Exquisite Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  “Now, Mr. Kadella, your request to reopen the issue of a change of venue.”

  Marc looked like he was going to say something, so the judge held up a hand to stop him.

  “As you are obviously aware, this issue was previously argued by your predecessor, Sheldon Burke. The court found insufficient grounds to support a venue change.

  “I have carefully read your pleadings and was unable to find enough new facts to change my original decision. Do you have anything new to present today?”

  “No, your Honor,” Marc had to admit.

  “If anything, the local atmosphere and media coverage have cooled off,” the judge said.

  “I’m very concerned about what is going to happen once jury selection has begun,” Marc said.

  “I’m not unsympathetic, Mr. Kadella, but it’s also your client who won’t waive time…”

  “I couldn’t persuade him to, even for this, your Honor,” Marc admitted.

  “In that case, we’ll go forward and see what happens,” Tennant said.

  Thanks for stepping in it, Marc, Steve Gondeck thought.

  “Moving on. I understand there are discovery issues, Mr. Kadella,” Tennant said.

  “The problem is there has not been any discovery given to us…”

  “That’s not true!” Gondeck almost jumped up to say. “He has…”

  “Mr. Gondeck, wait your turn,” Margaret told him.

  “They have gone over my client’s life with a magnifying glass. They’ve served search warrants on his house and cars. They’ve tried to get them for his parents’ and in-laws’ homes. They confiscated computers, including the ones the kids use for school. Laptops, cell phones, you name it. They’ve scooped it all up. And, so far, we have seen nothing.”

  “We’re hearing from people he hasn’t seen in years that the county attorney’s investigators are questioning them,” Arturo Mendoza added. “People going back to kindergarten. They’re trying to get someone to claim Mr. Dane is a white supremacist. And, again, we have seen nothing forthcoming from them about any of this. We can’t even bring a suppression motion because we don’t know what to suppress.”

  “What about it, Mr. Gondeck?”

  “We’re working on it diligently, your Honor. We’re almost done. If the defense wants a continuance, we will not object.”

  “What about it, Marc, um, Mr. Kadella?”

  “He won’t budge, your Honor. This case is playing hell on him and his family. We’re down to twenty days,” Marc replied.

  “I know,” the judge said. “Monday, October 3rd. You’re almost done?” she asked Gondeck.

  “Yes, your Honor. A few more days,” he replied.

  “Witness statements,” Arturo said.

  “We don’t have anything written,” Gondeck said.

  “We want, we absolutely have to have, the complete list of everyone you’ve talked to, even if you don’t plan on calling them or including them on your witness list.”

  “If we found anything exculpatory, we would have told you!” Jennifer Moore spoke up for the first time.

  “I’ll be the one to decide that,” Marc said. “Witnesses may see things and tell cops things that the prosecution might not think is important. That list, I want today. Names, addresses, phone numbers, any notes you might have about what they told you. We gotta have it, now.”

  “Do you have this on your computer file?” Margaret asked Jennifer.

  “I’ll see, your Honor,” she answered.

  “Delivered to the defense by noon tomorrow,” Margaret said. “The rest of it,” she continued, looking at Gondeck, “by noon Friday. If they don’t have it by noon Friday and you try to get it into evidence, you’ll have a tough road to convince me. Understood?”

  “Yes, your Honor,” Gondeck replied.

  “We’ll have a list of prospective jurors by Friday also. And, you will both exchange witness lists by five p.m. next Friday, the twenty-first,” Tennant said.

  “Anything else?”

  When no one responded the judge said, “Okay, we’re adjourned.”

  As they were packing up to leave, Margaret asked Marc, “How’s Maddy?”

  “She’s good,” Marc said.

  “I heard a rumor the two of you were, um…” she smiled.

  “Yeah, we are,” Marc admitted. “And I heard you’re getting married.”

  “True,” she replied.

  “Do I know him?”

  “I doubt it,” Margaret said.

