the Onion Field (1973)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Would you identify the party in this picture?"

  "That was my partner, Officer Ian Campbell."

  "You saw him in life, is that correct?"

  "Yes."

  "And you saw him in death?"

  "Yes."

  Judge Cooke looked down at the eyes of the young policeman and said, "We'll take a recess. I think the officer has had enough."

  There was, from the witness's point of view, only one question asked of him that day which was to return to him that night as he lay next to his sleeping pregnant wife, himself unable to sleep. The one innocuous question asked by the elderly lawyer for Jimmy Smith: You were not restrained in any way in the back of the car, were you?

  Why did he ask that? thought Karl. What did he mean by that? What could I have done back there? Weren't those guns in the front restraint enough? I knew someone would say it, that I should have done something back there. Hit them with a tire wrench? Sure, in that little car, and a cocked gun in Ian's belly, and three more guns. Sure. You were not restrained in any way ....

  But maybe he didn't mean it that way. Maybe he was just trying to show that his client wasn't really so bad after all. No, not really so bad. They didn't handcuff you. They weren't so bad. Maybe that's all he meant. Maybe he didn't mean the other thing.

  By now Karl was sure that almost all policemen were critical of his behavior that night. The way they looked at him in the Hollywood coffee room and especially in the police building cafeteria. The way so many heads turned as he entered. He was sure there were whispers. It was that memorandum that started it. Surrender is no guarantee of safety to anyone. Surrender. . .

  All right now, hold on, he told himself. Let's be logical about it. And Karl Hettinger, for the first time, deliberately thought through the entire night of March 9th, gouging his memory to focus on each word spoken, each nuance of each word, each gesture and nuance of gesture of Powell and Smith and Ian, and of himself. His side of the bed was dripping wet when he finished. It was after one in the morning. He decided he was absolutely blameless in the death of Ian Campbell. He vowed never to deliberately think of it again. But he couldn't sleep. He got up and drank a can of beer and watched a television movie.

  Greg's daughter Lisa Lei was born to Maxine on May 13, and Greg's attorneys brought him into court two weeks later when they feared his recent moods of depression would infringe upon the coming trial.

  "Dr. Crahan, tell me what medication the defendant is receiving now, if you know, sir," the witness was asked.

  "He's been receiving three types of antacids and some tranquilizers."

  "What is the purpose of the antacids?"

  "To allay his verbal complaints."

  "I note you have checked the defendant's blood pressure. Did you check to compare that with prior blood pressures of the defendant?"

  "Yes. The blood pressures range around 110 to 120. That's normal."

  "Dr. Crahan, you are here, of course, to aid the court in determining the merits of Mr. Powell's contentions that he hasn't been able to hold any food down for fourteen days. Did you check his weight yesterday?"

  "Yes."

  "What was it?"

  "One hundred and fifty pounds, the same he claimed on admission to the jail."

  "Do you have a record on any other weight?"

  "Yes."

  "What was that?"

  "He was weighed a week or two ago, and he weighed one hundred and forty-nine pounds at that time. He gained a pound since."

  "Thank you. That is all."

  Jimmy Smith was a celebrity in the high power tank reserved for murderers and escape risks. His picture had been on front pages for days and everyone recognized him. Jimmy was delighted with the waves and deferential glances from the other inmates. They passed magazines and cigarettes to him and clucked sympathetically when he told how he'd been wronged and then betrayed by that snitch Gregory Powell.

  A few days after his arrival, Jimmy saw two young blacks initiate a futile act of violence born of a hatred and defiance Jimmy could not even begin to fathom, not even at this time of his life.

  The two young men, after screaming their hatred of cops and whites, dragged their cell bunks against the wall and propped them up to make room. Then they tore the insides from their pillows and filled them with hardback books and coffee cups. They used torn blanket strips to tie the pillow sacks to their wrists. The first three deputies in that cell were met with an astonishing attack which brought reinforcements and a mattress shield. The two inmates were finally overpowered and choked by towels the deputies carried in their pockets for that purpose.

