the Onion Field (1973)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Yes," said the judge sadly, as Schulman fiddled with his necktie and hitched up his pants.

  "Did I mention the Modesto case?" "Yes, Mr. Kanarek. Yes."

  During the days of new trial argument, Irving Kanarek was permitted to make motions which the prosecutor would rage about when back at his office at day's end.

  "Your Honor, these five witnesses would testify," said Kanarek, "that during this motion for a new trial they were taken to an anteroom and the female deputy required these female witnesses to lift their dresses, lift their slips, if any, until the most intimate items of apparel, their underpants, were visible to the female deputy, and whatever other intimate items of apparel were present, and that she conducted this search of them before they were allowed to enter the courtroom in connection with the allegedly public proceeding!"

  After seven days Judge Brandler finally ended it. Before imposing sentence, the judge read a written plea from defendant Smith in his own hand.

  I have never had a profound fear of death, but to end one's life in such a grim, ghastly, and unjustified way frightens me. I am hoping that there is some humane element within your spirit that enables you to understand and have compassion on a dying man whose life you can save. I hope and pray that you are an instrument of God's everlasting compassion and save my life for me. Do I deserve to die?

  With humility and humanliness, Jimmy Smith

  On November 13, 1963, Judge Brandler answered him: "Sadistically, Gregory Ulas Powell led Officer Campbell to believe that his life would be spared up to the very moment that he took deliberate aim and cold bloodedly executed Officer Campbell by firing one shot into the officer's mouth. While Officer Campbell, unconscious but writhing on the ground, was in the throes of death, Jimmy Lee Smith, standing over the body of Officer Campbell, with revolting, inhuman savagery, pumped four additional fatal shots into the prostrate officer.

  "Then these two defendants continued their barbarous attack by stalking the fleeing Officer Hettinger, who miraculously escaped from being likewise cruelly executed by these defendants.

  "The evidence in this case overwhelmingly justified the death verdict by the jury. It is the order of the court that you shall suffer the death penalty and that said penalty be inflicted within the walls of the State Penitentiary of San Quentin, California, in the manner and means prescribed by law at a time to be fixed by this court in the warrant of execution."

  Chapter 12

  They were driven to San Quentin in a black and white station wagon with three armed deputies in the front. A car with two armed deputies drove ahead and another car followed.

  When they arrived, they learned that the prison authorities were installing new cells upstairs of North Block where Condemned Row was located. For many years the row contained only thirty-three cells, but now that was not nearly enough. The back of the row had another line of cells called "the shelf," used for punishment for cons from the mainline. The new arrivals were being housed in the Adjustment Center, which was at that time the mainline segregation unit.

  Jimmy afid Greg arrived on Tuesday, and Jimmy spent the night going over legal documents. He was determined to become a better jailhouse lawyer than Gregory Powell. On Wednesday a riot broke out in the segregation unit.

  "Jumpin fuckin Jesus," shouted Jimmy Smith that day to Gregory Powell. "I can't get away from maniacs like you no matter where I go!"

  The cons tore up the cells and created havoc for two days. Jimmy Smith and Gregory Powell did not take part, and on the second day when it was quelled and the tear gas was still lingering in the corridors stinging their eyes, Jimmy yelled, "Hey Powell, that gas ain't nothin compared to what you're gonna feel when they strap you in that chair upstairs!"

  3*5 The two ex-partners were enormously popular in the segregation unit. After all, they had earned headlines with the murder of Ian Campbell. Jimmy found himself basking in the limelight. What he hated was that Powell was getting half the attention. So Jimmy began to show other cons his copy of Gregory Powell's first statement to the Kern County Sheriff's Office.

  "Think he's a big man?" Jimmy would say indignantly to any con who cared to read it. "Look at this and see what a snivelin rat he really is. Look how he rolled over me, and I was his partner! Look how he snitched me off!"

