that Malik Williams has never been arrested, charged, convicted, or adjudicated delinquent in Philadelphia County or any county in the United States of America.”

“And you agree to these stipulations,” the judge asked the prosecution.

ADA Dembe nodded. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Then the stipulations are accepted by the court. Call your first witness.”

“Your Honor, we call Kim Jones.”

Kim walked to the witness stand slightly hunched over, her head down. Even in this frail state, she looked better than she did a few days ago. Her clothes were clean and fit her small frame well. Her hair had been washed and curled.

Janae and Tameka looked at each other, completely unsure. Tameka forced a smile and grabbed Janae's hand and squeezed it. They both turned back to the defense's first witness.

“Good morning, Ms. Jones.”

Kim moved forward in her seat to get closer to the microphone. She cleared her throat and a dry hack echoed throughout the courtroom. “Please call me Kim.”

Calvin smiled, pleased to see that she was comfortable enough to correct him. “Okay, Kim it is. Could you tell the judge what you witnessed on January twentieth?”

She turned slightly toward Judge McCormick, with her eyes still on Calvin. “Well, like I told you before—”

“Kim,” Calvin interrupted her, “I want you to pretend like this is your first time ever telling this story. Tell the judge everything you observed.”

“Everything?” her voice squeaked.

In Kim's mind,
everything
meant telling the judge about her own crimes. It meant risking one of these gun-strapped, overzealous officers arresting her after her testimony. She looked at Janae, Tameka, and then Malik.

“Everything,” Calvin repeated himself.

“I came out to the corner looking to buy some drugs.” She glanced at the judge but quickly looked away, not wanting to feel the sting of disapproving eyes.

“The person I sometimes buy it from was there. He goes by the name Shaun G. Troy and Malik were there and also a few others who were with Shaun G.”

“How do you know these boys were with Shaun G?”

Kim scrunched her face. “They stood right beside him. They talked to him. Every time he said something they would nod their heads in agreement or say what he said. I don't know. It was just clear from seeing them that they knew each other and were together. Oh, also when Shaun G left, they went with him.”

“Do you know the names of these boys you are talking about? The ones with Shaun G?”

Kim nodded her head vigorously. “Yeah, they were Michael Gaines and Little John John.”

“What else did you observe?”

“I remember Shaun G trying to get Malik to sell drugs for him and Malik saying no. Then Troy got in the middle of it and called Malik a pussy. He told Shaun G that Malik was not the right guy for what he wanted.”

“Go on,” Calvin encouraged her.

“They argued some more.”

“Shaun G and Malik?”

“No, no, not at that time. It was Troy and Malik. Malik was really angry. I guess because they had been friends and Troy just called him out. Troy didn't seem angry at all. You ask me, I believe Troy was trying to protect Malik from—”

ADA Dembe sprang to her feet. “Objection, Your Honor. This is pure speculation.”

“Sustained,” the judge ruled.

Calvin moved closer to the witness. He placed his hand on the front rail of the witness stand. “Kim, keep your answer to what you actually observed,” Calvin said.

“Well, after Troy and Malik got done fussing, Malik left.” Her dull eyes widen. “And that's when the
real shit happened
.” Her eyes darted toward the judge. “Excuse me. I meant to say
stuff
. The real stuff went down after Malik left.”

“What specifically do you mean?”

“Shaun G and Troy started going at it.”

“Objection, Your Honor. This is not a trial. And this Shaun G is not the one who is accused of this heinous crime. We are here to determine where the trial will take place, here or in criminal court.”

“Your Honor, the prosecution seeks to try Malik Williams as an adult for first-degree murder. There is the question, even at this hearing, of whether the evidence bears out that my client should ever have been charged with committing the crime he stands accused of.”

“ADA Dembe, counsel is correct. The prosecution should be just as interested in the evidence as the defense. You do want the right guy?”

ADA Dembe gritted her teeth. “Of course, Your Honor. And we believe we have the right guy.”

The judge nodded to Calvin. “Please continue.”

Kim looked at the judge with a puzzled look on her face. She pointed her index finger to her birdlike chest. “Are you talking to me?”

Judge McCormick grinned. “Yes.”

Kim looked nervously at the judge. “Well, Shaun G had a gun in his waist. He lifted the bottom of his jacket up and grabbed at his gun. He didn't pull it out of his pants. He told Troy, ‘You've messed with my money for the last time.' I thought he was going to shoot him right then and there. Shaun G looked at me. I thought he was going to shoot me, too.” She shrugged her shoulders and her voice trailed off.

“Just focus on what you actually saw, Kim,” Calvin told her.

“Okay. Well, nothing much else happened other than Troy just kind of laughed at Shaun G in a weird way. It was kinda like he didn't care if Shaun G killed him right there. I remember Shaun G telling Troy to hand over the drugs he was selling for him. Troy did. Next thing I know, Troy was dead, and Malik”—she spoke in a tone of utter disbelief—“he was arrested for his murder.”

“I have no further questions for this witness.” Calvin smiled at Kim to let her know that she did well. He walked back to the defense table and sat down.

Roger leaned toward him. “Well done.”

ADA Dembe was on her feet before Calvin reached the defense table. “Your Honor, I have a few questions for this, this witness.” The prosecutor's lips curled at the ends as if she was about to bite into a piece of choice meat. “Kim, it's Kim, right?”

The witness nodded.

