“Do you understand the seriousness of the charges you’re facing?” Motley enquires. She seems concerned. “You could be sentenced to life in prison without parole. Forfeiture of all your assets, and significant fines if convicted.”
Heroin says, “Yes, judge. I have read the statute.”
Cannabis questions, Does she think I’m stupid, or has she figured out how smart I am?
Motley addresses the prosecutor. “What is the government’s position on this?”
Stuart Little bristles. “The government strenuously objects to Mr. Stratton representing himself. We see this as yet another attempt by this defendant to delay the proceedings and turn this court into a theater for Mr. Stratton’s self-aggrandizing antics aimed at attracting publicity so he can promote himself as some kind of author or showman when in fact he is a sophisticated criminal with ample means to retain competent counsel.”
Heroin and cannabis in unison: Man, this guy has me pegged. Author manqué. Showman! Still, this is our venue. We are in control.
The judge leafs through the brief. She is already familiar with my legal writings. With guidance from Ivan Fisher’s office, I wrote and filed pro se my motion to have the New York indictment thrown out on double jeopardy grounds. I also wrote the appeal and the answer briefs submitted to the Second Circuit. I discussed my self-representation strategy with Ivan Fisher, who still represents that sorry fuck Biff. Fisher is lead counsel on the case. He loves the idea. He agrees that if I sit mute in the courtroom and let the prosecutor trot out a bunch of witnesses who will testify that I am the boss, the jury is bound to find me guilty. But if they get to know me, if they get a glimpse of my production and entertain it for what it is—theater—without me being subjected to cross-examination, I might just win them over.
Besides, I have concocted another novel defense.
“He cited the relevant case law,” says Judge Motley, setting aside my brief. “The defendant is a literate, educated man.”
She looks up. “I see no grounds for me to deny the petition.”
Motley then levels her imperious, dark-eyed gaze upon me. “However, Mr. Stratton, I will require you to present to the Court in camera your theory of defense. With that you must submit a list of potential witnesses. I will consider your proffer before I allow you to proceed to trial. Do you understand that?”
“I do. Thank you, your Honor.”
“I will also appoint stand-by counsel to assist you. Motion granted. Good day, gentlemen.”
Heroin says, Damn right you will grant my fucking motion, you old bag. Cannabis chirps, Fooled ya’!
TWO DEPUTY US marshals handcuff me and escort me to a holding cell. I’m starting to come down.
What the fuck have I done? The reality of the situation hits me as hard as the steel bench my skinny white ass is resting on. Now that I am my own attorney, I am forced to consider the prospect that I have a madman for a client and a lunatic for a lawyer.
Please, take me back to my cell. I’ve had enough excitement for one day.
Two years I have been a guest at the Criminal Hilton. Over two years! Most everyone else passes through, but I have moved in and made MCC my home. There is only one other prisoner in the building who has been here longer than me. IRA soldier Joe Doherty has been fighting the British government’s attempts to extradite him back to Northern Ireland where he stands convicted in absentia of murder. Joe is kept in seclusion on Nine South, the supermax isolation unit. I see him occasionally when the doors to both units are open and we are allowed to meet in the sally port to exchange greetings and observations. He is as pale as I am, two long-term white prisoners in this multihued population.
My new friend, Frin, shipped out well over a year ago. But that was not the last I heard of her. She too was indicted under the continuing criminal enterprise statute, one of the first women ever to be so charged. Irving Berlin negotiated her plea agreement. No cooperation. She got the minimum, ten years, and was transferred to the women’s maximum-security prison in Alderson, West Virginia. Before she left MCC, we had a last meeting in the attorney visiting room.
“I’m going to escape,” Frin told me. “There is no way I will go without sex for ten years.”
“Oh?” I said. “So you are going to break out? Just like that?”
“Yes. Just like that.”
And she did. Several months after she shipped out I received a postcard. On the face was a picture of The Rockettes kicking up their heels. “Just had to hightail it,” Frin wrote. “Good luck. I hope we meet again someday.”
