Norco '80

by Peter Houlahan

  20

  STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

  July 1, 1982. Vista, California.

  THE JURORS AND SPECTATORS WHO ENTERED THE COURTROOM OF THE SAN Diego Superior Court were greeted with quite a spectacle. Ceremoniously laid out across the courtroom floor was the entire arsenal of weapons used by the Norco bank robbers on May 9, 1980. All the long guns and handguns, ammunition, defused grenades, launchers, bomb-making equipment, knives, gas masks, canteens, walkie-talkies, a machete, and what had come to be their symbol of excess: George’s samurai sword. The collection took up so much space that its creator, Jay Hanks, had to step over the items as he roamed the courtroom floor delivering the first of two closing statements.

  Hanks began with the first comprehensive narrative of motive for the crime the jury had heard.

  “These two men being religious, believing themselves capable of making interpretations of biblical prophecy, and being survivalists. The combination of these two things resulted in those forty-five crimes. They had interpreted biblical prophecy and decided that the world that we know, our civilization, was going to suffer a tremendous upheaval. That upheaval was going to occur by, at the outside, 1985.

  “There would be . . . that kind of complete social breakdown, a situation where people would be desperate for food, shelter, where individuals would be set upon one another because of their need for food and their need for clothing.

  “This, however, was not the end of their planning. You see, to live in Southern California during the breakdown was almost certain disaster. If you lived here these roving hordes of individuals who were seeking to take away from you your means of existence, and without any civil authorities to stop them, you would be at their whim.

  “The best place to survive would be on a mountaintop in a sparsely populated area, go to Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, buy yourself a little place out away from everyone, sufficiently barricaded so you could defend it.”

  Hanks then connected the beliefs with the crime.

  “They arrived at the conclusion that it was all or nothing at all. They were going to get the money, and they were going to acquire the means to leave Southern California and find themselves their safe haven to protect themselves from this cataclysm, or they were going to die trying.”

  Hanks could have easily argued that all the mishmash of religiosity and doomsday scenarios was nothing but a smokescreen to cover up a far less noble motivation. But instead, he appeared to attribute their decision to commit the crime in the manner they did to honestly held religious beliefs. “This type of cataclysmic behavior was coming about,” he told the jury, “and these men believed it. This was a heartfelt belief.” It was a characterization the defense would be happy to embrace when the time came.

  Hanks then turned his focus to the exhibition of weaponry on the floor. “As a result of this, they acquired the materials, their survivalist materials, and they acquired a vast array of them,” he said. “They equipped themselves admirably for killing human beings.”

  He stepped cautiously through the display and picked up the most inexplicable item of all. “Why would he take a samurai sword which was chromed and a decorative device and sharpen the edge of it, ruining the chrome decorative value but making it a lethal weapon? Why? As a last resort, George Smith was going to pull out his samurai sword, if necessary, and continue fighting. Do you remember George’s motto, ‘We’ll not be taken prisoner’?

  “You’ll notice that I have got here the pictures of the five men who perpetrated these crimes,” Hanks went on, indicating easels supporting the three-foot-high photos of George, Chris, and Russ taken soon after capture. Along with them now were similarly sized photos of a mugshot of Manny Delgado from his minor arrest in Orange County and an autopsy photo of Billy Delgado. Before each photo were the weapons with which each had been armed.

  “Russell Harven, the weapon he had,” Hanks said, standing before the photo of Russ. He moved to the second photo. “George Smith, his weapons. Christopher Harven, his weapons. Manuel Delgado and his weapons. With one exception. Christopher Harven’s rifle was never recovered. Belisario Delgado and his weapons.” Hanks held up Jim Evans’s .38 revolver. “Those four men armed with all of this against James Evans.”

  Hanks did not miss an opportunity to take a jab at Chris Harven while he was over there. “Okay. Now, over here, ladies and gentlemen, is the picture of Jerry Cohen,” he said, framing his hands over an empty space beside the final photo. “And these are his weapons,” he added, indicating the empty floor in front of the nonexistent photo. “Chris Harven is a liar.”

