by Scott Pratt
That pissed me off immediately. I hated police brutality almost as much as I hated rapists.
“Who was the cop?”
“Skinhead named Riddle.”
Bo Riddle. I knew him well, or at least I’d known him professionally for a long time. I’d always suspected him of being a racist and had heard stories of him beating on suspects, but I’d never been able to pin anything on him. I made a mental note to make sure that changed in the near future.
“Okay, if I take this, I’ll deal with Riddle,” I said. “I promise you I’ll deal with him for assaulting you. But before we go there, what did you tell him?”
“I told him we hired a stripper, which we did. One of my buddies called the escort service. A couple of my friends got the money together from the players and put the party together. The girl showed up, she chatted some of the guys up, including me, for a few minutes, and then she said she was going into the bathroom to change and would start her show. When she came back out, she was too messed up to do anything. She could barely walk.”
“Know her name?” I said.
“No. The paper isn’t printing it and the cops didn’t tell me. I called the escort service and asked them, but they hung up on me.”
“Why in the hell did you hire a stripper to come to a party in the first place? I mean, even if this hadn’t happened, didn’t you think word would have gotten out?”
“Nothing happened,” Kevin said. “And as far as why we did it, I really can’t tell you. It wasn’t my idea, but I didn’t say no, either, when it came up. We’d been working our butts off, and we just felt like we needed to do something to loosen everybody up and have some fun before the season started.”
“So objectifying and sexually exploiting women is your idea of fun?” I said.
He was silent for several seconds. Then he looked at me and said, “You don’t like me much, do you?”
His parents were shifting in their seats. I don’t think the meeting was going quite the way they expected it to go.
“I don’t know you,” I said. “But I have to tell you I don’t tend to like people who objectify and exploit women. I have some wonderful women in my life that I love and respect, and I already told you about the rape incident, so when someone walks in here and says, ‘We hired a stripper to dance at a football party,’ it sticks in my craw a little.”
“Before we continue,” Gerome said, “may I ask you a personal question?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Sure.”
“Are you a racist?”
I figured the question might be coming, but I still found it a little disconcerting. Because I was vigorously questioning his son, I was a racist? What he didn’t know was that over the years, while practicing criminal defense, I’d asked myself that question many times. The answer, to me, was far more complicated than a simple yes or no.
“I don’t think so,” I said to Gerome. “I don’t think I’m a racist any more than you or anyone else. I think the better question, Mr. Davidson, is when I see a black man or a brown man or anyone of a different race, do I automatically hate that person? The answer to that question is an unqualified no. Do I judge them differently than I do white people? I don’t think so. I certainly don’t do it consciously. My mother was an uneducated Southern woman. She hated a lot of things, including the government as an institution, many individuals in government—especially those that had to do with our involvement in the Vietnam War—and she despised organized religion. But she didn’t hate people based on their skin color, so I didn’t have that ingrained into me from a parent or family member like so many racists do. I’ve represented black men and women and Latino men and women who have done some pretty horrible things, just like I’ve represented white men and women who have done horrible things. I look at them as flawed human beings, not as flawed black people or Latinos or white people. So I guess the simple answer to your question is no, I’m not a racist.
“Now ask me if I look at a black man or woman I don’t know and automatically love them. The answer is no, I don’t. Do I even trust them? To a certain degree, I suppose I do. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, although I admit it’s difficult after you’ve been in my profession for as long as I have. But I can’t sit here and tell you that I love everyone, because I don’t. That doesn’t make me a racist, does it?
“What I can tell you is that race will become a part of this case if your son winds up being arrested and charged with sexually assaulting or raping or kidnapping a white woman, even if she was a stripper. Racism and hatred are as alive and well here in Northeast Tennessee as anywhere else. I’m sure you heard about the incident last year at the Black Lives Matter rally on the ETSU campus where the white kid showed up in a gorilla mask. He had bananas dangling from strings and a burlap sack with a confederate flag and a marijuana leaf on it. He was offering bananas to the black protestors. The police arrested him and charged him with civil rights intimidation, and he’ll probably be convicted, but it’ll be reversed on appeal. Was he trying to provoke them? Sure. Intimidate them to keep them from doing something? No. He probably had as much right to be there as they did, gorilla mask and all, under the first amendment. But because what he did probably wasn’t illegal didn’t make it right. He was an ignorant kid promoting hatred and bigotry. It’s a shame. It really is.
