Dark Days

by D. Randall Blythe

  Our apartment was a modest two-bedroom affair, five stories up on the top floor of a building that was in all likelihood older than our home nation. It had two bathrooms (convenient during the trial, when both Jeff and I needed to shower and shave before walking to court), as well as an open floor plan with a kitchenette–dining room and living room area. Jeff is an excellent cook, and most nights he would make us a delicious dinner from the strangely labeled items we purchased from a nearby grocery store. Our first trip to the grocery store was fairly comedic; a whole lot of “What in the hell is this?” type of shopping. But we managed to get the essentials, and ate many good meals thanks to Jeff’s efforts in the kitchen.

  The next day we took a taxi across town to begin preparing for trial at the offices of Tomas Grivna, a young and extraordinarily bright professor of law at Prague’s Charles University. We had retained Tomas to be the main mouthpiece of our legal team in court in addition to Martin Radvan, Vladimír Jablonsky, and Tomas Morysek, as well as Michal Sykora, a young lawyer employed by Grivna’s firm. Including Jeff Cohen, this meant there was a total of six lawyers working on my case, all with six different brains and six different ways of looking at things. Jeff was not a criminal lawyer, nor a member of the Czech bar association, and as such was excluded from “officially” representing me during trial. But he was a long-term employee of my band, was intimately familiar with us and our business, and had in-depth knowledge of the nature of the unique music scene we were a part of. Because of this, the court had decided he would be allowed to sit with my legal team during the trial, acting as a sort of liaison between myself and my Czech lawyers, as well as an advisor to my team concerning any technical matters on the music business end of things. Jeff would also play a very large part of the pre-trial preparations that began that day, and was with me every moment of every day as I talked to one or all five of my Czech lawyers. Six lawyers . . . I do not mind pointing out that this was a very, very expensive undertaking, and once again, I am filled with gratitude towards all who helped in any way to defray my legal costs. I truly do not have any idea of what a person lacking the huge support network available to me would have done had they been placed in my circumstances.

  Including my own, there had been a total of thirty people’s testimonies given to the police at various times after an investigation had begun into the events of May 24, 2010. These included concert attendees, club managers, security staff, promoters, and members of my band and crew. The earliest of these testimonies were given on October 6, 2010, well over four months after our show in Prague. Some witnesses had been interviewed more than once, and these interviews were spaced out by months, or even over a year apart. Each one of these testimonies would have to be individually reviewed, scrutinized for discrepancies, and viewed in relation to all of the others. It was a massive undertaking, and for Jeff and me, made all the more difficult as we were reading translations of the majority of the witness statements. Our translator, Rudy Leška, had done a fantastic job of rendering the Czech testimonies into concise, comprehensible English, but there are many nuances involved in word choice and colloquial meaning that simply get lost when something said is restated in a different language, no matter how skilled the translator. Countless times Jeff or I would make note of a specific word or phrase, then ask my Czech attorneys for clarification of its meaning, only to find it conveyed a slightly different yet very significant implication from what a native English speaker would have meant using the same terms. In reviewing all these testimonies, no detail was too minute to analyze. It gives me a headache just remembering the hours and hours I spent reading the widely varying versions given by witnesses of the events, looking for differences (not to mention trying to pronounce, remember, and keep straight all the odd-sounding foreign names). Luckily, Jeff would shoulder a great amount of the work involved in wrestling this massive pile of information into a manageable form, collecting all the available data that was pertinent to my defense into an easily reviewable spreadsheet. Aside from reading the testimonies, my job was to prepare my opening statement.

  Unlike America, in a Czech criminal court, the defendant opens up the proceedings after the charges have been read, relaying his version of the events that have brought him to court, then offering an argument in support of his innocence. Then the judges (there are three, one “professional judge” and two “lay judges”, who are similar in capacity to jurors in the States) ask the defendant questions, followed by the prosecuting attorney asking the defendant questions, then finally the defense attorney asks questions of his client. After the defendant is done, any witnesses relevant to the proceedings are brought in, and the process begins again. Also unlike America, the witnesses may be cross-examined by the defendant after all the judges and attorneys have asked their questions. The defendant may refute what the witnesses have said, or even just flat out call them a liar. I asked Grivna how long my opening statement should be, and he told me forty-five minutes to an hour. An hour? I didn’t think I had an hour’s worth of things to say, but I began writing out my statement, restating what I remembered of the events of May 24, 2010 exactly as I had during my interrogation by the police.

