The Onion Field

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Karl Hettinger still did not respond, and the insensitive prosecutor began to wonder about something which none of Karl Hettinger’s colleagues and superiors had even noticed.

  Seldom had a preliminary hearing aroused such interest. It was held March 19. The defendants were still wearing their leather jackets. They had not yet learned to adjust to their new lives as cop killers, notorious on one side of the law, celebrated on another. They had not as yet settled into their bewildering new lives in the “high power” tank of the Los Angeles County Jail. They were still tense and drawn.

  The young defendants were getting more deference than either would ever again receive in his life. No one wanted the slightest hint of ill treatment or prejudice to cloud the subsequent court record and interfere with swift retributive justice for the two men. There had seldom been such public opinion in any Los Angeles murder case. Hardly a day passed without letters to the editor, or editorial comment on television. The public could not fathom the ultimate cruelty: We told you we were going to let you go but …

  Deputy Public Defender John Moore was an excellent foil for Marshall Schulman. He was no less aggressive a trial lawyer, but he was less apparent. He was thin, bookish, mild in voice and demeanor. A slashing attacker like Schulman could often look callous against a defender like Moore, but both men were experienced careful trial lawyers.

  There was another public defender, Kathryn McDonald, a middle aged energetic spinster, assisting Moore with the defendant Gregory Powell. But Greg was frustrating his attorneys by adamantly refusing any suggestion of an insanity plea.

  “I’m having a hell of a hassle with the public defender’s office, Mr. Brooks,” said Greg.

  “Oh?”

  “They’re pushing me and want me to plead insanity, and Mr. Brooks, I’m not insane, never was. And they’re coming up with all this malarkey about my brain operation and all this other jazz and I don’t know enough about the law to know whether I can fight them or not. They’re gonna drag this goddamn case out for two or three years. If it was possible to plead guilty, I would plead guilty and to hell with all these lawyers. I know there’s a law that allows a man to represent himself.”

  “Well, let me give you a piece of advice if you’ll accept it,” said Brooks. “There’s an old saying in the courts that only a fool represents himself. Even great and famous judges say that if they were in trouble they’d have an attorney represent them. You should be represented by an attorney that understands the law.”

  John Moore was incensed to learn that his client was still seeing the detective. And Greg was to confront Moore saying, “I want you to know that Sergeant Brooks has my permission to see me anytime he wants to.”

  Moore replied in disgust to Brooks, “You don’t have to ask my permission if that’s the way he wants it.”

  Moore found his client to be intelligent, headstrong, egocentric, and extremely unappealing from the standpoint of jury impression. It was even impossible to direct the young man how to sit less straight and rigid at the counsel table, and how not to look at the jury with his intimidating fearful blue eyed stare.

  Perhaps the most difficult job belonged to court-appointed Ray Smith, an aging, white haired defense attorney from the old school, given to homespun ways and homilies, who became thoroughly despised by his client Jimmy Smith almost from the first. He perhaps never believed that Jimmy Smith might not be lying when he protested his innocence, when he adamantly denied firing the four shots in the officer’s chest. Ray Smith saw his job as that of saving Jimmy Smith from the gas chamber, of somehow salvaging a life sentence from the overpowering people’s case, and accepting a life verdict as total victory.

  The only witnesses to testify at the preliminary hearing were the autopsy surgeon, Dr. Kade, and Karl Hettinger, who looked different to the defendants, thinner and younger without the glasses he had lost that night and not replaced. Marshall Schulman would be told a hundred times in later years that he could have put on an impregnable case in one week with just these two witnesses. But that, he would bitterly answer, was hindsight.

  The hearing was held before Judge Edmund Cooke. The defendants were held to answer on the charge of first-degree murder and bound over for trial. It was an uneventful hearing marked only by the frightening testimony of the surviving officer.

  At five minutes before ten in the morning, after the witness had recited the events of March 9th, his voice breaking at the end, Marshall Schulman approached the witness, who was sitting hunched over in the witness box, his hands clasped between his knees.

  “Would you identify the party in this picture?”

  “That was my partner, Officer Ian Campbell.”

  “You saw him in life, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you saw him in death?”

  “Yes.”

  Judge Cooke looked down at the eyes of the young policeman and said, “We’ll take a recess. I think the officer has had enough.”

  There was, from the witness’s point of view, only one question asked of him that day which was to return to him that night as he lay next to his sleeping pregnant wife, himself unable to sleep. The one innocuous question asked by the elderly lawyer for Jimmy Smith: You were not restrained in any way in the back of car, were you?

  Why did he ask that? thought Karl. What did he mean by that? What could I have done back there? Weren’t those guns in the front restraint enough? I knew someone would say it, that I should have done something back there. Hit them with a tire wrench? Sure, in that little car, and a cocked gun in Ian’s belly, and three more guns. Sure. You were not restrained in any way.…

  But maybe he didn’t mean it that way. Maybe he was just trying to show that his client wasn’t really so bad after all. No, not really so bad. They didn’t handcuff you. They weren’t so bad. Maybe that’s all he meant. Maybe he didn’t mean the other thing.