“Let me give you one more example of what you’ll be up against if Kevin gets charged and we wind up going to trial. I was trying a crack cocaine case a few years back. I was appointed to represent a black man with a couple of prior drug convictions who had done ten years in the penitentiary. He wasn’t on parole—he’d flattened his sentence—but there was a drug task force agent in Johnson City who hated him and wanted him back in prison. My client’s name was Freddie. Freddie didn’t sell any crack cocaine the night he was arrested, and he didn’t have any in his possession. He’d smoked some earlier in the night, but this cop didn’t know that. What the cop did was get one of his scumbag informants to call Freddie and ask him to help the informant find a hundred-dollars-worth of crack. The drug agent paid his informant fifty dollars to make the call. My client, who had known the informant for a long time, agreed to help the guy find a few rocks. He took him to a park and pointed out a dealer. He wasn’t involved in the transaction, didn’t get any drugs. But Freddy facilitated it, so they charged him with conspiracy to sell and distribute. He was a multiple offender, so he was looking at twelve years. We walk into the courtroom for jury selection and I look around the room. Not a black face in the crowd. The black population in the county is only around three percent, and I guess the Criminal Court Clerk just didn’t bother making sure any black jurors got summoned for jury duty. We start questioning the potential jurors, and I tell them my client is scared. I tell them he’s scared because he’s the only black man in the courtroom. The judge absolutely went off on me. He’s retired now, but he was an idiot. His name was Ivan Glass, and he made a speech about racism being a thing of the past, that Jim Crow was over and that the civil rights movement had done away with racism in the United States and that white people could judge black people without any bias whatsoever. I told him he was a fool and almost went to jail for contempt. But I have to tell you, that attitude is still prevalent with some of the judges. They don’t think racism exists. They just don’t get it.”
“They’re wrong,” Gerome said. “It’s getting worse by the day. What happened to Freddy?”
“The jury nullified. I showed them the rocks. They were tiny. The informant admitted he sought Freddie out and talked him into helping him find a dealer—it was all on tape. But Freddie didn’t get anything out of the deal. Under a strict interpretation of the law, Freddy was guilty, but they found him not guilty and let him go. The judge gave me another speech afterward saying the verdict proved his point, but Freddy didn’t walk because there weren’t any racists on the jury. He walked because I was able to convince them how stupid and unfair the entire prosecution was. He should never have been
arrested.”
“Kevin made a mistake,” Gerome said. “Hiring the stripper was a mistake. You have a son, Mr. Dillard, I talked with him on the phone yesterday. Has he ever made a mistake?”
I started to say something about Jack never having hired a stripper, but did I really know that? He’d played Division I baseball with a bunch of alpha males for years. He’d played in the minor leagues. He was an alpha himself. I was sure he hadn’t told me everything he’d done while he was out on his own, and if I was truly honest with myself, I didn’t want to know.
“I’m sure he’s made mistakes,” I said. “But I don’t think he’s done anything that could land him in the penitentiary for thirty or forty years.”
I turned back to Kevin and said, “You haven’t been charged yet, but I assume they took DNA from you, correct?”
Kevin nodded. “They had a warrant for DNA samples from me and the other two guys who live in the house. They swabbed the inside of our mouths first thing.”
“If they find your DNA in her or on her, you’re in for a difficult time.”
“They won’t find anything.”
“Did you touch her?”
“No.”
I noticed he had some pretty deep scratches on both of his arms.
“Where’d you get those?” I said.
“Practice. I have scratches and bruises on me all the time.”
“Anything else you need to tell me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Who paid the girl?”
“One of my roommates. We took up a collection from all the guys on the team that wanted to come to the party.”
“You contribute?”
“Twenty bucks.”
“Your fingerprints will be on some of the money, then, if the cops get their hands on it before it gets distributed or deposited in a bank account somewhere.”
“What does that prove?”
“Nothing, just a little piece of circumstantial evidence. Maybe it won’t come up. Did the cops say anything about having the money? Did they fingerprint you?”
“No.”
“Then they don’t have it. How many guys were at the party?”
“Probably sixty, seventy.”
“Any girls besides the one you hired?”
“I noticed maybe ten girls.”
“Know any of their names?”
“Yeah, I know a few of them.”
“People taking pictures with their phones?”
“Yeah. Videos and photos.”
“We’ll need a list of everybody you can think of who was at the party. What has your coach had to say?”
“Besides the cussing we took? He said we’ve endangered everything we’ve worked for, everything he and the other coaches have worked for, and everything the university administration has worked for. He told us they intend to cooperate fully with the police to the extent that the rules of privacy will allow them, and he said if he finds out that a rape occurred, he hopes whoever did it rots in the penitentiary before rotting in hell.”
“Doesn’t beat around the bush, does he?”
“Coach is a good man.”
“Had you had anything to drink that night, Kevin?”
“I don’t drink, Mr. Dillard. Never have. I’ve never smoked pot, never done anything like that. I take care of my body and I like to have a clear head.”
“Good,” I said. “You’re going to need it.”
“Have I convinced you I’m innocent?” he said.
“You haven’t done or said a thing that makes me think you’d kidnap and rape a stranger. I’ve been dealing with criminal defendants for more than two decades, and I’m a pretty good judge of when someone is trying to pull something over on me. I don’t get that sense from you.”
“So you’ll represent me?”
I nodded.
“How much is this going to cost?” Gerome said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It depends on what the DNA tests find and what the district attorney does. If Kevin winds up being prosecuted, it’ll be expensive. Let’s just wait and see how it goes. We’ll deal with money when the time comes.”
