Tight Lines (30 page)

He looked at me and smiled. He was, after his fashion, giving me his defense. I guessed this was a long speech for Daniel McCloud.

“Like growing your own marijuana,” I said. “That’s your law.”

He shook his head. “God’s law. Not mine. My daddy told me that if it don’t hurt anybody else, and it helps you, then it’s God’s law you should do it. He never broke God’s law. Shit, neither did I. I guess we both broke man’s law some. Difference is, my daddy never got caught.”

We talked a while longer. Daniel told me what I needed to know to handle his arraignment on Monday. I tried to explain how it would go. “We’ll wait around for a long time. Eventually it’ll be your turn. They’ll read the charges against you. We’ll argue about your bail. The judge will set it, and if you can make it you’ll be released. Then you and I can start thinking about the probable-cause hearing.”

I told him they’d bring him to the district court in Northampton on Monday morning and I’d meet him there. I told him it was a lousy deal that he had to spend the weekend in jail, that if he’d been arrested any day but Friday or Saturday he’d be arraigned and out on bail the next day. He repeated that he knew “that farkin’ Oakley” had come for him on Friday afternoon on purpose, because he had it in for him and wanted him to suffer. I asked him if he was suffering. He nodded and said yes, as a matter of fact, he was suffering terribly, and he said it in such a way to make me understand that he was familiar with suffering and tried not to let it bother him. I asked him if I could bring him something. The only thing that would help, he said, would be a few sticks of cannabis.

I told him I didn’t think I’d be able to do that for him.

When we stood up and shook hands, Daniel said, “Can you get me out of here?”

I hesitated. Bail would come high. But I nodded and said, “Sure.”

The smile he gave me showed me what I hadn’t seen before—that Daniel McCloud, survivor of the terrors of the Southeast Asia jungles, was scared.

I
ARRIVED AT THE
Northampton District Court on Monday morning for the nine o’clock criminal session. I sat on one of the benches among the lawyers, witnesses, and accused citizens, feeling tired and headachy from getting up early and driving the two hours from Boston to Northampton—a long straight monotonous shot out the Mass Pike to Springfield, then a quick jog north on 91.

I wished I’d had the foresight to sneak a cup of coffee into the courtroom with me.

At the table in front of the bench the clerk shuffled a large stack of manila folders. A pair of probation officers whispered at their table.

About ten after nine a uniformed officer led six or eight bleary-eyed men into the prisoners’ dock. Daniel was the last of them. He looked out of place among the others, young men all, the weekend collection of lockups. Sobriety test and Breathalyzer flunkees, I guessed.

I jerked my chin at Daniel. He nodded to me.

His leg, I observed, was jiggling madly.

Then a side door opened and the judge came in. One of the officers said, “All rise.”

We all rose.

A voice from the back of the courtroom mumbled, “Hear ye, hear ye,” told us the Honorable Anthony Ropek was presiding, and concluded, “God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

The judge sat. The officer said, “Be seated.” The rest of us sat. The clerk leaned against the bench and conferred with the judge for at least five minutes. High drama.

Then the clerk returned to his table and began reciting names. To each one, the probation officers responded. Usually one of them would say, “Terminate and discharge.” A couple of times they said, “Request default warrant.” They directed their words to the judge. The clerk, however, ran the show.

It was all routine court business, and it gave me a chance to size up Judge Anthony Ropek. He was small and gray and businesslike as, with an unintelligible word and small gesture, he repeatedly gave his official endorsements to the requests of the probation officers. He was an old-timer, I guessed, still in district court after all these years, which meant that he’d probably been passed over for superior court or federal seats enough times to know that he wasn’t going anywhere else. This I took to be a positive omen for Daniel. Judge Ropek didn’t strike me as a man with a motive to build a reputation at the expense of an ailing Vietnam vet who grew his own marijuana.

After the probation cases came the weekend motor vehicle cases. All involved drunk driving. Most of them pleaded guilty, were fined, had their licenses revoked, and were enrolled in rehabilitation classes.

