Hs green-and-vermilion topknot was as colorful as a parrot’s, and in Colleton County’s courtroom that afternoon, with its stripped-down modern light oak benches and pale navy carpet, a cherryhead parrot couldn’t have looked much more exotic than this Michael Czarnecki.
Nineteen years old. Tattooed eyeliner on bloodshot eyes. Stainless steel skull-and-crossbones dangling from his left ear-lobe. His jaw was purple from where it’d banged the steering wheel when he ran off the road a little past three that morning, and he was still wearing black skinny-legged jeans and the electric orange-and-green “Boogie On Down To Florida” sweatshirt he’d had on when the state troopers plucked him off 1-95 and perched him in our brand-new jail.
From his own perch, the black-robed judge frowned down at Czarnecki like an elderly cowbird while Assistant District Attorney Kevin Foster read the charges: speeding 74 in a 65 zone, driving while impaired, simple possession of marijuana.
“You got an attorney?” asked Judge Hobart, who knew quite well that he’d appointed me that morning when the calendar was first called and that this was why I was now seated at the same table with the defendant.
I stood up. “Your Honor, I represent Mr.-” I glanced again at the court calendar in my hand and tackled the unfamiliar name with more confidence than I felt. “Mr. Zar-neck-ee.”
“Zar-n’kee,” my client corrected me shyly.
“Not representing him too well, Miss Knott, if you can’t even say his name right,” the judge sniffed. “How does he plead?”
I’d worked it out with Kevin before lunch. He’d knocked a 78 down to 74 and had thrown out a piddling seat belt violation and two charges of reckless and endangering, but we were stuck with DWI and simple possession. And I was stuck with punk hair, “Boogie On Down To Florida,” and a judge with many, many axes to grind.
I-95 passes straight through the middle of Colleton County, North Carolina, linking Miami to New York. I’ve never actually looked into the wording of the billboard law that regulates signs along a federally funded highway, but it’s lax enough that farmers here can rent their roadside land to advertise the locations of factory outlets that sell towels and sheets, name-brand clothing, and, of course, cheap cigarettes.
Despite the tourist dollars, our stretch of I-95 would be a no-exit tunnel if Harrison Hobart had his druthers, and he normally throws the book at any Yankees who stray off the interstate and into his court. Fortunately, it was only a week till the May primary, so Czarnecki, who was boogie-ing on back up to Teaneck, New Jersey, got lucky. His outlandish hair, his satanic earring, and his smartass sweatshirt afforded so many opportunities to zing me, that Hobart finally let the kid off with a ninety-day suspended and a two-fifty fine.
Did I mention that Harrison Hobart’s seat is up for election?
Or that I’m one of the candidates?
I hadn’t really planned to run for judge. Not consciously anyhow, but it must have been lurking down deep in my subconscious because something snapped last winter. It wasn’t even my case. I was sitting there on the lawyers’ bench at the front of Courtroom #2 that rainy January morning, waiting to try and keep Luellen Martin out of jail one more time even though she was nearly seven months behind in her restitution payments and her probation officer was ticked because she’d skipped a couple of reporting sessions as well. Luellen works out at the towel factory and makes enough money to get her hair fixed every week, keep up car payments on a Hyundai, and trundle her kids down to Disney World over the Christmas holidays; but she couldn’t ever seem to get up the monthly hundred dollars she was supposed to be paying various complainants after bouncing checks all over town last spring.
A jury case was in session; Reid Stephenson defending an impassive-looking black man.
“What’s the charge?” I whispered to Ambrose Daughtridge, who was also waiting for a case to be called. I should have known. After all, Reid was not only my cousin, he was also one of my partners.
“DWI, wouldn’t take the Breathalyzer,” Ambrose whispered back.
Refusal to take a Breathalyzer test’s not a real smart decision under the usual circumstances. As the examining officer explained, “I tried to tell him that if he didn’t take the test, God himself couldn’t let him drive for twelve months in the State of North Carolina.”