PART TWO
THURSDAY, AUGUST 29
Jack hollered at me a few minutes after the Davidsons left.
“Come to the conference room!” he said.
“Why?” I yelled back.
“Just come in here. You have to see this.”
I walked out of my office and down the hall to the conference room. The television was on. Mike Armstrong, the interim district attorney general, was giving an interview to a Fox television reporter.
“Yes,” Armstrong was saying, “in my opinion, a rape occurred at a party thrown by the East Tennessee State University football team. The young woman who was raped was an exotic dancer hired by the players. She claims she was raped by multiple players, and I have good reason to believe her.”
“Have you identified suspects?”
“We’ve talked to the players who rent the house where the party took place. We’ve searched the house and taken DNA samples from those players at the house. We intend to take DNA samples from every player and interview as many of them as we can.”
“And is the university and football program being cooperative?” the reporter, who was one of the network’s better-known guys, asked.
“Not in my view. We haven’t heard anything from anyone other than the players who were living in the house,” Armstrong said.
I looked at Jack open-mouthed.
“What does he think he’s doing?” I said. “He’s giving interviews to the press on a case that hasn’t gone to the grand jury? There hasn’t even been an arrest and he’s giving interviews?”
“He’s talking to anybody and everybody,” Jack said. “The New York Times has a story on their website. Time Magazine has mentioned it. He’s talked to both of them. He’s talking to the local papers and television stations. He’s not only trying to convict them before they’re arrested, he’s poisoning potential jurors.”
“It’s unethical,” I said. “Totally against the rules. A prosecutor can’t just walk out and start flapping his gums about an ongoing criminal case in the press.”
“He’s trying to get himself elected right now,” Jack said. “And it might work. Did you see this story in the paper?”
He slid a copy of the Kingsport newspaper across the desk. In it, on the editorial page, one of the editors had taken it upon himself to write a scathing, accusatory letter to the football players who were at the party.
“You know,” part of the letter said. “We know you know, and you need to have the courage to come forward and help the police and Mike Armstrong. Stop protecting the rapists among you.”
“Wow,” I said. “This is starting to remind me of the Salem witch hunts. It feels like a frenzy, a lynch mob mentality. The university better get its act together and respond to this stuff forcefully, and they better do it in a hurry. Has the coach said anything publicly?”
“He’s said he believes his players when they say no assault occurred. At the same time, he’s taking responsibility for not maintaining enough control over them and letting this happen in the first place.”
“I wonder if he’ll be the sacrificial lamb,” I said. “The university will be looking for one. They’ll fire somebody, and it’ll probably be him.”
“Probably,” Jack said. “Why don’t you report Armstrong to the board?”
The “board” to which Jack was referring was the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility, an organization in Nashville created to police lawyers across the state. I regarded them as a bunch of ineffective bureaucrats, pencil pushers who’d either never practiced law or had tried it and failed.
“Because I’m not a rat,” I said, “and I can’t stand the BPR. Don’t ever go anywhere near them unless you absolutely have to.”
“How did it go with the Davidsons?” Jack said.
“Went good. I like him. I don’t think he
sexually assaulted anyone.”
“So we’re going to represent him?”
“We are.”
“What about your ‘I don’t represent accused rapists’ rule?”
“Rules change sometimes. Where’s Charlie?”
“I think she’s in her office.”
“Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”
I walked down the hall to find Charlie staring at her computer screen, no doubt poring over case law. She was a junkie when it came to law. She loved it.
“Could I borrow you for a few minutes?” I said.
She looked up and flashed a beautiful smile.
“Sure. Your office?”
“Conference room.”
“Be right there.”
I went to the front and asked Beverly and Kelly to come to the conference room.
When everyone was gathered, I sat down at the head of the table. They’d left the seat open for me. I didn’t know whether they did it consciously, but they showed me deference and respect on a regular basis. It made me feel good sometimes, but it also embarrassed me to a degree and it made me feel old.
“I’m sure everybody’s heard about the ETSU rape case,” I said, “and everybody knows I met with Kevin Davidson and his parents. We’re going to take it on, but I want all of you to know that this is going to be difficult. Mike Armstrong wants to be elected district attorney. The primary is in the spring and if he wins the primary, he wins the election because there isn’t a Democrat in this part of the state that can get elected to any public office. There is nothing worse for criminal defense lawyers than an election. People just aren’t themselves when they’re running for office. They make bad decisions, stupid choices, and put themselves and their ambition ahead of everything else. What we have brewing at ETSU is potentially a bombshell. I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but with everything that’s been going on in this country lately, this is the worst possible time for something like a young black man to be accused of raping a young white woman. The nuts will be coming out of the woodwork. And when I say nuts, I mean extremists of many different kinds. We’re going to see feminists going after the administration and the football program and our client, we’ll probably see liberal faculty groups going after the team and our client. We’re going to see white supremacists going after our client and maybe after his lawyers, so I want you to keep your heads up and watch your backs.