I used my spare time to search for better jobs at an Iowa workforce office, which was right across the river from Omaha in Council Bluffs. I needed to find a different job before the first freeze, when car washing would end.
I spotted a “document analyst” job. It probably meant proofreading. That I could do. It wasn’t writing briefs and it wasn’t working for attorneys, but it would do for now, I thought. The job was with a printing company in Omaha. I recognized the name; I had seen it stamped on the bottom of Supreme Court briefs along with a 402 telephone number; the area code had drawn my attention because it was a reminder of home.
There are only a few companies that specialize in printing Supreme Court briefs. It is very exacting work, with no room for typos. A small book is published as part of the appeal; it includes an appendix of lower court opinions relating to the case. Forty copies are sent to the Supreme Court—several for each justice and the clerks, and the others for places like the Library of Congress.
Omaha’s Cockle Printing is, in fact, one of the nation’s largest Supreme Court printers. For my purposes, it seemed odd, almost a miracle, that they are located in Omaha and not in D.C., but miracles seemed to be happening for me.
I sent them a résumé. When you read it, the first thing you would notice is the ten-year work history gap. I did mention that as an “independent” paralegal I had written briefs that had made it to the Supreme Court, which the people at Cockle would know rarely happens. I also mentioned that I had worked with Seth Waxman and others.
Seth is kind of an Elvis in the world Cockle Printing inhabits. When they saw my reference to him in my résumé, they were reasonably sure I was a lunatic. They called me anyway.
Actually, they had already found a good candidate to fill the job before I even applied. They were about to make the phone call to complete the hire when my résumé arrived.
Cockle is located in a tiny, nondescript building at the western end of downtown Omaha. It is a short walk to the federal and state court buildings. It is directly across the street from the biggest box of money in Omaha, the Federal Reserve Bank.
Cockle was started in the early 1920s as a regular print shop, but because its owners, Albert and Eda Cockle, had law degrees, they veered into the business of printing legal briefs. Their grandchildren, Andy Cockle and Trish Billotte, run the company today. The basement still has the old lead ingots and buckets from the days when type was set in molten lead. Also in the basement are box upon box of Supreme Court briefs that have changed modern U.S. legal history. Cockle has had some involvement in nearly every major Supreme Court case going back to the 1980s. It is a rather remarkable place, given its modest environs on a standard Omaha street. You might think it was any other printing company, but it is not.
The fact that Cockle is called a printing company is kind of a misnomer. In fact, with high-speed copiers and pneumatic paper cutters, the printing is the easy part. The mental work is the important part. Lawyers from all over the nation are on the phone with the folks at Cockle, letting these careful, cheery midwesterners calm them down and explain how to prep their arguments for the big show. It’s about the only place in the nation where my knowledge of brief writing and the Supreme Court could possibly find application, and it was but a few miles from the halfway house.
My résumé landed in the e-mail in-box of Renee Goss, the office manager. Renee, almost because she thought it was funny or at least awfully odd, showed it to the boss, Andy Cockle.
Andy is a man of moderate height and build, who is charming and quite funny. He would appreciate a madman’s résumé, maybe suitable for framing. He read it with a wry smile and then asked Renee to schedule an interview with “the crackpot.”
She called to set up a date and time for the interview. When she spoke, her statements were bordered with “please” and “thank you”—a form of communication completely foreign to someone stepping out of prison. She asked if I would please e-mail her an attachment of the letter of recommendation from Mr. Seth Waxman, if I didn’t mind.
The Cockles had long been trying to capture Seth’s attention and a portion of his business. They had sent him countless marketing letters and had never heard back. I had used just the right magic name to open the drawbridge. This was another miracle, if you’re counting.
When I finished my shift at the car wash, I drove to the workforce center where a secretary tried to help me scan the letter into something called a PDF, so we could attach it to an e-mail. But we had no idea how to do any of that, so I decided to just take the folded, dog-eared letter with me to the interview.
The day before the interview I drove home to David City for the first time since prison. I had skirted around the visit for weeks, not wanting to face the reality that Dad would not be there.
The closer I came, the more my stomach knotted. By the time I passed the sign announcing that I was entering Butler County, I needed to pull over. I called Annie in California. She was bummed that I was making the trip without her. We had talked for years about the first trip to David City.
“How is the new job working out?” I asked her.
“It’s okay. I am still waiting to be moved into the role as primary therapist. That’s where I’ll really help people. For now, I’m supervising people during mealtimes and leading group exercises. I’ll start the therapy sessions as soon as I prove to them that I can handle the eating part.”
Part of the therapy there, which she had to participate in, was to set a good example, by eating what seemed like huge portions of food. And she didn’t like cilantro. California food is half cilantro. I tried to calm her down about that. And, yes, I know, how can you not like cilantro?
I had been sending Annie a constant stream of encouraging letters, because I knew how fragile she was. And also because I desperately wanted her to succeed, even if it meant we would remain separated.
