by Robbie Tolan
So every year, usually around January, B.A.T. holds a large fundraiser in New York City called Going to Bat for B.A.T. We typically go each year, but obviously, because I was shot on New Year’s Eve of 2008, I missed the 2009 meeting while I recovered in the hospital. But I was eager to go to the next fundraiser, because it is a cavalcade of Major League stars, including dozens of Hall of Famers, and since I’d grown up with them, I knew they’d be interested in seeing that I was okay. Plus, it’s truly an amazing and inspiring experience. You never get tired of being surrounded by your heroes.
The event consists of a cocktail party for players and guests only, followed by a silent auction and autograph session with the fans, and then dinner. It’s a time for fellowship, reminiscing about their playing days, and generally catching up with each other. I’d known most of these men for all of my life, so they were like family. Yes, they were a very famous family but part of my extended family nonetheless.
By the time I sat down for the B.A.T. dinner in 2010, I knew I was ready to return to baseball, but again, the path wasn’t clear on how I’d get there. The independent Bay Area Toros had released me back in 2008, so even when I was healthy, I was fighting an uphill battle to stay in the game. But a combination of my frustration over the continued postponement of the trial and a fierce determination to get back in baseball shape meant that after a full year of rehab, I felt like I was back in baseball shape.
I was motivated, running and working out with a minimum of pain, and that meant I had control over my body again. Something happens mentally when you’re back in control of your body, your functions, and what you can do, and I think that it helped make the world an optimistic place for me, even with the trial still awaiting. And I believe that others can sense optimism, which is why I think Dmitri approached me at the 2010 B.A.T. dinner.
“Hey man, can you do me a favor and take these baseball cards,” he asked, handing me a large stack of baseball cards, “and get some of these guys to sign them?” The autograph table was packed full of famous players signing cards for fans, which meant that the players themselves couldn’t get autographs for their own cards. And since Dmitri was a huge baseball card collector, I didn’t mind doing it. I had access the fans didn’t have, meaning that I could go behind ropes and security and get access to anyone I wanted.
After the dinner, I met up with Dmitri to give him back his signed cards, and while he was thanking me, he asked, “Didn’t see you here last year, man. Where you been?” It was funny, but Dmitri was the first person in the past 365 days who didn’t know that I’d been shot, and it was damn refreshing. To him, I was just the now grown up dude who used to be his twelve-year-old friend, nothing more or less. When I told him what happened, he was enraged and nearly in tears. We talked for hours about what I’d been doing to get back to normal and how my road had been rocky. Dmitri had recently retired, which I’ve heard is like death to athletes, and so I think he was even more attuned to what it meant to not be able to do what you want to on the athletic field due to injury beyond your control.
I left the conference feeling good about having seen him, but I wasn’t expecting any further contact. But then, a few weeks after the dinner, Dmitri sent me a series of text messages.
“Hey, can you run?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you all healed up? Can you work out, hit, and throw?”
“Hell yeah,” I replied, slowly coming to the realization that Dmitri was trying to see if he had a ball player on his phone or someone who just used to be a ball player. There’s a difference. Slowly, I began getting excited. I didn’t know what DY was going to be able to do, but I did know that faith and hope mean that anything is possible. He called me later.
“So I’m now working for a team in the Frontier League, an independent squad called the Oakland County Cruisers,” Dmitri said during our conversation. “I’m now the vice president of baseball operations, and my first order of business is to get you back on the field.”
In less than an hour, my path back to baseball had been laid, and my jaw dropped when Dmitri explained the opportunity to me. It was everything I could have asked for, which was nothing but a chance. When you don’t have that chance, you feel so empty, and that was part of the collateral damage that Cotton’s bullet had caused. It seemed to take away my chances. The ship that had sailed was only where the bullet had entered my body, but it sure as hell tried to infect my brain with doubt about whether I’d ever get another chance to do what I loved.
Because Dmitri had been impressed by my tenacity in rehabbing and overcoming my injuries, he wanted to take a chance on me. That meant that regardless of whether I stuck on the team or flamed out as a baseball player, from that moment on, I’d won. I’d beaten that damn bullet. Now I needed to see if I could win this criminal trial against Cotton.
CHAPTER 5
THE TRIAL OF MY LIFE
Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 7, Detroit, Michigan—May 16, 2010
Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old African American girl, was asleep on the couch when Detroit’s Special Response Unit, the city’s SWAT team, burst into her home around midnight. With the reality crime show The First 48 in tow, Officer Joseph Weekley threw a flash bang grenade into the house, and then fired a single shot from his weapon, hitting Jones in the back of the head, killing her instantly. Compounding the mistake, they had entered the wrong apartment. Officer Joseph Weekley was charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun. After two trials, Officer Weekley was cleared on all counts.
