by P. L. Gaus
“I don’t know,” Robertson sighed out. “It probably doesn’t matter, anyway.”
“Why?” Cal asked.
“Linda Hart has asked for a Miranda hearing this afternoon. She’s filed a motion to toss out Burkholder’s confession altogether.”
* * *
As he left the sheriff’s office, Cal turned in the doorway and asked Robertson, “Are you following the Billy Winters disappearance?”
Robertson laughed. “Cal, he probably just wandered off somewhere, drunk. He probably just finally fell off the wagon.”
“I don’t know,” Cal said. “They found blood inside his truck.”
Robertson shrugged his lack of interest. “All I did was call down to let them know whose truck it is. I haven’t really been paying attention.”
Missy stood up and said, “I’ve got to drive back up to the hospital,” and moved toward the door, apparently not much interested in Billy Winters, either.
Robertson saw her out to the front entrance and came back to his office to find Cal standing in front of the desk, pensive.
Cal turned for the door again and said, “Rachel is going to follow the Bradenton Beach police investigation. I think you should do that, too.”
Robertson acknowledged that with a tip of his head and stepped back behind his desk.
On his way through the door, Cal muttered, “I’m going out to check on Darba Winters. She’s worried about Billy.”
Robertson said to his back, “I’ll call Bradenton Beach, Cal, but Billy Winters is a drunk. Always will be.”
Cal turned back to say, “I’ve got to believe in someone today, Bruce.”
Scoffing, Robertson said, “Amish murderers, Cal. Who’d believe in that?”
20
Thursday, October 8
2:20 P.M.
WHEN CAL pulled up at Darba Winters’s place, Bishop Leon Shetler was sitting in his plain black buggy, parked on the lane in front. Cal swung his gray truck into Darba’s drive and walked back to stand beside the bishop’s rig. On the high seat of the buggy, the bishop looked down at Cal and said, “My Katie is inside,” shaking his head.
“Visiting?” Cal asked.
“You don’t know?” Shetler asked, surprised.
“Know what?”
“Darba tore her place apart about an hour ago,” the bishop said, pointing out scratches on his arms and a bruise under his eye. “I had to help the doctor settle her down.”
“What do you mean, she ‘tore her place apart’?” Cal said, as he turned to walk across the lawn toward the house.
Shetler climbed out of his buggy and followed, saying, “Katie and I were already here when the doctor arrived. We were visiting, and Darba was still pretty worried about Billy.”
Cal stopped. “Evie was supposed to tell her that they found Billy’s truck.”
“Dr. Carson told Darba that his truck hadn’t been moved since last night, and the police found blood. Then Darba got nuts. Throwing chairs, tipping over tables, breaking plates, smashing china, punching holes in the walls. Swinging fists, too,” Shetler added, rubbing the bruise on his cheek.
The men climbed the two short steps up onto the front stoop. When Cal started to pull the screened door open, Evelyn Carson met them at the door and said, “I can’t let you in.”
“You need help?” Cal asked.
“Don’t think so,” Carson said, “but Darba should be sleeping. I gave her a sedative, but she’s still up on her feet, crying about Billy. She says we’ve got to call him, and tell him not to ever come back here.”
From the back hallway, they heard Darba screaming, “You run, Billy! You run, boy!”
“What does that mean?” Cal asked.
“She acts like someone’s after him,” Carson said. “She’s been screaming like that since I told her that Billy is missing.”
21
Thursday, October 8
2:30 P.M.
ON THE second floor of the old jail, in the narrow bricked hallway several paces down from Crist Burkholder’s cell door, Linda Hart stood whispering with Vesta Miller. Dressed in her usual black suit, the angular lawyer was a head taller than Vesta, and she leaned in to speak earnestly.
“Just try to get him to trust me, Vesta,” Hart said. “He needs to let me handle the judge.”
“OK,” Vesta said, “but Crist can be stubborn. And I’m not sure what you want me to say to him.”
