Bill Collingwood paused for a moment.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll talk to Mr. Dupree for you. I’ll put in a good word.”
The younger man’s face brightened.
“Okay, thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Collingwood,” he said with relief.
Then he disappeared from the doorway.
Collingwood turned back to his paperwork, but he still couldn’t focus. He was thinking about the implications for Gilead if he ended up being convicted of a criminal offense, even if it was a misdemeanor. A conviction would likely mean he would be disqualified from finishing at the mission school. Gilead had completed the first year before he’d dropped out and taken the position as pastor in West Virginia. Bill had been secretly hoping and praying that Gilead would complete his missionary training, and then return to the Middle East with the same missionary organization through which Collingwood and his wife had worked for more than two decades.
Though Gilead had spoken little of returning to mission school and completing his training, Bill had hoped it would be so. But now, with the criminal charges…
At least, the veteran missionary thought to himself, Will Chambers agreed to take the case. That was a blessing. But whether he can win the case remains to be seen.
11
VIRGINIA DISTRICT COURT WAS IN SESSION in the courtroom of Judge Lawton Hadfeld, where testimony in the criminal misdemeanor trial of Gilead Amahn had taken up most of the morning.
In his early forties, Hadfeld had been a judge for nearly a decade. His approach to the law was not particularly elegant, though it was thoroughly practical—having been shaped by general practice of law in Virginia, followed by his years on the district court bench. His court heard the mundane stuff of real life rather than the deeper mysteries of constitutional law—single welfare mothers being evicted, busy executives going eighty-five in a sixty-five-mile-per-hour zone on I-95, homeowners violating the brush-burning ordinances.
Hadfeld was leaning back in his judge’s chair, rubbing his eyes.
The prosecution case had started with the testimony of the “imam,” who supervised the worship in the Islamic Center Mosque, and of the “mufti,” who was also in attendance at the Islamic Center at the time of the riot. The Commonwealth attorney had also called as a witness an attendee at the conference, a professor at a Florida university who had suffered a broken arm in the melee. His injury, according to the testimony, was likely to leave him with a small percentage of permanent disability.
Now the prosecution was wrapping up its case with testimony from the arresting officer who had obtained a statement from Gilead.
The prosecutor led the thirty-year veteran of the sheriff’s department through a description of his presence at the Islamic Center that day. The deputy described the tensions with the two groups of protestors outside the Center. Then he said that a mob of angry Muslims had burst out the front door of the Center chasing after Gilead Amahn, whom he then identified as the man sitting at the defense counsel table next to Will Chambers.
Then the Commonwealth attorney went to the heart of the matter.
“And you arrested Gilead Amahn?”
“Yes, sir, that’s correct. Then I placed him in the patrol car. And then after that, I proceeded to read him his rights, after which time he gave me a free, voluntary statement concerning his side of the incident.”
“Now tell the Court,” the prosecutor said, “exactly what Gilead Amahn told you in the patrol car after he was arrested.”
The deputy paused for a minute and turned to squarely face Judge Hadfeld.
“Mr. Amahn told me,” the deputy said in a slow, clear voice, “and this is his statement verbatim…‘I knew they would react—I was not afraid of violence.’ ”
“And after Mr. Amahn told you that he knew the audience in the Islamic Center would react to his speech, and that he was not afraid of their violent reaction, what did you do?”
Will Chambers quickly rose to his feet.
“Objection, Your Honor,” Will said “The Commonwealth attorney is misstating the deputy’s testimony.”
“Oh, I suppose Mr. Amahn’s confession was fudged a little by the Commonwealth attorney,” Judge Hadfeld said, glancing at his notepad in front of him, “but this is not a jury trial. The Court is not misled. I’ll instruct the Commonwealth attorney to be a little more careful in restating the testimony. Now let’s get on with this.”
The prosecutor smiled and restated his question.
“After Mr. Amahn confessed to me he knew the audience would react,” the deputy said, “and that he wasn’t afraid of violence, I informed him that I was taking him to a magistrate for the setting of bail, and that he would be charged with a criminal offense of disorderly conduct.”
“Your witness,” the Commonwealth attorney said to Will, and then sat down with an air of satisfaction.
Will was back on his feet but without any notes in his hand.
“Did you read something to refresh your memory before testifying today—so that you could memorize Gilead Amahn’s statement word for word?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” the deputy said, hedging a bit.
“Let me approach this from a different angle,” Will said in a casual tone. “As a deputy, you wrote out a formal incident report on this event, did you not?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And in your formal report you quoted Gilead Amahn exactly, word for word, as you recited in court today. Correct?”
The officer nodded.
“That’s right. Word for word.”
“So my question is this,” Will continued. “Did you have with you that day, the day of the incident, a memo book?”
“You’ll have to specify—”
“I mean a daybook. A notebook—a personal log that you keep, as most officers do, to write down events, statements, and observations on the scene. Then when you get back to the station, you use your log or memo book to reconstruct the information you then put in your formal report. Isn’t that the way it’s done?”