“And did he understand?” asked Tracy Johnson, who was prosecuting the calendar that day in a navy blazer and red wool skirt. She’s tall and slender with blonde hair clipped shorter than most men’s. Quite pretty actually, except that she keeps the good bones of her face obscured by businesslike hornrimmed glasses.
“Objection,” said Mel. “Calls for a conclusion.”
“Sustained.”
Tracy had graduated from law school only six months earlier, and it still needled her a bit whenever an objection to one of her questions was sustained. She pushed her oversized glasses up on her nose and hurriedly restated. “Did you ask Mr. Gilchrist if he understood that if he didn’t take the test and was found guilty, he’d automatically lose his license for a year?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the officer. Sanderson. Late twenties, spit and polish uniform. Always sits at attention. Even when he’s trying to convey more-in-sorrow-than-anger earnestness. “I did everything but beg him to take that test. I told him even if he didn’t pass, he could probably get a limited permit. But if he didn’t take it, he was going to be walking for twelve months. He didn’t say nothing ‘cept ‘Huh!’ ”
“ ‘Huh’?” asked the judge. Perry Byrd that day. Well into his third term of office.
“That’s all he’d say, Your Honor,” Sanderson said. “Every time we asked him anything, that’s all he’d say; ‘Huh!’ Real cocky-like.”
No law officer says uppity anymore. Not in open court anyhow. Cocky’s the new code word in the New South.
Judge Byrd nodded and laboriously made a notation on the legal pad in front of him. At fifty-two, Perry Byrd’s peppery red hair had a hefty sprinkle of salt in it. Broad strapping shoulders on a six-foot-two build, and the florid face of an incipient stroke victim. He also had a prissy little high-pitched voice and, even talking under his breath, everyone sitting near the front, including the jury, could hear his absent-minded “cocky-like” as he wrote.
Reid looked over at the lawyers’ bench and he rolled his eyes at Ambrose and me.
Judge Byrd finished writing and looked up. “Well, get on with it, Miss Johnson,” he told Tracy, fussily.
Some judges enjoy bossing brand-new ADAs and it’s not always a male/female thing, although the two years I’d worked in the DA’s office, there’d been this one white-haired little bastard who rode me like a dog fly, never lighting, always just out of swatting distance.
Tracy quickly finished her examination of Trooper Sanderson, and Reid’s cross-examination explored the possibility that he and the arresting trooper might have maybe, “unintentionally of course,” denied his client permission to call his lawyer.
“No, sir,” said Sanderson, displaying a copy of the Alcohol Influence Report form he’d filled out earlier and which Gilchrist had signed. “We go right down the list and when we got to ‘Is there anyone you now wish to notify?’ he said ‘No.’ ”
“But hadn’t he earlier asked to call his lawyer?”
“Not to my knowledge, sir,” Sanderson said blandly.
Even though Reid is my mother’s first cousin, he’s four years younger than me. He’s got the Stephenson good looks, too: tall, blond, melting blue eyes. When he wants to, he can look like a Wall Street broker; most of the time though, he tries to act like a good old country lawyer. He leaned back in his swivel chair and wheedled around every way he knew, but Sanderson sat up straight in the witness box and wouldn’t admit that Gilchrist had been denied any of his constitutional rights.
“No further questions,” Reid finally said.
“State rests, Your Honor,” said Tracy.
The jury looked at Reid expectantly, but Judge Byrd motioned to the bailiff. “Head ’em out, Mr. Faircloth.”
Eight women, three of them black, and four men, one black, stood up and followed the elderly bailiff out through the right rear door. I was interested to see that the one black man was James Greene, formerly a deputy on the town police force and now head of his own small security service.
Why in God’s name, I wondered, had Reid left him on the jury? I could tell it was likely to be after lunch before the court would get to Luellen’s case, but a freezing rain was falling outside and there was nowhere else I needed to be right then, so I settled back on the bench.
When the door closed behind the last juror, Judge Byrd called for motions and Reid asked for dismissal for lack of evidence. I’d come in late, so I couldn’t tell if there was merit to what would be an automatic motion on Reid’s part, even had his client been falling-down drunk.
“Denied,” Byrd squeaked in his little high voice. “Will there be evidence for the defense?”