  Marc leaned on her desk and whispered, “Be happy, Margaret. Okay?”

  “You, too,” she replied.

  When the four of them were almost back to the empty courtroom, as they were about to enter through the back door, Steve Gondeck gently took Marc’s arm.

  “You and Maddy? Really?

  “Yeah, Steve,” Marc said, “it’s true.”

  Putting on a forlorn, broken-heart act, Gondeck said, “That’s it. I might as well get it over with. My fantasy was all I had to live for.”

  “I’m calling your wife,” Jennifer said.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. I forgot about her,” Gondeck said. “Never mind. Leave it alone.”

  “You won’t have to kill yourself,” Jennifer said

  “If that’s all I thought she’d do to me…”

  “The good news is, Steve,” Marc said, “Maddy’ll be hanging around the trial. I’ll be sure to have her wear something distracting.”

  “She could wear a burlap Burkha and he’d be distracted,” Jennifer said. “Come to think of it, I would be too and I’m not gay,” she added.

  Thirty-One

  When Marc arrived back at the office, he found Maddy and the office para-legal, Jeff Modell, in the conference room. First, Marc stuck his head in Connie’s open door to say hello.

  “You got a problem,” Connie said.

  She got up from her desk and led him into the conference room. Maddy was seated across from the door with a stack of printouts in front of her. Jeff was going through three boxes of discovery documents they had just received.

  Maddy looked up and said, “Hi.”

  Jeff ignored them completely.

  “Anything interesting?” Marc asked Maddy referring to the stack of paper in front of her.

  “Interesting isn’t the word I would use, but I am getting into his head a bit,”

  Maddy replied.

  What she was reading was the life of Philo Anson. She was also devising a way to go at him.

  “We just got this stuff from Gondeck?” Marc asked Jeff.

  “Yeah, looks like records of everything they found during their search. I won’t know if they found anything until I get through it, but it doesn’t look like it so far.”

  “It’s only some of it,” Marc said. “You can bet there will be an even larger paper dump on Friday. Most of which will be worthless junk.”

  Marc turned to Connie and asked, “So, what’s the problem?”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Jeff said. “This stuff here,” he continued, referring to the paper dump in the boxes, “appears to be smoke just to give us something to do.”

  “And they’ll try to hide things in there,” Marc said.

  “They did. I started going through the box on the bottom first. Sure enough, in the middle of all the junk, I found a smoking gun,” Jeff said.

  “Your guy’s been involved in four civilian complaints for excessive use of force,” Connie told Marc.

  “Shit,” Marc quietly said as he slumped down in one of the chairs.

  “Let me have them,” he told Jeff.

  Jeff slid a two-inch stack of papers across the table to Marc.

  “They were hidden in two boxes, spread out so we might miss them,” Jeff said.

  “That’s not like Steve,” Maddy said. “Is it?”

  “He’s under a lot of pressure to win this. To get a solid conviction,” Marc replied.

  “He’ll offer second-degree with a small break on sentencing,” Connie sai
d, “at the courthouse door.”

  “Maybe,” Marc said. He looked at Jeff and asked, “Have you been through these?”

  “Enough to know that they are all from African Americans.”

  “Perfect,” Marc said.

  “Why hasn’t he charged this as a hate crime?” Maddy asked.

  “Don’t know,” Marc replied. He took out his phone and while scrolling for a number, added, “He still might.”

  The phone he called rang once and was answered.

  “Arturo, we’ve got a problem.”

  “What?” Arturo asked.

  “I’ll meet you at Rob’s in fifteen minutes and explain it then.”

  “Okay,” he heard his co-counsel say as he ended the call.

  “What about my lunch?” Maddy asked.

  “Mom, will you take her across the street for me?” Marc asked Connie.

  “Sure, but she’s buying,” Connie replied.

  Marc had called ahead, as did Arturo, to let Rob Dane know they were coming. Marc made the turn onto Rob’s street and saw Arturo pull into the driveway. Before Arturo got out of his car, Marc pulled in behind him. The two of them walked up to the door together to find Rob holding it open.

