A Sense of Justice

by Jack Davis

  Pencala was about to provide Lublin with his itinerary back to Syracuse when she was interrupted by the door bursting open and a short, disheveled man with hair resembling Larry from The Three Stooges came rushing into the room. In a high-pitched voice, he wheezed, “Don’t say another word! The interview is done! No more!”

  74|Davis Timmons: Defender of

  the Public

  Binghamton, New York, 10/22/09, 1622 hours

  Davis Timmons was a defense attorney who possessed every negative quality associated with the breed. As a marinade to all his other personal failings, Timmons was lazy.

  Possessed of reasonable intelligence, he spent his whole life using it to avoid work and dodge responsibility. He’d gotten through school and his career doing as little work as possible. Those who knew him well had always said that if he had spent half as much time on his studies or his profession as he did trying to find some way around work, he would be the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Alas, for Timmons it might as well have been part of his DNA. He’d spent fifty-one years trying to shirk responsibility, and even if he had seen something wrong with the attitude, he wouldn’t change himself.

  From Timmons’s perspective he was working smarter, not harder. He felt only a fool would work hard if he didn’t have to, and he didn’t fancy himself a fool. He never looked at his attitude as not trying to work; he viewed it as trying to find a way to do the work using less effort. Much of the time, that could be achieved by pushing the work off on someone else; Timmons had mastered that as well.

  Part and parcel of the as-little-work-as-possible attitude was playing the angles. Timmons always looked to see if there was an angle to play that could be to his benefit. Just because the lowlife he was forced to defend had no money didn’t mean the criminal’s family didn’t.

  Timmons had spent enough time in his profession to know the right thing, if not the truthful thing, to say in just about any situation. Over the years he’d honed his skill at lying to a fine edge. He could as easily make a jury feel his feigned passion for defending the innocent and downtrodden as a college coed in a bar. And while his acquittal rate was not high, it was higher than his closure rate with women, especially coeds these days.

  Actually, he had almost given up on coeds. Occasionally he could convince one that he was an adjunct professor in the Syracuse University Pre-Law program, but after a couple of embarrassing calls from the New York State Bar Association, he’d been forced to stop that approach.

  Without his “professorship,” he hadn’t had success with a coed in six years and was tired of wasting money trying. At his age, while his ego and Viagra convinced him he could still bed someone thirty years his junior, his success rate and bar bill told a different story.

  The different story was personified by Agatha Byrnes, a 53-year-old divorcee, who worked at the county clerk’s office in the Criminal Intake Division. Timmons had met Byrnes shortly after her husband left her and moved to the sun and fun of Las Vegas to try his hand as a poker player. Within two months of the change of climate, he turned his half of their life’s savings, just over $67,000 in stocks and bonds, into $4,961 in cash. He tried to come back home but was flatly refused by a proud and stubborn Agatha.

  Timmons had been a part of Agatha’s reason for refusal to reconcile. He’d dealt with her in her capacity as the person in charge of notifying the defense attorneys they were being assigned cases. Reasoning Agatha might have some power over who was assigned what case, he had always been extremely complimentary to her in their dealings. He hadn’t really thought much more about her until a female colleague advised him that Angela had recently separated from “her asshole of a husband.”

  The wheels started turning immediately, and Timmons decided it was worth paying Agatha a visit. Beside the fact it had taken him three dinners to get the reluctant Agatha to “give it up,” it had gone about as he had anticipated.

  That had been five years earlier. For her part, Agatha, still a little leery of men, didn’t push for too much. Once or twice a month there was dinner, drinks, Viagra-enhanced sex, and a mechanically induced orgasm. She’d come to settle for that, and not directly in return, but as a favor, Agatha would try to direct good cases or clients to Timmons. She saw no quid pro quo. If the sex had been better maybe, but as it was, she felt they were even when they left the bedroom.

  In Agatha’s mind, the favoritism in cases was because he was as good as any other defense attorney and he had always treated her nicely even before they had become intimate.

