The Legal Limit

by Martin Clark

  The man he was addressing, Phil Moore, was a steady, conscientious fellow who’d been blessed with quite the judge’s gimmick: Moore absorbed the world through eyeballs that were slightly out of whack with his head, a pair of owlish hazel ovals easily a size or so too big for their confines. His gift in the courtroom was a knack for taming his temper and patiently scrutinizing the daily parade of lies he received from the witness stand—some rank and some intricately wrought—and in most instances arriving pretty close to where the truth was lodged, his curious, active, expansive eyes often appearing to assay and filter the bullshit as it came his way. “If I can, I will,” he promised Mason, not knowing what to expect. It was almost quitting time, and he’d had to unlock the security doors when a deputy from the jail’s reception desk called to say Mason Hunt was there and hoped to come upstairs for a talk.

  “Here’s a hypothetical,” Mason said. One of the fluorescent overheads in Moore’s chambers was beginning to hum and quiver, becoming more noticeable as the forgettable November day expired outside, cold and drab.

  “A hypothetical?” Moore replied, his tentative tone indicating he had no idea where the conversation was going. Like Mason, he was a Patrick County boy, born and raised, and although they weren’t the best of pals, they shared the kinship of people who’d been stamped by a place’s peculiar ink. Judge Moore could recall the playground’s red clay dust staining the canvas uppers of his PF Flyers, the smell of woodsmoke infecting shirts and trousers on the drafty school bus and the sight of a skinny seventeen-year-old country girl hoeing a tobacco field in summer weather, clad in cut-off Levi’s and a bikini top, sunned dark as a hickory nut, her hair caught by a red bandanna. The two men had seen each other countless times, exchanged thousands of casual words dating as far back as a Cub Scout meeting in the Baptist church’s basement.

  “Yeah,” Mason began doggedly, his features determined but a tick off-beam, “hypothetically a guy has a brother who shoots another man in 1984…” And from there, he confessed everything that had happened, the story of Gates and Wayne Thompson and the echoing .38 shot on Russell Creek Road. It took him fifteen minutes, and twice he backtracked to add details and for a while he tugged and shaped a rubber band he found in his pocket and when he mentioned his daughter’s decline and the barn cigarettes, he sort of hunched his shoulders and misfired with his blinking, couldn’t keep his voice from rupturing. After he finished, he got up and leaned against the wall.

  The judge asked him what anyone would: “Why are you telling me?”

  “Because you’re the only person who can resolve this.”

  “Me? How? I don’t have anything to do with your case. I recused myself the same day the grand jury handed down its indictment.”

  “What’s the key, Judge?” Mason asked rhetorically. “What stops Stallings?”

  “I hate to sound dense, but I’m not following you.”

  “Gates,” he said. “My brother. There’s no real evidence against me…hypothetically…without him. Just some bits and pieces and statements with no context. You agree?”

  “I do. Absolutely. If there’s no testimony from Gates, the case doesn’t even see a jury. It wouldn’t survive a motion to strike. And if Stallings is as vainglorious as you’re suggesting, I doubt he’d want to be humiliated and would probably dismiss the indictment. A no-brainer.”

  “So I need to take Gates out of the equation.”

  “True.”

  “And you’re the only person who can do that.” Mason grabbed a chair, dragged it closer to the desk and sat down with purpose.

  “I’m still lost.”

  “Judge Richardson sentenced Gates, but it remains a Patrick County case, and you’re the circuit court judge here.”

  “Yep. Last I checked.”

  “Gates will tell the truth—or, to state it more accurately, stop lying against me—only if he can get out of the pen.”

  “Even if I wanted to help him,” Moore said, anticipating Mason’s pitch, “I don’t have any jurisdiction. Twenty-one days came and went years ago. Case is final.”

  “He can file a writ of coram vobis at any time in the sentencing court,” Mason said. “You would have jurisdiction to decide the issue.”

  “Jeez—there’s a gem from the archives. I haven’t heard coram vobis mentioned since law school. It’s the king’s writ or something, if I’m recalling correctly. To be honest, I don’t remember much about it. Never seen one filed.”