The deputy paused for a moment and smiled.
“Yes. I do have a logbook. If that’s what you mean.”
“And you made entries that day—the day of the incident where you encountered Gilead Amahn at the Islamic Center?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you have that logbook with you today?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Please pull it out, Deputy,” Will said.
The deputy reached down into the small briefcase he had with him at the stand and retrieved a spiral-bound memo book. He flipped through the pages, glanced at a few of them for a moment, and then resumed his testimony.
“I do have a few entries here, if that’s what you mean,” the deputy replied.
Will asked that the deputy hand the memo book to him, and the officer reluctantly complied. As Will walked back to the counsel table, the Commonwealth attorney swept up to his position and stared over his shoulder, reading the pages as Will examined them.
After a few moments, the other man shook his head a little, smiled, and resumed his position at the prosecution table.
But Will continued staring at the memo book, absorbed in something that he was reading there.
“All right, Mr. Chambers, let’s get this show on the road,” Judge Hadfeld remarked.
Unperturbed, Will smiled, nodded, and resumed his cross-examination.
“Deputy, let’s take the first of Gilead’s statements—the statement ‘I knew they would react.’ ”
Will was holding up the memo book in his right hand for emphasis.
“Would you agree with me,” Will continued, “that, according to your notes in your memo book, you asked Gilead Amahn this question: ‘You knew the audience would react’? And when you asked Mr. Amahn that, he simply replied that he knew there was a chance that the audience might react to what he had to say. Right?”
The deputy shrugged and said he couldn’t say for sure w
ithout reading his notes again. So Will handed the memo book back, open to the appropriate page, to the deputy. After a moment he replied.
“I suppose that’s one way to interpret my notes…they’re a little sketchy…”
“You would agree that what I just said is the most reasonable interpretation of your notes? The most accurate interpretation of your notes?”
“I suppose so.”
“And as to the second statement by Gilead Amahn—the statement ‘I was not afraid of violence.’ That was a statement prompted by your question, as indicated in your memo book. You asked Gilead Amahn this: ‘When the riot broke out, were you afraid of the violence occurring around you?’ To which Mr. Amahn replied, ‘No, I was not afraid of the violence directed at me as I was being beaten and then chased out of the building.’ ”
The deputy paused for a moment and then answered.
“Mr. Amahn told me he was not afraid of violence. That’s what he said, and that’s what I put in my report.”
“Prompted by a question, put to Mr. Amahn by you, as to whether he was afraid of the violence that was directed at him after the riot had already broken out.”
“According to my memo book…that’s correct.”
“And your memo book contains your notes written at the time of the arrest, at the time of your encounter with Mr. Amahn, when the matters you’re testifying about today were the freshest in your memory, correct?”
The deputy paused one last time before answering.
“I’ve testified to what I recall happened that day. Not everything I observed or heard was recorded in my memo book.”
“But the fact is,” Will said, his voice rising now with a sense of finality, “that Gilead Amahn’s statement about not being afraid of violence was not in response to any questions by you about his intentions to create a violent episode, or a riot—but in fact had to do with his feelings while he was being beaten and pursued by the crowd. Correct?”
“I guess so.”
“Deputy—can you point out any entry you made in this memo book, on the day in question, where you record any statement from Gilead Amahn in which he indicates his sharing his religious beliefs with the attendees of the Islamic conference was intended in any way to provoke, instigate, or incite a riot or a public disturbance?”
“I don’t believe so. I don’t believe there’s anything in my memo book that says that,” the deputy answered.
“But Gilead Amahn did tell you in the squad car that the reason he felt compelled to share his faith in the midst of such a hostile environment was that he was a former Muslim himself. That his mother had been a former Muslim. And that his mother had been killed for her faith over in Cairo, Egypt. Is this all correct?”
The Commonwealth attorney leaped to his feet and objected to the multiple form of the question.
Judge Hadfeld sustained the objection with a growing sense of impatience.
Will asked the question again, this time breaking it down into several parts, but with increasing emphasis in his voice.
“Yes,” the deputy answered quietly. “Mr. Amahn did say some of those things.”
Will rested his cross-examination, and the prosecutor presented no redirect and rested his case. Will then began arguing his motion for dismissal based on grounds of free speech and free exercise of religion. But Judge Hadfeld quickly cut him off.
“Counsel, I’m not going to grant your motion. But you can renew these arguments again in detail after the close of all the testimony. Now let’s hear the defense case.”
Will nodded, then bent down to Gilead Amahn, who had been sitting quietly and patiently next to him at counsel table.
“This is it,” he whispered to his client. “Are you ready? If you’d like me to ask the Court to start this after lunch, I could probably make a pitch that way…”
“No,” Gilead replied confidently, “I would like to testify now. Let’s go.”
He quickly made his way to the stand, raised his right hand with his left hand on the Bible, and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God. And then he sat down.