  Shortly after lunch on the twenty-second, Timmons had gotten a call from Byrnes. She described a complicated case and told him he should consider having it assigned to him. When he tried to get out of it by telling his occasionally lover that he didn’t have any background in computer cases, she insisted he take a call from her…on her cell.

  The call came five minutes later, and Agatha explained it was a Secret Service case that had already gotten lead news headlines in the Triple Cities. Timmons didn’t need the clerk to tell him that anytime a case had FBI, Secret Service, CIA, or NSA in the title it would generate headlines. A lack of self-realization let Timmons feel justified in his belief that the news media were the biggest whores on the planet. The Secret Service name alone was worth a story in Syracuse and the surrounding markets—Utica, Watertown, Binghamton, and maybe even as far west as Rochester, if the news cycle was slow. If the case had any pizzazz, it could be a lead on the eleven o’clock local news, and if the nothing else supplanted it, or he paid off the producer, it might even make the five o’clock broadcast.

  A good shot of him in the courtroom conferring with his client, or better yet a twenty-second interview would be priceless. With no effort at all Timmons could get thousands of dollars of television and radio exposure for nothing. He also knew, winning—or most likely losing—a case against the Secret Service would look good when he mentioned it to high-profile clients.

  Lastly, he knew the federal system was slower than the state and that meant cases dragged on, which meant more billable hours. Timmons lied, “Babe, I’m swamped right now, but if you think the case is important enough, I’ll trust your judgment and take a look.”

  “You won’t be sorry,” said Agatha. “I’ll process the paperwork and you’ll get an official call shortly.”

  Fifteen minutes later Timmons’ phone rang, and he was officially notified. He’d been assigned to represent a Mr. Craig Lublin, who had been arrested earlier in the day for violation of 18 USC 1028, 1029, and 1030. Timmons thought twice about having been talked into the case when he found out his new client had been arrested and processed in Binghamton.

  Normally Timmons would have waited until the following day before getting in touch with his client, and then only by phone. The problem was that Timmons worried about his new client being able to afford a “real” defense attorney. He mentally resigned himself to the seventy-mile drive to Binghamton but seethed when he was unable to push a two-thirty tee time at his favorite course in Camillus. The window on golfing in upstate New York was coming to a close, and Timmons was going to miss one of his last chances. The Lublin case had better be worth it.

  Pulling onto I-81 south, Timmons called his administrative assistant, Sally Willis. She was a student at Onondaga Community College in their business administration program. The young woman was smart, pretty, hardworking, and accepted minimum wage. Timmons had been feeling her out to see if he could get her in bed, but she had been unreceptive to his verbal innuendoes and politely rebuffed his offers of dinner.

  His call was to have Sally “refresh my memory” regarding the crimes Lublin was facing and figure out how much the federal government paid per mile for travel.

  Willis read the various statutes out loud as Timmons scribbled notes on a legal pad. He made her read the potential sentencing range twice for each offense. He assumed from the outset that his client was guilty, and he would be working on some type of plea bargain. Knowing what kind of time behi
nd bars his client was looking at helped him figure out a reasonable offer from the prosecutor. It was only after he knew the ranges that Timmons had his young intern read him the criminal complaint.

  A third of the way through, Timmons was daydreaming about what color underwear Sally might be wearing. He wanted to believe it was a thong or nothing at all. As he fantasized, he thought she was too nice a girl to… “Bahamas on….” He heard the name of the island and tuned in again.

  “Sally, I must have gone through a dead zone because I missed the past twenty seconds of the call, can you repeat it.”

  Sally repeated more than Timmons cared about but finally said, “Evidence obtained from Secret Service Confidential Informant 108-0057648-S, arrested by agents and members of the Royal Bahamian National Police in Nassau, Bahamas, on….”

