The Onion Field

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Even civilians can see through it all, thought Karl. The lawyers could see through it. Why would I be picked for that. They’re just putting me there to get me off the street, to do it in a nice way. I’m too well known now just to stick me in some ordinary desk job. They think that’s where I should be after what I … after what they think I …

  He tried to stop thinking. He sat and stared and drank beer and hoped the dream would not come tonight. The dream which would never awaken him until it was over, but which seldom failed to awaken Helen when she heard him panting and felt his sweating body and saw him there in the dark running through his dream. Flat on his back, his legs pumping, the sobs tearing forth every few seconds.

  When she awakened him he would tremble and dry himself and go into the living room to the television.

  The first few times Helen followed him in.

  “Karl, please tell me.”

  “Helen, I told you I don’t remember what I was dreaming. I don’t even know if I was dreaming.”

  “Is something …”

  “Nothing’s bothering me.”

  “Well how can anybody help you? Karl, we’ve been married almost a year and I don’t even know you.”

  “I’m just a little tense from the trial. I’ll be all right.”

  “Tell me about the dream.”

  “I told you I don’t remember.”

  “We don’t talk, Karl. People have to talk.”

  “Nothing, Helen, there’s nothing …”

  And she would turn, angry and frustrated, and stalk back to her bed and lie there seething. Then she would feel the soaking sheets where his body had been and the anger would dissolve. Helen Hettinger would feel the fear and doubt creeping through the darkness to envelop her.

  She had always known herself to be a strong girl. But Helen’s kind of strength—the strength which had seen her through the birth of her daughter—was no match for the baffling unspeakable thing which was stealing her man away, possessing him. She couldn’t see it or touch it. She became frightfully aware of her inadequacy. “I’m not smart enough,” she would say. “I just don’t understand and he won’t tell me, can’t tell me.” She would not be able to sleep for an hour, but she would be asleep long before her husband came to bed.

  The next day during cross examination the witness looked only a little more haggard, perhaps darker around the eyes. By now he had begun compulsively digging his nails into his palms. His wife and his sister Miriam noticed. Other than that and the weight loss which showed in his cheeks, he looked pretty much the same.

  “Well,” said Attorney Ray Smith, “will you please give any explanation you choose to make to this jury as to why on March 12 in front of your police officers there you positively identified Jimmy Lee Smith as having shot bullets into Officer Campbell, and why in this courtroom you have said you could not identify him?”

  “Yes sir,” said the witness. “As I stated before, I made this in the form of an accusatory statement. I was not under oath then. I believe this is an accepted police procedure.”

  “What are the physical facts or the movement that leads you to believe that it was Jimmy Lee Smith who fired those four shots?”

  “As I looked back, as I am looking back, the form to the left of the form that is firing down into the body appeared to be moving. And it appeared to be moving from the spot that I last saw the defendant Powell standing in. Due to these circumstances, I am assuming that the figure that is over the body is that of Smith, and it is my assumption that Smith has moved forward also from the spot that he was standing in, and is over the body firing into it.”

  “That is an assumption on your part, you didn’t see it, did you?”

  “No sir, I did not see it.”

  And when the jury was in recess the old attorney felt obliged to address the court with his incessant problem.

  “Your Honor, I feel it would probably be appropriate to have some little remark in the record because in the event of an automatic appeal, the Supreme Court, of course, will be reading the entire record. Since the last outburst of Jimmy Smith, he has not talked with me, he refuses to talk with me, he slides his chair over some four or five or six feet to get away from me. Now it is not that he’s hurting my feelings by doing that, but I feel that the Supreme Court should know that the condition exists.”

  “Well, all the court can say is,” replied the judge, “that you are very vigorously representing the defendant, and this may be just a part of the defendant Smith’s stratagem to attempt to create some possible error or confusion in the record.”

  The client of Ray Smith arose wearily. His hair was cut so short now he was almost bald, and that coupled with the new glasses gave a mournful look to his soft quiet-spoken way.

  “Your Honor, for the past two days I have been fastin and prayin and I haven’t had anything to eat. My condition is not real weak, I am not physically sick, but I have been walkin rather slow back and forth between the courtrooms. And this afternoon, I was walkin slow and the two officers told Powell and the other two officers to go ahead, and they grabbed me by my arms and they jerked me and they forcibly ran me down the hallway and manhandled me and twisted me and turned me and shoved me into the bookin room!

  “I was only usin a slow motion to conserve my energy, and I would go on to say the reason I am fastin and prayin was on the advice of my mother, I call her my mother, I mean my auntie, Mrs. Iona Edwards.”

  “You are not suggesting that you are fasting because you are not receiving proper food from the county jail?”

  “No, I am not, your Honor. They have offered me food every meal every day as much as I want. I am doin this because of the condition of my folks. My aunt is seventy years old and she is a diabetic and I am doin this so that she won’t get no sicker. She cannot do what she is tryin to do, and I feel if I pray in this matter that God will help us. You know? You know what I mean?”

  Jimmy Smith often mentioned prayer and fasting and God during the course of his many motions and complaints he was permitted out of the presence of the jury. Privately, however, he would review his looted life and conclude that if there is a God, He must be a burglar.

