A Criminal Defense

by William L. Myers Jr.

  “Your Honor,” Devlin begins, “in light of the testimony by defense counsel’s secretary and brother, the people are willing to withdraw, for now, our petition to remove Mr. McFarland as defense counsel.”

  “The motion is withdrawn—and not just for now.” Judge Henry leans forward. “Now, who are all these people?”

  Devlin takes a deep breath, as though he’s upset by what he has to tell the court. “Your Honor, I didn’t want to raise it with the court until I was absolutely certain, but now I am. The people have received strong evidence that Mr. Hanson is planning to flee the jurisdiction.”

  This stops everyone in the courtroom cold.

  “This is bullshit,” I say, shooting to my feet.

  “Your Honor,” Devlin continues, his voice soft and matter-of-fact, “the people have learned that Mr. Hanson has been siphoning cash from personal and corporate accounts, and—”

  “How much money?” William Henry interrupts.

  Devlin waits before answering, allowing the drama to build. “Four. Million. Dollars.”

  I hear several of the reporters gasp. The court stenographer’s eyes bulge, and the judge’s courtroom deputy does a double take. David slumps in his seat. He’s screwed, and he knows it. Judge Henry stares down at me, then looks at David. We have nothing, so the judge looks back at Walker, who resumes.

  “I have the CEO and the general counsel of Hanson World Industries, who will testify to the defendant’s embezzlement of two million dollars from HWI. Also here is Detective Caroline Robb, from our financial-crimes unit, to testify that the defendant withdrew an equal amount from a personal account in the Cayman Islands.”

  “And how did you know to go to Hanson World Industries?” asks the judge.

  Walker pauses before answering. “We received an anonymous call,” he says, causing Bill Henry to narrow his eyes. “I know, Your Honor. I know. At first, we didn’t give the call any credence. It seemed too far-fetched to believe that the defendant would do something so transparent as withdrawing vast sums of money on the eve of his trial. Still, we had to follow up the lead. So I called our financial-crimes unit and asked Ms. Robb to call HWI and see if there was anything to it. She reached Mr. Kratz, who said the claim was insane but that he’d check into it. He got back to us two days later and said that, in fact, Mr. Hanson had personally taken two million dollars in cash from the vault of a corporate subsidiary near Mexico City. We also learned that, from Mexico, the defendant had the company jet fly him to the city of George Town on Grand Cayman Island, where he withdrew two million more from a numbered account in a private bank.”

  I know already how this is going to turn out for David. The Philadelphia criminal-court system has been plagued by defendants failing to appear for trial since the 1960s, when the court abolished commercial bail as a result of scandals involving private bail bondsmen, leaving it to the court itself to handle pretrial releases. In 2010, the Inquirer presented an investigative series showing that massive numbers of arrestees ducked hearings after posting 10 percent of the bail amount. Philadelphia’s FTA, or failure-to-appear rate, was the highest in the nation. Forty-seven thousand defendants were long-term fugitives from the court, which was owed more than $1 billion in forfeited bail. To address this problem, the state supreme court enacted changes in 2012 to help private bail firms finance bail, based on studies showing that defendants are more likely to show up for hearings if bail is posted through private bail bondsmen as opposed to being posted by the defendants themselves. Taking their cue from the state supreme court, the Philly trial judges have taken a hard line on defendants who skip out before trial.

  Devlin’s first witness is Brad Collins, an HWI pilot. Collins testifies that he and a copilot flew David on a company Gulfstream V from Philadelphia International Airport to a small private airstrip outside of Mexico City.

  “Excuse me?” It’s Judge Henry. He’s fully engaged now. “Are you telling the court that the defendant has recently left the country? Since the time of his arrest and arraignment?”

  David had to surrender his passport and agree not to leave the country as a condition of bail.

  The pilot looks up at the judge. “Well, sure. Mr. Hanson had us fly him abroad a few times, but that was to Japan. This was the first time he had us go to Mexico.”

  The judge glares at me and David both, then tells the witness to continue.