Dearest Annie,
I really believe that this is your last big step toward full recovery. And I know you can do this. The food stuff will be challenging and so will dealing with people on terms not of your own making. It will test your resolve but you will persevere because deep down beyond the sensitivity, you are an incredibly strong woman. A woman who amazes me on a daily basis.
I hope you are beginning to settle into your new apartment. Just remember your home is with me, Annie.
Bye-bye cutie,
Love Shon
It was cold and rainy in David City. My first stop was two miles outside of town at my father’s grave. My breath produced big clouds that drifted over my father’s tombstone. I kneeled and prayed for his eternal happiness.
I cruised into David City, my knees wet from the grass. As I entered the street next to the Thorpe Opera House, I saw a man walking, head hunched over but making good time against the cold wind and some raindrops. It was Dr. Kaufman, the man who had written me letters while I was in prison.
He visited with me on the street for a minute, but it was cold so he suggested we sit in my car. I thanked him for his letters and told him how much they had helped. He said he was glad. He knew all about my law work, about how Annie and I had met, and about how my mother was faring after Dad’s passing. Before he got out, he put one hand on my shoulder.
“Let’s say a little prayer, Shon.” We bowed our heads. “Lord, thank you for protecting Shon in that place and for sending him home safely after such a dark time. Give him what he needs for a new life now. Help him to live for your purposes and not the world’s.” He patted my shoulder and said good-bye.
Before he walked away he leaned into the open door. “Shon, I knew your father well. I know he was proud of how you changed. He was very proud of you before he died. You go over there and see him.”
I told him I just had.
“Good, good.” He patted the car and was on his way.
For a few minutes I did not feel like driving. I just sat and let whatever had been given sink in. These people had every right to think of me as a monster.
They could have harassed my family out of town. They could have tried to erase me from the town’s memory. But they came with love and kind letters and even little donations instead of torches and pitchforks, and it made such a difference to the shape of my heart.
These random happenings were starting to shake the foundation of my disbelief. What were the chances that Dr. Kaufman would be the first person I’d see in David City? It was hard not to see these things as hints of something bigger at work.
I had only a few minutes to spare. It was my lunch break from the car wash job, and I was still dressed in mud-caked clothes. It was time for my interview at Cockle. I couldn’t find a place to change, so I pulled into the parking lot of Channel 7, undressed, and then dressed inside my dark-windowed car. I took a sponge bath with a jug of half-frozen water—at least I would be awake. I straightened my tie in the rearview mirror.
“Your résumé has a rather large gap in it,” Renee said as we all sat down in Andy’s little office, where bright paintings, an old bucket of lead, an antique cigar poster, a voodoo doll, and an Opera Omaha poster caught my eye.
“You also say that you were a paralegal and that you wrote several Supreme Court briefs, but that you are not an attorney. How is that possible?” Renee asked.
Before I could answer, Andy and Trish started arguing about whether nonlawyers could file petitions on cases other than their own. Then they remembered the meeting we were having.
“Were you able to write and file briefs as a paralegal?” Andy asked. My résumé had somewhat glossed over the gap with a summary of my legal accomplishments.
“It’s a long story,” I replied.
“Well, why don’t you tell us,” said Trish. Straight to the point, she would have made a good trial judge.
I took a breath.
“I wrote those briefs from prison, where I was locked up for over ten years for robbing banks when I was twenty-two,” I said in one breath.
There was, of course, silence. Andy smiled but it was not the smile of humor. It was the smile of a curious man. He caught himself and looked serious.
Renee’s smile was frozen. I probably could have produced the same reaction if I had removed my shirt to show the jailhouse tattoos on my back.
Trish broke the silence: “Did you use a gun?”
“Yes I did. I didn’t ever fire it, but I had a gun.”
Then I told them everything, right down to John Fellers and the Mercedes outside, and my goal of someday becoming an attorney.
They asked me, as they do with everyone, to read a snippet from a Supreme Court brief. It was a literacy test of sorts. I read every word perfectly, stopping only to ask them if they wanted me to read a legal citation as “JA” or “Joint Appendix.”
“You know, Shon, we have conducted a lot of interviews over the years,” Andy said. “No one ever knew what ‘JA’ stood for.”
After that I pulled out my crinkled copy of Seth Waxman’s letter, unfolded it, and handed it to Andy. I also gave them Noah Levine’s telephone number.
Renee asked me why I was coming back to Nebraska if I had such friends.
“Why not New York or Washington?”
I said I owed my mother some good years with her son. She bit her lip a little, so I guessed that was the right thing to say. It was the truth.
At the end of the interview they said they would contact me. I thought they were giving me the “don’t call us” script. The interview had not gone as well as I had hoped; I had hoped for the job. But I had, after all, hit them with a sledgehammer of sorts. No one could be expected to react positively to a story like that.
I didn’t know it, but as I walked down the street their heads were huddled in Andy’s little window to see if I had the Mercedes or, more likely, a shopping cart. But there it was—thank you, John—my big black Benz.
I returned to the halfway house to learn we had a new boarder. Tyler’s brother had arrived. He had been in prison for selling drugs. I wondered if Tyler’s hatred was somehow following me. It had not boiled over at Pekin, maybe because I had so many in my corner. Now I was going to be sleeping—and with my eyes open—in the same room with Tyler’s brother?