“Yes, Your Honor, there’ll be evidence.” Reid sat down and conferred with his client until the bailiff had finished bringing the jury back in.
Ambrose looked at his watch, sighed, and wandered out to the hall where other lawyers paused to exchange pleasantries as they passed from one courtroom to another, keeping check on how much longer it’d be before one of their cases was called. Earlier that morning in Courtroom #3, I’d pled two young men guilty to taking a deer illegally and got them off with a $150 fine and ninety days suspension of their hunting licenses. (“They were real respectful and cooperative,” the game warden testified.) And I’d helped an elderly grandmother avoid a fine for writing worthless checks on what she’d thought was still a joint account with her sailor grandson. (He’d gotten married in San Diego and had closed the account without telling her.) Nothing else was on my court schedule that day except Luellen Martin’s hearing.
While I sat there, her probation officer came in with a steaming white foam cup and sat down at the end of the bench beside me. The smell of hot chocolate mingled with the sweet floral perfume she wore. Either I’m getting older or probation officers are getting younger. I know they have to be twenty-one and college graduates, but in her blue print jersey with its broad, white, lace-edge collar, this one looked like a yuppie teenager. No wonder Luellen kept skipping her probation meetings.
“Call your first witness, Mr. Stephenson,” Judge Byrd directed.
Reid had only one, the defendant himself.
Gilchrist appeared to be in his midthirties, quite dark, close-clipped wiry hair, neatly dressed in a blue turtleneck sweater, a brown corduroy jacket, and blue jeans. A self-employed plumber who lives here in Dobbs, he told his story quietly and with no apparent emotion, almost as if he were describing something that had happened to a stranger.
But his eyes were wary.
On the Thursday in question, he said, he’d worked all day on some frozen pipes over in the next county. He’d had a bad cold all week and was running a fever; so before he went to bed that night, he’d mixed himself a homemade toddy.
“I waited till after my three daughters had gone to bed because my wife and me, we don’t hold with drinking in front of the girls.”
At Reid’s prodding, Gilchrist indicated that he’d poured about two fingers of Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey into a pint Mason jar, then added honey and lemon juice. (Too bad he hadn’t bought George Dickie or Jim Beam, some brand name that didn’t carry such a load of drunken images.)
He’d sipped the toddy while watching the late-evening news and had then gone to bed. Two hours later, he’d been awakened by a phone call from his sister, who worked a night shift at a convenience store over in Widdington, about twenty miles away. Her car wouldn’t start and there was no one else she could call, so Gilchrist had hauled himself out of bed, sleep-drugged, stuffy head, low-grade fever and yes, a debatable quantity of that homemade toddy, and had driven over to pick her up. He’d taken her to her house out in the country about three miles from Dobbs and was on his way back to his own house when the trooper pulled him.
According to his testimony, he’d cooperated up to the point they tried to administer the Breathalyzer. “I walked the line, touched my nose and did all that stuff, but when they wanted me to blow on the tube, I said I wanted to call my lawyer and they said they’d get to that.”
He then described how Sanderson and the arresting officer, Davis, kept pressing him to take the test. When he refused and repeated his request to call a lawyer, they started filling out the Alcohol Influence Report. “That’s when I just quit talking and said whatever I thought they wanted me to say because I didn’t want to get them mad at me.”
It sounded logical. On the AIR form, the question about calling someone is down near the end. If Gilchrist had gone into a passive mode of answering yes or no according to what he thought the troopers wanted to hear, it was quite likely that he’d automatically answered no at that point.
Gilchrist’s testimony also disputed Sanderson’s version of filling out the report. According to him, Davis had read the questions and Sanderson had filled in the blanks. “They said I had that paper and was reading along with ’em, but they never gave it to me till they said I had to sign it, so I did.”
On cross-examination, Tracy tried to rattle Gilchrist about how many inches of Georgia Moon he’d actually poured into that Mason jar, but nothing got beneath the unemotional surface the black plumber had learned to present to white officialdom.
“I bought that bottle at the ABC store back before Christmas,” he said, quietly underlining the assertion that he was no habitual drinker. “It’s still got almost a third left in it.”