The US marshals’ fugitive task force paid me a visit a few weeks ago, wanted to know what I knew about Frin’s disappearance.
“Listen,” I told them, “even if I knew anything about where she is, do you really think I would share that information with you?”
The woman made such an impression that, in my spare time when not working on my own case, I have begun writing a novel based on Frin’s story.
THE RESIDUAL HERO in the heroin in my bloodstream wants to know: When are these people going to get hip to the fact that we don’t give a fuck what they do to us, we will not rat? That simply is not in our DNA. THC elaborates: We have drawn a line in the sands of time and the dimension of character across which we will not tread.
Back in the cell, I break out the bag of heroin. There’s that feeling again: None of this really matters. It’s all just bullshit anyway, their absurd war on drugs. Sometime in the future, perhaps before I die, this war will be recognized for what it is: a war on the American people, a war on freedom and justice. I am immune to their punishment. No one can hurt me, no one can touch me in my cocoon, my cell, the cells of my brain now happily embraced by the hero in the heroin.
Here is how this happened, how I became a minor god in this ever-entertaining Hades. It was the other night, what may have been two weeks ago—I have lost all track of time. Only my court dates keep me on any kind of schedule beyond the daily round. I was in my cell, asleep in the early morning hours, when the graveyard-shift hack opened my door. Another prisoner dragged his tired ass in and took the vacant upper bunk. I rolled over and went back to sleep. This happens from time to time; I get doubled up. Then the new guy will be moved to one of the other units, depending on the status of his case, or I will move him to another cell, and I’m alone again. Which is how I prefer it. This is a really small space to be inhabited by two grown men. MCC is operating at 150 percent over capacity. Even the TV room has been converted into a makeshift dormitory. In this war on drugs, the captured far exceed the government’s capacity to house them. New prisons are opening all over the country. America, land of the free, now has a greater percentage of her population locked up than any other country in the world.
A few hours later, I awoke once more to sounds of moaning and labored breathing. My new cellie was perched on the toilet bowl maybe eighteen inches from my head and taking what appeared to be the biggest, most painful shit of his life. He was sweating, his face was red. He might have been giving birth. He flashed me a pained expression.
What could I do to help? I try to be helpful, that is part of what gets me through the days—being helpful to my fellow prisoners. It makes me feel good. Necessary. With all my experience here, I can help new prisoners adjust to life in the Criminal Hilton. I do my best to assign them to a cell of their choosing. I’ve been here so long, I’m no longer just the concierge. I’m like the mayor of Nine North. My co-counsel and now confidante, Ivan Fisher, and I have become friendly with the gay Bureau of Punishment Nine North Unit Manager. I call him Harmless. He likes to act like a big shot, but he’s really a pussy and would like nothing better than to suck my cock or have me enter him from the rear. I like him. He’s smart for a Bureau of Punishment type. I’m sure the only reason he stays on in his position here is because he likes to be surrounded by big bad men.
So now I am also Harmless’s clerk as well as the unit clerk. And that gives me the run of the whole rock ’n’ roll joint. I
get to travel around from floor to floor, unit to unit, on a special pass without a cop to escort me. This degree of freedom within the jail for a prisoner with my security level is unheard of; Harmless has gone out on a limb.
Getting back to my new cellie and the Big Shit: What could I do? There are some things one simply must do on one’s own.
I could see he was embarrassed as well as in pain.
“You okay?” I asked.
He groaned. Then he reached down into the bowl and fished out—not a turd but a shit-smeared cylinder. It looked like a cigar tube only bigger, wider, bullet-shaped, like a giant suppository. I sat up in my bunk and immediately took charge of the situation. The guy was still hurting. His asshole was bleeding. As the mayor of Nine North, with this newcomer, whatever was in that cylinder was going to come under my authority. I would decide how it should be managed. This guy doesn’t know his way around. If he gets busted with that, whatever it is, he’ll be in even more trouble. And since he’s in my cell, I’ll be in trouble as well. I need to determine what to do with the contraband. I have experience in these matters.
“What is it?” I asked.
He seemed reluctant to fess up.