I asked the house manager if something could be done. We were moved to different rooms at least.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked when we ran into each other in the basement bathroom.
“I do.”
“Look,” I said, “we both just got out of prison, and I don’t want to go back. I doubt you do either. But we’re going to spend some time here in close quarters. If we’re going to have a problem, we might as well have it now.”
He stared at me but didn’t speak.
“I understand it that you don’t like me. That’s okay. There’s nothing I can do to fix that. How about if we just don’t talk to each other?”
He looked at me for a few seconds.
“All right.”
After the encounter I felt lighter, like there was no danger in smiling, and that I could put away the armor.
Hearing nothing from Cockle for a week, I wrote it off and kept washing cars. Annie told me to keep the faith; they would call. She was right.
“We would like to talk to you again,” Renee said. They had spent the week researching my every claim. Trish had called Noah and gotten a very good report on my legal skills.
“If you were me, would you hire him?” she had asked Noah.
Noah said he would. He also said that if I visited New York, which he hoped I would, that he would take me into his home and introduce me to his family.
“Oh that’s great,” Trish said. “Because we really like him.”
Trish had also placed a call to Seth’s office, as she had done before without effect. This time Seth called right back. He gave an equally enthusiastic endorsement. He told Trish that she’d be crazy not to make the hire.
It was going to happen. I washed cars that day singing out loud to the iPod that rarely left my jeans pocket—my favorite new gadget. Maybe my career had begun. Maybe I had been killed at a bank or in prison a long time ago and this was the dream I had had while dying. Maybe it would all blink out any second.
On my first day at Cockle, I met behind closed doors with Andy, Trish, and Renee.
“What do you think is the best way to handle this?”
Renee asked. “Do you think we should tell everyone now or wait?”
I looked at Andy and Trish, who offered no hint as to which solution they preferred.
“If people get to know me before they find out my past, it seems to work better. They see me as a normal guy,” I said.
“So you aren’t normal?” Trish joked.
The joke felt welcoming.
My coworkers were a curious bunch, and every time I seemed to know something Court-related they asked how I had learned that. Giving fuzzy answers became uncomfortable for me. I wanted to come clean, but I felt I had to duck and dodge for a while longer. Lunchtime was the worst, as everyone wants to chat. I would eat lunch in my car, claiming I wanted to listen to a game or NPR on the radio while I ate.
Shari trained me on the publishing process. Details that are minor in most jobs are vital at Cockle. Due dates are the most important. Fortunately, the staff at Cockle had compiled a book of notes for each type of Supreme Court brief. Shari kept heaping these books on the desk.
Here is how it works. The lawyers send the text of the brief in electronic form, unless they are old school and snail mail us a hard copy. More often than not the briefs are full of errors. We help the attorneys cite the cases correctly and ensure that the lower court opinions are reprinted in the correct order. The main arguments have to be clear, concise, and compelling. Sometimes they arrive mushy and convoluted or they are missing parts, and you have to try to reach the lawyers on the phone and work with them to fix the next draft. The final project sometimes involves hundreds of pages that must be absolutely error-free. The brief is then printed and nicely bound, and sent to the Court in a t
imely fashion. Sometimes it is a round-the-clock crash course where everyone has to be finely tuned to their respective job.
I was coming in as a guy who barely knew how to operate a computer.
“Shon, good grief, don’t retype that whole section. Just cut and paste the change into place,” Shari said to me one day. I had no idea what “cut and paste” meant or how to do it.
Renee, who had become my work mother, helped to take the prison edge off my language and manners. Not that I was going around mean-mugging and punching people, but my vocabulary had some rough spots.
My coworkers, all women, were helpful and patient, but they couldn’t imagine what planet I was from.
One problem, which wouldn’t have been a problem to anyone but me, was wearing zippered pants. For a decade I had worn khaki pants with buttons. But now, coming out of the men’s room, I had to remember about the zipper. When my first day was finished, and I was back in the confines of the halfway house, I discovered a problem. I had been open for business all afternoon. I didn’t sleep well that night.
But each day was a little better.
Two weeks in, Andy and Renee assembled the entire Cockle crew in the main workspace.
“We called everyone to this meeting to talk about Shon,” Andy said. “We think you all should know that we hired Shon because he has a lot of experience with the Supreme Court. Well, his experience comes from writing briefs while he was an inmate in federal prison.”
“Ya, right, Andy,” Sandy said, shaking her head. “What’s the real reason for this meeting?” She thought it was very funny. Andy can be very funny.
I looked down at Sandy and winced. “No, that is the reason,” I said.
I explained where I had come from and why I was there. To my surprise no one later complained to Andy or Trish. They all treated me the same as they had before. I was okay. Maybe more interesting, but okay.
What are the chances I would find a job in Omaha that involved something I was uniquely qualified for? And a place where I was accepted, ugly warts and all?
Law Man: My Story of Robbing Banks, Winning Supreme Court Cases, and Finding Redemption Page 20