  Timmons thoughts immediately went to a taxpayer-subsidized trip to the Bahamas to conduct personal interviews with the arresting officers and witnesses and look at the police case files to be able to provide my client the best possible defense. He didn’t really hear anything else in the complaint, and Willis had to rouse him from his thoughts when she had finished.

  “Looks like I’m going to have to go to the Bahamas. Wanna come along and take notes? I think it would be a good learning experience for you,” said Timmons.

  “Thanks for the kind offer but my class load is pretty heavy right now.”

  Timmons was getting tired of her rejections but knew Willis was too good, and cheap to drive her off. He consoled himself with the thought that there were other coeds in the sea who would jump at the chance to fly to the Bahamas for a few days, which was about all he could reasonably milk from the government. I wonder what the golf courses are like in the Bahamas…

  Having had the complaint read to him, he was more sure than ever his client would be looking for some type of lesser sentence. Thinking about the crimes, he was working on his “No one really got hurt here” speech. He would sprinkle in a liberal dose of “It’s not like he was selling drugs, or mugging someone,” for good measure.

  By the time Timmons pulled into the courthouse parking lot, he had it all laid out in his head. Moving on to how he could draw the case out to get the trip to the Bahamas and make additional money, he went through the sign-in process and showed his identification before asking the desk sergeant where he could find his client, Craig Lublin.

  “He’s in Interview Room 2 on the second floor; you take the stairs to two and then they’ll buzz you into the intake area.”

  Timmons had not heard anything past “interview room two.” Lublin is allowing himself to be interviewed! That was the worst thing that could happen.

  The idiot could be making his own deal. Worse yet, he may be one of those first-time criminals who when caught wants to confess.

  He could be in there fucking it up right now. His potential Caribbean coed expedition could be slipping away.

  Timmons turned on the man behind the desk and blurted out, “I demand to see my client immediately; take me to him now!”

  The sergeant, who knew that some semi-important prisoner was being processed, was taken off guard and tried to comply. He ordered a patrolman to take Timmons up to the intake area. Timmons tried to push the pace and his short legs were almost at a gallop as the two moved up the stairs. The officer used his key card to gain access and pointed down the hallway to a door, across from which sat a large man in a chair. Timmons ran toward the room, followed quickly by the officer.

  Kruzerski had been going through the case in his mind while in the hallway waiting for something to happen. He anticipated one of two scenarios: Lublin lawyering up, or a confession. The scenario he didn’t see was a pudgy, middle-aged man with a receding Caucasian Afro running toward the interview room, an officer following behind.

  Kruzerski stood and barred the way as the small man in a slightly tight-fitting suit waved his right hand dismissively while yelling, “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!”

  Kruzerski had determined the officer wasn’t chasing the man, only following him. That saved Timmons a trip to the hospital. Still not sure of the situation, Kruzerski decided the comic figure rushing at him was not a danger and only needed to be stopped. He appeared to comply with the man’s request.

  Timmons was surprised when the huge man who had gotten out of the chair and barred his way stepped aside. For a split-second as he passed the oaf he thought, how easy it is to cow law enforcement. They’re so used to taking orders that anyone using a command voice would…

  Kruzerski stepped aside somewhat like a matador in a bullfight. He let the smaller man almost pass before grabbing him by the collar and pivoting. The momentum of the lawyer and Kruzerski’s maneuver catapulted Timmons into the wall across from the interview room.

  Fortunately for the lawyer, he pulled his pleather briefcase up in front of him to break the impact. He crumpled to the ground in a heap.

  Kruzerski, hands still on the dazed man, turned to the officer. “What’s going on? Who’s this asshole?”

  The officer grinned. “He’s a public defender assigned to one of the defendants up here…I think.”

  Morley, who’d heard the commotion, stepped into the hallway as Kruzerski jerked the even more disheveled man to his feet and asked, “Who are you?”

  A still shaken Timmons replied, “I’m Davis Timmons, and I’m here to talk to my client.”

