Blanket Immunity

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Blanket Immunity Page 7

by Adam Van Susteren


  “All good points. What’s your angle? Use time on release to count towards time in custody if you decide to plead guilty?”

  Jo gave Matt’s shoulder a little squeeze then removed her hand. “That’s true. This arrangement would encourage a plea deal because of the custody credit. We good with it?”

  Matt shrugged his shoulders. “Sure.”

  “Thanks.” Jo shifted her briefcase and held it with both hands. “Oh, hey. I need to set a Free Meeting on another case. You in the office on Thursday or Friday?”

  “Thursday afternoon,” Matt said with raised eyebrows. “What makes you think I’ll be assigned the case?”

  “Because now that I’ve left, you’re the best prosecutor in the office.”

  Matt chuckled and shook his head. He looked for the next attorney in line to talk to him and Jo took a seat in the gallery. Jo was barely seated when the bailiff appeared with her client wearing his jail house blues and waist chains. Jo’s lip curled slightly as she thought how maybe half the prosecutors, defenders, bailiffs, and judges tried cocaine when they were younger. Her client is in cuffs because the next generation of policy makers and enforcers wanted a little blow. Now they punish the guy who gets it for them. Kind of a strange system.

  Jo had Tai sign the retainer agreement, whispered the update with Omar, and her plan that Tai would not post bail, stay in jail, with the Court suggesting to the sheriff that he be released on house arrest while awaiting trial. The time in custody and house arrest would count against any sentence and could even be used to offset a fine. Tai wasn’t thrilled with the idea of staying in jail a few more days and didn’t fully understand what Jo was explaining. But because Jo was now working with Marcos Omar, he trusted her.

  While Jo was finishing her talk with Tai, Judge Robert Klausner walked into the courtroom from the back doorway. His black robe puffed slightly as quick strides caught a bit of air. A bailiff shouted for everyone to come to order and announced the Judge.

  Judge Klausner opened the first file on his desk and called out, “Tai Nguyen. HSC 11351.”

  “Matt Terry for the People,” Matt called out, still seated from his prosecutor’s desk.

  Jo walked towards the lectern before the Judge. “Jo Channing for Tai Nguyen, who is present in court.”

  Judge Klausner cocked his head sideways. “Ms. Channing. Nice to see you. Feels a bit strange seeing you on that side of my Department. How does your client plead?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “Waive time?”

  “Not at this time, Your Honor. It would be a hardship for my client to make bail. I spoke with the prosecutor and they would agree, if the Court is willing, to put a note in the file that it would recommend to the Sheriff that Mr. Nguyen be given house arrest while awaiting trial. If house arrest is granted, we’ll waive time.”

  Judge Klausner nodded to Matt Terry.

  “The People do not object to the Court recommending house arrest pending trial. In the meantime, the People would request bail in the amount of twenty five thousand dollars if the defendant chooses to post bail.”

  Judge Klausner looked back at Jo.

  “That amount is reasonable, but even the bond on that amount would be a hardship.”

  In a more quiet voice, Judge Klausner spoke to his clerk, “Put a note in the minutes that I recommend the Sheriff authorize house arrest.” He looked back up at Jo. “Bail will be set at twenty-five thousand. Readiness and trial dates on the board work?”

  Jo looked again at the whiteboard with dates written on it, she had already written them down. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Matt added and wrote the dates down on his file. He plopped the file down on the right hand side of his desk, next to the fifteen remaining files for the afternoon’s session.

  As the Judge was announcing the next case, Jo walked towards Matt and whispered, “I’ll need a small favor before our Free Meeting. I’ll email you.”

  Matt nodded, as he focused on flipping through his files to pull the one the Judge called out.

  Jo nodded to Tai as she walked out of the courtroom happy with her first appearance. Tai Nguyen was likely dead-to-rights guilty. Her maneuvering for house arrest might build up enough custody credits that even if he is found guilty of a felony she might be able to keep him from going to prison. This would be a great outcome to springboard her fledgling practice. Jo smiled all the way out of the courthouse. Worst case scenario, the Sheriff wouldn’t grant house arrest and Jo would hire a bail bond agent to post bail for Tai next week.