Will looked at Gilead, ready to commence his direct examination—but noticed something in his client’s expression.
His eyes were not on Will or anything else in the courtroom, but somewhere else. Nor did he appear nervous. His face was relaxed, with a slight smile. It was as if Gilead Amahn, while waiting to testify in his own criminal case, was actually harboring a secret that had little to do with the legal proceedings in the District Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Will had thoroughly prepared his client for the trial, conducting a painstaking review of the sheriff’s department’s incident reports. However, he had been unsuccessful in his attempt to get the reports of the federal agents and the Department of Justice relating to their initial temporary detention of Gilead Amahn.
If his client was hiding something, Will wondered whether it, like some concealed detonation device, would be inadvertently tripped during the trial.
12
“GILEAD, TO REVIEW, THESE ARE THE REASONS that you went to the conference at the Islamic Center that day: to preach Jesus Christ to those Muslim attendees, to honor the memory of your dead mother, who gave her life for her Christian faith, and to obey what you described as the command of the Great Commission—to preach the gospel to the whole world?”
“Yes, Mr. Chambers. That is why.”
“Did you deliberately seek to incite a violent reaction?”
“Of course not. That would be wrong.”
“What desire did you have to cause injury or harm to the attendees?”
“None whatsoever. I was very distressed that one of those in the audience—that professor fellow from Florida—got injured.”
“Did you make any threatening gestures while delivering your comments in the auditorium?”
“No.”
“Did you threaten to commit any act of violence yourself?”
“No.”
“What is the best description you can give of the nature of your comments that day at the Islamic Center?”
“Evangelistic. I was doing evangelism. Delivering the message of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Will rested his direct examination. The Commonwealth attorney stood up slowly and confidently.
“Mr. Amahn. You said you were being an evangelist—is that what you said?’ ”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ve been to some real hell-fire-and-brimstone church services—but no evangelist I know gives a sermon with the intent that folks start throwing punches and get broken arms. Now, are you saying that you believed—as an evangelist—that you were somehow above the law?”
“Oh no. I never believed that.”
“But you knew that the whole auditorium of die-hard, fundamentalist-type Muslims—when you got through having your say—that they would set on you like a swarm of angry hornets out of a nest that had just gotten whacked. Right? You knew that, didn’t you, Mr. Amahn?”
“I thought it might happen—”
“You told the deputy, in fact, that you knew that they would react. Those were your very words—your words to the deputy when he arrested you and put you in the squad car. Those were your exact words.”
Gilead was silent, considering the question.
“Speak up there, Mr. Amahn. Those were your words—admit it.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know about you, Mr. Amahn, but I can’t think of any Christian men in the preaching ministry that give a sermon knowing it might cause a riot…”
“I can.”
“Oh? You can? You really can?”
“Yes.”
“Name one.”
“The apostle Paul. The riot that broke out in Ephesus. Book of Acts, chapter nineteen.”
The prosecutor waved his hands to signal a different tack in his questions, but not before Gilead added one more comment.
“Verses twenty-two to t
he end of the chapter, I believe.”
“You are comparing yourself to the apostle Paul—to Saint Paul himself, now are you?”
“Oh no.”
“And even Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’—didn’t He?” the prosecutor asked with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“Yes.”
But before his questioner could change the subject, Gilead continued.
“But you see,” Gilead added softly, “Jesus, in His sermons, said He was many different things. Some were very beautiful and pleasant—He called Himself a shepherd…a door…waters of eternal life. Others were not so pleasant. Jesus also said that he came as a sword.”
“Are you saying that you were a sword, Mr. Amahn? Is that what you were, over there at the Islamic Center? A sword that would cut into the hearts of those people—who don’t share your religious beliefs—prompting them to explode in a natural expression of anger at your insults—”
“I did not insult them—”
“Oh? You didn’t?” the prosecutor said, his voice rising to almost a falsetto.
“ ‘You false teachers of the law…woe to you who lead millions upon millions astray’—if I am not mistaken, those were your exact words spoken at the microphone in the Islamic Center, isn’t that correct? ”
“Yes, but—”
“ ‘Idolaters of religion, falsely so-called, vainly puffed up by your fleshly minds, taking delight in false humility and worship of angelic creatures’—those were also your words. Weren’t they, Mr. Amahn?”
“I do admit I said that—”
“And you don’t think that your words were insulting?”
Gilead was silent.
“You don’t think that a bunch of fundamentalist Muslim clerics wouldn’t be outraged by such epithets being hurled at them?”
When Gilead still did not respond, the prosecutor snorted, then told the judge he didn’t need to hear the answer. He rested his cross-examination.
Will Chambers rose to his feet slowly. He was unperturbed.
“Gilead.”
“Yes, Mr. Chambers.”
“Those words you spoke at the microphone. Before the riot broke out. You said that these Islamic teachers were ‘vainly puffed up by your fleshly minds, taking delight in false humility.’ Right?”
The Last Judgment Page 6