The Onion Field

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “And she was telling me that the evidence was overwhelming. That’s what shocked me. And I say, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ because it was just an impulsive reply. I mean, it was like a psychological bombshell that she should say that to me. And I said, ‘It seemed to me that I smelled something for a long time,’ and that is what I said. I don’t know if I mentioned Attorney Ray Smith’s name.

  “After all, I’m sitting in the jury box and I’m under oath, and why she did that to me, I don’t know. She simply got a psychological impulsive statement.”

  “Well, Mrs. Bobbick, the court certainly will make inquiry into this alleged misconduct on the part of Miss Decker.”

  “Yes sir, I would like to say one more thing. I want to say what happened in the jury room.”

  “I don’t want to discuss what happened in the jury room.”

  “I would like to say one more thing. I feel that because this has happened now and what she did, I’m probably disqualified as a juror, because that is brainwashing. I mean, that is saying something to a juror that shouldn’t have been said. I purposely avoid having lunch with people and doing anything improper, and she comes up to me and says that. I feel that because of what is going on now, perhaps I’ll be antagonized. I feel that I should be relieved of jury duty because this is important as far as my conscience is concerned. It’s a psychological brainwashing thing that is like a snowballing that has been going on and perhaps maybe I’m …”

  “Mrs. Bobbick, if I may, we certainly will make an investigation into the alleged statement of Miss Decker,” said the judge.

  “In other words, all these things have an effect on the human brain,” said Mrs. Bobbick. “I’m just like anyone else. My brain is like a sponge. If something happens to it, it has a reaction. I’m not dead or anything!”

  “No, Mrs. Bobbick,” said the judge, glancing toward the court reporter who was taking the testimony.

  “Perhaps it was an impulse on her part. Perhaps a psychological thing. I’m a living human being and I’m influenced like other people are, but I try to go off by myself, to keep away from people. I have lunches myself. I don’t know what it does to me.”

  “Mrs. Bobbick, we have no intention whatsoever of disqualifying you as a juror.”

  “I mean, now, see, this is another incident, and it has a psychological reaction on me. I can’t help it. I am one of those human beings. I am very level-minded and I am very conscientious.”

  “We know that you are because you listened very attentively to the evidence and you took copious notes throughout the trial.”

  “I know.” Mrs. Bobbick smiled. “And I would like to ask another question. If at the end of your instructions I still feel as if I’m disqualified, could I get up and say I am disqualified?”

  “No.”

  “If I don’t get up, in other words, I will feel that everything is leveled off.”

  “There should be no reservations in your mind. All we are interested in is having a fair and impartial jury.”

  “Do you feel I’m leveled off? I feel I am. But I’ll ask your opinion.”

  “As long as you feel that way about it. Your state of mind is the important thing.”

  “I am leveled off. It probably was just one of those things.”

  “Thank you very much,” said the judge.

  At a later in-chambers hearing the judge sat before the woman deputy.

  “How long have you been a deputy sheriff, Miss Decker?”

  “Sixteen and a half years, your Honor.”

  “And knowing you and your exemplary record, the court won’t question your conduct in connection with this matter. However, since Mrs. Bobbick is one of our regular jurors the court would suggest that you confine your activities to assisting in meeting the needs of the jurors.”

  “Yes, your Honor,” the deputy replied.

  Judge Brandler sighed and ran his fingers through his fine pale hair, and his sleepy lids dropped slightly and he wondered if this trial would ever end with the record intact, with not only the defendants, but now the jurors themselves behaving in such a way to threaten mistrial.

  The judge had little reason to feel reassured. The next day the court was given a handwritten note:

  Juror No. 4 has requested disqualification as a juror in this matter. Juror No. 4 has made this request because of what she, the juror, says is unnecessary dissension, thus possibly causing her to become ill and thereby not be able to fully concentrate and render a proper and just decision.

  The judge then instructed Dr. Crahan, the court psychiatrist, to examine Mrs. Bobbick, but was advised by the doctor that the juror refused. The doctor however did have the opportunity of observing her and ventured an opinion that she appeared to be a schizoid personality with attendant suspicions of hostility, but at that time he found nothing to warrant the court excusing her as a juror by reason of conditions of health. However, Dr. Crahan did warn the judge that if the court was advised that the juror became hysterical or showed any other signs of breaking down, to let Dr. Crahan know so that the doctor could again attempt to examine her to ascertain whether there was any change in the condition.

  The judge decided to proceed with the juror and hope she could endure. However, on September 3 he received another note:

  I, Mrs. Bobbick, Juror No. 4, would like to make a request of the court to be relieved of further duty because of extreme hostility which appears to border on coercion and force.

  This time the doctor did examine the juror and the judge wrote:

  The court was advised by Dr. Crahan of the following facts based upon his physical observations of Juror No. 4: She appeared to be hysterical, her eyes were popping, she was gesticulating with her hands, she was rambling in her conversation, she couldn’t sit still, and she appeared nervous and tense. The doctor advised the court that continuing on as a juror might well seriously impair her health.