  Jimmy Smith could not forget the shouts and moans of the prisoners and deputies bloodied in that fight. Jimmy saw one of the young blacks dragged away splattered with blood from a head wound, and that night Jimmy dreamed of blood. His dream was drenched in rivers of blood, and for a moment he saw a bloody arm reaching toward him. The arm was so bloody he couldn't bring himself to look at its owner. The bloody arm awoke him.

  Jimmy spent the first week reading about himself and watching television accounts of the murder case. He watched the television film of the funeral and saw Ian Campbell's widow grieving. He read the many newspaper headlines. He listened to a county supervisor and even the governor say, "Even though I'm opposed to capital punishment . . ."

  The letters to the editor demanding retribution frightened him, especially the important editorial which said there is no such thing as rehabilitation for such brutish slayers. But what frightened him most was that many paroles were going to be canceled because of the notoriety of the Powell-Smith murder case. Jimmy looked closely at his fellow inmates the day this news was broadcast. Though it didn't directly affect anyone awaiting trial in the county jail, still, you never knew. He and Greg had caused the loss of other men's paroles. That was something to truly fear.

  One memorable day, Jimmy was able to get close with an inmate who had managed to smuggle half an ounce of heroin into the tank. With what he could beg from his Nana, Jimmy Smith escaped from his tormentors. It lasted almost a week. The dreams of the body on the ground came no more to Jimmy Smith. Once he finally and irrevocably decided he just could not fix in his mind a picture of Powell standing over the body firing down into it, he stopped dreaming. It was the attempt to visualize it which brought about the dreams in the first place, he reasoned. That's the only explanation possible. After all, he told his lawyer, he had done nothing to feel guilty about. He was sick of hearing people talk about conscience, this thing that white people dreamed up. Jimmy Smith now slept well, ate well, and never dreamed troublesome dreams. He was telling the unvarnished truth when he said that the thing called guilt or conscience did not exist. For him, it did not.

  Karl Hettinger had been dividing his working hours between Hollywood station and homicide division. When the trial date got nearer, he would be assigned temporarily to homicide to be available until the completion of the trial. After the trial he would be given another assignment.

  "Driving for the chief of police?" said Helen when he told her.

  "Yeah, if I want it."

  "If you want it? Why wouldn't you want it? How many officers get such a chance?"

  "That's just it, Helen. Why am I getting it? Because I'm notorious, that's why. Everyone knows about me now."

  "What's that got to do with it?"

  "I don't know. Maybe they don't think I'm fit to be a street policeman because of what I . . . what some of them think I was respons . . . Well, maybe this is sort of a nice way of putting me away."

  "Karl, it's a day job with weekends off. And you wear a suit and just go to work and come home like any other businessman. Why read all this other stuff into it?"

  "I just think what other policemen might say, people who'd put their names in for that job and see me just move in."

  Helen Hettinger, now almost seven months pregnant, wondered about this man she had married, realized how little she knew him. After all, they had been wed only a
few months when the murder happened. She had just been getting to know him then. Now he was so different. He never laughed or joked like he used to. He was losing weight and staying up almost every night, long after she went to bed. He was avoiding their friends.

  She wished he'd talk to her about the whole thing, the coming court trial and about how he felt at work. But he just wouldn't tell her anything. When she'd ask, he'd just shrug or smile and say nothing was wrong. He wouldn't even get mad when she tried to nag him into talking. If he'd only get mad once in a while it would be good for both of them. He never would. He'd just quietly and stubbornly resist.

  It was impossible for Helen or anyone else to make Karl reveal his innermost thoughts. You just didn't burden others with your problems. It wasn't the family way.

  Judge Mark Brandler had a sensitive face, pale hair, a long thin nose slightly hooked, eyes which crinkled and smiled beneath slightly drooping lids. Jimmy Smith looked at the face and had hope.