Vesta wore a full-length cotton dress of a soft lilac color. Her white bonnet covered the bun at the back of her head, and her white day apron hung in front, nearly as long as her dress, which covered her legs to the tops of her ankles. She twisted a lace hankie in her fingers, needing the normal—housework, cooking, anything but this. Anything but these brick walls. Anything but an English jail.
But here she was, she told herself, and there was nothing to be done about it now. So listen, Vesta, she thought. Listen to the imposing lawyer, dressed all in black. Let this English lawyer juggle this thoroughly English dilemma.
The trouble was, it would be English people now who would juggle the fate of all the rest of her years. It was the English people and their courts who would lock Crist away for all the rest of his life. For all the rest of her life. But the lawyer woman was so certain of herself. So confident that Crist would not go to jail.
Was that possible? Could that really happen? Or was her new life with Crist Burkholder already done and finished, before they had even gotten started?
“Just tell him to trust me,” Linda Hart was saying. “Tell him that I can get his confession tossed out.”
“He won’t go to prison?” Vesta asked.
“Vesta, I don’t think he’ll even go to trial. Much less be convicted.”
“But, what if he really did do it?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Hart said, leaning closer. “We haven’t come to that yet. First, I want to get his confession tossed out. Then, maybe he won’t even go to trial.”
“He says he did it,” Vesta argued, hoping the lawyer could convince her to find hope where Vesta suspected none could exist.
“Vesta,” Hart said, and pulled the girl down the hall toward Crist Burkholder’s cell door. “Even the coroner doesn’t believe he did it. But that’s not the question we need to address right now. First, we need to win this Miranda hearing. Then we’ll see what happens.”
“Because the sheriff didn’t tell him his rights?”
“Yes.”
“Why would that matter, if Crist says he did it?”
“Because, without his Miranda warning, Crist never really did confess that he did it. At least not as far as the law is concerned.”
“But he did confess.”
“Not if we win this argument.”
Vesta stopped in the hall and considered that. “What do you want me to say to him?”
At the end of the hallway, Ricky Niell appeared, and Hart leaned down to Vesta and put her finger to her lips.
Niell walked up to them, and Hart said, “Ricky, I want Vesta to talk to him, before I do.”
“I’d have to sit in on that,” Ricky said.
“You can watch through the mirror, Sergeant, but I can’t let you listen.”
Ricky nodded. “I’ll take him to Interview B.”
* * *
On the first floor of the jail, while Hart waited in the hallway outside Interview B, Vesta sat at the long gray table in front of the one-way mirror, and told Crist what his lawyer had said to her.
Crist sat across from her in his orange jailhouse jumpsuit, and considered the implications of what she had told him. He balanced the truth of what he knew against the legalisms of the English law, and he wondered if it were that way in all the rest of America. Could it be true? Kill a man and go scot-free because of something the sheriff hadn’t said at the time of his arrest?
He reached across the table for Vesta’s hands, and said, “I have to live with the truth of what I did, Vesta.”
“I
know, Crist,” Vesta said. “But maybe you don’t have to go to prison.”
“She doesn’t care if I did it?”
“She says the Miranda hearing has to be first. Then maybe they won’t believe your confession.”
“But I know it’s true, Vesta.”
“I know,” Vesta said and pulled her hands back across the table. “But think about our lives, Crist.”
“You could live with this?”
“I want to live with you.”
“That was all a dream, Vesta. It was a dream we had once, before I killed a man.”
Vesta studied Crist’s eyes for encouragement. She studied them for reassurance. For hope. But he looked back at her without any of those blessings showing in his gaze.
“What are you going to do, Crist?”
Burkholder reached again for her hands, took them into his, and said, “I don’t know.”
22
Thursday, October 8
3:00 P.M.