  “Let’s see some identification,” responded Kruzerski.

  Timmons fished in his suit pocket and thrust a business card at Morley. “Here.” He sneered, then, “I’m here to stop the unlawful interview of my client, Chris Lublin.”

  “First, this is a business card, not identification. Second, the interview isn’t unlawful, as your client consented, and we have his signed authorization to prove it. And third, the individual’s name is Craig, not Chris. Do you want to start again?”

  When Timmons produced proper identification, Morley nodded to Kruzerski, who released his grip. The lawyer slid to the floor. This time Kruzerski didn’t help him up.

  Getting to his feet, still stunned and very embarrassed, Timmons tried to compose himself and enter the interview room in a dignified manner. His appearance—hair a mess, tie askew, shirttails un-tucked, suit jacket twisted, and dusty knees—made dignity impossible. Still out of breath from his physical exertion, he gasped, “Don’t say another word! The interview is done! No more!”

  George Kantor and Sally Willis (10/23/09, 0800 hours)

  While Timmons had very few redeeming qualities, he wasn’t without capability. His lifelong laziness had magnified his ability to judge individuals quickly and accurately. This became extremely valuable when selecting jurors or interns.

  Syracuse University supplied Timmons with one gratis pre-law intern every semester. In turn he signed on to mentor them and provide insight into what their future held if they continued on their current path. In actuality, Timmons used the interns as glorified indentured servants. The luckless students couldn’t complain during the ordeal as Timmons was responsible for providing half of the input on their final grade for the semester and a recommendation letter.

  Timmons grudgingly interviewed the candidates and graded the final paper for the privilege of having free help for three months.

  If there was a particularly promising candidate, and in Timmons mind promising meant someone who could do his work for him, he would ask if they would like to “stay on to learn what being an attorney is really all about.” He explained that while they were interns, they were necessarily limited in what they could do, but if they worked for him afterwards, they could do quite a bit more. There was little appeal for most. It was the rare ones like George Kantor who saw the real opportunity.

  Kantor had been an intern two semesters prior to the Lublin arrest and done a phenomenal job. He did everything Timmons could have asked for and more. He took responsibility and needed little or no supervision. Kantor was organized, excellent at research, and knew the l
aw better than Timmons. He had a casual and friendly demeanor, and clients—especially the guilty ones—warmed to him. Kantor had a knack for getting clients to agree to pleas. This capability made Kantor rare, and to Timmons, invaluable. Timmons would never realize it, but Kantor was almost his complete antithesis—he was tall, a good athlete, a tireless worker, and honest.

  Between Kantor and Willis, Timmons’s office had never been run so well. The fact the two students did most of the work was not lost on anyone who knew the situation. Timmons claimed he was giving the two valuable work experience. To Kantor, that was the beauty of the arrangement; he was able to really practice law—before getting his license. He was getting a head start on all the other students and learning the law—the practical law—at the same time. He rightly felt he would be able to jump into the work as soon as he graduated and passed the bar.

  Kantor and Willis drove together from Syracuse to the jail in Binghamton that Friday morning for three reasons: one, to save on gas money; two, they enjoyed each other’s company; and three, most importantly, they wanted to avoid having to ride with their boss.

  They were going to Binghamton to assist Timmons with an extensive interview of their new client prior to his arraignment. The day before, their boss had done little other than stop the interrogation and confirm basic information. The two assumed that when Timmons realized the defendant was not a run-of-the-mill client, and knew he had to conduct a real interview, he wanted their assistance. It also would look more professional having a team rather than just one person. The interns had seen him use the ploy before on clients he didn’t want to lose. Timmons had set the meeting up for the following day at eight a.m.

  Kantor and Willis arrived twenty minutes early, which turned out to be forty minutes ahead of Timmons. Since that was not unusual, after a few minutes and a phone call confirming he wasn’t even close, the two, having done this before, started the process. They told Lublin they would get the basics out of the way before Timmons arrived.