“Exactly how long have you been addicted to crack cocaine?”

Kim lowered her head slightly. Her eyes fluttered a bit. “I've been on drugs all my adult life, about seventeen years. But I'm in rehab now.” Her eyes found her sister's. Tameka nodded gently.

“Were you high the day of January twenty-second?”

“When are you talking about? Naw, I was on that corner with Malik, Troy, and Shaun G because I was looking for drugs. I wanted to buy. I was not high at that time.”

“But you were high at other times on that day?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

ADA Dembe gave Kim a look that indicated that she couldn't be trusted.
Once a crackhead always a crackhead.
Kim could no longer look her sister in the eye.

“I have no further questions for this witness.”

Kim got down from the stand, eager to return to the safe environment of the rehab center. She could feel the familiar death hands of her addiction grasping at her throat.

“Your Honor, I have a few questions for Loretta Gaines.” Calvin pointed toward the door. “That's the woman you had escorted out earlier.”

The guard opened the courtroom doors and Loretta walked in. She moved toward the witness stand with a hurried stride. She was looking forward to telling everything she knew; anything to help Malik and get justice for Michael.

“Ms. Gaines, tell the judge about the night your son, Michael Gaines, died.”

“Michael . . .” She did her best to stop the shaking in her voice, but it was next to impossible for her to think about her son in the past tense and not get emotional. From now on that's all it would ever be—what Michael used to do, what he used to say. She pressed her lips together hard and shook her head. “Michael was staying at a friend of mine since Troy's murder. There had been a few rumors that he was present the day Malik and Troy got into the argument, the same day Troy died. I asked him if it was true and he finally admitted that he had been. I was afraid, especially after they arrested Malik. I thought they would arrest Michael, too. So I tried to hide him the best way I could.” She looked at Janae with regret in her eyes. “Anyway, the day I sent for him, my friend's car pulled in front of our apartment—around, I don't know, one thirty in the afternoon. Michael got out of the car, and I was waiting for him at the door. There was gunfire,” she said, as if she was still trying to make sense of it. “I looked at my son and he was clutching himself and falling. I ran to him as fast as I could and I caught him before he hit the ground. There was blood everywhere. He was afraid. He was calling my name. The last thing he ever said to me”—she turned toward the judge and looked at him intently—“he said, ‘Shaun G killed me.' ”

The judge's robe billowed about him as he quickly led the line of lawyers to his chambers. Before he was fully seated, before any of them had a chance to take a seat, he demanded, “What the hell is going on?”

“Your Honor—” Calvin began.

“Not you!” he snapped. “Dembe!” He pointed to her with a stiff arm. “You better explain. We have a fifteen-year-old defendant that you want me to send to criminal court. However, out there in
my
courtroom we have an officer who came damn close to perjuring himself. We have a mother who swears her son told her a ‘mystery man' by the name of Shaun G killed him—and this is the same person mentioned in the, in the . . .”—He tried his best to remember her name, but without his notes in front of him he simply said, “the addict's testimony. And now there's another boy, twelve, accused of murder. Two boys accused of murder, and both are tied to a man that neither your office nor the police have taken the trouble to investigate. I want this Shaun G found. I want to know what his connection to this case is, if any.” He darted a quick eye at Calvin and then Roger.

Calvin could see the judge's growing reluctance to transfer Malik's case on the prosecution's thin showing.

“Your Honor, while we are waiting further investigation by the DA, I request that you make a determination now that this case will remain in juvenile court. The prosecution had its opportunity to link my client to the murder in this case, and they came up short.” Calvin smartly pushed to take full advantage of the situation.

Dembe retorted, “Your Honor, I strongly disagree. We have reliable police testimony that the defendant committed the murder. The defendant was found where the anonymous witness said he would be, wearing exactly what the witness described. The defense's own witness”—she quickly referenced her notes—“Kim Jones testified that the defendant and victim argued just hours before the murder. That's motive. And the defendant resisted arrest, which must go toward evidence of guilt. Your Honor, there is sufficient evidence to transfer this case to adult court. We are talking about murder one. The victim was shot in the head and back at point-blank range. This is a vicious crime that deserves adult punishment. The defense has not provided substantial evidence to contradict our showing.” With disgust plastered over her face, she continued: “They have merely provided a red herring to distract the court.”

Roger's quiet but assured voice rose above the bickering attorneys. “There's another reason not to waive this case to adult court.”

Judge McCormick, ADA Dembe, and Calvin turned toward Roger, who, until this moment, had been uncharacteristically silent.

“If you transfer this black boy to adult court, you may as well convict him now.” Roger was confident that Calvin had chipped away at the prosecution's case. Calvin had already exposed the police and the DA's willingness to convict and destroy a child on flimsy evidence, all in name of
justice
.

ADA Dembe rolled her eyes as if she had responded to his claim a thousand times. “This
isn't
about race,” she said in exasperation.

“If we were anywhere else but the United States of America, I might agree with you,” Roger countered. “But here, in this country, prison and race are inextricably tied together. How else can blacks make up less than thirteen percent of the entire population but account for forty percent of prisoners? And when you look at juvenile defendants like my client, nearly fifty percent of all juveniles waived to adult court are black. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Why is this happening? Judge, do you think they are really more culpable because they are black? Do they deserve harsher sentences because they are black? Should their lives be destroyed because they are not the right color?”