IN THE courtroom of Judge Robert Knowles, Crist sat with his lawyer at the defense table in front of the gallery railing, and waited for the judge. He was dressed in the same Amish clothes he had been wearing at the time of his arrest, worn denim trousers, a plain blue blouse, and a blue denim vest. Behind him in the gallery, his parents sat with Cal Troyer and Vesta Miller.
“Do they have to be here?” Crist asked his lawyer. “Do they have to see me here?”
Hart sighed and wished again that Burkholder were taking greater interest in her motion to suppress his confession. “Crist,” she said, sounding weary, “you need to focus on what is going to happen here.”
Crist hung his head. “I don’t want them to see me like this. Can’t we do this someplace private?”
“We’re in court, Crist. They have a right to be here.”
Sheriff Robertson appeared at a side door and took one of the seats where a jury would sit. Then Judge Knowles entered through a door to the left of his bench, and the bailiff announced the judge and called Burkholder’s case number.
Hart guided Burkholder to his feet while the judge was seated, and then she sat him back down, saying, “Knowles has been on the bench for thirty years.”
“What?” Burkholder asked.
“He’s not a rookie, Crist. That’s good for us.”
Knowles took up papers from his bench and asked, “Is this Mr. Burkholder, Ms. Hart?”
“Crist Burkholder, Your Honor.”
Turning toward the prosecutor’s table, Knowles asked, “Am I right that you oppose the motion, Ben?”
“We do, Your Honor.”
Knowles nodded and asked Hart, “Does defense have any arguments beyond what is presented in this brief?”
“No, Your Honor,” Hart said, standing. “The motion is complete, as you have it.”
“Does the prosecutor have anything new?” Knowles asked, studying Hart’s document.
The prosecutor stood and said, “Your Honor, we consider the arguments to be weak, in as much as they make assumptions about some nebulous Amish dis-awareness of legal matters. We consider that the sheriff can’t be expected to take such finely divided cultural differences into consideration every time he makes an arrest.”
Knowles responded, “But, under Thompkins, the Supreme Court has just this year ruled that a suspect must make a positive declaration in order to invoke the protections under Miranda.”
Stepping forward, Hart said, “If I may, Your Honor, defense argues that even if Miranda were to have been acknowledged by the defendant, he could not have appreciated its full implications. He wouldn’t have understood it sufficiently, Your Honor.”
“Noted,” Knowles said. He studied the papers in front of him for a moment longer, and then he looked up to say, “At some considerable length, I have studied defense’s motion to suppress, and I have studied the recent Thompkins rulings. Accordingly, I have concluded that I am required to take into consideration the fact that the defendant is Amish. And on the narrow question of Miranda, it can be anticipated that the defendant had poor knowledge of legal matters at the time of his confession, and that he had an insufficient understanding of Miranda at the time of his subsequent questioning.”
Hearing that, Robertson slipped out through the side door, wearing disappointment in all of his features.
The judge continued without taking note of the sheriff’s departure. “I’ve considered that the sheriff and his deputies knew this at the time the defendant approached them. I’ve considered the fact that the sheriff did expect a confession to be forthcoming, because of his prior phone conversation with the defendant’s bishop. I therefore rule in favor of defense’s motion. The confession is therefore suppressed, as are all subsequent utterances of the defendant while in custody.”
Burkholder stood and asked, “What does that mean, Judge?”
“Your lawyer will explain it to you,” Knowles said, standing.
Hart pulled on Burkholder’s sleeve and sat him down. “It means they can’t charge you with murder,” she whispered.
As the judge turned to exit his courtroom, Burkholder stood again and said, “I knew my rights, Judge. They didn’t have to tell me about my rights. I’m guilty. I killed him. I wish to plead guilty.”
“Your Honor!” Linda Hart shouted, as she rose again.
“Mr. Burkholder,” the judge said, “I advise you to sit down and be quiet. There are to be no charges filed against you now.”
“Judge,” Crist said, “I don’t want an attorney anymore. I killed Glenn Spiegle with my fist.”