  Jimmy discovered that cons on the third floor took care of the less fortunate ones downstairs in the strip cells. Those in Jimmy's unit had three meals a day and earphones to listen to the radio while the ones below had half rations with only a mattress and blanket for comfort. The building was new and modern and had many small windows set into the bars for light, and on his first night Jimmy watched a con tie a bar of soap to a rope made from torn sheets, and toss it some twelve feet up to a window, breaking the pane. The con then sat on the toilet with his pillow beneath him, completely covering the opening. When he raised up it created a suction which drew all the water down. The water gone, the con then could put his head in the toilet and call down to his friend below through the toilet telephone to tell him a package was enroute.

  The con below would break one of the small windows in the same fashion and would eventually receive a package of food or cigarettes tied to a string from above. He would have to entangle that dangling prize with his own string tied to a comb flung out the window. It was a tedious maddening process and sometimes took a hundred tosses, but determination usually prevailed.

  Greg was having difficulty adjusting to prison life. A guard made the following entry in his record:

  January 21, 1964: Powell threw food at Jimmy Smith and Smith subsequently stated he would like to beat Powell half to death.

  January 22, 1964: Powell found guilty of refusing to shave in violation of Prison Rule D 1202 concerning obeying orders. Sentenced to isolation pending transfer to Death Row.

  January 28, 1964: Powell does not get along very well with other inmates, therefore does not go for exercise. Will throw a tantrum if he does not get his way.

  Death Row! It was impossible. Of course, Jimmy had, like all small time criminals, enhanced his ego in a thousand back alley bull sessions by saying, 'Til probably end up there someday." But like all small time criminals he didn't mean it. Nothing could have been farther from his mind.

  Now after his time in the San Quentin Adjustment Center, he was being taken across the yard blinking in the harsh sunlight, toward building number eight, which housed the row itself.

  In Jimmy's earlier term in San Quentin he had heard the bulls shout certain words in reference to other condemned men, like Caryl Chessman. The bull was leading him through the throngs of curious cons, and Jimmy felt a surge of excitement and dread. He was the big man and the other cons dropped their eyes when he looked at them. At first it was incredibly thrilling, but then the third time the bull had to say it, Jimmy's throat tightened and the blood rushed to his face and he began to tremble.

  "Get back!" the guard commanded. "Dead man comin through!"

  Jimmy Smith had spent the nights in the Adjustment Center thinking of death, and he had vowed that for the first time in his life he would act with courage when it came. Who knows, it might at last be the most pleasurable experience of his miserable life. Who could say it wasn't? One thing for certain, Powell would accept it like a hero, of that Jimmy had no doubt. Powell would give his life in a minute to make himself a big man in the eyes of the other cons. Jimmy wondered how Powell had liked the walk across the yard to the row. But he knew the answer to that. It would be the high point of Powell's life.

  One thing Jimmy vowed, if they killed him first, if he went before Powell, he would go like a man. He would burn in hell before letting that bastard show him up.

  When the new arrivals were brought into the row itself Jimmy had abandoned his fantasy of beating Powell to death. Jimmy decided the best revenge would be to watch him endure the misery that was sure to come.

  Four guards escorted Jimmy and a chubby con named Willie to the row that day.

  "Next stop, the penthou
se," said one guard as the elevator took them up. Then Jimmy found himself facing a huge steel door with a thick glass window about eight inches square. One of the escorts pressed a button and unlocked the door from the inside. Jimmy was to learn that the inside guard had the key taken away from him at night, locking him in with the cons.

  Next came the stripping, and the inevitable: "Okay, bend over and spread em out." Then came the issue of blue dungarees. No one ever left or returned to the row with the same clothing on his back. At last, Jimmy got his first glimpse of the cells and the bars and steel mesh surrounding them. It was quiet and he heard only the occasional click as one of the condemned men changed TV channels with his remote button.

  Then Jimmy was marched to a cage at the end of the corridor leading to the cells unit. Once inside, two guards entered and the sergeant locked them inside calling to a gun guard to admit them. The gun guard had a walkway that ran the length of the cells and was protected by bars and steel mesh. The gnn guard pulled a release bar and Jimmy walked into what he thought would be his home until he died.