  The next hours involved a lengthy hearing to decide whether Jimmy Smith was in fact manhandled. The court after taking sworn testimony was satisfied he was not. Jimmy then made another motion to fire his attorney.

  “I asked him, your Honor, I said, ‘Would you take my uncle with you to locate witnesses?’ It is a predominantly Negro neighborhood, your Honor. I said, ‘Will you take my uncle down with you, Mr. Smith?’ Now he said no. He said, ‘I’m gonna take my wife with me and I would rather not have him along with me and my wife.’ Which I understood right away.”

  “I can’t force you to eat, Mr. Smith,” said the judge. “And I can’t force you to talk to your attorney. But I would suggest to you that, as Mr. Ray Smith just said, it is certainly to your best interests and for the best interests as far as your defense is concerned, that you do co-operate with your counsel. All right. Let’s bring the jury down.”

  “Take me to the nearest lamppost!” shouted Jimmy, eyes like torches. “And put the hood over my head and execute me, because this is what is happenin here in this courtroom now! This is all that is happenin.”

  Jimmy sounded so brave and eloquent, he was surprised and rather pleased with himself.

  After reading a local editorial entitled “License to Kill” concerning easy paroles, Jimmy Smith decided to put his declaration in writing. The judge received a note:

  Seeing that you insist on giving me a Judas to represent me, why don’t you first don your white sheet and pillowcases and hang me to the nearst lamppost which I am sure would be more in keeping with the local temperment.

  Another note from Jimmy Smith, in his always neat and formal hand, complained of “vermin infested cells built for II men which contain VI or VII.”

  Karl Hettinger was excused from further testimony subject to being recalled. But he found that
escape from the case would not be that easy.

  The crank letters had started to arrive when one Los Angeles newspaper printed his home address. Most of them were incoherent and general and hardly bothered him at all, even the vicious ones. There were others, however, that did trouble him, those which threatened his family and those which were very specific, written by a man he had all but forgotten—a burly young homosexual whom he had once fought as a vice officer, and who had fallen into a gully near Ferndale Number Nine, breaking his collarbone.

  At first the homosexual’s letters merely reiterated earlier threats and complained that his arrest was unlawful, and that Hettinger and Calderwood had cost him a great deal of money and great pain. Then the letters from him began to get very specific:

  Dear Karl,

  I understand you were taken for a ride to some farm country near Bakersfield. They raise lots of chickens there. I understand you ran away and left your partner. That’s where you should end up. On a chicken farm.

  One day between court appearances, Helen saw him standing on the porch at the time the postman usually arrived.

  “What’re you waiting for, Karl?”

  “Oh nothing, Moms, nothing.”

  “Expecting a letter or something?”

  “No, not particularly.”

  But when those letters came, he would try to get them first. He gave the threatening ones to Pierce Brooks, and he double locked all doors at night, and kept the blinds always drawn in his baby’s room. The ones which accused him he read again and again before he gave them up.

  For Karl Hettinger, the summer was unbearably long. It was almost as bad waiting in dismal courthouse corridors or at the police building as it was to be on the stand. It was estimated that the trial would last all summer.

  “Can you approximate about how soon death would occur as a result of that type of a wound?” Schulman asked the pathologist who did the autopsy on Ian Campbell.

  “Well, that’s difficult to say, however I believe that the hemorrhage through this area would’ve been sufficiently severe that the mouth and the throat would fill with blood. This blood would get down into the air passages of the lung and death would probably result in fifteen minutes or thirty minutes, something like that.”

  “Doctor, I believe you related that number four was a fatal wound?”

  “Yes, it was a fatal wound inasmuch as it was a through and through wound of the heart. It was just about as promptly fatal as any wound could be expected to be. I’m sure that unconsciousness would result quite promptly in a matter of seconds and death would result in a matter of no more than a few minutes, perhaps five minutes at the most.”

  The prosecutor had in his hand photographs of the bullet torn, blood drenched body of Ian Campbell. The defense requested to approach the bench, where Ray Smith said: “Your Honor, the district attorney showed Mr. Moore and myself a photograph that I believe he is going to ask to be identified. I want to object on behalf of Jimmy Lee Smith on the ground that the photograph itself would be inflammatory, and it would certainly be an error to show it to the jury.

  “While Dr. Kade was testifying as to the course of one of the bullets, I noticed juror number one shuddered and looked at the man next to her. I don’t blame her for that. It seems to me that this photograph is merely cumulative and can serve no useful purpose except to upset members of the jury.”

  “I object,” said Moore, “to the introduction of the two photographs at this time based upon an illegal search and seizure caused by the illegal stopping of the Ford vehicle in Hollywood by Officer Hettinger and Officer Campbell. I also move at this time to strike all of Officer Hettinger’s testimony. That is, any testimony after he stopped the automobile, on the basis that he did so without probable cause.”

  “The objections and each of them are overruled.”

  Back at counsel table when a Kern County detective was testifying as to Gregory Powell’s initial statements, John Moore said, “I object on the grounds it is a violation of this defendant’s constitutional right to have the presence of an attorney or the advice of an attorney at any time.”