  By now Karl was sure that almost all policemen were critical of his behavior that night. The way they looked at him in the Hollywood coffee room and especially in the police building cafeteria. The way so many heads turned as he entered. He was sure there were whispers. It was that memorandum that started it. Surrender is no guarantee of safety to anyone. Surrender …

  All right now, hold on, he told himself. Let’s be logical about it. And Karl Hettinger, for the first time, deliberately thought through the entire night of March 9th, gouging his memory to focus on each word spoken, each nuance of each word, each gesture and nuance of gesture of Powell and Smith and Ian, and of himself. His side of the bed was dripping wet when he finished. It was after one in the morning. He decided he was absolutely blameless in the death of Ian Campbell. He vowed never to deliberately think of it again. But he couldn’t sleep. He got up and drank a can of beer and watched a television movie.

  Greg’s daughter Lisa Lei was born to Maxine on May 13, and Greg’s attorneys brought him into court two weeks later when they feared his recent moods of depression would infringe upon the coming trial.

  “Dr. Crahan, tell me what medication the defendant is receiving now, if you know, sir,” the witness was asked.

  “He’s been receiving three types of antacids and some tranquilizers.”

  “What is the purpose of the antacids?”

  “To allay his verbal complaints.”

  “I note you have checked the defendant’s blood pressure. Did you check to compare that with prior blood pressures of the defendant?”

  “Yes. The blood pressures range around 110 to 120. That’s normal.”

  “Dr. Crahan, you are here, of course, to aid the court in determining the merits of Mr. Powell’s contentions that he hasn’t been able to hold any food down for fourteen days. Did you check his weight yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “One hundred and fifty pounds, the same he claimed on admission to the jail.”

  “Do you have a record on any other weight?”

  “Yes.”
/>   “What was that?”

  “He was weighed a week or two ago, and he weighed one hundred and forty-nine pounds at that time. He gained a pound since.”

  “Thank you. That is all.”

  Jimmy Smith was a celebrity in the high power tank reserved for murderers and escape risks. His picture had been on front pages for days and everyone recognized him. Jimmy was delighted with the waves and deferential glances from the other inmates. They passed magazines and cigarettes to him and clucked sympathetically when he told how he’d been wronged and then betrayed by that snitch Gregory Powell.

  A few days after his arrival, Jimmy saw two young blacks initiate a futile act of violence born of a hatred and defiance Jimmy could not even begin to fathom, not even at this time of his life.

  The two young men, after screaming their hatred of cops and whites, dragged their cell bunks against the wall and propped them up to make room. Then they tore the insides from their pillows and filled them with hardback books and coffee cups. They used torn blanket strips to tie the pillow sacks to their wrists. The first three deputies in that cell were met with an astonishing attack which brought reinforcements and a mattress shield. The two inmates were finally overpowered and choked by towels the deputies carried in their pockets for that purpose.

  Jimmy Smith could not forget the shouts and moans of the prisoners and deputies bloodied in that fight. Jimmy saw one of the young blacks dragged away splattered with blood from a head wound, and that night Jimmy dreamed of blood. His dream was drenched in rivers of blood, and for a moment he saw a bloody arm reaching toward him. The arm was so bloody he couldn’t bring himself to look at its owner. The bloody arm awoke him.

  Jimmy spent the first week reading about himself and watching television accounts of the murder case. He watched the television film of the funeral and saw Ian Campbell’s widow grieving. He read the many newspaper headlines. He listened to a county supervisor and even the governor say, “Even though I’m opposed to capital punishment …”

  The letters to the editor demanding retribution frightened him, especially the important editorial which said there is no such thing as rehabilitation for such brutish slayers. But what frightened him most was that many paroles were going to be canceled because of the notoriety of the Powell-Smith murder case. Jimmy looked closely at his fellow inmates the day this news was broadcast. Though it didn’t directly affect anyone awaiting trial in the county jail, still, you never knew. He and Greg had caused the loss of other men’s paroles. That was something to truly fear.

  One memorable day, Jimmy was able to get close with an inmate who had managed to smuggle half an ounce of heroin into the tank. With what he could beg from his Nana, Jimmy Smith escaped from his tormentors. It lasted almost a week. The dreams of the body on the ground came no more to Jimmy Smith. Once he finally and irrevocably decided he just could not fix in his mind a picture of Powell standing over the body firing down into it, he stopped dreaming. It was the attempt to visualize it which brought about the dreams in the first place, he reasoned. That’s the only explanation possible. After all, he told his lawyer, he had done nothing to feel guilty about. He was sick of hearing people talk about conscience, this thing that white people dreamed up. Jimmy Smith now slept well, ate well, and never dreamed troublesome dreams. He was telling the unvarnished truth when he said that the thing called guilt or conscience did not exist. For him, it did not.

  Karl Hettinger had been dividing his working hours between Hollywood station and homicide division. When the trial date got nearer, he would be assigned temporarily to homicide to be available until the completion of the trial. After the trial he would be given another assignment.

  “Driving for the chief of police?” said Helen when he told her.

  “Yeah, if I want it.”

  “If you want it? Why wouldn’t you want it? How many officers get such a chance?”