  If Marshall Schulman was distressed by the news, the defense was elated and saw a chance for a mistrial at least.

  Pierce Brooks shrugged wearily and privately expressed confidence that Judge Brandler could work things out. In his years as a detective he had seen a thousand jurors who were not merely crazy but were incredibly stupid to boot. It was all a chancy thing, after all, this whole jury business. That’s what the detective muttered privately, but publicly he controlled his disgust. He revered the courts and the law and was the kind of man who had always served without question.

  The defense wasted no time in calling the doctor to challenge his recommendation to excuse the juror.

  “What is your field of specialty?” asked John Moore.

  “Internal Medicine and psychiatric diagnosis. I have practiced medicine for some thirty-five years, and have examined between five and ten thousand people for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County as medical director of county jail.”

  “Have you ever examined a juror who was holding out as a minority in a jury room?”

  “Objected to as assuming facts not in evidence,” said Schulman.

  “Objection sustained.”

  “What were the statements she made about the other jurors?” continued Moore.

  “That they were abusing her, cursing her, and they were suspicious of her. She had made the statement that she had cried for the first time in forty years. And she told the judge in chambers that she saw a rattlesnake up near her home and she called the police and the police came and the juror said, ‘Do you know, Judge, the police shot that poor rattlesnake?’ ”

  “This is a capital case, your Honor,” said Ray Smith. “I for one would like to have Mrs. Bobbick come down here and tell us on the record what is going on that has caused her to become so hysterical that she had to write and ask your Honor for permission to get off the jury.”

  “All right. The request of counsel is denied,” said the judge. “The court will order the discharge of juror number four and direct that the name of an alternate shall be drawn to take her place.”

 
; “I ask for a mistrial!” said Moore, but he was denied.

  On the fourth of September, Gregory Ulas Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith were finally found guilty of first-degree murder, and Gregory Powell wasted no time in making a motion to represent himself during the penalty trial.

  “Due to complete disagreement with both my lawyers, I intend to discharge them immediately,” Greg informed the court, and it was astonishing how much he himself sounded like an attorney after listening and learning for two months: “I don’t believe I ever stated at any time I felt I was incapable of defending myself, as the district attorney maintains. I think I stated, if the record will reflect, that I realized I didn’t have enough time to prepare my case. I think Mr. Schulman has made assumptions as to what I know and what I do not know, and I feel that this is none of his business. The court is not aware of some of the colloquy and the different issues that have gone on between counsel and defendant. Therefore what Mr. Moore has done in his own behalf and what he has done at my urgent insistence is something the court cannot possibly know. The argument that Mr. Moore presented to the jury, I wrote the night before. Many of the things which were in the argument I had written out myself, your Honor. I could have made the same argument and done as well.”

  Pierce Brooks looked at Greg and listened to his newly acquired legal jargon and rather surprising eloquence and said to Marshall Schulman, “What an ego! Yes sir, that’s my boy!”

  “What is going on here?” demanded Schulman. “This is just another method of presenting some questions on appeal, and Mr. Moore is just sitting there and letting it go by!”

  “All right, I know this much,” said Greg. “Mr. Moore cannot possibly obtain my cooperation if I will not give it. And I have stated that I will not. I have made my position quite clear.”

  “Your Honor,” said Jimmy Smith, now entering the debate, and the heavy-lidded blue eyes of Judge Brandler moved back and forth toward the many speakers at the counsel table. “Mr. Powell has been treated with a silver spoon in his mouth ever since we were arrested. I haven’t did anything! I am innocent and I know I can … that I could prove it. I could prove it to this jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Goin to Bakersfield was my idea, not my attorney’s idea and the record will so reflect that I am the first one that mentioned it. Then he comes back and asked the court, would the court grant the motion to go to Bakersfield as a part of the defense. We went to Bakersfield. There was no defense put on for my part. My attorney ran around drunkedly all over the ground. And I attempted to call him back and ask him whether they could put Mr. Hettinger on the stand and ask certain questions that would prove beyond a doubt that I was innocent. He would not ask him. It was a physical impossibility of Hettinger runnin down the road and lookin over his shoulder. And another thing, I asked him to give me a hypnosis test. Any kind of way, a psychiatrist, anything. He hasn’t made any attempt to do that. He refused. I did not commit the crime. This whole trial has been put on for this man Powell. He is a self-confessed murderer. May I just say one more thing, your Honor?”

  “Yes,” sighed the judge.

  “I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I, Jimmy Lee Smith, is more qualified to defend myself in this courtroom than Gregory Ulas Powell. And also the district attorney has papers in his possession that will prove these facts to this court. I think.”

  “Prove what?”

  “Prove I am qualified and capable of defendin myself, maybe not verbally, but when given opportunity to take my time and to write out things that I wish to say, and to have use of the law library which I have asked the court on occasions, and I was refused. Sergeant Brooks even knows I am not guilty. They all know it. That is why all these lies were produced in this court. Just to get me. I want another attorney. Please.”