On redirect, Reid said, “How old are you, Mr. Gilchrist?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“How long you been driving?”
“Since I was sixteen.”
“Ever been arrested before?”
“No.”
“No speeding tickets, no DWIs?”
“No.”
“Defense rests, Your Honor.”
The jury was taken out again. Once more Reid asked Judge Byrd to dismiss and once more the motion was denied. Then Perry Byrd mechanically ran over the usual points he planned to touch on in his instructions to the jury. “Any requests for further instructions?”
“No, Your Honor,” Tracy said.
“No further requests,” said Reid.
The jury filed back in and seated themselves with a friendly, interested air. This was only Tuesday, the first day they’d actually sat on a case, and they weren’t yet jaded. Reid had a warm avuncular smile on his face as he went over to address them, and several smiled back tentatively.
“Now’s when we bring out our closing arguments,” he said and delivered a short and eloquent speech about the burden of proof being on the state. His argument, of course, was that all the state really had was the defendant’s refusal to take the Breathalyzer and the account of the arresting trooper who’d stopped Gilchrist at 2:30 in the morning, a sick man on his way back to bed after performing a Good Samaritan deed for his sister.
“A dark moonless night, ladies and gentlemen, on a winding stretch of deserted highway. Two cars meeting each other. Trooper Davis says he observed my client weaving back and forth over the center line and he had what? Fifteen seconds? Twenty seconds to observe all this?”
“Don’t forget, ladies and gentlemen, that Trooper Davis is an experienced officer with nearly ten years as a North Carolina highway patrolman,” said Tracy Johnson. I decided those ugly glasses were a smart touch. They neutralized both her prettiness and her inexperience and lent a tone of judicial competency as she ran over the case again and asked for a guilty decision.
In persnickety tones more suited to explaining Parcheesi rules, Judge Byrd instructed along predictable lines: the jury was not to consider what they’d like the law to be, but what it is; yes, there’s a presumption of innocence and the state must prove guilt, but not beyond all doubt, he told them, leaning heavily on the all, merely beyond reasonable doubt. He read them the law on DWI, told them their possible verdicts, then sent them off to deliberate.
It was 12:15.
I’d hoped to slide Luellen’s case in before the lunch recess, but Ambrose Daughtridge had poor-mouthed about his schedule enough that Tracy called his case next, so Reid and I splashed across the street in the freezing rain to Sue’s Soup ’n’ Sandwich Shop for a bowl of her homemade Brunswick stew. The little shop was crowded and steamy and permeated with the wonderful smells of hot coffee, toasted bread, and fragrant meats. We had to wait a few minutes for one of the tiny booths that lines the wall opposite the long Formica lunch counter.
Reid was torn between optimism for his client’s case and disgust that Gilchrist had even been charged. He’d managed to keep on the panel a sharp-eyed middle-aged woman who’d worked as an auto insurance adjuster, and he seemed to think that she was the natural choice for foreperson, someone who’d see this case for what it was and bring in a quick not guilty.
I hate to lick the red off anybody’s candy cane and kept my mouth shut.
“What?” he asked.
“She’s never going to get elected foreperson,” I told him. “James Greene is.”
“What you talking? She’s white, she’s educated, she’s sharp-”
“She’s a woman,” I interrupted. “And a civilian.” Our stew arrived, hot and thick, and I added a heavy sprinkle of black pepper. “James Greene may be a black man, but he’s still a man and an ex-police officer. The other men’ll vote for him to show they’re not bigots and he’ll toss around enough jargon that the women will defer to his expertise.”
“Yeah?” Reid crumbled saltine crackers over his bowl and stirred them in as he considered how Greene’s being foreperson would affect Gilehrist’s chances. “Well, hell, he knows even better than the Webster woman that it’s all a crock of shit. Everybody sitting in that courtroom knows that Davis wouldn’t have pulled Gilchrist that night if he’d been white. Green’s just some extra insurance I slipped past little Tracy.”
“God takes care of fools, drunkards and brand-new ADA ’s.” I reached for the pepper shaker again, but Reid pushed it away.
