Poisoned

by Alan Bell

  Because playing the drums consumed my time and energy, I didn’t have much luck with girls or pay attention to academics. I earned average grades in everything but music, where I excelled, even winning the Florida State High School Drumming Championship in 1972.

  The real world knocked on my door senior year, however, when my guidance counselor took one look at my grades and informed me that I should consider trade school. “You’re just not college material,” she pronounced.

  I was dumbfounded. All around me, my classmates were getting into prestigious colleges. Plus, my mother always said—only half joking—that I could be anything I wanted to be, “as long as it’s a doctor or a lawyer.”

  My stubborn streak kicked in, and I applied to nearly every college and university in Florida. Every one of them rejected me except the University of Miami, where I earned a scholarship to attend their school of music. Once again, my life consisted of doing what I loved—playing drums for various bands and ensembles. Our university band traveled around the world, even winning a jazz competition in Sweden.

  Yet as much as I was enjoying myself, I felt like a duck out of water the minute the music stopped. My personality was far too intense to fit in with laid-back musicians. I had changed a great deal since high school, both physically and emotionally. My acne was gone and I had shot up to six feet three inches. I became a distance runner, started playing racquetball, and had my first serious girlfriend.

  Suddenly, I experienced an epiphany: I didn’t need a degree to play music. I could continue to play drums in a rock band, while earning a more versatile and practical degree. After exploring several different majors, my friendships with fellow students led me to eventually transfer into the University of Miami School of Business Administration.

  Finally, I began growing intellectually and socially. In business classes, I encountered classmates who were the children of bankers, Fortune 500 executives, and even senators. They were ambitious and driven to succeed despite the University of Miami being known back then as “Suntan U.”

  Being among these movers and shakers motivated me to up my game. I joined a professional business fraternity and became active in student life, serving as student body treasurer, president of the Omicron Delta Kappa fraternity, and Chief Justice of the Student Supreme Court. In 1976, I graduated magna cum laude, in the top 2 percent of my class.

  Now I faced another fork in the road as the real world beckoned. I decided to study for the CPA exam, figuring that was the next logical professional step. I quickly discovered accounting wasn’t for me. The profession seemed to be filled with Poindexters who navigated their world with numbers. In contrast, I was a “people” person who loved to socialize and debate about topics ranging from music to politics. What else could I do?

  And then it came to me: law school. I’d grown up watching the Perry Mason television show—one of my mother’s favorite dramas—on a small, oval-shaped television with rabbit ears. Because Perry Mason was one of my mother’s heroes, he became one of mine. Perry Mason was a smart, articulate, and quick-thinking trial lawyer. I wanted to be just like him, only instead of being a defense lawyer, I wanted to argue cases in front of juries and put bad guys behind bars.

  Why not? My other dreams had come true.

  2 • LESSONS IN THE COURTROOM

  IN LAW SCHOOL, THEY DON’T warn you that the legal profession isn’t all that glamorous. Most lawyers never see the inside of a courtroom. Instead, they spend their lives drafting contracts, making deals, and pushing papers. Trial lawyers like Perry Mason—known as “litigators”—are an elite breed: the courageous, risk-taking fighter pilots of the legal profession. I was determined to become one.

  At the University of Miami Law School, an exciting opportunity arose. Students in their final year of law school had the option of signing up for an internship program instead of taking classes. Eager to test-drive my skills, I jumped at the opportunity to work at the State Attorney’s office under Janet Reno, who would later serve as Attorney General of the United States for President Bill Clinton.

  I took every case that came along and got my clock handed to me over and over again. It was humiliating at times. However, my early days as a prosecutor taught me essential lessons about justice and power that would prove to be not only key to my success in the courtroom, but also vital to my survival when I later became a victim imprisoned in my own body.

  I learned my initial lesson when I prosecuted my first case in a courtroom as an intern. I was only twenty-three years old and still very wet behind the ears. I took comfort in the fact that I was being closely supervised by an experienced attorney who tutored me every step of the way.