We heard a malicious destruction case. A mason with a long unpronounceable Italian name was accused of knocking down the brick walls he had constructed at a new condominium complex because the contractor had fired him halfway through the job. The prosecutor, a young female assistant district attorney, built her case entirely on the testimony of the contractor, corroborated by two witnesses, that the mason had cursed and uttered oblique threats when he was let go, and had thrust his arm from the window of his pickup truck and extended his middle finger as he drove away. Her implied argument, simply, was: Who else could have done it?

Nobody had seen him at the scene of the crime since the afternoon he was fired, the only point the defense attorney bothered to emphasize in his cross-examination of the witnesses.

When both sides rested, Judge Ropek said that he, for one, still retained reasonable doubt. Not guilty. It was the correct verdict.

The whole thing took less than an hour.

When the court recessed around eleven, twenty-five or thirty citizens had had their lives significantly altered by decisions rendered in the Northampton District Court. About a dozen couldn’t drive automobiles for sixty days. Another dozen or so no longer needed to report to probation officers. A few would soon be arrested for probation violations. One Italian stonemason found himself relieved of both worry and a few thousand dollars in legal fees.

Daniel McCloud was still jiggling his leg and waiting.

I went outside for a cigarette. I wondered how Daniel had endured the weekend without what he called his medicine. I hoped his case would come up before the lunch recess.

I thought about what I had witnessed during the previous two hours. Justice. Routine, boring, repetitive justice had been dispensed evenhandedly by Judge Anthony Ropek. In the course of a week, justice would be meted out hundreds of times in this courtroom, as it would in dozens of other courtrooms across the state.

My law practice rarely requires me to perform the peculiar formalities of courtroom routines. Most of my work is done by telephone or in conference in a lawyer’s office. Most of my practice is civil and probate, and you can judge the effectiveness of a civil or probate lawyer by his success in resolving issues before they find their way into a courtroom. It’s the law of give-and-take, compromise, negotiation. It’s my niche, and I’m pretty good at it.

Criminal law is different. The state, not a private citizen, is the adversary. The ground rules are more formalized, less flexible. Behind the state stand massive bureaucracies, enormous budgets, up-to-date technology. Behind the accused stands only a lone attorney, more often than not one who has been appointed by the state, and the presumption of innocence.

It usually turns out to be a pretty fair contest. The state bears the burden of proof. The presumption of innocence is a powerful ally.

On those relatively rare occasions when I find myself handling a criminal case, I inevitably recognize it as somehow more important. My client stands to lose not just some money, or his house, or custody of his children. Criminal clients go to prison when their lawyers screw up. Sometimes, because they are in fact guilty as charged, they go to prison even when their lawyers don’t screw up. Under this system, remarkably few innocent people are imprisoned—although a remarkably large number of guilty people go free. Still, I, for one, never can avoid the feeling that I’ve screwed up whenever one of my clients goes to prison. Even when they’re guilty, I always feel that I should have been able to get a “not guilty” verdict.

There’s a big difference between “not guilty” and “innocent.”

What would soon happen on that muggy Monday morning in July in the old Northampton courthouse, I knew, was the beginning of an intricate process that could land Daniel McCloud in M.C.I. Cedar Junction for fifteen years. What actually would happen would depend more than it should on me.

That Daniel did in fact grow marijuana in his garden, that he was therefore a guilty man by every definition except the one that counted—the due process of the law—did not affect my attitude toward his case. The presumption of innocence and the right to counsel—only those things were relevant.

If he’d been selling the stuff—not something the state needed to prove—I’d have felt differently about it. But, having agreed to take his case, I still would have done my best to get him off. That’s the system, and it’s not a bad one.

I flicked away my cigarette butt and went back into the courthouse. As I shouldered my way through the crowded lobby I felt a hand on my arm. I turned. It was the ADA who had unsuccessfully prosecuted the bricklayer. “You’re Mr. McCloud’s counsel?” she said.

I nodded. “Brady Coyne.”

“Joan Redlich. Here.” She handed me a sheet of paper.

“What’s this?”

“The police report. You’re entitled to it.”

“Yes. Thanks. I’ll want a copy of the warrant, too.”

She smiled quickly. “You’ll have it, Mr. Coyne.”