“You’re gonna wreck your stomach,” he warned. “What’d I forget?”
“There’s talk that James Greene wants the security contract for that new pharmaceutical plant over in Cotton Grove.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that, too. So?”
I swallowed a meltingly tender chunk of beef. “So Owen Barfield’s one of the owners.”
Dismayed enlightenment broke on Reid’s face. “And Owen Barfield is Judge Perry Byrd’s brother-in-law,” he groaned.
“Bingo!” I said. “What better way to get the word to Owen that Greene’s Security Agency is absolutely colorblind when it comes to providing security than for James Greene to be foreman of a jury that convicts a black man when there are good grounds to let him ofi?”
Reid pushed aside his stew. His appetite seemed to have suddenly disappeared. “You’ve got a weird mind, Deborah,” he said, frowning at me. “That’s too goddamned Machiavellian. Greene wouldn’t-”
“How ’bout a nice slice of pie?” asked our waitress as she paused at our booth to top off our cups with more coffee. “We’ve got deep-dish apple or there’s one piece of pecan left.”
Pecan pie’s my absolute favorite and I do indulge in the wintertime-after all, what are bulky sweaters for?-but good as Sue’s is, it doesn’t hold a candle to my Aunt Zell’s, and I don’t squander those five hundred calories on anybody else’s.
“I’ll take the apple if you’ll melt me a little cheddar on the top,” said Reid, who wore a bulky red sweater vest under his gray tweed sportscoat.
I was wearing a cropped green jacket over a soft challis skirt with a wide tight belt that registered every ounce I ate, so I passed.
The rain had slacked off by the time we got back to the courthouse, but it had washed away most of the sand that a janitor had sprinkled earlier and the wide marble steps were glazed in a thin coat of ice. Reid took my arm as we started up. “How you gals walk around on those stilts in good weather beats me, but why you don’t break your neck in winter…”
Since my beautiful black leather boots had sensible one-inch heels, I knew his grousing was just to cover his worry.
“Maybe the jury will come back as soon as court reconvenes,” I comforted, patting his hand. A quick return would mean acquittal.
It was nearly three before the jury brought in their verdict. I’d gotten Luellen another stay of active time, and though Judge Byrd gave her a stiff lecture-“You know what suspended means, Miz Martin? You under some kind of impression you don’t have to go to jail if you don’t keep to the terms of the judgment on you?”-he did allow her one more chance to set up a regular schedule of restitution payments with her parole officer.
Machiavellian or not, James Greene had been chosen foreman and the jury did deliver a guilty verdict. Reid and I-and maybe the wary-eyed Gilchrist-were the only two not surprised. (Later, the bailiff showed Reid the ballots that had been thrown in the trash can. On the first vote, the count had been seven to five for acquittal.)
Perry Byrd tried hard not to beam as he sent for Gilchrist’s driving record. Despite the plumber’s testimony, he wanted to see for himself; and when it was brought to him, Byrd frowned and muttered to himself in those carrying undertones, “I don’t believe this man’s gone twenty-one years with no tickets.”
Even under uniform sentencing, a judge has much leeway. The punishment for a first DWI conviction with no priors could be as light as court costs and a few hours of community service. Gilchrist’s was near the maximum: 120 days suspended for three years upon payment of a $250 fine and court costs, plus forty-eight hours of active jail time.
Reid was appalled, but still game. “Your Honor,” he said, “my client operates a one-man business for his livelihood. We request that he be allowed to wait till the weekend to activate his jail time.”
“Denied!” said Judge Byrd. “Bailiff, take the prisoner in custody.”
Okay, so Gilchrist probably would’ve blown a ten. Big damn deal. It wasn’t his choice to go out that night and it wasn’t like he’d deliberately gone and driven recklessly on a crowded highway or anything. Even Trooper Davis admitted he’d been well below the speed limit.
Normally, mean-minded judicial pettiness sends me right up the wall; that frigid January day it sent me right over to the election board where I filed for Harrison Hobart’s seat.
I really wished it could have been Perry Byrd’s.