“It’s okay. You can trust me. Whatever it is, I don’t want to get caught with it in my cell.”
“Heroin,” he admitted.
“Ah … okay. Give it to me.”
I took a roll of toilet paper and wrapped the cylinder, then washed it in the sink, careful to make sure no water got inside.
“How do you happen to have a tube of heroin up your ass?” I asked.
Turns out the guy was on his way into the country from Italy with what amounts to four ounces of uncut junk he got from a relative in Sicily. He was smuggling it in to give to another relative here in New York. But he got stopped at the airport and arrested on an old warrant that had nothing to do with smuggling heroin; it was on a credit card fraud case he claimed to know nothing about. They locked him up with the goods still in the internal suitcase.
That evening my new cellie was transferred from Nine North to the seventh floor. I insisted he leave the heroin with me for safekeeping. All those years on the street, urged and cajoled by Mohammed and the wiseguys to get into the heroin business, I had refused. I had to come to prison to become a junk dealer. Seems about right. With four ounces of uncut heroin in a place like MCC, something like that falls in your lap, you cannot ignore it. You must come up with a plan. I called a meeting with the latest Nine North resident wiseguy boss, known as Ronnie Las Vegas, and his friend and cellmate, Patsy, who is a junkie.
Patsy does not resemble any stereotype of the wasted, skinny, zoned-out addict. For one thing, Patsy is fat. Not obese, but chunky. Big shoulders and chest. Big, hard, round belly. He’s covered with battle scars from knife and gunshot wounds, and his legs, arms, and torso are illustrated with crude India-ink jailhouse tattoos that resemble primitive cave drawings. He’s been in and out of jail most of his life. Patsy is from the neighborhood, East Harlem, and he knows Ronnie Las Vegas and some of the other wiseguys on the unit from the street and from prison. He’s a knock-around guy, an associate, never made and never could be made because he’s a flagrant junkie and a maniac. Heroin doesn’t affect Patsy the way it does most people. It’s almost like speed for Patsy. He becomes even more uninhibited and will say or do virtually anything when he’s loaded on junk. He’s a performer; he jumps up on a table in the common room and sings, does impressions of Elvis or Sinatra. It’s like he’s drunk but without the sloppy stupid side of most drunks. He’s witty, brash, and fearless.
Patsy was immediately struck by the purity of the heroin and warned that it would be easy to OD on the stuff. Ronnie Las Vegas, who was a heroin merchant on the street, had some cut smuggled in and they whacked up the four ounces, made it half a pound. Now, for some time the entire jail has been hit by this blizzard of Sicilian white. It is like the place is under a soft, white, downy comforter. The noise level is down several decibels. Anybody so inclined is in that state where nobody gives a fuck. Even the hacks seem sedated.
A day or two later, I arranged to meet with my former roommate on the medium-security unit, Seven South. Ronnie Las Vegas got him a mob-connected lawyer and they posted his bail. I made two grand and kept a small bindle of the uncut goods to keep me relaxed through my trial. A tiny match head is all I need to start me up and sooth my nerves. Heroin and a cup of black coffee in the morning, a few hits of skunkweed, I tuck my file folder under my arm, and I am off to do battle with the US government.
My mother drove down from Wellesley to visit and left me a whole new wardrobe for court: a conservative blue suit, white shirt, muted tie, and dress shoes. No cowboy boots in the Southern District. Mother Mary is such a trooper. Does she question her son’s latest mad endeavor? No, she’s behind me all the way. Says she will be in the courtroom cheering me on when the day of reckoning comes. While in the city, she had dinner with Mailer. They both feel I am taking a huge risk by defending myself, but they understand my tactic to approach the jury on a personal level. Mailer has met with Ivan Fisher. They subscribe to my theory of defense.
Judge Motley, Stuart Little, and my stand-by counsel—a good-looking, dapper playboy-type member of the New York criminal bar, Robert Leighton—and I convene in Judge Motley’s chambers. I address her Honor. “Judge, I must ask that the government’s attorney be excused from this meeting. I don’t want to reveal my defense to the government at this stage in the proceedings.”