  The judge had come to America as a small child during the First World War, a refugee from Belgium. He had worked in the office of celebrity lawyer Jerry Geisler and had been a deputy district attorney for many years. He was the last appointment of Governor Earl Warren before the governor himself became the world's most famous jurist. Mark Brandler was proud that in his sixteen years as a deputy district attorney he had never been beaten in a jury trial. He was prouder that in his years on the Superior Court bench he had never been reversed by a higher court.

  "Is there any reason why you are personally requesting that the public defender be relieved and that you be substituted as attorney representing yourself?" Judge Brandler asked in another pretrial motion.

  "I feel I know myself, and I feel I am more familiar and I just want to handle it myself," Gregory Powell said.

  "You haven't had any training in connection with rules of evidence, have you?"

  "I've read several books. I feel that I am adequately capable of representing myself. I wish that I could have, to help me, the use of the law library."

  "How old are you, Mr. Powell?"

  "Twenty-nine years old."

  "What education have you had?"

  "I started at Cadillac Michigan High School but I left in the ninth grade. I finished my high school in a period of eighteen months while I was in Leavenworth, Kansas, and received a certificate of equivalency from Topeka Kansas Educational Board. I took various college courses."

  "What college courses did you take?"

  "I studied logic under Dr. Burke. And I had first year and second year of college algebra, and I studied some acoustics and several subjects related to music."

  Jimmy Smith's pretrial appearances were more concerned with jail conditions than with the impending battle for his life.

  "Well, what's happened is they put me in a tank, your Honor," said Jimmy. "In a tank where I know, beyond a fact, where they keep fellows that are what they call snitches, and I know for a fact, from my own benefit, that the food is tampered with because the other inmates hate the guys in there and they can't get to them, and they have me locked in the end cell by myself with no walkin privileges. I won't eat the food down there. I don't know what's in it. I've heard all types of rumors. That's all I wanted to say."

  Things were not going well in county jail for Gregory Powell. On June 26 a sheriff's sergeant was contacted by an inmate facing an armed robbery charge who wanted to betray Gregory Powell in exchange for a letter to the judge advising of his cooperation.

  The inmate related that Greg had in some way come into possession of two hundred aspirin tablets and was planning to swallow them and be sent to the General Hospital. The informer had been urged by Greg to slash his own wrists severely enough to be taken to the hospital. Once there, Maxine was to arrange for two guns to be smuggled to the informer through a certain hospital employee.

  And another jail inmate told a deputy that Greg was taking a large quantity of aspirin, "trying to kill his fool self or to put on a good act so that he might go to the hospital."

  They were not the only two to inform on Gregory Powell and he was not taken to the hospital.

  A week later another inmate in cellblock 10-A-2 had a secret conversation with a jail lieutenant informing him that according to Greg, Douglas Powell, Greg's younger brother, was supposed to plant some guns in the courtroom and that Gregory Powell would crash out, "Dillinger style" in Greg's words. The inmate volunteered to remain close to Greg and inform on further escape preparations up to and including the break. The inmate only expected any help that could be given when his own probation violation was brought before Judge Brandler later in the month. The inmate's further services were declined, but courtroom security was tightened.

  Finally that same week another inmate informed the jail captain that Greg claimed Douglas Powell was to cut the chairs in the courtroom and insert guns in the cushions, and that he might use a smoke bomb diversion during the inevitable shootout which would follow.

  Another informer detailed several of Greg's alternate plans. One involved striking a juror which he thought would lead to an automatic mistrial, a later lunacy hearing, and finally a transfer to Atas- cadero State Mental Hospital from where an escape would not be difficult.

  The escape from the courtroom was to be a last resort in that it seemed suicidal. Greg much preferred a scheme of having his brother secrete a gun in the law library. A gun could easily be hidden there, and he would only have to shoot one or two people to escape. But even if he was given the right to defend himself, the judge might not permit him to go to the law library.

