“I was trying to build capitalism,” he said. “Capitalism requires the formation of capital. And capital is blind: The money doesn’t know how it was acquired—whether it was inherited or earned or stolen. But so long as it stays in the country, so long as it doesn’t go to New York or London or Switzerland, the money is going to be put to work locally building businesses and creating jobs. And that’s what I wanted to do.”
This was an astonishingly pragmatic answer. This lifelong Communist intuitively understood how to harness the energy of greed for the common good. He was giving a master class in the art of Realpolitik.
Shevardnadze stood up, indicating the end of the interview. Lali and I retraced our steps and exited the compound. As we walked to the car, I noticed a man across the street with a long-lens camera. Clearly, someone had a continuing interest in knowing who visited the former president. As I looked at him, he snapped my picture.
I was now officially on the Georgian government’s radar.
When we arrived home, I made a cup of tea and tried to figure out what impact the government’s awareness might have on my efforts. I had thus far enjoyed easy access to people who had information about the murder and the investigation. But if the government chose to do so, it could hamper future access or—with regard to at least one important witness—block it completely. And that could be a real problem.
“Lali,” I said, “I need to talk to Anzor Sharmaidze as soon as possible.”
I’d never really thought of Anzor as a witness. After all, my belief that he had not committed the murder was the raison d’être for my involvement. Nevertheless, he did have unique knowledge about two things: the fact of his innocence and the brutal things the police had done in order to get him to deny it.
We organized the visit through attorney Tamaz Inashvili and a Western-funded ombudsman for prisoner rights. The four of us agreed to meet in the morning and ride together in Lali’s car. The twenty-mile trip to the prison took just over an hour.
The aptly named Rustavi Isolator squatted at the end of a rutted dirt road. It was a bleak place. Twenty-foot-high whitewashed walls; shards of glass and razor wire; an apron of concrete and dead grass.
I felt queasy as we stepped through the iron door. I was walking into a cage and trusting that the guards would (eventually) allow me to leave. My freedom depended entirely on their willingness to comply with established rules and procedures—and if my investigation had taught me anything, it was that Georgians had a little trouble with rules and procedures.
The guards checked our credentials, searched our bags, and led us to the warden’s office. Along the way we passed a group of inmates. As we approached, they turned to face the wall, clasped their hands behind their backs, and bowed their heads.
It was a synchronized choreography of the damned.
The warden jumped up as we entered. He was a short, thick man with an expansive forehead and a stubble of gray hair. He wore a Russian military parka and smoked nervously. His pale eyes betrayed apprehension: There was nothing good that could come from a meeting with an American lawyer.
We stood by the window as we waited for Anzor to respond to the warden’s summons. The second-floor office overlooked the inner courtyard of the prison. There were rows of dilapidated barracks and, in the far corner, a garden.
“The convicts are permitted to grow vegetables,” said the warden. “It is a privilege for good behavior.”
After a few minutes I heard the sound of someone climbing the stairs. The footfalls were slow and unsteady, the breathing rapid and labored. A man finally appeared on the landing but did not enter the room. He was skinny, with ferret-like features. He was wearing a shabby leather jacket, a black crew-neck sweater, and dark wool pants. He had a close-cropped beard and unkempt brown hair. His eyes were rheumy, and he was cradling his left arm tenderly with his right. He swayed a little as he tried to stand still.
This was Anzor Sharmaidze.
The warden called him in and told him to sit at the conference table. He shuffled to a chair, sat down, and looked at us with passive indifference. He seemed decades older than his thirty-one years.
“Mr. Sharmaidze,” I said, “I represent Georgia Woodruff Alexander, a sister of the man you are accused of killing. She believes that you are innocent and has hired me to get you out of prison.”
It took a moment for him to understand my absurd assignment, but when he did the response was electric. He became agitated, glanced at the warden, and began to babble. Words gushed out of him like blood from a wound.
“I didn’t do it,” he said. “I wasn’t there. The police beat me—they made me say I did it but I didn’t do it. The worst was my feet; they beat the soles of my feet until I couldn’t walk. They cuffed my hands behind me and hung me up by my wrists and beat me with iron pipes . . . but I didn’t do it.”
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the vitality was gone. All that remained was a broken little man with tears on his face. Lali touched his arm gently—a gesture of compassion and comfort—and he screamed in agony.
We pushed back the loose sleeve covering his left forearm and discovered an abscess the size of a grapefruit. There were red streaks tracing out from the center and the fetid odor of rotten meat.
Lali began to cry and I heard someone groan. It was me.
The warden called for the prison nurse—a grandmother in an old greatcoat. She examined the patient and announced that he had a temperature of 106.5 degrees.
“I expect that this boil will burst today,” she said. “And when it does, he will die of blood poisoning.”
The warden looked terrified. Having an inmate die was of no great consequence, but having an inmate die in front of an American lawyer was a disaster. He unlocked a cabinet behind his desk and gave Anzor two tablets from a small bottle.
“What else do you want me to do?” the warden asked.
“I want you to send him to a hospital,” I said. The simplicity of my answer seemed to increase his anxiety.