  For the next two and a half weeks, everyday was much the same—we woke up early and made our way to Tomas Grivna’s or Martin Radvan’s offices. Once there, I read and reread testimonies, asked my lawyers questions, answered questions from my lawyers, and worked on my opening statement while my legal team built my defense. Jeff and my Czech attorneys tore into the available evidence—the thirty widely varying testimonies, a crappy cell phone video of half our show that didn’t contain any footage whatsoever of the incident that had resulted in me being incarcerated (much less any footage of the deceased young man), and some police photos of the crime scene, i.e., the stage area of the club. The photos had been taken months after the night in question—the club no longer even existed as a business, the stage shown was a mobile one of adjustable height, and there was no guarantee that the stage configuration and shoddy barricade depicted in the photos had been the same the night in question, or for that matter that there had even been a barricade present at all. Some of the testimonies were worrisome to me, but as hard physical evidence, I found the video and photos laughable—they would be presented in court by the prosecuting attorney, to what effect I am still unsure of to this day. Jeff and my Czech attorneys spent hours and hours dissecting all of the evidence, arguing fine points amongst themselves and asking me questions from time to time. I read and wrote and read and wrote and read and wrote until it was time to call it quits for the day, and I could go for a walk to clear my head.

  The days were draining, but the early mornings, late afternoons, and nights I spent walking through Prague were rejuvenating. All around me a great throng of humanity pulsed through one of the most beautiful urban settings I had ever seen, for I was quartered in the hallowed Staré Mesto district; Old Town Prague. I am a great lover of history, and since the ninth century on the very same cobblestone streets beneath my feet, the Czech people had erected homes, businesses, and government buildings, fought battles, created works of art, suffered under the yoke of different conquerors, raised families, and gone about the business of life in an unbroken stream from medieval times until the present. For over a thousand years life had been happening in Staré Mesto, and as in any place inhabited for such a lengthy time, a specific culture had developed within it. All foreign culture holds great interest for me, and there was an inexhaustible trove of it to be learned about in my immediate vicinity. I spent every spare second I had wandering Staré Mesto and neighborhoods far beyond, taking in the sights and shooting photographs.

  And all the wandering and photographing I did served me well, in more ways than one. On one hand it had certainly occupied my free time, the time when I wasn’t in my lawyer’s offices, the time I would have probably spent consumed in worry over a fate that was currently beyond my control. But also, without consciously seeking it out, my activities had brou
ght me some empathy and respect for the people of the Czech Republic, a people that (had I succumbed to the paranoia and xenophobia that was always trying to burst free and completely dominate my mind) I could have viewed en masse as my enemy. I was in a strange country. I could not speak the language. I did not know what opinion that country’s people held of me, other than that of its press (which had made me out to be a monster) and that of an ill-mannered representative of that country’s legal system (who I knew was about to do his best to put me back in prison). I could have cursed the whole Czech Republic and its dreadful 123-year-old prison and its archaic legal system and its loutish prosecuting attorney and its goddamned freezing cold climate. Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all, right?

  Wrong. Very wrong. To have developed that attitude would have been to give into the knee-jerk reactionist mentality that has kept humans at war with each other since the dawn of civilization. This is a small, weak-minded, and fear driven manner of thinking and living life. I have never wanted to have anything but a broad mind and a life free of fear, for therein lies the path to growth. The people of the Czech Republic were no more my enemy than I was theirs, despite what their press had made me out to be (in general, I do not trust the press, period), despite their awful prison (no prison is a nice place to be), despite their strange legal system (I have never heard of a perfect one), and despite their rude prosecuting attorney (I’m sure they exist everywhere). The press and the prison and the legal system and, yes, even the prosecuting attorney, were not the people of the Czech Republic. I saw the people of the Czech Republic every day as I walked through Prague, exploring and shooting photos and filming. Not a single soul mistreated me, and I saw that they were just like people anywhere else. I saw that they were just like people back home.

  One evening after the trial was underway, I decided to go for a stroll in Wenceslas Square. As I headed towards a coffee shop, I saw an elderly man notice me walking his way. As I got closer and closer, the man continued to stare at me. I walked past him, then turned around after I heard him call my name in a heavy Czech accent.

  “Randy. It is good you have come back,” he said, then gave me a short nod before turning and walking away into the cold night.

  The old man had wanted me to know that he respected me for proving I was a man of my word.

  That was the only time anyone said anything about my case to me on the streets of Prague.

  After my trial had begun, I tried not to read too much of the endless discussion about my case on the Internet, because when I did I would become irate at the comments made by some fans of my band. “Fuck the Czech Republic!” I read more than once. This sort of uneducated commentary, while made with good intent, was just as simple-minded as “Fuck Randy, I hope he goes to prison!” My situation was a complex one, a tragic matter that I had to get to the bottom of for myself—I wanted to know what had happened just as much as anyone else involved. Reading the words of well-meaning fans who cursed the entire country I was in was not helping matters, so one day after court I posted a photo to address the issue. In the photograph, taken in front of the astrological clock in Old Town Square, is a small girl, perhaps two or three years old. The child has her tiny hand outstretched, trying to reach out and touch a giant soap bubble hanging in the air above her head. Her mother stands opposite, watching her baby daughter trying to touch the transparent sphere. Underneath the photo I wrote:

  I have heard of some people talking smack about the Czech Republic, saying “Fuck the Czech Republic,” etc. This is not how it should be. This is a very sad case, not something to rage at people you do not know over. I am not angry with the Czechs at all. A fan of my band is dead—what do I have to be angry about? I am an innocent man, but I am also a very sad man right now. To not be sad in this instance would be inhuman. But mad at the Czech people? Why would I be mad at them? Here, look at this picture—a mother watches her baby. The child reaches out for something new, laughing and chasing a pretty picture in the air. It is the same here as everywhere else. Do you see? Life is beautiful. I hope to see y’all soon.