All I remember was leaving our courtroom, the courtroom where Cotton’s defense attorneys had patted him on the back with congratulations, walking into another room, and collapsing into a ball. There I was in the fetal position, weeping uncontrollably. My parents really couldn’t do or say anything, and the rest of my family just let me be. When the verdict of not guilty was read, my brain went blank, in the same way it had gone blank when I’d been shot. I’ve heard victims talk about being traumatized by the criminal justice system, and now I understand. A jury of my peers had looked at the evidence and had basically said to me, “You deserved that bullet.”
And I couldn’t handle it. But let me back up a bit.
After a year of waiting, postponements, and just plain delaying tactics, the trial finally started during the first week of May 2010, over a year and a half after I was shot. I was feeling fairly confident about the case Greenwood and Morris were going to present. The reenactments were solid. The evidence was there. I wasn’t an expert on how to prosecute a case against police officers, but we’d done everything we’d been asked. We’d been truthful, but more importantly, we believed that, like everything else, this was in God’s hands, and He wouldn’t let us down. After all, we’d gotten miracles already: I was alive, and we’d gotten an indictment. Why would a conviction be a bridge too far?
My relatives and supporters would come out in droves to the courtroom on the first day of the trial, which was reserved for something called voir dire. I had no idea what voir dire meant, but Greenwood and Morris explained that it was Latin from the phrase, verum dicere, which means, “that which is true.” Initially, it referred to the oath that the jury took to be impartial, but now it refers to the process of picking and swearing in the jury. This process took all day, but Greenwood and Morris made sure to make themselves available to us day and night for any questions we had.
I was worried about the jury more than anything else. Remember those death threats? I said that I wasn’t worried about that specific person trying to kill me, but I was worried that one of those types of people could be on the jury. And it only took one—just one person who looked at my black skin and saw nothing but the racism they’d learned and grew up with all of their lives and who had none of the empathy I needed for someone to see the evidence clearly.
Around six o’clock in the evening, the jury had been picked, and Greenwood explained that neither side would get the exact people they wanted.
It would be a mix of people who believed that the police should have wide latitude in cases like mine and others who think people of color get a raw deal. The job of Greenwood and Morris would be to prove that Cotton had violated my civil rights, hadn’t been truthful in his deposition testimony, and as a result, was guilty of aggravated assault. And even if they had a jury box full of indifferent or middle-of-the-road jurors, I was confident that we’d prove our case.
I guess that’s the ultimate answer to the woman who asked about how the little kid could still have hope that the system is just. Regardless of what I’d gone through, call me crazy, but I still believed in the goodness of America to do right by me. Yeah, I knew the statistics, but deep in my gut, I thought that Americans could see my situation for what it was and get justice for me. They say Americans are the ultimate optimists, and I think that perhaps I’m just like everyone else.
The night before the trial began with a jury, I was back to being the insomniac I was after leaving the hospital. The media was swarming again, we were all over the television news each night, and I felt like I was in a fishbowl again. I felt like I was suddenly reliving a nightmare. I can’t emphasize how much your anonymity, your privacy, should be guarded and valued. Because when you lose it, you feel like you’re stripped naked before the world.
In the early morning hours on the day of the trial, I sat in my bedroom with my back against the wall, staring at the suit I’d chosen to wear. It was freshly cleaned, still in the plastic protective bag. As much as I’d wanted this day to come, with the two postponements making it feel like it would never come, a small part of me wanted another postponement—something that would delay the inevitable for the third time, so I wouldn’t have to face it. As much as I wanted to look Jeffrey Cotton in the eye and let him know that, despite his efforts, I not only survived, but was going to thrive and that he needed to pay for what he’d done, I’ll have to admit that I was also terrified. I wanted to crawl back into the safety of that hospital bubble and be Unknown 90, that vulnerable young man the nurses and doctors had protected from the outside world. Every transition, from me leaving the hospital to going to my Aunt Carolyn’s to starting the trial, had created this yearning need for anonymity.
So as the minutes ticked toward the inevitable, I tried to escape by listening to jazz. Involuntary tears began to roll down from the corners of my eyes. It’s awful to be scared shitless and not be able to express it to anyone, all because they need to see you strong, and I was scared shitless. That’s what it’s like to be trapped.
Around six in the morning, I heard the alarm go off in my aunt and uncle’s bedroom. Wide awake, I let out a resigned sigh and lifted my head from the wall. Minutes later, Aunt Carolyn walked down the hall and poked her head into my bedroom.
“Time to get up, Robbie. You’ve got to get ready.”
“I’m up,” I said, my monotone voice betraying my lack of enthusiasm for the task ahead. I willed myself to the shower, and let the water flow over me longer than normal, as though I was trying to cleanse myself. I watched the water run down my body, a body now scarred from my sternum to my belly button, and I got angry. I felt around to my back, where the bullet had traveled after leaving my liver. It was then that I started praying. The water was now a baptismal soaking, a rejuvenation and new life all in one. As I got out of the shower and got dressed, I suddenly felt more resolve and determination. I wasn’t alone in this ordeal, dammit, and I was going to win.