  “It’s still on the books, Section 8.01-677. Basically, a prisoner presents new facts to the court that were unknowable at the time of trial and could’ve affected the verdict.”

  Moore held up his hand, traffic-cop style. “I don’t want to wander too far into a tricky place. If your brother has a legitimate claim, I’ll hear it and decide it according to the statute. I’ll give him every fairness. But you and I aren’t allowed to discuss it here in private. I wish it were different, but I can’t ignore the rules.”

  “Yeah, well, no need to worry about Gates having any legitimate basis for his writ or granting him a fair hearing for that matter. By necessity, any ruling in his favor would have to be…extraordinary.”

  The judge rocked forward in his chair, listening. Like everyone else, he’d suffered right along with the Hunts when Allison died, had gripped Mason’s arm at the funeral service and tried to salve the wound they all felt, whispering in a pained, sincere voice, “If I can ever do anything, Mace, anything at all…”

  Mason drummed his fingers on his side of the desk, a fast, arrhythmic thumping that ended before he spoke again. “You and I both realize there’s occasionally a separation, an ugly sulk, between the law and justice. On rare instances, they’re at odds. Here’s the long view: If I’m convicted, my daughter will suffer profoundly for the second time in her life. She’s lost her mother to a damn ridiculous fluke, and now she’ll be punished by the loss of her dad. She’s had no control over either, and it’s eating her alive. Even the prospect of a trial—the possibility—is traumatizing for her, regardless of the eventual verdict. She’s slipping, giving up, and who can blame her?”

  “I can’t imagine,” the judge said, and meant it.

  “My innocent mother, who lived a life of misery not of her own making with Curt Hunt and has since endured the embarrassment and heartache of Gates, gets a second dose of disappointment and the pleasure, at age seventy or so, of raising a buck-wild, heathen granddaughter and probably an illegitimate great-grandkid—”

  “Mason,” Moore interrupted, “isn’t this simply a variant of the defense you and I listen to every day, the type of reasoning I’ve heard you condemn over and over? You’ve become the guilty criminal propping up his bawling child or feeble mom as a pity shield. Hell, anytime we send someone to jail, there’re ripples and consequences that reach past the courtroom. Nearly every man or woman in prison has a mom or dad or kids or a spouse.”

  “This is unique,” Mason argued. “Here, two innocent people are about to be decimated based on a lie. Three if you count me. A lie—how’s that any credit to the system? How’s it commendable or appropriate?” Sweat beads were dotting his forehead. He was ashen.

  “You okay, Mason?”

  “Hungover,” he said frankly. “Custis and I last night.”

  “Can’t say I blame you much, given your problems.” The judge smiled as best he could.

  “Thanks.” Mason wiped his brow with his coat sleeve. “At any rate, I admit—hypothetically—I broke the law. But what would you or anyone else have done? Huh? I was twenty-four years old, and I wouldn’t have survived my father but for Gates’s protection and encouragement. I owed him a debt. There was no real opportunity to think or deliberate. It’s not as if I planned and schemed and devoted hours to an elaborate getaway. Plus, that night on Russell Creek Road, I couldn’t have possibly predicted the future—I had no idea Gates would become a worthless dope dealer.”

  “In a certain sense, you’re more culpable than most. You were in la
w school. I’d say you had a better than average feel for right and wrong. You realized what you were doing was corrupt, not to mention illegal.” The judge looked at Mason, and Mason held with him, didn’t shy from the gaze. “I’d have more sympathy if you’d just kept quiet and refused to tattle on your brother. But you got your hands dirty and helped make it impossible for the police to solve the crime. Wayne Thompson’s kid and family have been left in limbo for years. That’s not some theoretical, textbook fiddle-faddle; it’s a genuine injury you caused. In a certain fashion, it’s fair to say Thompson’s son has suffered identically to your daughter. Hypothetically, of course.” The “hypothetically” had plenty of sting in it.

  “I don’t dispute my guilt. I screwed up. I was wrong. I’m responsible. But please give some thought to any difference it makes. No matter what I decide in 1984, Wayne is dead and Gates shot him. I can’t change it or correct it or undo it. I—”

  “By the way, how do I know you’re telling me the truth?” Moore asked, though he didn’t have any doubt Mason was. “Maybe you did shoot Thompson. Maybe Gates is innocent.”