  Moving forward with his tale, Collins explains that David boarded the plane with two suitcases. “He took one of the suitcases with him, when he left the plane in Mexico, while we refueled and waited for him.” Two hours later, when Hanson returned, “he carried the suitcase like it was heavy.” The pilots then flew David to George Town on Grand Cayman Island. “This time he took the second suitcase. When he left, it looked empty. When he came back, it was definitely full.”

  Then Devlin gives us the money shot. “Do you know what was in the suitcases?”

  Collins hesitates, then lays it out. “Well, Jake the copilot and I got to talking about what was in that first suitcase while we were waiting for Mr. Hanson in George Town. We didn’t want to be a part of anything illegal, like drugs or who knows what. So we decided to check and see what was in that suitcase. There was no lock on it,” he adds. “So we went back onto the plane, and we unzipped the suitcase. And it was filled with money. Hundred-dollar bills.”

  Devlin pauses for this to sink in, then sits.

  I hit back at once with the only answer I can think of to the pilot’s testimony. “But the important part is that you, Mr. Collins, don’t know what Mr. Hanson was going to use the money for, do you?”

  “Well, no. It was none of my business.”

  At this, I practically shout. “None of your business? Well, that didn’t stop you from violating Mr. Hanson’s privacy by riffling through his personal luggage in the first place, did it?”

  Collins squirms. I stop here, hoping that Devlin comes back with the obvious rejoinder. He doesn’t disappoint me.

  “One more question, Mr. Collins,” Walker begins on redirect. “Since you don’t know what Mr. Hanson planned to use the money for, would you object to him telling us all now?”

  I object, as Devlin knew I would. But he wasn’t asking the question to get an answer. He was making a point for Judge Henry. If David wasn’t going to use the money for a nest egg once he fled the jurisdiction, he needs to explain what he was going to do with it.

  Devlin’s second witness is Kevin Kratz. My old classmate is even more nervous than he was sitting across from David Hanson at the American Way gala. Throughout his direct examination, Kevin uses his handkerchief to wipe sweat from his face. I can see him fighting the urge to glance at David, but he can’t help himself. He locks eyes with David half a dozen times. Three questions into direct examination, everyone in the courtroom can see that Kratz is absolutely petrified of David Hanson.

  Devlin finishes up with Kevin’s position at HWI and has Kratz explain to the judge how he received the call from the police department’s financial-crimes officer about whether David had taken a large amount of company cash. “I told her it was impossible,” Kevin explains. “That David was no longer with the company. And that even if he were still employed at HWI, he wouldn’t have cause to be handling company cash. Still, I promised to check it out. The officer told me that she thought the cash may have been taken out of a subsidiary in Mexico, so I began making calls. That’s when I found out about the trip to Mexico City, where he absconded with two million dollars in cash from one of our subsidiaries there, Azoteca Comercial.”

  “Objection,” I say. “Anything that Mr. Kratz is claiming to have learned from a third party not present in the courtroom is hearsay.”

  Judge Henry thinks for a moment. “Overruled. I’ll hear the testimony. If I decide we need a representative from Azoteca Comercial here to testify, I’ll order it, and we’ll have a second day of hearings.” The judge then directs Kevin to continue.

  “Of course, I took this informa
tion to Mr. Hanson, Edwin Hanson, our CEO,” Kevin says. “He was as shocked as I was. He asked me if I knew of any other money David might have made off with.”

  I make a mental note of “made off with” and “absconded.” Kevin is peppering his speech with words and phrases from a 1940s film-noir screenplay. And this is when I realize that Kevin Kratz has made a decision to see that David, now down, stays down.

  “The only other money I knew about,” Kratz continues, “is the money he parked in the numbered accounts in the Caymans. Years ago, David had asked me to find out how to set up overseas accounts there. He said he wanted to hide . . . that is, place . . . some of his money offshore. So I contacted some banks and set up some accounts for David. Then I helped David wire money a number of times from accounts here in the United States. A few times, David asked me to transfer money from one of the Cayman accounts to the other. That’s when he gave me the passwords to the accounts. So, when Edwin asked me about other money, I told him about the accounts, and I contacted the banks and used the passwords to have them e-mail me activity statements. I learned that the same day he withdrew the money from Azoteca Comercial, David withdrew two million more from one of his Cayman accounts. I reported this all back to Edwin Hanson, who told me to share it with the police.”