  The defendant, a large black man, was accused of hitting a police officer. Officially, this was “battery on a law enforcement officer,” a third-degree felony in Florida punishable by up to five years in the state prison. Since he was a first-time offender, if the man had agreed to a plea bargain, he would have been placed on probation. However, because he maintained his innocence and refused to take the plea, his fate would be decided by the judge.

  I walked into the courtroom and stood before the judge. Although I was nervous, my supervisor was by my side, monitoring and correcting every move I made. My case was simple: the defendant hit a police officer. No injury, no weapon, and two witnesses. In my mind, this was the kind of case where the judge would be lenient and give this man another chance. I figured the State had given a green intern like me an opportunity to prosecute it because there wasn’t much to lose if I screwed things up and the guy walked out of the courtroom a free man.

  I was confident that I had done my homework. I was fully prepared to question the police officer and two witnesses on the stand. However, the judge was so authoritative and had such a loud, intimidating voice that I was suddenly gripped by stomach-churning fear. I felt like the scarecrow quaking in front of the all-powerful Wizard of Oz as she bellowed, “Call your first witness.”

  The minute I began direct examination of the cop, everything changed. Immediately after he identified the defendant as the man who’d hit him, the judge interrupted and said, “Mr. Bell, you’re done with the direct testimony of this witness, correct?”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. We were only halfway through the cop’s testimony, and I was stunned that she didn’t want to hear any more.

  I turned to look for guidance from my supervisor, who was seated at the table next to me, and was shocked to see that he’d covered his eyes with his hands. What had I done wrong? Had I messed up so badly that the judge was going to throw the case out of court?

  “Mr. Bell, we’re finished with this witness, are we not?” the judge asked sternly.

  Now I received an even bigger shock: my supervisor looked up at me and made a slashing motion across his own throat, an obvious signal urging me to comply with the judge’s wishes and terminate my direct examination of the police officer.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” I muttered reluctantly. “I guess we’re done.”

  Once the judge dismissed the cop from the stand, I said, “Your Honor, I have two eyewitnesses who saw the incident take place.”

  The judge snapped back, “The State rests, correct, Mr. Bell?”

  “No, Your Honor,” I replied in confusion. “We have two eyewitnesses.” Hadn’t I just told her that?

  She raised her voice even more. “The State rests. Correct, Mr. Bell?”

  I looked over at my supervisor for guidance, wondering what I was supposed to do. Had I really lost my first case as easily as that? I’d never been so embarrassed.

  My supervisor hissed, “Say ‘yes,’ Alan. You’re done, kid.”

  Sadly, I complied. “Okay. I mean, yes, Your Honor. The State rests.”

  My supervisor tugged on my jacket, and I finally sat down next to him, feeling completely defeated.

  Then the biggest shock of all came: the judge hit her gavel and said, “I find the defendant guilty, and sentence him to five years in Florida Sta
te Prison.” She then ordered the bailiff to remove the defendant and called, “Next case.”

  I walked out of the courtroom feeling a turmoil of emotions: happy that I had somehow “won” my first case, but stunned and heartsick because that man didn’t deserve to be put away for five years. The judgment, I now saw, had been predetermined, and the facts of the case weren’t all that important.

  It was then that my supervisor explained that the judge was widely known as “the hanging judge” because she prided herself on being “America’s toughest judge.” She had formerly been Florida’s first female felony prosecutor. Now that she was a judge, she nearly always handed out the maximum sentences possible—no matter what the crime or circumstances.

  For me, this was a sobering moment. It was my first real encounter with the criminal justice system, and I had witnessed firsthand just how flawed it could be. My life lesson: people in positions of power are not always motivated to do the right thing.