  Greetings were a bit brief and perfunctory while they went into the living room. Marc and Arturo took the couch, so they could use the coffee table for the documents they brought. Rob took a chair across from them.

  “This feels kind of serious,” Rob said looking back and forth at his lawyers.

  “It is,” Marc replied. He pulled a manila folder out and placed it on the table.

  Marc tapped the folder and said, “What do you suppose this is?”

  Puzzled, Rob replied, “I have no idea.”

  “Do the names, Jorell Clark, Levon Turner, Romain Robinson and Faaruq Noor sound familiar?”

  “Oh, shit,” Rob said. “I had forgotten…”

  “Did you think the prosecution would miss these?” Marc asked. “Civilian complaints against you. All by African Americans except Faaruq. I assume he’s Somali.”

  “Oh yeah, he’s Somali,” Rob defiantly said. “Did you read the incident report? I was exonerated. In fact, I was exonerated on all of them,” he continued, annoyed.

  “Take it easy, Rob,” Arturo said. “We are wondering why you kept this from us.”

  “I didn’t,” Rob said. He paused then said, “Okay, maybe I did. But only because I was totally cleared of all of them.”

  “Tell me about Faaruq Noor,” Marc calmly said.

  “Let’s see,” Rob said. “I was cruising Little Mogadishu, ah, sorry, Cedar/Riverside when a call came in about a gang disturbance at a local park. Gold Medal Park.

  “I turned the lights on…”

  “Your emergency lights?” Arturo asked.

  “Yeah, but not my siren. Anyway, I was there in a minute or so and found a squad with two officers already on the scene.

  “There were two cars of American blacks hassling the Somalis. In case you didn’t know, they don’t get along. The Somalis treat African Americans with racial contempt. Not black enough.

  “There were a lot of mouths going off on both sides. Especially this Faaruq guy.

  “One of the other cops on the scene was Sergeant Dave Powell. Dave’s a black man and usually good at calming these things down.

  “Dave got in between a couple of these guys and tried to cool it off. He told the Americans to get back in their cars and take off.

  “The other cop was Officer Diane Logan. She’s a good cop who can normally take care of herself. She was trying to get the Americans settled down and back in their cars. I was standing next to Faaruq who had shut up by now.

  “The shit started when Dave Powell put his hand on the chest of the ringleader of the Somalis. His name is in the report. This guy slapped Dave’s hand away and pushed him. Dave is ex-Marine and nobody’s chump. In about two seconds he had the Somali leader on the ground trying to cuff him. That’s when all hell broke loose.

  “This Faaruq asshole sucker punched me in the neck and pushed me down. I found out two or three of them each went after both Dave and Diane.

  “Faaruq jumped on top of me and tried to stab me in the face. I was able to hold his right hand, the hand with the knife, away while he tried to get my gun. I let go with my right hand and punched him as hard as I could. I fractured his cheekbone, his jaw and knocked out four teeth.”

  “With one punch?” Marc asked.

  “One punch,” Rob answered. “He was out cold. By this point, there was a mini-riot going on. Lucky for us another eight or ten squads got there and put the whole thing down.”

  “Was this on the news? In the paper?” Arturo asked.

  “Sort of,” Rob said. “The Star Trib had a story in the Metro section the next day.

  “The headline was that the police were under investigation for overreaction to a minor problem, that’s what they called it, ‘a minor problem’, in the Somali community.

  “I found Faaruq’s knife with his prints on it. I had enough sense to bag it as evidence.

  “Just about all of the cops there received excessive force complaints. We did get an honest investigation, and everyone was exonerated.

  “Everyone who was arrested, twenty in total, had the charges dropped. Including Faaruq who was arrested in the hospital for the attempted murder of a police officer.”

  “And Faaruq signed a waiver agreeing not to sue the city,” Marc said.

  “Yep,” Rob said. “All of them did. Signed a waiver.”