  “Oh, that is a frivolous objection,” said Schulman, but the prosecutor may never have been more wrong in his professional life.

  “I will cite the district attorney for misconduct,” snapped Moore.

  “And I will cite you,” said Schulman.

  “And move for a mistrial at this time,” said Moore.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” said the judge patiently, “the jurors will disregard the specific statement of Mr. Schulman that the objection is a frivolous one. The citations for misconduct are denied.”

  Among the long procession of prosecution witnesses was a Los Angeles robbery detective who had interviewed Jimmy Smith as to the armed robberies. He related Jimmy’s apparently evasive response to his questions.

  “Defendant Smith said to me: ‘Well, I can’t help it, I just can’t think.’

  “I said: ‘Well, what is the problem?’

  “He said: ‘I have nightmares. I can’t sleep. I just keep seeing that officer’s coat jumping.’

  “And at this time I had to admonish Mr. Smith because I told him again that we were only interested in robberies. That we could not overlap into the homicide investigation and we did not want to hear about it.”

  And then the detective read the statements of Gregory Powell as to the robberies, including a confession to at least one Las Vegas robbery the detective still believed Greg’s brother was actually responsible for:

  “Well sure, with the red hood on, I’ll bet you there isn’t a person down there that would tell you within twenty pounds how much I weighed,” Greg had told him. “I know they described me in the paper as at least six feet tall and weighing at least a hundred and ninety pounds. But I did that job too.”

  When it was Pierce Brooks’s turn to testify, Greg’s attorney once again repeated the old objections.

  “We will object, your Honor, on the constitutional grounds, violation of due process, and not free and voluntary, not having been advised of his right to counsel, nor having the advice of counsel.”

  “Well, if the court please,” said Schulman in exasperation, “I don’t know where the constitution says anyplace that a police officer …”

  “Pardon me. I made my objection,” said Moore.

  “The objections and each of them are overruled,” said the judge.

  The jury would hear the taped conversations of Brooks and Gregory Powell:

  “Greg, anytime you want to ask me a question, you go right ahead and ask me and I want to let you know now that I will never lie to you,” said the taped voice of Brooks. “I will either answer your question truthfully or I will tell you that I cannot answer the question, that it would interfere with the investigation.”

  Moore once again interrupted the proceedings.

  “I will make my objection on the constitutional grounds, violation of due process, without the benefit of consulting with an attorney, the advice of an attorney, or the presence of an attorney, and not free and voluntary.”

  “Not free and voluntary?” asked the judge.

  “Yes.”

  “All of the objections, with the exception of the objection ‘not being free and voluntary,’ are overruled. Do you desire to take the witness on voir dire examination as to any of the objections?”

  “Not at this time, your Honor.”

  “All right. All of the objections are overruled. I say, knowing the thinking of our appellate courts, that we have to be very very careful, particularly in a homicide case with a death penalty, because it’s a joint trial for the sake of convenience.”

  On the morning of August 6, with the air conditioning broken, the judge entered a suffocating courtroom. All three lawyers were looking unhappy but still had their white shirts buttoned at the throat and their ties adjusted. The air conditioning was repaired before a decision was made to let them remove their coats.

  “Pursuan
t to the provisions of Section 1089 and 1123 of the Penal Code,” the judge said that morning, “it appearing to the court that the alternate juror, Mrs. Jeans, is ill and unable to perform her duties as an alternate juror, and has, in addition, requested the court to be excused, she will be excused and discharged as an alternate juror.”

  John Moore then said, “Defendant Powell will move a mistrial on the basis that there was not a sufficient showing for her excuse, your Honor.”

  “All right. The motion is denied.”

  When the next detective witness took the stand, Schulman said, “I am now going to ask you to relate the conversation that you had with the defendant Gregory Powell after the defendant Jimmy Smith left the room.”

  “I will object on the grounds previously stated,” said Moore.

  “If the court please,” said Schulman, beside himself now, “I would like to find out just where the constitution says …”

  “We don’t want to speak in front of the jurors,” said the judge.

  “Withdraw it,” said Schulman.

  The jury then heard Gregory Powell’s boast to the robbery detective: “Anytime you can find one where it’s got Schenley’s on it, it’s me!”

  The hot summer days bled one into the other for Karl Hettinger, until August 9, when after a defense motion was granted, he found himself standing once more in a place he thought he would never see again. Now, though, the summer sun was in the cloudless sky over Bakersfield. It was hot and still and the lawyers were in shirtsleeves, as was the witness, who stood in the dust of the road near enough to the chairs where the jurors sat by the onion field. He looked at the stakes in the ground which had been placed to represent where four men stood exactly five months ago when the sky was black and bitter cold and the wind was howling.

  Karl looked across the field he had run through and he thought of the glasses he had lost and he wondered if they might be just on the other side of the wire fence where the tumbleweed was packed solid. But he did not go to the fence and look. Karl, like Ian Campbell, was frugal. He did not take the loss of a thirty-dollar pair of glasses lightly, and, in fact, he had still not replaced them. But he would not go into that field, nor near that fence. Even now in the light of day with so many others here. He stood where he must, looked where he must, answered what he must.