“We send the van to the Tbilisi hospital on Saturday—but today is only Wednesday. We can’t afford to make a special trip.”
“How much would it cost?” I asked.
Whenever I travel in the Third World, I carry hard currency. US dollars have an amazing power to create opportunities out of thin air. I lay my hand on the money pouch tucked beneath my shirt and wondered if $5,000 would be enough to buy Anzor’s life from this man.
He began to calculate.
“We would need a driver, two guards, the nurse, gasoline for the trip there and back,” he said. “Perhaps . . . twenty dollars?”
They were loading Anzor into a van as we left. The next day Lali visited the hospital and paid the doctors $100 to keep him there for a month.
In many ways, the bullet that killed Freddie Woodruff in 1993 had ricocheted and hit Anzor Sharmaidze. It would have killed him in February 2004 if I hadn’t gone to visit him in prison and paid to put him in the hospital. Native Americans say that if you save a man’s life you become responsible for him. I had no idea what I’d just done.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
A VISIT TO THE PROSECUTOR GENERAL
One of the principal functions of a lawyer is to evaluate whether a client’s goal is worth the effort and expense necessary to achieve that goal. This kind of cost-benefit analysis assures that the courts will not be overwhelmed with trivial matters and that any legal fee charged will be reasonable relative to the recovery. However, the analysis breaks down when the goal is to save a human life. In this circumstance, the burden of deciding normally shifts to the person paying the expenses: How much justice can that person afford?
And in this case, I was that person.
My client didn’t have money to pay me. I was donating my time and paying all the expenses. It was a dubious business model that inspired me to look for creative efficiencies.
The Republic of Georgia was rife with corruption. Anyone who had authority was will
ing to exercise that authority in exchange for money. And the price wasn’t always that high. I had, after all, gotten Anzor admitted to the hospital for only $20.
This experience raised an interesting question: Could I pay just a little more and buy Anzor’s freedom entirely? And assuming that I could, should I?
There are (of course) practical problems with any bribery scheme. I would be required to trust a dishonest person. Would the payee keep our venal bargain or would he sell me out to an indignant prosecutor general?
Then there was the issue of who to pay and how much to pay them. Unlike people who had grown up in this culture, I had no understanding of the protocols of graft.
As far as I could tell, the most probable outcome of subornation was that I would pay the wrong person the wrong amount and end up sharing a cell next to Anzor. And in the process I would betray my basic nature.
None of that seemed like a very good idea. So I decided that—in all my dealings with the Georgian judicial system—I would abide by the ethical standards applicable to American lawyers. My adoption of those guidelines immediately imposed two imperatives: first, that I reject out of hand all possibility of bribery; and second, that I become licensed to practice law in Georgia.
Almost all courts permit out-of-state lawyers to appear before them on a case-by-case basis—and Georgia was no exception. I could represent my client in the Georgian courts provided that I filed the necessary paperwork. Obtaining a certificate of good standing from the State Bar of Texas was easy. Upon request (and payment of a small fee) an officer of the association certified that I was a duly licensed attorney.
However, this was only the beginning of the paper chase. It was also necessary to obtain proof that the association officer who signed my certificate was authorized to make that certification on behalf of the bar. This came in the form of a notarized affidavit from another bar employee. I was then required to submit evidence that the notary who attested to the affidavit had the requisite legal authority to administer an oath. This was satisfied by a certificate from the chief of the state agency that administers local notaries—that is, the Texas secretary of state. Proof that the Texas secretary had the power to certify notaries was in turn provided by the US secretary of state. And finally the US secretary’s authority to certify state secretaries was confirmed by the Georgian ambassador to the United States.
I filed this sheaf of self-authenticating documents with the Georgian Ministry of Justice. The receiving clerk—who did not read or speak English—dutifully examined each official seal and then issued me a local law license. My first task as a newly minted Georgian lawyer was to locate and reinterview the remaining eyewitnesses who had testified at trial—the two women in the car and the two men with Anzor. Their testimony was the last link in the prosecutor’s chain of evidence.
Elena Darchiashvili (the woman riding in the front seat of Gogoladze’s Niva) lived with her mother in a house on Kekelidze Street. Lali called her to arrange a meeting, but as soon as Elena heard the subject of our interest she hung up. I sent a mutual acquaintance with assurances of goodwill and confidentiality but Elena became hysterical and slammed the door. Thereafter, every time I came to Tbilisi, Elena left the city and went into hiding.
These encounters were short on details but long on information. At the trial Elena had testified that because of her poor eyesight she could not tell the judge anything about the murder. Nevertheless, the prospect of talking to me was terrifying to her. This reaction suggested two things: first, she did in fact know what had happened to Freddie Woodruff; and second, someone had promised to hurt her if she ever revealed that knowledge. This threat of violence was encouraging confirmation of Anzor’s innocence.
The other woman in the car—the barmaid who sat in the back seat with Freddie—was more problematic. No one seemed to know where Marina Kapanadze was or what she was doing. I located her mother, but she denied knowing even what country Marina was in. “She calls me sometimes, but I never know from where.”