  • • •

  While I was earning my legal chops, crime in South Florida was heating up. The best and most expensive lawyers followed the money to Miami to represent celebrities, mobsters, and Colombian cartel kingpins. They were a virtual legal who’s who, national headline makers like F. Lee Bailey; Roy Black, who represented William Kennedy Smith; Albert Krieger, who represented John Gotti; Frank Rubino, who represented Panama’s ex-dictator, Manuel Noriega; and Gerry Spence. Despite my heavy caseload, I was determined to learn how to win, and I earned an amazing education by watching these masters at work.

  I devoted every spare moment to sitting in different courtrooms, studying these esteemed legal experts while taking notes. I analyzed their actions and questioned them about their tactics. Gradually, I figured out how the game was played and started winning, too.

  In one of those courtrooms, I observed the accused rapist and serial killer Ted Bundy—a third-year law student just like me—representing himself in front of a jury. Bundy was arrested in 1978 and was charged with assaulting and murdering numerous young women and girls. To this day, his victim count remains unknown, but before his execution in 1989, Bundy confessed to thirty homicides committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978.

  To put it mildly, Bundy was the very face of evil. Yet, as I watched him represent himself in the courtroom, it was easy to see why he had so readily earned the trust of his young female victims. He was handsome, personable, poised, and articulate.

  Years later, as an organized crime prosecutor, I decided to visit the state prison where many of the most hardened criminals I put away were housed. I wanted to see firsthand where I was sending our convicted criminals. To my surprise, while I was touring the facility, the warden asked if I’d like to meet Ted Bundy. By then, he was their most infamous prisoner.

  When I agreed, the warden woke Bundy in his cell on death row. Bundy was sleeping on his cot beneath a thin blanket; he stirred, rubbed his eyes, and climbed out of bed to greet me. He was wearing a nightshirt and a pair of boxers. His skin was pale, almost milky white, and his eyes were a piercing bright blue. He looked like an anchorman on the evening news.

  This infamous serial killer was articulate, friendly, disarming, and engaging. We could have been in a barbershop or at a backyard picnic talking about local sports teams and politics. I left Bundy’s cell feeling chilled to the bone, wondering how this blandly “normal” man could possibly have committed such horrendous, heartless acts. He was an infamous murderer awaiting execution, yet even face-to-face with him, I could perceive no evil residing in Ted Bundy.

  I’d learned another valuable life lesson: evil can be found anywhere, even in our everyday environments and in seemingly “good” people—including, I would later find out, those in government organizations and Fortune 500 corporations. I vowed to keep my antenna up for evil I might encounter in my future work as an attorney.

  • • •

  As I grew and changed, so did South Florida. These were the Reagan years, a time when business bustled and new buildings were springing up like mushrooms. In 1979, the year I graduated from law school, a deadly shoot-out in broad daylight at the Dadeland Mall between Colombian drug traffickers highlighted the fact that Miami had become the locus of mob violence and turf wars over illegal narcotics.

  I was living just two blocks away from where the shooting occurred, but I wasn’t shocked by it. This kind of violence had become the new normal: every day, bodies turned up on beaches, in the streets, in the Miami River, and in the Everglades as the homicide count skyrocketed.

  Most of the cocaine and marijuana entering the country at that time was trafficked through South Florida, drawing ruthless drug cartels as well as exiled dictators, con men, international weapons traffickers, and the idle rich. Miami also served as the Mafia’s winter home. Mobsters came south every winter for extended vacations, financing and running businesses, many of them illicit. They invested in strip joints, bars, drugs, and prostitution.

  This booming trade brought millions of dollars into the region, and nobody was shy about spending it on fast boats and even faster cars. South Florida rapidly became a glamorous destination for the rich, famous, and beautiful. There were three women for every guy in the nightclubs. The disco scene was heating up and the partying never stopped. Nothing was too excessive or outlandish. South Florida sizzled, pulsed with bright colors, and danced to a sexy Latin beat as everyone basked in the sunshine by day and partied all night.