  “Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, they were prepared for a war,” Hanks said, wrapping up his initial statement. “And they were engaging in one. It was a one-sided war. It was a war that they had prepared for and no one else. It was a war on their terms. They initiated the place. They selected the arms. But it was a war nonetheless. For that and because of that, I ask you to do what the law and justice demands.”

  IN HIS CLOSING ARGUMENT, CLAYTON ADAMS REITERATED HIS DEFENSE THAT George Smith was “legally unconscious” after being shot in front of the bank and could not have participated in any of the crimes from that point on, the empty .308 shell casings littering the entire pursuit route notwithstanding. With many of the normal courtroom constraints gone, Adams had saved his energy for an all-out attack on the prosecution and “their agents, the police.”

  Adams said he and Smith had not contested the offenses for which he was guilty. “The Smith defense has always worked to expose the truth and the whole truth as to any given issue in this case.” However, he said, “the prosecution’s case is based primarily on fabrication, falsehood, and collusion.” Adams accused Hanks of intentionally defying discovery orders, adding that even the jailhouse accusations against Jeanne Painter were part of the strategy to hobble his defense. Adams said the misconduct went far beyond foot-dragging and bad faith “even to the extent of actual theft of evidence by a prosecutor,” in this case a bullet from D. J. McCarty’s gun. “This was a very important piece of evidence, the only surviving bullet that Deputy McCarty had in his weapon up on Lytle Creek on May 9, 1980. I had found it. Mr. Hanks went over and stole it, took it apart, just totally destroyed any hope that I might have had for accomplishing that which I had hoped to do,” Adams said, his blood boiling. “Now, I don’t know about you folks, but I expect a heck of a lot more integrity from a person who claims to be a prosecutor and a representative of the People of the State of California.

  “Simply put, in my opinion,” Adams concluded his attack on Hanks, “I think we have demonstrated that the prosecution will stop at nothing to get a conviction in this case, including lying, cheating, and stealing.”

  Adams also had harsh words for the cops, especially those involved in the firefight that killed Evans, and for one officer in particular. “We have amply and routinely exposed bias, favoritism, motives, and willingness to actually testify falsely by prosecution witnesses in this case. I suggest that Officer McCarty’s testimony is so demonstrably false, it should be disregarded. I suggest to you that every officer’s testimony up there is false and should be disregarded.”

  Adams let it be known that his contempt was not limited to the other side, striking back at Chris Harven’s claim that George had pressured him into participating. “When you take a witness like Christopher Harven who is up there doing everything he could to relieve himself of liability, I think it’s an exhibition of his own belief that he can manipulate people and get them to believe what he wants them to believe, get them to do what he wants them to do. I suggest to you that if anybody planned this particular robbery, it was Christopher Harven.

  “For those reasons and the other reasons that I have stated,” Adams concluded, “I think that in all fairness, and in order for you to do that which is right in this case, that you should convict only of those charges that are undisputed, admitted by the defendant, and acquit him of all other charges.”

  ROBBED OF HIS ABILIT
Y TO PIN RUSSELL HARVEN’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE crime on his older brother, Alan Olson’s summation was a combination of the diabetes defense and a portrayal of his client as the bungling doofus, so hapless he could not possibly have committed the crimes for which he was charged. “He did an incompetent job,” Olson said of Russ’s responsibility to guard the door inside the bank. “All he had to do was see to it that no one left or came in. A simple job. But people came up to the door, came in, and left. He, in fact, had his back to the door.” As he often did in the courtroom, Russ nodded off during his attorney’s attempt to save his life.

  Olson characterized the police as “a brotherhood of Barney Fifes,” comparing them to the famously inept deputy from the popular television comedy series The Andy Griffith Show. He referred to the RSO investigator as “the rotund Officer Burden,” and gun store owners as “merchants of violence.” He accused Glyn Bolasky of starting all of the shooting at the bank and blamed the death of Evans on “grossly unprofessional” conduct by the officers in the Lytle Creek pursuit. “These country policemen did not have the necessary training. Police did all the killing. The defendants did all the fleeing.”