  Still another inmate, one very close indeed to Gregory Powell, was to inform on him and assure jail officers that he would tell them of the slightest escape move of the accused murderer. Gregory Powell always suspected this inmate of informing. He never suspected any of the others, or even dreamed that half the inmates were anxious to use him to better their own lots. He would never have believed it. He had always wanted people to love him and believed they did.

  In July, in the middle of a hot smoggy summer, in a gray foreboding ancient chunk of concrete known as the Hall of Justice, the jury selection was ready to begin in Department 104 of the Los Angeles Superior Court.

  The courtroom was large and old, impossible to keep looking less than grim or even clean.

  The defendants wore suits and ties and now Jimmy Smith had his astigmatism corrected by horn-rimmed glasses.

  "For the information of the jurors," said Judge Brandler to the panel, "in California we have what is called a bifurcated trial in homicide cases. The jury makes a determination in the first or main trial of the issue of innocence or guilt of a defendant. In the event that the jury, after hearing all of the evidence and the court's instructions, returns a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree, then, and in that instance, the defendant has a second trial, at which time the jury makes a determination based upon the evidence as to what the penalty should be. So the matter of penalty as such is not for the consideration of the jury on the first and main issue as to innocence or guilt."

  "I am challenging the panel," said John Moore, "on the ground that all persons entering this courtroom are apparently being searched."

  "The fact of the matter is," said Marshall Schulman in rebuttal, "these two defendants-have probably been treated better than any other prisoner in the jail. Mr. Moore has had access to the prison file, and he certainly knows that Powell could be a security risk, and Jimmy Smith too."

  Schulman immediately and perhaps intentionally irritated Gregory Powell's other public defender, Kathryn McDonald, who was attempting to obtain a severed trial for her client.

  "I would like to call attention to a very much earlier case which I don't believe has been overruled, although it has been explained,"

  said Miss McDonald. "That is People versus Stewart, which I am sure Mr. Schulman is familiar with, which goes way back, to 1857."

  "I'm not that old," Schulman said dryly.

  "Nor
am I, Mr. Schulman," she replied.

  "I'm not familiar with it," Schulman said.

  Then began several days of jury voir dire, begun by Judge Brandler:

  "Does the mere mention of the fact that the person alleged to have been the victim in this homicide is a police officer bring back to any of your minds or memories the fact that you may have read anything about it in the newspapers? If so, would those of you who recall reading anything at all about this case in the newspapers, or hearing it on radio or television, will you please raise your hands?"

  "That's the one in San Bernardino?" asked juror number one.

  "It's hard to say," said juror number two.

  "You made some inquiry?" asked the judge. "Was this the one in San Bernardino?" asked juror number one.

  "No," said the judge, "I don't believe this was in San Bernardino."

  "Then I don't know anything about it."

  "Mr. Hall, you had raised your hand."

  "It's kind of hard to say, but it seems to raise a thought in my mind that I did hear about it, but it's vague, real vague, so I'm raising my hand."

  "Mr. Johnston, may I ask, what is your business or occupation?" asked John Moore.

  "Truck driver."

  "Do you recall having heard something of this case on the radio, news, or seeing it on television?"

  "I very seldom watch the news on television."

  "You say you vaguely recall reading about the case?"

  "I glanced through the papers. That's the way I read a paper, I just glance through it."

  "I will challenge each juror in the box under Section 1073," said Moore, "for actual bias. The existence of the state of mind on the part of the jury in reference to the case will prevent them from acting with entire impartiality and without prejudice for the substantial rights of either party."

  "This court has no jurisdiction in the first instance," said Ray Smith, Jimmy's court-appointed lawyer. "I don't think you have any authority here except to dismiss this action since the alleged crime occurred in Kern County. I don't think any result from this jury is going to be worth the paper it's written on."