  “I am not interested in the many falsehoods that Jimmy Smith has just related,” said Schulman, worrying now about an issue being raised on appeal concerning Smith’s accusation of a drunken attorney. “I think the court should make some observations on the alleged drunken stupor Mr. Ray Smith was supposed to have been in at Bakersfield.”

  “I believe the word he used was ‘drunkedly,’” said the judge.

  “Not only there but here in the courtroom too, your Honor!” shouted Jimmy.

  “The court has no information that during the course of this trial Mr. Smith had partaken of any intoxicating liquor.”

  “You have almost got me almost in the gas chamber!” Jimmy cried. “What am I gonna do? Your Honor, please have mercy on me!”

  “The motion that the court is ruling on now is just the motion that Mr. Ray Smith be relieved, and that the court at public expense appoint another attorney to represent you. That motion the court does deny.”

  “Well, your Honor, you will have to relieve him in some kind of way,” Jimmy said. “He must be relieved, your Honor. If you don’t, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I must do somethin. I can just sit here and don’t do anything just as well as to have him. The man is not doin a thing.”

  “All right …” the judge said, but Jimmy interrupted him once again.

  “Would you consider, your Honor, if I brought in a witness to state that after talkin to Mr. Smith they smelled liquor on his breath?”

  “All I can suggest to you is, the mere fact, if it is a fact, that an attorney may have a drink during noon hour is certainly no basis for any criticism of that attorney. Was there anything further?”

  “Yes, your Honor,” said Greg, on another subject. “There are no mutual meeting grounds for Mr. Moore and myself, and I think that I quite clearly stated this morning my requests and my wishes, and they are still the same. I still insist, and desire—demand—that I be allowed to defend myself for the duration of this trial, and I am prepared to go forward immediately. There is no mutual meeting of the minds. Mr. Moore has indicated that he wishes to withdraw, and I concur, and have already asked that he be discharged.”

  “As a lawyer, I know,” said Attorney Ray Smith, “that the facts of this case justify a first-degree murder conviction. I have been striving for one thing, and that is to keep Jimmy from the death penalty and that has been the theory of my defense, if you can call that a defense. For that reason, I will not request to withdraw.”

  “I’m tired. I can’t stand it anymore,” moaned Jimmy Smith. There were others in the courtroom who felt the same.

  On September 6, during the penalty trial, Gregory Powell, representing himself, called his mother to the stand.

  “Take the stand and be seated. State your name, please,” said the clerk, and Greg was looking more fit, well dressed, and relaxed than at any time in the case thus far, prompting Schulman to remark that being a lawyer agrees with him.

  “I would ask your relationship to anyone in this case,” said Greg.

  “I am your mother,” replied the witness.

  “What is your occupation?”

  “Housewife and college student.”

  “Will you give your age, please.”

  “Fifty years old.”

  “Mrs. Powell, could you tell us in general what your health has been since the year 1941?”

  “I’m sorry, but I am going to have to object to that as immaterial to the issues,” said Schulman.

  “I expect to prove by this testimony that during the formative years of my life the responsibilities of raising children were placed upon me,” said Greg. “She has had, your Honor, I don’t know the dates, but she has had ten major operations. She has had Bright’s disease. Included in these ten major operations were three thyroids during this period of years.”

  “I am going to object to this, if the court please,” said Schulman. “Why do I have to be placed at a disadvantage just because he chooses to release his counsel and defend himself?”

  “I don’t feel you are placed at a disadvantage,” Greg retorted.

  “It’s not up to you to feel one way or the other,” shot Schulman, “and if Mr. Powell has anything to say he should address it to the
court. If he wants to play lawyer I think he should act like one!”

  And then Greg, proving he had in fact learned to act like at least one lawyer, replied: “I would cite the district attorney for that remark, your Honor!”

  After the judge restored order Greg continued, looking yet more confident.

  “Mrs. Powell, would you give a brief history of my personal health until school age, please?”

  “At the age of three and a half you had scarlet fever and you were in the hospital with a mastoid operation. When you were four and a half you fell out of a car and had a serious head injury.”

  “If the court please …” said Schulman, then gave up and slumped in his seat.

  “Do you remember, Mrs. Powell, your financial status at the time?”

  “We were very poor.”

  “Did you have an occasion to think about the winter months that were spent there?”

  “You want me to tell them I broke up a chair to have a fire one day to keep us warm?”

  Schulman was now unable to control his eyes, which were rolling back every few seconds, giving him a stricken look.

  “Would you say that despite all this, it was a happy home?”

  “Yes, I certainly would. You don’t have to have money to be happy.” Ethel Powell smiled.

  “Going back to the time that I started the first grade, what was your general health at the time?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Could you tell us specifically?”

  “Yes, the very first thing—I know it doesn’t matter because it happened before you were born—but I lost all my teeth through an accident, and that left an infection in my mouth, and the infection spread through my body, so my health was in terrible shape.”

  “How serious was your Bright’s disease, Mrs. Powell?” asked Greg.

  “I was given three months to live.”

  “While I was attempting to take care of the three younger children, did you receive any disciplinary reports about me from school?”