The Last Plea Bargain

by Randy Singer

  I had no time to dwell on it, because the assembly line continued. A new public defender stepped to the defense table, and a defendant named Lucious Hazlett was brought in by the deputies. Hazlett had been charged with aggravated assault and battery for cutting his girlfriend’s face during a domestic dispute.

  Hazlett had agreed to plead guilty and save the state the trouble of trying him in exchange for a reduced sentence recommendation. There were some notes in the file, explaining that we were accepting the plea because the girlfriend was living with Hazlett again and there were “proof problems.” I knew the implications of this euphemism. We could always compel the girlfriend to testify, but we couldn’t keep her from shading the testimony to make the whole event look more accidental than intentional.

  I explained the proposed plea agreement, and Judge Brown kept his raised eyebrows to himself this time. He had seen hundreds of cases where a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife went to the police and swore out charges but later tried to back out. My colleagues would usually plead the cases out.

  “Do you understand the nature of the charges against you and that you have a right to plead not guilty?” Brown asked.

  “Yeah,” Hazlett said.

  “By pleading guilty, you understand that you waive the right to a trial by jury and to be confronted by the witnesses against you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you satisfied with your counsel’s representation in this matter?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you understand—?” Brown stopped in the middle of the next sentence. It had taken a moment for Hazlett’s response to register. “Did you just say ‘not really’?”

  “Yeah.”

  Brown frowned at the answer. Sometimes guilty pleas blew up because the defendants were too stupid to give the right answers. Maybe this was one of them. Brown decided to give Hazlett some help.

  “You do understand that I can’t accept your guilty plea unless you’re satisfied with the services provided by your lawyer,” Brown said. He sounded like he was coaching a five-year-old. “Otherwise, you could claim ineffective assistance of counsel and argue on appeal that the deal isn’t valid.”

  Hazlett shrugged his shoulders. The issue of his own freedom was apparently not that interesting to him.

  “So let me ask you again. Are you satisfied with the assistance of your counsel?”

  This time, Hazlett turned to his lawyer and snorted. “This dude doesn’t even know my name. See that pile of paper in front of him, Judge? All he wants to do is get to the bottom of those files so he can go have a beer with his buddies and get home to his woman. If the DA’s office wanted to give me the needle, he’d cut a deal for that, too! When I told him I wanted to fight the charges, I thought he might pee his pants. So no, I ain’t happy with my counsel. I think the state of Georgia got screwed if they’re paying this guy more than twenty bucks for handling my case.”

  Judge Brown’s face reddened. “Are you through?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Good. Then we’re going to do two things. First, I’m going to allow your lawyer to withdraw, and we’ll find you a new lawyer. And second, I’m going to reject this plea, and the DA is going to pursue this case against you and ask for the full sentence allowed by law. Is that clear, Ms. Brock?”

  I stood. “Crystal clear.”

  The court talked logistics with the public defender for a few minutes. Hazlett smirked as he was escorted out of the courtroom.

  When the next two defendants sabotaged their plea agreements too, I knew something was up. It was rare to have even one guilty plea fall apart. But three in a row defied any random explanation. For some reason, the defendants had all decided to take their chances at trial. I had never seen or heard of this happening before. The public defenders started whispering to each other, and the court clerk sat up straighter and took note. Since all twelve of the defendants had been in the same holding cell waiting for court, I assumed one of them was dissatisfied with his plea and was strong-willed enough to talk the others into rejecting their pleas too. Hazlett was the most likely candidate.

  When the fifth straight defendant rejected his plea, Judge Brown ran out of patience. He dispensed with all the preliminaries on the next guy.

  “Is it your intention to accept or reject this plea that has been worked out?” he asked the defendant even before I could explain the basics of the deal.

  The startled defendant stood. “I’m having second thoughts, Judge.” The man stared at the floor as if he was ashamed to be doing this.

  “Next!” Brown said.

  The surprises were not yet finished. The ninth defendant of the morning, a young man named Ricky Powell, had agreed to plead guilty to first-degree vehicular homicide. He had two prior DUIs, and this time his drunk driving had resulted in a buddy’s death. Powell was appropriately repentant and had agreed to plead guilty for only a slight reduction in sentence.

  “Are you going to take this guilty plea that’s been negotiated by your counsel, or is it your intention to squirm your way out of the deal too?” Judge Brown asked.

  Powell trembled as he stood. “No, Judge. I did what they charged me with, and I’ll never forgive myself. I still want to take the deal.”

  The clerk stopped typing, and even the court reporter seemed surprised by this. A guilty plea that might actually go through! I never thought I’d be so excited to see a criminal defendant get a deal.

  Judge Brown asked the usual questions and threw in a couple more for good measure. Powell, to his credit, looked the judge in the eye and answered all of them correctly. I felt so sorry for the kid that I thought about knocking another year off his sentence out of sympathy.

  Brown sentenced Powell to ten years in jail, suspending all but five, and the kid actually thanked the court. “I’ve learned my lesson, Your Honor. I can promise you that.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Brown said.