  Jo thought about her life and lunch with Dzuy on her drive back to the office. She took off her heels and laid her suit coat on a client chair before hopping into her office chair. The flashing light on her desk phone was beeping. With a touch of excitement and angst she played her message. An attorney from the Indian casino Marcos Omar claimed to have gambled at said they had a 1099 for Marcos and wanted to confirm Jo’s address.

  Jo placed the palms of her hands against her forehead and pulled her hands all the way down her face. “Am I helping perpetrate a tax crime?” she asked out loud as she reached for the office phone. Jo arranged to have the 1099 sent care of her office. She hung up and dialed Marcos Omar’s number.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Marcos. I have good news. A 1099 will be sent to my

  office. You should be able to pick it up on Friday or Monday.”

  “Great.”

  Jo thought the connection felt strange. “I’ll give you a call when I receive it.” She waited, but no response. “Hello.”

  Jo pulled the receiver from her ear and looked at it. Marcos Omar hung up but she never heard a click. She confirmed, “Hello?” No response. She put the receiver back and looked at her watch. “No offense, but I’m getting Cartier back right after I help the parents out.”

  Apparently the watch took no offense, as it continued keeping track of time while Jo emailed Matt Terry to obtain surveillance footage from Metropolitan Transit System and Starbucks for her Brad Gecina case. Her phone calls led to roadblocks, people were much more willing to share private video footage with the police than regular citizens. Without an active court case, Jo lacked subpoena power and dearly missed the weight of government behind her.

  Jo leaned over, pulling her notepad and file out of her briefcase. She put the dates of Tai’s hearings into her computer’s calendar. She looked at the Brad Gecina and Tai Nguyen files sitting on her desk and decided against creating a Marcos Omar file just yet. She took a deep breath. She was all caught up with nothing left to do.

  She went onto Facebook, found Dzuy, and sent a friend request. If he was lying about the ex-girlfriend being an ex, hopefully a little more transparency would help bring about the truth. And since she was already on his page, might as well look a little at the pictures and posts….

  Ten minutes later, Jo rolled her eyes at her own stalking. “Back to work,” she said to herself and closed her internet browser. She looked at her blank screen then over to her hard-copy files. “Ughh.” She pushed her chair back. There was literally nothing to do.

  Jo got up, walked to a box next to her file cabinet, pulled out her framed bar certificate and placed it where her public defender plaque used to hang. She hung her law school diploma where the other plaque had been. “Ugh.” They were way too close and made the wall look funny. Peering back inside the little box, Jo passed on putting up more frames and grabbed a folder that held unframed certificates.

  Returning to her desk, she opened the folder and gently flipped through a dozen certificates. She stopped on the seventh one. When she was a public defender she attended a two day DUI workshop and received a certificate for the training.

  “I need DUIs!”

  Jo knew the competition for driving-under-the-influence charged clients was intense. A vast number of DUI defendants are generally law abiding citizens who drank two IPAs at dinner instead of two light beers. That put their blood alcohol content at .09 instead o
f .07, with .08 being a strict cutoff for a Vehicle Code 23152(b) violation. These were usually good people who made a little mistake. Those are the clients Jo wanted to focus on.

  Jo thought back to the thirty or so DUI trials she had defended and prosecuted. Almost invariably the arresting officer would testify at trial that he or she was tired from doing DUI enforcement the night before. Most of these officers worked the night shift, meaning their daytime testimony in court meant they were going above and beyond the call of duty by coming in on their day off.

  A year ago, Jo and Matt Terry were talking with an officer who was working five regular night shifts and appearing at court or administrative hearings an average of three times per week. He disclosed his income after overtime was just shy of two hundred thousand. His overtime testifying in court more than doubled his base salary. Jo asked Matt why attorneys weren’t attacking the credibility of the police with an argument of bias on borderline DUI charges. Wouldn’t the officer be inclined to err on the side of arresting if he could double his salary by testifying for a few hours at a DMV hearing or trial?