  None of the condemned men spoke as he marched down the corridor, and at first Jimmy thought the cells were empty. He squinted into each of them and finally made out the cigarettes glowing and forms lying on the bunks looking up at the TV's perched on platforms near the top of the bars.

  Cell number nine looked like the dozens of others Jimmy had inhabited in his life. It contained one bunk bolted to the wall, a small table, a heavy wooden stool. As he was making his bunk he heard a familiar voice calling him. It was a huge condemned man he called the Bear, who had been to college and played Canadten football and was something of an artist. Jimmy had known him in the county jail high power tank. That first day in the high power tank when Jimmy urinated in the toilet, the Bear had said to him, "Now after you're through pissing, you take some toilet paper and wipe off that stool real careful, and if you ever miss and hit the floor you wipe that up too."

  And the Bear had said to the inmate delivering the tray of chow to high power: "I know what kind of sex acts you punks do. Now you go wash those filthy hands and bring a new tray."

  "Screw you," said the man with the food tray and it was the last thing he said for the five minutes it took to revive him.

  "That's all I fuckin need," Jimmy mumbled to his neighbor on the other side, "the Bear livin next door to me. I'll probably accidentally drop a match near him when he's house cleanin and he'll break my back. My life is just one big junkyard full of misery and bad luck," moaned Jimmy Smith.

  Cell number nine of Death Row. This was the real thing. This is where every event of his life had inevitably led him, he thought. He was sullen and teary when breakfast came, but then he perked up.

  "Hey, this is okay," he said to his neighbor. "Like, good enough for some fancy cafe on the outside."

  "Enjoy it while you can, brother," said the voice next to him, with a loose slobbery giggle.

  The first day on the row was routine. The second found two of the residents locked in a fierce fistfight as soon as the doors were opened for exercise. A black man, a robber and murderer known as Taco, was battling a white youngster named Junior, a cop killer who had been slightly crippled while trying to run a police roadblock. Junior was clearly the winner in this fight, and while he was pounding the black man, the gunrail guard, after several warnings, fired a shot. The shock literally blew Jimmy back into his cell onto the floor.

  Ten minutes later when he recovered from the fear, Jimmy was told the first shot is a blank, it's the second one you've got to worry about.

  "Jesus," Jimmy whispered. "It ain't safe. It ain't safe nowhere in this miserable-world."

  "Don't worry aboflt it," said a middle aged white man who murdered wives. "Nobody's going to kill you before the state gets its chance."

  Time passed even for condemned men. For some the months passed much too quickly. One unforgettable winter day Jimmy Smith found Gregory Powell on the floor at his feet.

  The fistfight erupted so fast that Jimmy could not even remember what caused it when it was over. They were in the corridor. Someone made a snide remark, but that was common enough between them. Then Greg had thrown something in his face. What was it? Jimmy thought, now that it was over, and he was lying on his bunk nursing his bruised knuckles. Paper! That was it, wasn't it? A ball of crumpled paper!

  Jimmy had plowed into him so fast they were both surprised. Powell went down. Oh yeah! Jimmy thought in exultation. Powell went down to his knees after one punch, like the whinin snivelin punk he was! It was easy, so damn easy Jimmy couldn't believe it. Big man. Big tough man with a gun. Now Jimmy vowed to punish Powell. Maybe once a week. Maybe twice. Just kick his ass, just a little, when the gunrail wasn't around. That was all that saved Powell this time, the gunrail cocking that gun. The metal sound was like a lightning bolt to Jimmy Smith. Powell was on his knees trying to hold Jimmy's arms. Oh yeah!

  That night, most of the men on the row could hear Jimmy Smith screaming triumphantly into the toilet telephone, the voice echoing through the corridors.

  "Powell's a lyin braggin punk!" Jimmy screamed. "Powell says he was a boxer at Vacaville! I heard what he was! He was a punk in the gym! The other guys'd bend him over a workout bar and brown him! He was a gymnasium punk!"

  "Shut up, Smith," the Bear growled. "I'm trying to watch television."

  "And that ain't all!" Jimmy shouted to everyone and no one. "He's worse than that! Yeah! He's a ... a incestuous bastard! That's what he is!"