She turned and headed into the courtroom. I followed her in and resumed my seat. I skimmed through the police report. It was written in the peculiarly stilted language policemen insist on using, on their theory, I assume, that it makes them sound highly educated.

To me, it always sounds like somebody trying to sound highly educated.

The report was signed by Sgt. Richard Oakley, Wilson Falls P.D.

Sergeant Oakley had written that the Wilson Falls police, acting upon a proper warrant, did on the afternoon of seven July confiscate an estimated fifty pounds or more of marijuana from the backyard garden of one Daniel McCloud, citizen of Wilson Falls. They did, pursuant to a search of the premises, also confiscate cigarette papers, a scale, a box of plastic bags, fifteen smoking pipes of various manufacture, and a cigarette rolling machine. They did consequently place the suspect, said Daniel McCloud, under arrest, recite to him his Miranda rights, handcuff him, and escort him to the jailhouse, where they did fingerprint and book him.

It was all pretty much the way Daniel had told it, except less eloquent.

A few minutes later the side door opened and Judge Ropek reentered. We all rose briefly, and then sat.

“Daniel McCloud,” intoned the clerk.

Daniel stood, and the officer opened the swinging door to let him out of the dock. I went down front and Daniel met me there.

“You okay?” I whispered.

“No,” he said. He glanced around, then muttered, “Bastard.”

I followed his gaze. Standing stiffly against the side wall was a large uniformed policeman. He was staring at Daniel. He stood six-three or -four with the bulk to match. He had the bristly haircut and sunburned neck of a marine drill instructor. “Oakley?” I whispered to Daniel.

“Aye. Him.”

“He’s interested in his case,” I said.

“He’s interested in me,” said Daniel.

The clerk read the charges. Possession of Class D marijuana, possession with intent to distribute, and trafficking.

The judge arched his eyebrows, then looked toward the prosecution table. “Trafficking, Ms. Redlich?”

Joan Redlich stood up and stepped toward the prosecutor’s table. Her black hair was twisted up into a bun. I guessed it would fall halfway down her back when it was unpinned. She wore dark-rimmed tinted glasses low on her nose, a gray suit that disguised her figure, and low heels. She was slim and young and, in spite of her best efforts, pretty.

Female lawyers have told me that they dress for the judge. They have different wardrobes, different hairstyles, different cosmetics, which they adapt to the situation. Some judges—His Dirty Old Honors, the lawyers call them—like to see a little leg, a hint of cleavage, eye makeup. It disposes them favorably to the client’s case. Others—especially female judges—resent it if the lawyers don’t look as shapeless and sexless as they do in their black gowns.

Female lawyers resent the hell out of this kind of patent sexism. But they don’t ignore it. It’s an edge, if you read it right, they tell me.

Redlich tucked a stray strand of hair over her ear. She leaned toward the microphone that was wired to the tape recorder that preserved the proceedings and rendered obsolete the court stenographer. “Cultivation, Your Honor,” she said. “He was growing it in his garden. The estimate is seventy pounds.”

Ropek frowned, then nodded. I didn’t like the looks of that frown. “Recommendation?”

She asked for a half-million-dollar surety bond. Not unexpected. Since Reagan, all the courts have been trying to convert the drug cases that come before them into moral lessons.

“Mr. McCloud?” said the judge, looking from Daniel to me.

“Brady Coyne, Your Honor,” I said into my microphone.

“Welcome, Mr. Coyne. Go ahead.”

“I ask the court to release Mr. McCloud on personal recognizance, Your Honor. He has roots deep in the community. He’s resided in Wilson Falls for the past twenty years. He owns property and runs a business there. He’s a Vietnam veteran, Special Forces, and he’s in poor health.”

The judge peered at me for a moment, then nodded. He looked to the probation table. “Probation?” he said.

“One prior, Judge,” said one of the officers. He stood and went to the bench, where he handed a folder to the judge. Judge Ropek glanced at it, then handed it back.

Then he looked at Daniel. “Two hundred thousand dollars surety bond,” he said.

Daniel grabbed my arm. “I don’t have that kind of money,” he whispered.

“You need twenty thousand cash,” I told him. “Can you raise it?”