  Olson characterized the prosecution’s case as one of quantity over quality. “I would refer to Mr. Hanks’s witnesses as similar to snowflakes: As many as you can count, no two exactly the same.” Olson closed by lamenting that he would now have to stand by helplessly and watch Hanks lie his ass off with no opportunity at rebuttal. “Now, I will sit down and begin to sizzle. God help you all in your deliberations.”

  MICHAEL LLOYD CLOSED HIS DEFENSE OF CHRISTOPHER HARVEN WITH A RETELLING of the Jerry Cohen story despite Jay Hanks’s dismemberment of the tale. Lloyd attempted to give the story a coherent flow, but the contradictions were still glaring.

  “Jerry Cohen, a person who now, even as I speak, secrets himself away, a person sits here on trial for Jerry Cohen’s crimes.” Lloyd noted his own attempts to find the elusive Cohen. “I would like nothing better than to bring in Jerry Cohen, but it didn’t happen.”

  Lloyd continued to contend that the jailhouse beating Harven took during his testimony was proof that Chris’s fear of retaliation by Cohen was very real. “I’m sure the district attorney is going to come up and say that is a hoax. You look at me and you look at Christopher Harven, and you remember when he had that beaten and bloody face and you tell me it is a hoax. That is real. It is here. It’s not a hoax.”

  Having earlier blamed Manny and Cohen for instigating and planning the robbery, Lloyd now pointed the finger at George Smith. “We have lots of evidence in here that George was the brains of the operation. George planned this. George Smith is kind of a leader. The others were sort of followers.”

  Chris’s objective was not self-preservation, Lloyd said, but a selfless attempt to protect his loved ones. “The motto of a survivalist is to protect your family, not yourself.” His belief that catastrophic events would soon befall mankind was not the product of a delusional mind, but an entirely reasonable one. “There are millions of people out there that believe the same way he does.” He implored the jury to absolve Harven of responsibility for becoming involved in the robbery at all because of the immense financial and personal pressures he was under at the time. “I want you to feel what he felt and decide if you would have done the same thing.”

  “Christopher Harven backslid from God,” Lloyd went on. “When the chips were down, he kept firm and he left, and he told the others not to do it. I don’t know if you want to call it conscience or God is telling you to do something, but when you know it is wrong sometimes you have to stand firm even under all pressure.”

  Lloyd concluded his closing argument. “I want you to be sure of your decision, because Christopher Harven, as he sits in that chair, does not deserve to be there. He deserves the same thing you are going to do and that I am going to do after this case is over with. We are going to go home to our families. That is where he deserves to be.”

  JAY HANKS WAS SPITTING MAD AS HE ROSE TO DELIVER HIS REBUTTAL OF THE defense attorneys’ statements. It wasn’t just the accusations made against him by Adams, Olson’s disrespect toward the officers, or the ridiculousness of Lloyd’s Jerry Cohen defense. It was the months and months of pointless delays, and what he and Ruddy felt was a consistent display of insolence, impertinence, and contemptuous and childish behavior on the part of all three.

  Lloyd was petulant and unprofessional, and his investigator had lied on the stand about searching for Cohen. Adams had alienated just about everyone in the courtroom at some point while Jeanne Painter was jacking off George Smith in an interview room. Olson was bush-league and needlessly mean-spirited toward witnesses, and his investigator, brother Roger Olson, was just plain lazy. Hanks and Ruddy would give them credit for one thing: If the defense’s only goal had been to make a complete mess of the trial, they had certainly done that.

  “They are all lying,” Hanks mocked what he saw as the defense’s outlandish conspiracy theory. “Riverside Sheriff’s Department, liars. Riverside Police Department, liars. San Bernardino Sheriff’s officers, liars. San Bernardino Police Department, liars. California Highway Patrol, liars. They all got together at some sort of meeting and conspired and made this all up? You know, if you were to believe this, this makes Watergate pale by comparison. Nobody has ever bothered from the defense to tell you why. Amazing. These cops are all liars, and why? What are they lying for? What are they going to get out of it? Nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s stupid. It’s silly.”