  "Smith, if you don't shut up I'm gonna twist your head off tomorrow," said the Bear, and Jimmy Smith was finally silenced that night.

  The following entry was made in the record of the prisoner.

  February 15, 1965: Found guilty of fist fighting with Powell in violation of Prison Rule D 4515 concerning fighting. Sentenced to 3 days cell status.

  His ecstasy was halted the next night when a friend whispered, "Jimmy, that ain't too cool what you done."

  "What's that?"

  "Throwing blows with your partner."

  "My partner? That punk?"

  "He's the only one in the world can save your life, baby." "What?"

  "Jimmy, looky here. You guys got a chance for a new trial. Man, most of us got a chance what with the Escobedo case, and now the Dorado case. I'd bet a million bucks you two guys'll get a new trial."

  "So what? It's gonna end the same."

  "For him, sure. He ain't got a chance. But you, Jimmy, it's different for you."

  "Different? I got a hot beef too."

  "You just gotta get separate trials. Have your lawyer make him out a fucking devil to your jury."

  "That ain't hard to do," said Jimmy.

  "Subpoena him to your trial and have your lawyer ask him if you really shot the cop or is he lying on you."

  "I suppose he's gonna say yeah, and ruin any little chance he might have, huh?"

  "He don't have to, Jimmy," the voice whispered. "He just gotta look tough and scare the fuck outta the jury. And take the fifth." "The fifth?"

  "The fifth fucking amendment! It can't be used against him at his trial. It won't hurt him none, and it'll probably save your ass. Other partners have pulled it off. You know how fucking goofy juries are. It'll work, I tell you."

  "Jesus."

  "But it ain't gonna work if you go around using him for a punching bag. You gotta play up to him, baby."

  "Jesus," Jimmy breathed, and he did not sleep that night. Not for a moment.

  Three days later, it was a haggard nervous Jimmy Smith who knew what he had to do and who offered his old partner a cigarette during exercise. And he smiled at his old partner and made a self- effacing joke. And at the end, just before returning to their cells, put his hand on his partner's arm, something he had never done, and looked in his eyes, and said friendly things. And the next few days, he sat with his partner and flattered him and touched him often. He took his partner away from the others and talked privately with him, whispered many things,
letting his lips touch the ear of his partner.

  Several weeks later, the following entry was made in the prison records:

  April 20, 1965: Jimmy L. Smith pleaded guilty to possessing pitcher of home brew in violation of Prison Rule D 1205 concerning contraband. Also found guilty of committing oral copulation on Gregory U. Powell in violation of Prison Rule D 1206 concerning immorality. Sentenced to 10 days isolation.

  The changes in both men were reflected in prison disciplinary records. Greg's behavior improved. In fact until an escape attempt in 1967, there would be no more minor troublesome prison violations on the record of Gregory Powell. Though the plans for escape never ceased, the other irritations seemed to have vanished. Greg had sexual contact with many inmates in San Quentin, both in the Adjustment Center and on the row itself. But this was different. It was the final utter submission of the recalcitrant member of his former "family."

  Jimmy's behavior deteriorated, became sex-oriented, erratic.

  September 14, 1965: Smith attempted to engage other prisoner in homosexual practices, necessitating moving the other prisoner to a new cell.

  September 18, 1965: Subject accused other prisoner of snitching and was attempting to have others join him in a mass rape of this prisoner.

  October 12, 1965: Smith provoked a fight between two other inmates.

  October 14, 1965: Smith talked about suicide for the last two days.

  Is not only a compulsive prevaricator, but is quite unable to accept responsibility for creating his own difficulties.

  Jimmy Smith had at last surrendered, yielded utterly. The last overture was made to Gregory Powell. He was literally on his knees -abject, humbled, degraded. He didn't want to die.

  Chapter 13

  Once he was driving for the chief of police, spending in-between hours answering telephones, cutting newspaper clippings which might interest Chief Parker, doing the perfunctory public relations tasks required of the chief's driver, he thought for sure the dreams would go away. They did not. They started to come almost every night.