  “Because you’ve known me since we were both knee-high to a grasshopper, and because you also know my brother. Because I had no reason or motive to shoot Wayne. Because I passed a polygraph on the money question and Gates didn’t. Because Gates has every reason to lie. Because, for a decade, you’ve seen my character on display in the courtroom. I can probably give you a longer list if you’d care for it.”

  “Thought I should ask. Go ahead.” The jail served dinner at five o’clock, and the heavy smell of cooking oil and fried food began working through the walls and floor, a hint to start, then the room full up. “I’m guessing hamburger steak,” the judge remarked. “Can I have them wrap you a plate to take home? It’s usually not too bad.”

  “No, thanks.” Mason was anxious to make his point and hardly considered the offer. “So no matter my choice, the crime is done and Wayne is dead. If I’d reported it to the police, what happens? The huge difference is the Thompson family has some peace of mind. I concede as much. As for Gates, he would’ve actually been better off than he is now. I would’ve had to testify Wayne was the aggressor. He’d been drinking, and there was dope in his car. He provoked Gates. He had a weapon. Gates catches a manslaughter conviction, a maximum of twenty years, though we both know he’d never draw a full sentence. Depending on the timing and who does what later on, perhaps he’s not even around to sell drugs at the fairgrounds and earn the forty-four years he’s currently pulling.”

  “You’ve taken this apart pretty well, haven’t you? I’ve always said if I was facing the very red devil and could pick one person to do my closing argument, it’d be you or Jim Young.”

  “Here’s the shorter version: The coke-distribution charge was worth five years—Tony Black, who’s no friend of defendants, no softie—offered it in a plea. The killing’s worth ten or so, twenty tops if the commonwealth had miraculously managed to ring the bell. Gates has already satisfied the time he should’ve received.”

  “Unfortunately, a jury decided he deserved forty-four years. He elected to not accept Tony’s very reasonable offer. We don’t get to make this stuff up as we go along. We either have consistency or we have anarchy and star chambers. Law du jour is no law at all.”

  “Ninety-five percent of the time, I would agree with you. But if that were the case exclusively, we’d hire bean counters, clerks and pointy-heads with computers to run the show. We’d find a drone with a chart and mandatory guidelines to occupy the big chair where you sit. You’re the guy who can sign his name to a piece of paper and have a man executed—you didn’t get the job to simply pound the rubber stamp.”

  “I’m always pleased to exercise my discretion,” Moore said, “but if I skirt the law, if I cheat or deviate or ignore the rules, then everything I do—and everything I’ve done—becomes suspect, its legitimacy lost. I go seat-of-the-pants, and I’m just a hack, a fraud with a robe and a pocketful of whims and a sheriff and bailiff to make them come to pass. It’s a slippery slope, as they say.”

  Mason sawed his teeth back and forth across his lower lip.

  “I have a bad feeling we’re on the verge of your asking me to break the law myself,” the judge somberly told him.

  Mason was silent. His forehead was glistening. The office smelled of the convicts’ dinner.

  “I’m sorry,” Moore said. “I wish I could be more helpful.”

  “Here’s my take, for what it’s worth. Judge Hooker sat in this same office in that same seat and looked out the window, watched the same mountains change seasons, gazed at the same schoolhouse on the knoll, saw the people milling around in front of the drugstore and insurance agency. Then Judge Richardson did the exact same thing. Now they’re both dead and gone.” Mason stopped making eye contact and bowed his head slightly. “No offense to you, my friend, nothing smart intended, but in a sense it doesn’t really matter. See, none of us can gouge too deeply. Calculate for the long haul. Lay the surefire pattern for the distant domino. Either the world is too tightly and infinitesimally tuned for us to crack the code and have any effect, or it’s so damn random and disjointed we’re spitting in the wind. Point-oh-eight, and I let the kid go who kills my wife. Decimals. One one-hundredth higher, I make a different decision and my life isn’t trashed. She sleeps five seconds longer, she clears the intersection. Believe what you will, there’re simply too many moving parts.”