  Devlin has Kevin Kratz describe his meetings with Caroline Robb, the financial-crimes detective, to lay the foundation for Robb’s own testimony. Then he turns my old classmate over to me for cross-examination. I start to stand, but David puts his hand on my arm. I sit back down, and David whispers in my ear, “Leave it.” I look at him, puzzled. I’m about to ask why, but then I figure it out. Kevin Kratz has a lot more dirt than just this on David. Additional questioning only risks opening a Pandora’s box.

  “No questions,” I say.

  Judge Henry raises his eyebrows, then tells Devlin to call his next witness.

  Edwin Hanson takes the stand. Walker has him identify himself as the CEO of Hanson World Industries. Then he asks Edwin if David is his brother.

  “My half brother,” Edwin says.

  Devlin then gets down to business. He has Edwin identify the account in question as one belonging to Azoteca Comercial, an HWI subsidiary headquartered in Mexico City. From there it gets a little dicey for Edwin, who variously characterizes the money sitting in Azoteca Comercial as a “discretionary spending fund,” “nonallocated short-term capital,” and the “corporate equivalent of a petty-cash account.” By this point, everyone in the courtroom has figured out that HWI likely set up the account as a slush fund to hold money HWI needed to grease the gears of the Mexican bureaucracy—in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

  “Is there any conceivable corporate purpose for the defendant, your half brother, to have withdrawn two million dollars in cash since his leave of absence from the company?” Devlin asks.

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Was the defendant traveling for a corporate purpose when he flew to Mexico City to withdraw the cash?”

  “None whatsoever,” Edwin repeats. “He had no business using that plane.”

  My cross-examination of Edwin is short. I can’t play up the dubious nature of the account David plundered because connecting David to a fund set up for an illegal purpose would hurt him as much as Edwin and HWI. Instead, I try to undercut Edwin’s testimony that David did not travel to Mexico for a company purpose. It doesn’t work.

  “You’ve testified that my client took a leave of absence pending his trial,” I begin.

  “It was that or be fired,” Edwin answers before I can complete the sentence.

  “Yet your brother remains on the company’s board of directors,” I continue, ignoring Edwin. “He is still therefore technically performing corporate functions.”

  Edwin leans forward and bores into me with his dark wide-set eyes. “Mr. McFarland, let me make this clear. David Hanson was not—not—on company business when he had our jet fly him to Mexico. It was not for any company purpose that he looted that corporate account. None whatsoever. As for his position on the board of directors: it won’t be for long. I’ve called an emergency meeting of the board for tomorrow morning, and I can assure you that, his inherited stock in our company notwithstanding, my half brother is going to lose his position. My family is a large one, and we are all very different people. But we will not have our company used for disreputable purposes. And we will not have it run by disreputable people.”

  In my peripheral vision, I can see David’s clenched jaw and fisted hands. I feel the heat radiating from his face and head. It is everything he can do not to spring from his seat and throttle Edwin.

  “Easy,” I lean in to him and whisper. Then I stand to counter Edwin’s speech with one of my own.

  “Objection,” I say. “I move to strike the witness’s testimony in its entirety. It was nothing more than a gratuitous slur by a jealous brother. Jealous that his younger sibling has managed to do in just a few years what the witness himself failed to do at the company’s helm in almost two decades. Namely, to build solid relationships throughout Asia, and to engineer deals that would have—and, if justice is done in this case, still may—bring thousands of jobs and billions of dollars to our local economy. Edwin Hanson may be CEO of his family’s company, for now, but he’s in no position to deny my client’s efforts, even under the stress of an impending trial, to further the company’s interests and the interests of our entire community.”