  I noticed the victim’s family had shown up in court to hear Powell’s sentence. My notes in the file indicated that they thought Powell was remorseful and were in full support of this deal.

  But Powell was the only success story that day. After the other defendants had rejected their pleas, Judge Brown called the public defenders and me up for a bench conference.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea,” I replied. “But I intend to find out.”

  By the end of the day, the office was buzzing about what had happened in court that morning. It became a running joke. They told me I gave off anti-plea-bargaining vibes. They assured me they would never send me to court again on such a simple task. Even Bill Masterson got in on the action. He called me and said he would have to put in an emergency budget request for two new prosecutors if I ever handled plea bargains again.

  The joking stopped on Wednesday afternoon. Ricky Powell was found dead in his pod at the Milton County jail. The inmates had somehow managed to shield him from the view of the security cameras while they sliced out his tongue. He bled to death before the guards knew what had happened.

  Caleb Tate was not around to witness it. He had posted bond on Wednesday morning and was once again enjoying life on the outside looking in.

  37

  The newspaper ran a short article about the killing at the Milton County Correctional Facility. It was buried on page three of the local section and was short on details. The deputies managed to keep a lid on the fact that the prisoners had cut out Ricky Powell’s tongue and that Powell was the only defendant who had followed through with his guilty plea on Tuesday.

  My colleagues had lots of theories about the plea rejections. Most favored the idea that the gang leaders in jail had found out that I would be the one accepting the pleas. In retaliation for my past refusal to cut deals, maybe they had instructed every defendant to sabotage the deals we had offered. When Powell didn’t come through, they cut out his tongue.

  It was a symbolic ki
lling, meant to send a message—there was no doubt about that. But what was the message?

  On Wednesday night, I slept with a loaded single-action .45 Kimber Pro Carry II next to my bed. I had bought it during my third year of law school at a gun shop in Gainesville after I got tangled up with some members of the federal witness protection program. I also made a point to stay away from the large window in my father’s study at the front of the house. I didn’t take a sleeping pill because I was worried that I wouldn’t wake up if somebody tried to break in. I knew Justice would bark like crazy, but if somebody actually made it inside, my black Lab would just try to lick him to death. For protection, I preferred the Kimber.

  It was a long night. Between missing my father, thinking about Rafael Rivera, trying to work on Tate’s case, and knowing that gang leaders might now be targeting me, I was so wired I could barely sleep. I struggled to get through the next day, and by Thursday night, I was in dire need of sleep. Shortly after midnight, I finally succumbed and popped two Ambien. I was late for work Friday morning.

  By noon on Friday, we knew my courtroom experience earlier in the week was not an isolated event. There had been no plea hearings on Wednesday, but every defendant scheduled to cop a plea on Thursday had backed out even though a different ADA had handled them. The public defenders had grown as jittery as the prosecutors and spent Thursday afternoon meeting with each defendant who was scheduled to plead guilty on Friday morning. All but one backed out on the spot.

  On Friday, the only holdout, Rontavius Eastbrook, pleaded guilty to a lesser included crime in exchange for a reduced sentence based on his past cooperation with police on a major sting operation. After the court accepted his deal, Rontavius was escorted directly from the courtroom to the district attorney’s office for processing. He was being released on time served and, in a deviation from prior procedures, was not sent back to the jail for processing. He was asked if he wanted police protection but scoffed at the idea.

  I got the text message on Saturday night, right after I finished my workout at the gym. Rontavius Eastbrook had been found dead in an alley in the projects. He died from a bullet wound to the back of the head.

  38

  On Monday morning, there were no plea bargains on the docket. Instead, Bill Masterson called a meeting for all prosecutors. Unless we had to be in court, we were expected to be in the main conference room at 10 a.m. sharp.

  In my three years at the prosecutor’s office, I’d never seen an in-house meeting start precisely on time. But when I arrived a few minutes before ten, every seat was taken, and I had to stand along a side wall with several of my colleagues. There was a buzz of excitement and a good deal of nervous energy. Most of us had become prosecutors because we were crusaders; we wanted to right wrongs. We saw recent developments as a frontal attack on the integrity of the criminal justice system, and we weren’t about to let the inmates run the asylum.

  Admittedly, a few prosecutors took the opposite approach. They believed the only way to break this logjam was to divide and conquer. They wanted to target a Latino gang and offer some sweet deals to get the wheels of justice grinding again. Once the African Americans learned that the Latinos were getting preferential treatment, they would want in on the action. It was the law of supply and demand; we just had to price the deals right. I thought it was the dumbest idea I had ever heard.

  Masterson walked into the meeting five minutes late, and the chatter quickly died down. He took a seat at the end of the table. Regina Granger stood behind him.

  The boss surveyed the room and gave a slight nod to most of us. These were the troops he had hand-selected, and you could read the look on his face—If I’m going to war, I want you men and women to go with me. He took a deep breath before he began.

  “I guess you’ve heard by now that the inmates have decided to play an interesting little game of chicken,” he said. “I always knew this job would be a little harder if they ever unionized.”