  Neither Matt nor Jo ever heard the argument that an officer had a financial interest in making the arrest that led to officer bias. While a judge may be inclined to shut that line of testimony down as unfairly prejudicial, Jo understood that bias is never collateral. So if there is financial incentive to arrest and testify, the jury should know about the flaws in the system. With the right facts, Jo could be the attorney to really bring to light the hidden incentives in the system.

  Jo looked up at her ceiling and pictured herself standing before the California Supreme Court. Jurors deserve to know the officer has a financial incentive to proceed to trial. They should know that the human beings who operate within the system, while generally good and honest, can subconsciously or purposefully influence it in a way that isn’t fair. When the field sobriety tests involve officer subjectivity, their bias in the matter is pertinent and needs to be disclosed.

  If she won, Jo could pile up speaking fees at seminars up and down the coast and get appellate work for rich clients throughout the State of California. She would be in a position to really help her parents. Her little stack of client’s folders, if two could even be called a stack, brought Jo back to reality. She had to get more clients. Starting tomorrow. Tonight, time with Dad sounded even better.

  Chapter 9

  After a relaxing night with her parents and a good night of sleep, Jo steadied herself into her office chair as her computer booted up. Her eyes widened and her pulse quickened when she saw an email from Matthew Terry, directing her to dropbox to download two video files.

  Jo clicked to download the first video, anxiously waiting as the large file downloaded to her computer. After an excruciating minute she pressed play and saw black and white security footage of a nearly empty, two row, parking lot. Ten seconds in she noticed a police car pull into the lot and park. The camera was situated so only the back half of the car was visible. It was impossible to see if Brad Gecina was in the driver’s seat but Jo clicked back to the car coming in, noting the license plate with the time stamp on the video.

  She inhaled deeply, looking up at the ceiling. “He was telling the truth.” Jo just had to confirm it was his police car and the car didn’t move, and she’d win at trial. Heck, she might even be able to get an immunity deal because there was no way Brad could be prosecuted with this timeline. Jo continued watching. She clicked forward. Watched more. Repeated. She noted several cars arrived and one left. She wrote down license plates, make and model of each car that entered the parking lot or left while Brad was there.

  Brad’s car left the parking lot just after nine am, exactly like he said. Jo clenched a fist and grunted in triumph. After a quick fist pump she clicked to download the second file. After a much quicker ten seconds she was watching black and white security footage from inside a Starbucks. The time stamp showed Brad Gecina walk in at ten minutes after nine. He appeared calm, hardly like someone with deep regret or basking in glory at a horrible deed. He looked like a tired cop trying to make it through his shift.

  Jo’s fingers tapped away at the keyboard. Three minutes later she was reviewing the draft of the email she wrote to the deputy district attorney who provided her these files. She asked to set a Free Meeting, with the unusual request of bringing in the victim and having Brad in a separate room, to see if they could negotiate a deal. She clicked send.

  Jo leaned back in her chair, wondering what she was going to do now. She thought about her dad. They had such a great time last night, she needed money to help take stress off of him. With that thought in mind she sent Marcos Omar a text message asking if he wanted to meet to discuss more legal representation. Jo needed DUIs. Maybe this Omar guy would be a source of referrals. Or maybe she could get involved with a few more of his dealings, for now.

  She sent Jason Miley an email asking if he needed any more appearance work. Sitting and staring at her computer she googled how to become an Uber driver. Jo shrugged her shoulders and queried Google how much strippers make. “I wasn’t seriously considering it,” she said out loud in case Grandma was watching her.

  Jo rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll be productive.” She ordered the security equipment that Dzuy told her to get. An email alert came in, Matt Terry arranged a Free Meeting and Cassie would be there too. She texted Brad and he confirmed his availability. Jo was now twenty eight hours away from the potential resolution of her first case.