  As is often the case with my creative endeavors, it wasn’t until after I had taken the photo that its meaning was made apparent. Only after I had a bit of time to look at it, analyze it, and finally explain it in writing did I figure out why I had been compelled to create the image in the first place, and what the picture was really about in the context of my life. Looking at the photo and what I wrote, I realized that that was what all the walking and exploring and photography had been about: I was trying to understand my life as it was, to make some sense of the grim situation I had found myself in. The only way to do that without turning into an overwhelming knot of despair, anger, and nihilistic fear (none of which would have helped me in the least) was to try to find and appreciate the beauty around me during those dark days. This is what creating art in any of its forms does for me.

  It helps me to understand my life; right here, right now.

  A few days before the trial was scheduled to begin, I presented my opening statement to my legal team. My Czech lawyers seemed to be pleased with what I had written, but advised me to be less emotional in my delivery, as it might make the judges uncomfortable. Less emotional? I am a very expressive person, and I was dealing with very emotional stuff, but I had already done my best to speak in an even, restrained tone—I knew from experience that the Czechs were by nature a reserved breed, not given to public outbursts of passion or excitable speech (the average Czech would have a rough go of it living in Italy, I believe). I didn’t think I had been overly-emotional during my presentation in the slightest, but my lawyers thought otherwise, so I tried again, remembering that the word robot had originated in the very city I sat in. My lawyers told me I had done better, but said I still might want to tone it down some. Tone it down? If I show any less emotion, they’re gonna think I’m fucking dead, I thought, but I just sighed and said I would give it my best shot in court. Then, in order to give me practice, my Czech lawyers began asking me questions, just as the judges would. Explain what a typical lamb of god concert is like. Explain what “stage diving” means. Do you remember ever seeing the deceased? Why do you not wear glasses when you are on stage? What could you see from the stage? Explain what “moshing” means. Did you drink any alcohol or take any drugs before the concert? Who is usually responsible for removing stage divers from the stage?

  On and on they asked me questions, all fairly straight forward, all of which I answered truthfully and with as little emotion as possible. It wasn’t the nerve-wracking experience I had expected, and I remember thinking I had done pretty well. Then, everything changed as Jeff took on the role of the prosecuting attorney.

  Jeff Cohen has worked for my band longer than any other person we have employed. He is a good man, with a great sense of humor, and I consider him a close friend. I had never once thought of him as a scary or intimidating person. Jeff is a really nice guy.

  But he scared the shit out of me that day.

  Jeff is an entertainment lawyer. He deals with band contracts, record labels, publishing companies. He’s great with all that convoluted music biz crap—the stuff that requires an in-depth knowledge of a massive and arcane legal lexicon, the stuff that makes me want to tear my hair out anytime I get within fifty feet or so of a record label letterheaded document that requires my signature. I would recommend him without hesitation to any band on the planet in need of an entertainment lawyer. I believe he chose wisely when he picked his particular area of law, because he loves it, and he excels at his chosen profession.

  But he would have made one cold-blooded killer of a prosecuting attorney.

  As he began peppering me with questions about the show that took place May 24, 2010, Jeff abruptly turned into a different person; a person I did not know and hoped to never to meet again. His normally kind face changed, taking on an arrogant, aggressive, and merciless expression. He hit me hard and he hit me fast, twisting the words in my answers around against me until I
began to feel guilty. He would ask the same question phrased in a slightly different manner, playing with my emotions. I felt like a mouse being toyed with by a very, very smart cat. I was literally shaking by the time he was done, trying not to stutter as I began to question myself, my answers, and my memories under the brunt of his verbal assault. This is what a good prosecuting attorney does.

  Then it was over, and Jeff returned to being the Jeff I knew and loved just as abruptly as he had sprouted fangs and bat wings, transforming into the Dracula of prosecuting attorneys. Jesus Christ, that sucked, I thought as he told me I had done a good job, I hope I don’t have to do that again. But the process would be repeated a few times, up until the very last day before trial. By that time I was calm and confident in my answers, no matter what Jeff threw at me. I didn’t know what would happen to me, but I felt I had done my best to prepare. The rest was in the judge’s hands.

  All I could do was tell the truth.

  chapter nineteen