  Standing feet from the defense table, Hanks raised a finger at Alan Olson. “Russell Harven’s attorney argues to you that, ‘Look at it. They couldn’t wait to get to the front of the line,’” he said, referring to Olson’s characterization that police officers had been reckless glory seekers. “These men in the back, Russell and George, firing away. And what happens when these [police] men come into court and tell you what happened? He calls them ‘Keystone Cops, country policemen, Barney Fife tactics.’ It’s amazing. They come in here to be insulted and vilified because they put their life on the line. It’s incredible.”

  He moved over to the Smith defense table and leveled a finger at Adams. “He calls them creatures, liars, perjurers. It’s intolerable.”

  Hanks still had ammunition left over for Michael Lloyd. “When we cut through the whole thing, get done with all the crap that we have heard for months, we get right down to the bottom line. Jerry Cohen never did exist. It is ridiculous. We spend all of this time to be insulted by that sort of thing?”

  As for their accusations of misconduct against him: “I have realized from the beginning of this that somehow the defense saw a clever tactic out of this case was to attack the prosecution, that somehow it would make it appear less heinous as to what they did if they tried to impute some sort of evil or vile deed to the prosecutor. You may recall that Russell Harven’s attorney asked you to ‘Gee whiz, don’t let the DA get up there and give all these evil connotations to what Russell said.’ Evil connotations? Can you believe that? How am I going to give that a good connotation? What am I going to say about that that’s good?”

  One by one, the prosecutor attacked and ridiculed the defendants’ cases.

  “George Smith’s defense doesn’t exist. He was unconscious. He was bleeding so badly that, shucks, he can hardly lift the gun up when he fired at D. J. McCarty. Poor George. Why, George was wounded so severely there at the bank that he was unconscious thereafter. The only thing that there is that deals with unconsciousness in this case might be a description of his attorney’s state of mind during the presentation of the evidence.”

  Adams tried to defend himself. “I would object to that as a denunciation of the defense, the defense counsel, and the defendant.”

  It only made Hanks even angrier. “Poor, unconscious George. In his confession, he admits trying to shoot the helicopter. Poor unconscious George.

  “What about Russell?” Hanks went on. “What about the diabetic Russell? W
ell, let’s see. He was standing in the back of the truck shooting at everybody he could. He stood up and he shot Bill Crowe a few times. He was leaning over firing in all directions. This insulin reaction is violent stuff, folks, and it makes you go out and rob banks and shoot and kill people.

  “The real reason we’re here is because that man died,” Hanks said, pointing to a large photo of Jim Evans. “He died up here on this road. Who killed him? Russell Harven. Russell Harven shot and killed him as he was fighting for his life. So unnecessary. So totally unnecessary.”

  Hanks had saved his last attack for the defendant for whom he had the most contempt. “I’m going to take the circumstance now and address myself to the phantom Jerry Cohen, the individual that suddenly and mysteriously appeared. The defense, as to Christopher Harven, is that he wasn’t there, that somebody else named Jerry Cohen was there instead of him. If you buy that, I have some property in the Everglades I’m sure you will be interested in.

  “Christopher Harven is a liar,” Hanks said, his voice rising. “And I sometimes think that he would probably lie when the truth would do him just as much good. The most important thing in his life was his family, right? That’s the most important thing in his life. That is the reason he was so tormented when they left him. It is not surprising his wife left him. He had two other women on the string. But it is the most important thing in his life.

  “Finally, his wife leaves him and takes the child, and he is so distraught over it, he moves in with another woman. And while he is living with the other woman, he is carrying on an affair with the third one. He is a liar. He lies to serve his own purposes. He lies about everything. He even lied when he talked to Malmberg. Whenever he thinks it is to his advantage, he will lie. He doesn’t care if it is under oath or not, he will get up there and lie.”