Immediately, Hart asked to approach the bench, and Knowles waved her forward. The prosecutor came forward, too, and Knowles covered his microphone with his palm, and scolded Hart, “Don’t you have any control over your client, Ms. Hart?”
“I apologize, Your Honor. I’m as surprised as you are.”
“Has your client said things like this before?” Knowles asked.
“You know I can’t answer that, Your Honor.”
The prosecutor argued, “Judge Knowles, you can’t release him, now.”
“I apologize, Your Honor,” Hart broke in. “I did not advise my client to speak at all during this hearing. I told him to sit still and keep his mouth shut.”
Knowles barked, “Then I gather that you anticipated he was capable of this sort of outburst!”
Hart said nothing.
To the prosecutor, Knowles said, “Do you have any other evidence on which to base charges?”
“It’d all be either hearsay, Your Honor, or facts that would not be definitive of guilt.”
“Then he’s free to go,” Knowles told the attorneys. “Step back.”
Once Hart had taken up a position behind her table, Crist rose again and said, “Judge, can’t you understand this? I did it.”
Hart groaned, dropped into her chair, and cradled her head in her hands. She fumed while thinking, and then stood and said, “In the interests of justice, Your Honor, I ask that my client be ordered to allocute fully to his crime.”
The prosecutor stood stunned behind his table and considered what to say.
Knowles prodded him, asking, “Does the prosecution have an objection?”
“We do not, Your Honor.”
Scowling, Knowles asked, “Mr. Burkholder, do you know what allocution means?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“You have to say what you did. You have to tell the truth. Are you willing to do that now?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Recess Your Honor?” Hart sang out.
“Granted,” Knowles said. “And unless you have something more for me, Ms. Hart, I’m going to allow him to speak. Bailiff, clear my courtroom.”
* * *
While Hart consulted with Burkholder in a side room, Vesta Miller stood in the hallway outside Knowles’s courtroom, talking with Wayne and Mary Burkholder. Cal sat with Robertson, on a bench at the other end of the hall.
“I didn’t see this coming,” Cal said.
<
br /> “The judge’s ruling?” Robertson asked.
“That, yes. But this confession, too.”
“Cal, all we’ve ever really had in this case is an Amish lad who keeps insisting that he murdered a man.”
“And you won’t be able to charge him now?” Cal asked.
“Cal, if he keeps on talking like this, I won’t have to.”
* * *
Once his courtroom was reseated, Judge Knowles said to Hart, “I want your statement, Counselor. I want it on the record.”
Hart rose slowly and spoke softly. “Your Honor, my client wishes to be ‘set free from his burden of guilt,’ as he puts it. I’ve explained allocution to him at great length. I’ve explained the consequences to him. He knows he’ll likely go to prison. He has accepted that. He insists on telling us what he did. He wants the opportunity to tell you why he did it.
“But I ask Your Honor to take into consideration the fact that he is Amish and that he is, if I may say so, Your Honor, completely naïve about crime, criminal justice, and punishment. I don’t believe he has the faintest idea that there is a difference between murder and manslaughter. He is not familiar with the nuances of criminal intent or premeditation. He’s Amish, Your Honor. One murder to him is like any other. He knows only his sin of aggression. As a pacifist, he believes that his crimes of pride and anger allowed him to kill a man, and he believes he deserves to be punished. If he goes to trial because of what he says this afternoon, I ask that the court appoint a psychiatrist to examine my client, so that we might understand the impulses that are causing him to insist on allocuting now to a crime for which he can no longer be charged.
“Finally, Your Honor, I ask that you hold any decision on this matter until next week. The unusual nature of these proceedings warrants careful, prolonged consideration by the court. Thank you, Your Honor. My client wishes to speak.”
Seeming both astonished and perplexed, Judge Knowles sat behind his bench without speaking. Then, coming slowly and deliberately forward onto his elbows, and looking around the courtroom as if seeking greater clarity of thought—or some meaningful insight into the human condition—Judge Knowles said at last, “I want him sworn.”