  “So we wish the murders and rapists well and send them on their merry way? We do nothing because we can’t do everything? I’m not as pessimistic as you.”

  “The opposite actually,” Mason insisted. “Sometimes we need to choose whatever will cover the most spots on the board—throw a blanket over as much good as we can and quit fretting about the horizon. We have this whole formidable legal apparatus, this dense set of rules and a twenty-nine-volume Virginia Code, and the truth is we can’t accomplish any more than right-now justice. You can sit there and talk about this abstract ideal, the integrity of our system, worship an idol that’s supposed to contemplate the big picture even though we ourselves can’t, figure you’re keeping the train on the tracks because you have this map that came from the Magna Carta and piles of ancient books, and you can stick to it and never deviate and think you’re safe and this will go A to B to C, and I’m here to tell you—I should know better than anyone, huh?—you’re mistaken. Allowing my brother to manipulate the courts and damage lives proves nothing. You’re in a position to help three people and put an end to a self-serving lie, or you can kowtow to letters on a page at our expense.” Mason spoke humbly, was rueful rather than hostile.

  Before answering, the judge waited for Mason to raise up and acknowledge him. “So I’ll take a stab at it,” he said. “Gates is going to file a bogus pleading and you want me to piss on the law and rule in his favor. Set him free before your trial in hopes he’ll amend his story. Throw the blanket, as you put it, over you and your mom and Grace?”

  “It’s what I’m down to, yeah,” Mason admitted. “Crumbs and slim reeds. But I’ve got several pot-sweeteners for you, not the least of which is my own penance.” His face pinched with disgust. “Of course, the worst punishment is I’m here helping my brother, a man I hate.”

  “Lex ex machina,” the judge mused, shaking his head. “It’ll have to be awfully compelling. Let’s hear it.” He was skeptical, still far from sold.

  Mason visited twice more to encourage the judge’s intervention, and the Wednesday court closed at noon for the Thanksgiving holiday, Gates’s typewritten coram vobis pleading arrived postmarked from Stuart, not the penitentiary. It was adequately written and decently argued and totally without merit, basically legal bunk, sophistry. The name “Gates Hunt” was typed rather than hand-signed at the conclusion of the paperwork, and there were a few misspellings and a grammatical blunder tossed in for camouflage.

  The judge swiveled his chair and peered out the window at the Swails Insurance sign a
nd the austere winter hills and the red-brick elementary school, stuck the pleadings in his briefcase, walked into the empty courtroom and sat there in the gallery, behind the old oak railing, thinking. Struggling. Taking stock of his own empty spot on the bench, built high above everything else. Judge Richardson’s portrait hung on the far wall, an oil painting that showed its brushstrokes when the window light hit late in the afternoon. Richardson was holding a law book, and there was a gavel nearby—all the honorable props—and Phil Moore indulged a fanciful thought: he wished he could ask his framed predecessor for advice, quiz him on how the hell to cut the baby.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Awakened at midnight by a prison guard and a third-shift deputy from the Patrick County Sheriff’s Office, Gates initially was inclined to demand he be allowed to call Bass or Minter or Leonard Stallings, but he thought better of it when the county deputy told him he was being taken to Stuart for a bond determination and a decision on the recent motion to have his sentence set aside, and, heck, it must be pretty darned serious, the cop said, because here he was with a transportation order signed by the circuit judge instead of the clerk and the case was scheduled to be heard in just a few hours. By the time the warden arrived at nine o’clock and notified Bass and Minter, Gates was long gone, so there was nothing they could do except hotfoot it to Stuart and try to discover what was happening with their star witness.

  Heeding instructions from Custis Norman to treat the prisoner “liberally,” the deputy allowed Gates to ride in the passenger seat without cuffs or restraints, switched the bluegrass station to classic rock, visited a truck stop for three a.m. cheeseburgers and fries, and meandered through the heart of every city and town instead of using the bypasses so Gates could enjoy the storefronts and window displays and the trip would be stretched by several miles. An occasional home already had Christmas decorations burning, roadside Santas and sleighs and candy canes lit by extension cords. “Been almost thirteen years for me,” Gates informed the officer.