  “That’s just it, Helen. Why am I getting it? Because I’m notorious, that’s why. Everyone knows about me now.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they don’t think I’m fit to be a street policeman because of what I … what some of them think I was respons … Well, maybe this is sort of a nice way of putting me away.”

  “Karl, it’s a day job with weekends off. And you wear a suit and just go to work and come home like any other businessman. Why read all this other stuff into it?”

  “I just think what other policemen might say, people who’d put their names in for that job and see me just move in.”

  Helen Hettinger, now almost seven months pregnant, wondered about this man she had married, realized how little she knew him. After all, they had been wed only a few months when the murder happened. She had just been getting to know him then. Now he was so different. He never laughed or joked like he used to. He was losing weight and staying up almost every night, long after she went to bed. He was avoiding their friends.

  She wished he’d talk to her about the whole thing, the coming court trial and about how he felt at work. But he just wouldn’t tell her anything. When she’d ask, he’d just shrug or smile and say nothing was wrong. He wouldn’t even get mad when she tried to nag him into talking. If he’d only get mad once in a while it would be good for both of them. He never would. He’d just quietly and stubbornly resist.

  It was impossible for Helen or anyone else to make Karl reveal his innermost thoughts. You just didn’t burden others with your problems. It wasn’t the family way.

  Judge Mark Brandler had a sensitive face, pale hair, a long thin nose slightly hooked, eyes which crinkled and smiled beneath slightly drooping lids. Jimmy Smith looked at the face and had hope.

  The judge had come to America as a small child during the First World War, a refugee from Belgium. He had worked in the office of celebrity lawyer Jerry Geisler and had been a deputy district attorney for many years. He was the last appointment of Governor Earl Warren before the governor himself became the world’s most famous jurist. Mark Brandler was proud that in his sixteen years as a deputy district attorney he had never been beaten in a jury trial. He was prouder that in his years on the Superior Court bench he had never been reversed by a higher court.

  “Is there any reason why you are personally requesting that the public defender be relieved and that you be substituted as attorney representing yourself?” Judge Brandler asked in another pretrial motion.

  “I feel I know myself, and I feel I am more familiar and I just want to handle it myself,” Gregory Powell said.

  “You haven’t had any training in connection with rules of evidence, have you?”

  “I’ve read several books. I feel that I am adequately capable of representing myself. I wish that I could have, to help me, the use of the law library.”

  “How old are you, Mr. Powell?”

  “Twenty-nine years old.”

  “What education have you had?”

  “I started at Cadillac Michigan High School but I left in the ninth grade. I finished my high school in a period of eighteen months while I was in Leavenworth, Kansas, and received a certificate of equivalency from Topeka Kansas Educational Board. I took various college courses.”

  “What college courses did you take?”

  “I studied logic under Dr. Burke. And I had first year and second year of college algebra, and I studied some acoustics and several subjects related to music.”

  Jimmy Smith’s pretrial appearances were more concerned with jail conditions than with the impending battle for his life.

  “Well, what’s happened is they put me in a tank, your Honor,” said Jimmy. “In a tank where I know, beyond a fact, where they keep fellows that are what they call snitches, and I know for a fact, from my own benefit, that the food is tampered with because the other inmates hate the guys in there and they can’t get to them, and they have me locked in the end cell by myself with no walkin privileges. I won’t eat the food down there. I don’t know what’s in it. I’ve he
ard all types of rumors. That’s all I wanted to say.”

  Things were not going well in county jail for Gregory Powell. On June 26 a sheriff’s sergeant was contacted by an inmate facing an armed robbery charge who wanted to betray Gregory Powell in exchange for a letter to the judge advising of his cooperation.

  The inmate related that Greg had in some way come into possession of two hundred aspirin tablets and was planning to swallow them and be sent to the General Hospital. The informer had been urged by Greg to slash his own wrists severely enough to be taken to the hospital. Once there, Maxine was to arrange for two guns to be smuggled to the informer through a certain hospital employee.

  And another jail inmate told a deputy that Greg was taking a large quantity of aspirin, “trying to kill his fool self or to put on a good act so that he might go to the hospital.”

  They were not the only two to inform on Gregory Powell and he was not taken to the hospital.

  A week later another inmate in cellblock 10-A-2 had a secret conversation with a jail lieutenant informing him that according to Greg, Douglas Powell, Greg’s younger brother, was supposed to plant some guns in the courtroom and that Gregory Powell would crash out, “Dillinger style” in Greg’s words. The inmate volunteered to remain close to Greg and inform on further escape preparations up to and including the break. The inmate only expected any help that could be given when his own probation violation was brought before Judge Brandler later in the month. The inmate’s further services were declined, but courtroom security was tightened.

  Finally that same week another inmate informed the jail captain that Greg claimed Douglas Powell was to cut the chairs in the courtroom and insert guns in the cushions, and that he might use a smoke bomb diversion during the inevitable shootout which would follow.

  Another informer detailed several of Greg’s alternate plans. One involved striking a juror which he thought would lead to an automatic mistrial, a later lunacy hearing, and finally a transfer to Atascadero State Mental Hospital from where an escape would not be difficult.