Freddie had thought Marina was a member of the local mafia, and a US embassy staffer had reported that she had confessed to being a spy. It was impossible to know the truth of these suspicions. However, Marina had accomplished the magician’s trick of disappearing completely. By all indications, she was not an amateur.
I hoped to have more luck talking to the two men who had been arrested with Anzor on the night of the murder. I didn’t think it would be difficult to locate them. After all, I was an experienced investigator and they were seemingly unsophisticated peasants. But finding Genadi Berbitchashvili and Gela Bedoidze proved to be a humbling exercise in frustration. Like Elena, they seemed to vanish every time I appeared—and I appeared in Georgia a half-dozen times trying to find them.
Anzor’s court-appointed lawyer, Tamaz Inashvili, was helping me. He suggested that we go to Genadi’s village at night. It didn’t seem like much of a plan, but—since nothing else was working—I agreed and later that day folded myself into his Lada for the hour-long trip.
It was dark when we arrived. The village of Minarheki was a half-dozen hovels at the end of a bumpy dirt road. Each house had a dog and each dog had an attitude. With the exception of these aggressive mongrels, there didn’t seem to be any life at all. I felt a vague “I told you so” sense of superiority. Before we set out, I had specifically asked Tamaz how he hoped to overcome the locals’ well-known distrust of outsiders. I was sure that the villagers would hide in their houses and wait for us to leave. Instead of answering, he’d just looked at me and smiled.
Now—instead of apologizing and driving us home—Tamaz got out of the car, walked to the back, and opened the trunk. I could hear him rustling around and went to investigate. Then I saw the reason for his smile. He had brought two five-gallon jugs of red wine and about twenty pounds of barbecued beef. He tore off a piece of meat, took a bite, and threw the rest to the closest yelping mutt. The dog stopped barking and I saw a curtain move inside the house he guarded.
In a few minutes, an old man came out the front door. Tamaz told him that we were there to meet a man from that village named Genadi but that he had not yet shown up. “We have a little wine and meat,” said Tamaz. “Would you like some?”
Soon every house was empty and every villager was standing around the car eating and drinking and talking. After he’d opened the second jug, Tamaz turned the conversation to the subject of our visit.
“Where is Genadi?” he said to no one in particular. “He’s going to miss all the wine.”
“He was here until a couple of days ago,” said one man. “But the police came and told him to leave. They’ve sent him off two or three times and—after a week or two—they let him come home.”
And there it was. For the price of a picnic dinner we had confirmed that the Georgian government was monitoring my travel and working to prevent me from speaking to the eyewitnesses. I was vaguely encouraged that they thought I was worth the effort, but at the same time their attentions made me nervous. I was no longer protected by anonymity and relative insignificance. I now needed the modest security provided by acting in a licensed capacity.
It was time to formally request reconsideration of Anzor’s conviction. And that process started with the prosecutor general.
The procurator’s office building was an intimidating place—a marble chicken coop with a barbed wire fence and armed soldiers patrolling the perimeter. Lali and I waited thirty minutes in an outbuilding while an adolescent corporal checked our credentials and confirmed our appointment. When we were finally passed through to the main building, the lobby was empty: no receptionist, no security guard, no building directory. Neither of us had ever been there before, and I wasn’t sure where to go.
Lali smiled at my naiveté. “You Americans put your president’s office on the ground floor of a white house,” she said. “But every Georgian knows that the most important man has his office on the top floor.”
The elevator doors opened directly into a sec
retarial anteroom. The young man behind the desk was watching television. He waved us toward a door that opened to reveal a second door. Lali noticed my confusion. “It’s for eavesdropping,” she said. “To frustrate people who try to listen at the door.”
She knocked and we entered.
Irakli Okruashvili crossed the room quickly to greet us. The prosecutor general was surprisingly young and unexpectedly cordial. I was just beginning to wonder whether professional inexperience explained his unseemly exuberance when Lali turned to introduce us.
“Irakli is my private student,” she said. “I’ve been teaching him English.”
The prosecutor general looked me directly in the eyes and extended his hand. It was the practiced maneuver of a retail politician. We bonded over our mutual admiration of Lali. Notwithstanding his relative youth, this man was one of the most powerful people in the Georgian government. His position identified him as a member of Saakashvili’s inner circle and a wunderkind of political judo. I felt confident that whatever I said to him would be communicated directly to the president.
“This is about the Woodruff murder?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
There was another man in the room. Irakli introduced him as Zaza Sanshiashvili, chief investigator for the office. He was older and less urbane, but projected an air of maturity and calm intelligence. If Irakli was a big-picture strategist, then Zaza was his detail-oriented foot soldier.
“We’ve read the file,” said Irakli. “What do you want?”
“I represent the dead man’s sister,” I said. “We have new evidence proving that Anzor Sharmaidze is innocent of murdering Freddie Woodruff.”
Irakli looked at me blankly. I had the uncomfortable feeling that as far as he was concerned I hadn’t said anything especially important or responsive.
“Yes,” he said, “but what does the Woodruff family want?”
It took me a minute to understand the implications of this question: In the prosecutor general’s world, the fact a man was innocent was no guarantee that the victim’s family would not want to see him punished anyway.
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