  Because I was from South Florida, I assumed the whole country was like this. When the TV show Miami Vice aired in 1984, everyone thought it was an exaggerated view of what was going on in the city. It wasn’t. In fact, the show minimized our extreme reality.

  I was the youngest prosecutor in the State of Florida when I joined the Dade County Prosecutor’s Office in 1979. As I worked my way up through the legal ranks in the State Attorney’s office, I advanced from prosecuting traffic tickets and misdemeanors to serious felonies, until eventually I was trusted to handle cases involving homicides and organized crime.

  In 1982, I prosecuted my first felony trial. This case was a slam dunk—or so I thought. The defendant had committed aggravated assault with a firearm, an offense punishable by five years in prison, with a mandatory minimum of three years because a firearm was used.

  The defendant was a young white guy who worked with the Mafia. He was represented by the godfather of all criminal defense attorneys, John Baron, who was in his mid-seventies by then. Baron commonly bragged that while not all of his notorious mobster clients “got off,” not one was ever executed.

  I didn’t see how I could lose this case. The defendant had pointed a gun at the victim, cocked it, and threatened to shoot him in front of two eyewitnesses during a dispute. The victim had called 911 after the defendant left, and had given an accurate description of the vehicle. The police had found the car. The gun was still in it, and the defendant had confessed to the crime.

  Judge Joe Mosey sat on the bench for that trial. I called the victim and two eyewitnesses to the stand, as well as the police officer who testified that the defendant had confessed the crime to him. I then introduced the gun into evidence. By contrast, the defense attorney had no evidence or testimony to contradict my case.

  And yet, as I sat there waiting to taste sweet victory after proving my case, Judge Mosey instantly made his decision after everyone had testified: “Not guilty!”

  I was flabbergasted, then infuriated. Afterward, I learned that Judge Mosey had previously worked as an attorney for Baron. When Mosey ran for judge, Baron had supported his candidacy and helped get him elected. As a representative of the people of the State of Florida, I had been set up to lose the case: they had cleverly plotted to waive a jury trial so Mosey could take care of his buddy. Years later, I learned that Judge Mosey’s nickname was “Let ’em go, Joe.”

  After that case, I vowed to become a skilled enough attorney to outwit even those who abused power, in the courtroom and beyond. I was going to do whatever
it took not to lose another case.

  • • •

  The more I practiced law, the more I loved the excitement of the job, especially as I began specializing in organized crime cases. My job was to convict and put away murderers, mobsters, drug dealers, and other lowlifes.

  One of my most entertaining cases involved international drug smuggling by the Colombian cartel. In this case, the cops had brought drug-sniffing dogs into the Fort Lauderdale airport and discovered several kilos of cocaine inside a suitcase on the conveyor belt. The two men who had checked in the luggage were arrested. Even half a kilo in those days warranted a mandatory fifteen-year sentence, and these men were smuggling five kilos. Things didn’t look good for them.

  My intelligence source informed me that one of these guys was a kingpin in the cartel. The other one was a lower-level guy, or what we called a “mule.” Naturally, we wanted to nail the kingpin, so I made a deal with the mule, offering him only five years in state prison if he’d flip on his boss. He took the deal. The kingpin went to trial; he got on the stand and claimed the suitcase wasn’t his and that the cocaine belonged to the mule.

  Before the trial, I had meticulously examined the contents of the suitcase and found clothing as well as cocaine. I noticed that the shirt inside the suitcase was monogrammed with the initials “JAR.” The defense had no idea that his shirt was inside the suitcase; they had never even bothered to look inside it to catalog the contents. As I cross-examined the kingpin on the stand, I seemingly went easy on him, but asked him write his name on an easel in front of the jury before he stepped down from the witness stand. He did so.

  Then I asked, “So that’s your name? Juan Alfonso Rodriguez? Your full name? The name you’ve written on that easel?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And you’re telling the jury that’s not your suitcase?” I asked. “That you never even looked inside it?”

  “Yes, that’s what I say.”