I love even speaking in this tongue.
Stuart Little objects. He feels the government has a right to know what I am planning. Judge Motley agrees but sends him from her rooms. She says she will review my theory and, if she approves, share the basic elements of my plan with the US attorney’s office. It is clear we are entering new territory. Motley, Stuart Little, my stand-by counsel, and I are all making this up as we go along.
“Proceed,” the judge tells me once the prosecutor has left the room.
“Your honor, it is my belief that the government was well aware of the facts of this conspiracy, and that they waited to prosecute me for a second time—”
“Just a minute, Mr. Stratton. I will not allow you to re-argue your double jeopardy issue before a jury in my court. You argued that before the Court of Appeals and were denied.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying, your Honor. I will show that this is a vindictive, coercive prosecution brought solely to force me to cooperate with the government. I will admit that I was a professional marijuana smuggler, but I will show that the hashish smuggle the government alleges I masterminded never took place.” A lie, of course. “I will prove that the government created this case as a fiction designed to exert additional pressure on me, and to manipulate me, and to have me implicate certain individuals who were not and have never been involved in my illegal activities.”
The judge looks to Bob Leighton. “What’s he talking about?”
I answer before Leighton gets a word in. “I’m saying, this is an affirmative defense, your Honor. I’m admitting I was a pot smuggler, just denying this particular venture ever happened under my leadership, and also denying that I was in any way the organizer or manager of this fictional hashish smuggle. I will ask the jury, just as I ask you: Where is the hashish? Where is the evidence? They have no proof.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not sure this is remotely plausible.”
Leighton interjects. “He’s saying, basically, Judge, that the government is overreaching, a kind of overzealousness on the part of the US attorney’s office in an attempt to get Mr. Stratton to implicate certain government targets who he will assert and prove are not and never have been involved in his drug smuggling ventures.”
“But he’s admitting to the facts of the case?”
“No, no. Absolutely not,” I announce straight-faced. “I will show there is no evidence this alleged hashish smuggle ever took place. I will leave that up to a jury to decide.”
&
nbsp; Judge Motley looks confused—precisely the desired effect.
“Do you have a list of potential witnesses?” she asks.
“I do, your Honor.” I hand her the list.
“This case has been on my docket for years,” she laments. “Are you ready to go to trial?”
“I am.”
“No more delays?”
“No more. Ready when you are.”
She shakes her head, shrugs her mighty shoulders bearing the burden of judicial impartiality. “Well, I suppose …”
“Thank you, your Honor. Thank you, Judge Motley,” I say and gather up my papers.
“She went for it,” I say to Leighton as the marshals cuff me and ready me for the return to MCC.
“I don’t think she has any idea what she agreed to,” he says.
We shake hands. “See you in court.”
JURY SELECTION TAKES a week. I want to empanel as many Jews on the jury as possible. Since all my co-defendants and all but one of their lawyers are Jews, and since the main rats testifying against me are Arabs—Nasif and Hammoud—I assume having Jews on the jury will work to my benefit.
Out of the twelve regular jurors and two alternates finally empaneled, over half are Jewish. Good … and not so good, for they are hardly a jury of my peers. These folks are conservative Westchester types, or Upper East Side Jews, retirees, professionals, solidly middle-class. Not the radical dope-smoking Brooklyn Jews I would have chosen. There is no one more conservative and law-abiding than a conservative, law-abiding Jew. Hard to say how these good citizens will respond to my show.
“Where is the hashish?” I open with this question, and it becomes my refrain. “Show me the hashish. The government alleges that I imported over seven tons, fifteen thousand pounds, of hashish from Lebanon. And yet they are unable to produce even one gram of the alleged hashish. How can this be?”
I expound on this theory to the jury: there was no hashish importation. “The witnesses you will hear from, and the government agents and prosecutors, have concocted this alleged hashish smuggling conspiracy to try to force me into implicating others in a blatant case of government overreaching and prosecutorial overzealousness. I ask you again and will remind you as the finders of fact, ask them, ask the government witnesses to show you: Where is the hashish?”
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