Tight Lines
Page 25
There’s a big difference between “not guilty” and “innocent.”
What would soon happen on that muggy Monday morning in July in the old Northampton courthouse, I knew, was the beginning of an intricate process that could land Daniel McCloud in M.C.I. Cedar Junction for fifteen years. What actually would happen would depend more than it should on me.
That Daniel did in fact grow marijuana in his garden, that he was therefore a guilty man by every definition except the one that counted—the due process of the law—did not affect my attitude toward his case. The presumption of innocence and the right to counsel—only those things were relevant.
If he’d been selling the stuff—not something the state needed to prove—I’d have felt differently about it. But, having agreed to take his case, I still would have done my best to get him off. That’s the system, and it’s not a bad one.
I flicked away my cigarette butt and went back into the courthouse. As I shouldered my way through the crowded lobby I felt a hand on my arm. I turned. It was the ADA who had unsuccessfully prosecuted the bricklayer. “You’re Mr. McCloud’s counsel?” she said.
I nodded. “Brady Coyne.”
“Joan Redlich. Here.” She handed me a sheet of paper.
“What’s this?”
“The police report. You’re entitled to it.”
“Yes. Thanks. I’ll want a copy of the warrant, too.”
She smiled quickly. “You’ll have it, Mr. Coyne.”
She turned and headed into the courtroom. I followed her in and resumed my seat. I skimmed through the police report. It was written in the peculiarly stilted language policemen insist on using, on their theory, I assume, that it makes them sound highly educated.
To me, it always sounds like somebody trying to sound highly educated.
The report was signed by Sgt. Richard Oakley, Wilson Falls P.D.
Sergeant Oakley had written that the Wilson Falls police, acting upon a proper warrant, did on the afternoon of seven July confiscate an estimated fifty pounds or more of marijuana from the backyard garden of one Daniel McCloud, citizen of Wilson Falls. They did, pursuant to a search of the premises, also confiscate cigarette papers, a scale, a box of plastic bags, fifteen smoking pipes of various manufacture, and a cigarette rolling machine. They did consequently place the suspect, said Daniel McCloud, under arrest, recite to him his Miranda rights, handcuff him, and escort him to the jailhouse, where they did fingerprint and book him.
It was all pretty much the way Daniel had told it, except less eloquent.
A few minutes later the side door opened and Judge Ropek reentered. We all rose briefly, and then sat.
“Daniel McCloud,” intoned the clerk.
Daniel stood, and the officer opened the swinging door to let him out of the dock. I went down front and Daniel met me there.
“You okay?” I whispered.
“No,” he said. He glanced around, then muttered, “Bastard.”
I followed his gaze. Standing stiffly against the side wall was a large uniformed policeman. He was staring at Daniel. He stood six-three or -four with the bulk to match. He had the bristly haircut and sunburned neck of a marine drill instructor. “Oakley?” I whispered to Daniel.
“Aye. Him.”
“He’s interested in his case,” I said.
“He’s interested in me,” said Daniel.
The clerk read the charges. Possession of Class D marijuana, possession with intent to distribute, and trafficking.
The judge arched his eyebrows, then looked toward the prosecution table. “Trafficking, Ms. Redlich?”
Joan Redlich stood up and stepped toward the prosecutor’s table. Her black hair was twisted up into a bun. I guessed it would fall halfway down her back when it was unpinned. She wore dark-rimmed tinted glasses low on her nose, a gray suit that disguised her figure, and low heels. She was slim and young and, in spite of her best efforts, pretty.
Female lawyers have told me that they dress for the judge. They have different wardrobes, different hairstyles, different cosmetics, which they adapt to the situation. Some judges—His Dirty Old Honors, the lawyers call them—like to see a little leg, a hint of cleavage, eye makeup. It disposes them favorably to the client’s case. Others—especially female judges—resent it if the lawyers don’t look as shapeless and sexless as they do in their black gowns.
Female lawyers resent the hell out of this kind of patent sexism. But they don’t ignore it. It’s an edge, if you read it right, they tell me.
Redlich tucked a stray strand of hair over her ear. She leaned toward the microphone that was wired to the tape recorder that preserved the proceedings and rendered obsolete the court stenographer. “Cultivation, Your Honor,” she said. “He was growing it in his garden. The estimate is seventy pounds.”
Ropek frowned, then nodded. I didn’t like the looks of that frown. “Recommendation?”
She asked for a half-million-dollar surety bond. Not unexpected. Since Reagan, all the courts have been trying to convert the drug cases that come before them into moral lessons.
“Mr. McCloud?” said the judge, looking from Daniel to me.
“Brady Coyne, Your Honor,” I said into my microphone.
“Welcome, Mr. Coyne. Go ahead.”
“I ask the court to release Mr. McCloud on personal recognizance, Your Honor. He has roots deep in the community. He’s resided in Wilson Falls for the past twenty years. He owns property and runs a business there. He’s a Vietnam veteran, Special Forces, and he’s in poor health.”
The judge peered at me for a moment, then nodded. He looked to the probation table. “Probation?” he said.
“One prior, Judge,” said one of the officers. He stood and went to the bench, where he handed a folder to the judge. Judge Ropek glanced at it, then handed it back.
Then he looked at Daniel. “Two hundred thousand dollars surety bond,” he said.
Daniel grabbed my arm. “I don’t have that kind of money,” he whispered.
“You need twenty thousand cash,” I told him. “Can you raise it?”
He nodded. “Twenty grand. Okay. Yes.”
We then argued about the date for the probable-cause hearing. Redlich asked for a month to give them time to process all the evidence. I asked for a week, citing the stress of waiting on Daniel’s health. Judge Ropek set it for ten days hence, a small victory for the good guys.
Before the court officer took Daniel away, he gave me a phone number and told me to talk to Cammie Russell. She’d get the money.
And as I turned to head out of the courtroom, Joan Redlich handed me a copy of the search warrant. I thanked her and stuffed it into my attaché case along with the police report.
I called Cammie Russell from one of the pay phones in the courthouse lobby. She had a soft voice with a hint of the Smoky Mountains in it. She said she’d be there in an hour. I told her I’d meet her outside the front door.
She actually arrived in about forty minutes. She was tall and slim in her white jeans and orange blouse. She had cocoa butter skin and black eyes. Her hair hung in a long, loose braid down the middle of her back. Her high cheekbones and small nose reminded me of a young Lena Home. There was a Cherokee Indian somewhere in her ancestry. I guessed her age at twenty-five, but I figured she had looked the same way since she turned thirteen and would still look as good at fifty.
Then she smiled, and I amended my first impression. She looked better than a young Lena Home.
She held her hand to me. “Cammie Russell,” she said.
“Brady Coyne.”
“How is Daniel?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know how he usually is. I’d say confinement doesn’t suit him.”
“I can see you’re a master of understatement, Mr. Coyne. He must be climbing the walls. Can we get him now?”
“If you brought enough money we can.”
She held up the briefcase she was carrying and nodded.
An hour later Cammie Russell and I we
re eating ham-and-cheese sandwiches and sipping coffee on the deck behind Daniel’s house in Wilson Falls. Daniel was slouched in a deck chair with his eyes closed, sucking steadily on a stick of cannabis. His leg no longer jiggled.
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