  The remark drew a few smiles, but Masterson remained serious. “We’re still trying to get to the bottom of who’s behind all this, and we have our suspicions. But that’s not why I called this meeting. Regardless of how or why this started, it’s the new reality, and we’ve got to deal with it.”

  There were a number of theories flying around the office about how the inmates had gotten organized. Some focused on the gang leaders, and the deputies had now put them all in isolation. Many of us suspected that Caleb Tate was involved. The pleas had started falling apart soon after he was locked up, and his firm had suddenly begun representing two of the gang leaders. But nobody was talking.

  “We’re squeezing the gang leaders and threatening them with new charges,” Masterson continued. “But until somebody blinks, we’ve basically got three choices. Some say we should single out the weakest inmates and give them blue-light specials—deals they can’t refuse. Part of the problem with that approach is that we’d have to use precious law enforcement assets to protect them once they get out. A plea bargain looks decidedly less appealing if you know you only get to live twenty-four hours after your release.

  “A second approach is to nol-pros all the nonviolent offenders. We’ve got limited resources. The public defender’s office has limited resources. Under this plan, we’d set the druggies free and just prosecute the rapists and murderers. That feels to me like we’re conceding defeat, and I’m not a big fan of playing dead before the first shot is fired.”

  Not to mention the fact that it might be a little hard to explain on the campaign trail, I thought.

  “There is a third alternative. We let them know that two can play this game. We bust our butts and prosecute every one of ’em to the full extent of the law. We cut no deals until further notice with anybody in Milton County. If they want to plead guilty with no promise of leniency and save themselves a trial, well . . . maybe they could talk us into that. But otherwise, we do the job the taxpayers pay us to do.”

  There were determined looks on most of the faces in the room, but there were also some skeptics. Even if we worked around the clock, there was no way we could get all the cases to trial on a timely basis. And even if we could, the public defender’s office would have no incentive to play along. Public defenders loved to complain about how overworked they were and how little budget they had. They would claim they couldn’t adequately prepare all of these cases, and if we got convictions, the appeals would clog up the courts for years.

  “Have you run the numbers on this, Bill?” one of the senior ADAs asked. “I mean, I’m willing to do whatever it takes, but we frankly don’t have the staff to pull this off.”

  “I know that,” Masterson replied. “And I know the PD’s office faces an even greater challenge. But I’ve given that some thought. I could ask our state legislators for emergency legislation that would allow us to hire lawyers from private firms as part-time prosecutors. They can already volunteer to help the public defenders. We could put a lot of pressure on all the big Atlanta firms and give them some positive publicity when they send us their young guns for one day a week. If we publicize the names of the firms, we could have fifty new prosecutors by the end of the month.”

  “I don’t know,” ADA Larry Hinson said. He had a reputation for being the last guy in each morning and one of the first to leave at night. “It’d take too long to train them. They won’t know what they’re doing. Most of the big-firm lawyers have never seen the inside of a courtroom.”

  Masterson stared him down. “You got a better idea, Larry? Because I’ve got lots of people who can help me identify the problems. I’m interested in solutions.”

  Larry shrugged. “I like the first option. Divide and conquer.”

  “Not me,” I said. Heads swiveled in my direction. “This is why I came to work here. I saw Mr. Masterson try the man who murdered my mother, and I knew that this was more than just a job for him. And that was not an easy case. To be honest, I don’t know if I would have survived if somebody hadn’t stood up for our
family and put Antoine Marshall behind bars.”

  The room was still. Everybody in the office knew about my history, but I had never played the victim card once in the last four years. I was playing it now.

  “If we back down from this, it’s just a matter of time before they do it again. And I’m not willing to look a rape victim or the family members of a murder victim in the eyes and tell them that the man who committed that crime is getting a deal because we’ve offered some blue-light specials. All because we’re not willing to work around the clock and train a few private-firm lawyers. So . . . I don’t know. I’ve probably already said too much, but I think we ought to do the job we’re getting paid to do.”

  The room became uncomfortably quiet while Masterson glanced around. “Anybody else want to say anything?” he asked. “I’m not putting this up for a vote, but I want your input.”

  I had mentored two first-year prosecutors who were sitting on the opposite side of the room. One at a time, they spoke up and echoed my concerns. The rookies were all in.

  A soft-spoken man named Al, a guy who had dedicated his professional life to the Milton County DA’s office, spoke next. He said he didn’t think we could ethically do anything other than prosecute these men and women to the full extent of the law. In the old days, he used to handle three times as many cases as he was handling now. And he was ready to step up.

  One by one, my fellow prosecutors spoke in support of Masterson’s third proposal. A few of my more dramatic colleagues even got a little choked up when they reminisced about the reasons they had come to this office in the first place. By the time the last person spoke, we were ready to storm the beaches. At least most of us were. A few lawyers stayed conspicuously silent, and Larry stared at a spot on the floor. No more two-hour lunches.

  “I guess that settles it,” Masterson said. “There’s never been a good time to commit a crime in Milton County. But God help anyone who breaks the law right now.”