  Her daydream was interrupted by the sound of her office door being pulled at. Before she could even stand she heard a gentle knocking. “Next week I’ll know,” Jo said to herself, thinking about a video feed to her computer as she walked towards the door.

  As she approached the door she could start to see a small man wearing khaki pants, a tight white polo shirt and a white cap. She unlocked and opened the door for Marcos Omar whose muscles appeared bigger than Jo had remembered. “Good morning, Mr. Omar. What brings you here?”

  Omar entered the office, reaching out his hand to shake Jo’s. “Got your text. Figured I’d stop over rather than call back.” Omar took off his hat and walked to the same chair he had sat in a few days ago.

  “Have any legal work that needs to be done?”

  “Actually, yes.” Omar reflexively tapped a bulge in his front left pocket. “What do we need to do for the attorney-client privilege to attach?”

  “Nothing more. I’ll consider this a legal consultation. It attaches. But remember it does not attach for helping to commit crimes.”

  Omar nodded. “Gotcha. So I’ve been assigned an account that I need to collect on. It’s a good size account, two hundred eighty grand. My share is fifty percent. The debtor has some money and can come up with more. But there’s a little problem. The guy may have powerful friends that I don’t really want to start trouble with.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I’ve been thinking about what to do and I’ve got a few ideas.”

  “Let’s hear them.”

  “Maybe I can make some sort of deal with the people this guy’s connected to before I attempt to collect. Get their permission.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Jo said as she leaned back confidently in her chair.

  “Yeah, but I think it’s a long shot,” Omar said with a frown. “So my second idea would be, what if something happened to the friends? Like what if they were off the streets and in jail?”

  “Are they criminals?”

  Omar laughed. “Of course.”

  Jo leaned forward. “Then helping law enforcement get them off the street would be a good thing.”

  “Well, my business doesn’t exactly allow me to cooperate with the police. Plus, these guys might still have some reach if they are arrested and in jail, on bail, or even in prison.”

  “Okay, Mr. Omar, how can a law abiding attorney help?”

  Marcos quickly glanced around the office. “People call me Omar, without the mister.” He nodded at her walls. �
��Took down your plaques and put up certificates?”

  Jo successfully fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Yes, Omar. Please, just tell me what you want. Tell me what happened and let’s see if I can help.”

  Omar adjusted himself in the chair. “My client operates a medical marijuana dispensary. He was robbed, two hundred fifty thousand in cash and about thirty thousand dollars in marijuana were taken from the store. He wants me to get it back.”

  “How do you know who took it?”

  “GPS stickers on the oversize tape rings on the cash.”

  “Whoa,” Jo said quietly.

  “I saw the video of the robbery. It was done by one man in a hoodie, bandana, and sunglasses. I tracked the money and sat outside a run-down house when a souped up Lexus left the garage. I noted the plate and followed the car to a small office park a half hour north. Four other luxury cars were a little out of place there for some marketing company. Milk. A guy on my team that helped me follow him set up shop two blocks away with a super zoom lens and got pictures of all the guys.”

  “So?”

  “These five guys have committed several armed robberies. They’ve killed before and I think they might be connected to a drug cartel. I’m not sure. That’s why I’m hesitant in taking the account. I don’t want to go against a cartel. I can’t go in and strong arm someone that might be connected without knowing more.”

  “Are you sure it’s them?”

  “On the guy who robbed my client, one hundred percent. He started coming in every week at different days and different times for, like two months, to buy small amounts of marijuana before the robbery. He was casing the place and my client has lots of pictures of him at the store. The robber was the same build, height, and the money tracked to his house. So I’m sure it’s him.”

  “Two hundred fifty thousand in cash? How is that possible?”

  “My client says when the guy was a customer he was fascinated with cash drops that went directly into a safe. He seemed like a stoner and a regular, so they just told him it dropped into a safe for the owner to collect. The owner would come in on Fridays and share some cash as a weekly bonus with the employees.”

 

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