  Now it’s Devlin’s turn to object. He demands that my own speech be stricken from the record, complaining that I’m trying to poison the jury pool, just as my client has been doing by planting stories in the media. Walker and I shout at each other, until finally Judge Henry brings us all to order with the smashing of his gavel—something entirely out of character for him. Behind me, the press is having a field day. I hear at least a dozen newsmen tap, tap, tapping the screens of their iPads, writing down everything that’s going on. I’m certain that others are recording the whole clusterfuck on their smartphones.

  William Henry sits back in his chair and closes his eyes. After a long minute, he opens them and leans forward. “All right, let’s cut to the chase. We’re going to assume that the witness from the DA’s financial-crimes unit will testify the way Mr. Walker says she will. Is that okay with you, Mr. McFarland, or do you need it all played out in detail and on the record?”

  “For the purposes of this hearing, Your Honor, and only this hearing, the defense will stipulate that the witnesses will so testify.”

  “All right, then.” William Henry looks at me. He opens his hands and waits. After a minute, still looking at me, he says, “Well?”

  I look up at the bench. “Your Honor?”

  “Come on, Mr. McFarland. You can’t figure out what I’m looking for? Your client has smashed the proverbial piggy bank on the eve of trial. He’s withdrawn four million dollars in cash. My question should be obvious. If he didn’t take the money to help him flee, what did he take it for?”

  “Your Honor,” I say, “if Mr. Hanson were planning to flee, he wouldn’t withdraw a bunch of cash. He’d just wire the money to another account in a bank located where he planned to go.”

  “Maybe he did that, too, and we just haven’t found out about it yet,” Devlin Walker pipes in.

  “I’m still waiting, Mr. McFarland,” says the judge, ignoring Devlin.

  “Your Honor, I’d like a minute to speak with my client in private.”

  The court calls for a break and lets me take David to a small conference room just outside the courtroom. As soon I close the door, David starts in on me. “You’ve killed me! You’ve fucking killed me! What the hell are we going to say? What’s our answer? That I needed the money to pay off a blackmailer who had a DVD of me at Jennifer’s house right around the time she was killed?”

  “David—”

  “You know what? Fuck it! That’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’ll go back into the courtroom and tell everyone about that fucki
ng recording. It doesn’t prove I killed her. It doesn’t prove anything. Come on!” David brushes past me toward the door, but I reach out and grab him by the arm.

  “Are you out of your mind? That video will hang you. No one can ever know anything about it. No one can find out you were at Jennifer’s house at the time of the murder.”

  “Find out? Everyone out there, everyone in the whole city, already thinks that’s exactly where I was when Jennifer was killed.”

  “But they don’t know. Some of them think it. Some believe it. But no one knows for a fact that you were there that afternoon. And it has to stay that way for you to have any chance of staying out of prison.”

  “But that’s what this whole hearing is all about. If we don’t come up with some answer for the money’s purpose, that judge is going to have me carted me off to county lockup. Today. Right now. Right? Right?”

  I lower myself to one of the scratched metal seats around the scratched metal conference table. “Sit down, David. Please. We have to think this through.”

  David remains standing, rubs his hands through his hair, then sits at the end of the table. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he says. “I just can’t believe it.”

  Thirty minutes after he called the break, Judge Henry is back on the bench. David and I are at the defense table. Devlin Walker and Christina Wesley are seated at the prosecution table, their witnesses and a smiling John Tredesco behind them. On my side of the courtroom, Marcie Hanson sits in the first row of seats behind the bar. Tommy and Angie are a few rows behind her. Only two things are different. First, there are even more reporters than were here before the break. Apparently, the word is out that blood’s being spilled. Second, two sheriff’s deputies have appeared and are standing by the doors in the back of the courtroom.

  “Have you had a chance to consult with your client?” the judge asks me.

  “I have, Your Honor. And all I can say is that Mr. Hanson is well known around the world as a philanthropist. He’s also a man of his word, and he has no intention of betraying the uses to which he donated that money.”