To get through this, I knew that I needed solidarity everywhere I looked. For all of the strength that I projected, I needed as many invisible friendly hands holding me up as possible. I was extremely vulnerable, and I knew it, but I did have my family, and they were going to be my shield and armor. Dozens of them told me that they wanted to come to the trial to support me, and I was good with that, as long as they were there on time. This was not the time to create distractions that either broke my concentration at the task at hand or created additional stress. I didn’t need some aunt or uncle or cousin causing a scene, all because they’d gotten stuck in traffic and were now mad that a court officer wasn’t letting them in. Get there on time or don’t come was my message.
We parked in an underground garage a couple of blocks away from the courthouse, and to my delight, all of my relatives were prompt and accounted for. Several cars, filled to capacity with relatives, were parked side by side in the garage. It picked up my spirits to be surrounded by them as I walked to the courtroom. The rest of the world might judge me by my skin color, but these people loved me.
The courthouse was about two blocks away, and honestly, you’d think that after nearly two years of dealing with this I’d have a handle on the media frenzy that’s surrounded my shooting from the start, but I didn’t. I still thought that I could walk the streets of Houston anonymously, but the two-block walk to the courthouse proved me wrong. Dozens of Houstonians pointed and stared as I made the slow walk to the trial, with dozens of relatives in tow. I tried to not look anyone directly in the eyes, but I could see people pointing and whispering as we walked. By the time we made it to the courthouse steps, the madness had ratcheted up to eleven, as the reporters, photographers, and television news talking heads descended upon us. It was your typical media circus, and I was the reluctant dude in the middle of it.
I remember walking into the courthouse and thinking that for all of this drama, I’d never seen the inside of a real courthouse in real life. Everything I’d seen of courtrooms had come from episodes of Law & Order or The First 48, and the reality that my case was just one of many that day struck me as we walked to our courtroom. The ground floor was a crowded lobby full of the accused and the victims waiting on wooden benches, uniformed police drinking coffee, bedraggled lawyers in ill-fitting suits, people waiting to clear their traffic tickets, and, on this day, the media. All of them moved to and fro believing that their concerns were the most important of the day at the courthouse.
Ten minutes after going through security, I was split off from my extended family. Greenwood and Morris wanted my parents, my cousin Anthony, my Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Charles, and me to head to the District Attorney’s office, while everyone else scrambled for seats in the packed courtroom.
As we waited in the DA’s office, not much was said because there really wasn’t much to say. Small talk really isn’t appropriate when it comes to a trial, so we sat waiting for Greenwood and Morris. When they arrived, they greeted everyone as if they’d known us for years, which did a lot to relieve the tension in the room.
The judge in my case was Judge Mary Lou Keel, a former prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, so we felt good about having the trial in her courtroom. However, she made a decision that would impact how we’d view the trial, or more accurately, how we couldn’t view the trial.
“The judge has invoked the rule in your case,” Greenwood explained.
“What’s that?” I asked, not sure about any new rules being added at this moment.
“The family is to be secluded from the trial until you all testify,” he explained. “It’s designed to keep witnesses from being tainted by the testimony of another witness. Since you all were there at the scene, you all have different perspectives on what happened. What we don’t want you to do is to suddenly start adding details from something you heard in court.”
So in essence, we could all be present together in a room, but we couldn’t watch each other give testimony. That seemed reasonable, and since we weren’t worried about our various stories, we simply followed our new liaison, Maria, to the top floor of the courtroom to an isolated witness room.
The seclusion room was dark, being poorly lit seemingly on purpose. The room was protected with a guard, and you could only enter after being buzzed in. As we walked into the room, I noticed that they’d assigned an attendant to sit at a desk directly across from the door. Before I sat down, I amused myself by thinking that I was probably in a room that had previously been used to keep mob sni
tches and corporate whistleblowers safe.
Filled with board games, puzzles, toys, and video games, it seemed like our room also doubled as a day care center for antsy kids. But for adults looking to burn off eight hours worth of anxiety, it wasn’t optimal. My cousin Anthony and I hooked up the Nintendo and started playing, while my dad tried to nap. My mom came prepared with a book.
We knew that we were unlikely to testify during the first few days of the trial. Greenwood and Morris had told us that they first had to build the case.
“They got in over their head and panicked,” Greenwood began his argument to the jury.
Our liaison, Maria, would periodically leave us and go sit in the courtroom and then come back to bring us vague reports about how things were going. She couldn’t tell us about the specific testimony, but she did say that it appeared that Greenwood and Morris were putting on a strong case. She also cheered us by saying that the defense seemed to look weak and unprepared, with the judge seemingly more favorable to the prosecution. Now you have to take all of that with a grain of salt because I’m assuming Maria knew as much about the legal system as we did, but it did keep our spirits up.
The early days of the trial fell into a regular monotony of arriving at the courthouse, eating lunch with my family, and getting bored. My relatives kept attending in droves, but when we got together, they weren’t allowed to discuss any details of the case. However, they were taking copious notes that they assured us they’d share after the trial.