  “Why doesn’t this stuff get more news coverage?” Marc asked.

  “Because the local media and politicians don’t want people to know about Somali gangs and crime in the Somali community,” Arturo said.

  “At least you got a good shot in on the little shit,” Marc said. “What about Jorell Clark?”

  “Oh, him,” Rob said as if recalling who he was. “I was one of five or six officers and a couple of detectives responding to a shooting on the Northside. One dead, one wounded and taken to the hospital. It was over some kind of gang turf dispute.

  “It was two years ago during the summer. A pretty good crowd had gathered and a few of us were walking through the crowd asking if anyone had seen anything or knew anything. I look at Jorell Clark and without a word, he throws the soda he’s drinking at me. A can. Only he missed me and hit a seventy-year-old woman in the head and knocked her down.

  “I went after Jorell and tackled him, rolled him on his stomach and cuffed him. One of the other officers had gone to the victim to help her.

  “I dragged his ass back and arrested him for assault. His gang buddies bailed him out and the woman dropped the charges. He filed a complaint against me. Then he failed to show up or cooperate with the case and it was thrown out.

  “As for the other two…”

  “Levon Turner and Romain Robinson,” Marc reminded him.

  “Right. Levon was arrested on a warrant by two other cops during a traffic stop. I had rolled up and was doing backup. Levon clearly resisted arrest and got thrown on the ground and cuffed. My dashcam had the whole thing on film. I never touched him.

  “Romain Robinson was sort of the same deal. He was arrested on a first-degree murder charge; his girlfriend and her six-year-old daughter. He did both of them with a knife during a domestic assault. We were warned armed and dangerous. And that was putting it mildly.

  “There were nine cops involved in taking him down. I held one leg while another cop held his other leg. That was all I did.

  “Romain is six-foot-seven and at least three hundred pounds. He wasn’t very cooperative. In fact, he was tossing cops around like beanbags. We were lucky no one was seriously hurt, especially Romain.”

  “I remember this,” Marc said. “Wasn’t he the one screaming police brutality on the ground while a dozen people were filming?”

  “Yep, that was Romain and it made great film for the local TV stations. Look, every time we get an uncooperative
perp and he has to be taken down by force, they always scream about something. ‘You’re breakin’ my arm’ or ‘my back’ or ‘I can’t breathe.’ That guy in New York a few years ago who died in custody. The one who got busted for illegally selling cigarettes? He yelled ‘I can’t breathe’ as clear as I just said it, eleven times on film. Sorry, but if you really can’t breathe, you can’t yell ‘I can’t breathe’ like that once, let alone eleven times.”

  “What happened with Romain?” Arturo asked.

  “There was one video that showed the whole thing, especially Romain tossing cops around. That exonerated everyone. Of course, that was never shown on TV. Romain got consecutive thirty-year sentences. He won’t be out for a while.”

  The three of them took a brief break and then Marc got down to business.

  “You have to understand something, Rob,” Marc began. “This can’t happen again––you failing to tell us something. If we hadn’t found this,” he continued holding up the folder with the complaint documents in it, “they could’ve sprung this on us and made you look like a racist.”

  “I get it,” Rob said.

  “Do you? Let me be clear. This is a must win case for them. You shot and killed a prominent member of the black community. It just about started a race war. They are putting your life under a microscope. By the time they’re done, they will know how many times you pulled Polly’s ponytail in third grade. How many times you had detention in middle school. How many times you ever picked on a black kid. Do you get it?”

  “Yeah,” he meekly replied.

  “I want all of it––your life back to the cradle. And don’t hold anything back. If you think it will hurt you, we have to know so we can deal with it. Talk to your friends, mom, dad, you name it. Report cards, school records anything you got in trouble for. If you saved someone’s life, we need to know it. Your military record…”

  “I didn’t think they could get at that,” Rob said.

  “Why, what’s in there?” Marc asked.

  “Actually, nothing but…”