The Onion Field

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Tomorrow would be November 6, 1969. The people would make the final argument to the jury in the Jimmy Smith trial. It would then be over. It would really be over. Then they could decide whether to give him death or life or something else. He didn’t care what they did. He didn’t care if they released him. He only wanted it to be right. That everything would be right. He only wanted it to end. That’s all the gardener wanted. That’s all he dared hope for.

  EIGHTEEN

  It was a different ball game this time around,” the prosecutor complained. “The statements weren’t admissible anymore. I couldn’t get in any of those copouts to Pierce Brooks, those terrible damaging statements that showed what kind of people they were.”

  Pierce Brooks, retired L.A.P.D. captain, now chief of police in Springfield, Oregon, just sat in court each day, having been subpoenaed from so far away, and shook his head sadly at the reversal which brought him back to Los Angeles.

  “We could’ve just put Karl Hettinger on back in 1963,” he said, “Karl and the coroner. A two-witness trial. One week. If only we’d known what the Supreme Court was going to do.

  “I was just trying to be thorough. To get at all the truth. Why don’t they tip you off when they’re going to make monumental changes? And when they do, why does it apply ex post facto to cases already tried? Just because they’re still on appeal? That doesn’t make sense. Ex post facto isn’t legal in any other human endeavor. Why?

  “They criticized me for getting too much of the truth. For too many confessions,” said Brooks. “We’re only here now to protect the court record, to say the right things so a higher court can’t reverse the case. Nobody cares about the truth.”

  In the early summer of 1969 the chief witness against Gregory Powell was a different man from the one who had testified in the emotion charged 1963 trial. His husky voice was stretched to a rasp. He stared lifelessly at the wall in the rear of the courtroom. His testimony was flat and riddled with: “I don’t recall.” He had managed to retain enough of the salient points to be what former detective Pierce Brooks would still say was a fine witness. But the detail had all vanished, along with names, faces, other events from his past. It was hard for him to believe he had ever been something other than what he was.

  “Would you say,” asked Deputy Public Defender Maple, “that the trousers they wore that night were darker than the jackets?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Were the jackets of a black leather type?”

  “I recall them being a leather type. I don’t recall if they were black or brown.”

  “Did they have collars? Did they come up close to the neck line?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Do you recall whether they were buttoned or zippered?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Were they long sleeved?”

  “Yes, as I recall.”

  “Were they open at the neck?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Would you be able to tell me, sir, if Mr. Powell had a shirt on beneath it?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  And still later:

  “Did you tell Officer Brooks that Jimmy Smith was facing you with a .38 in his hand but you weren’t sure which .38 it was?”

  “I don’t recall saying that.”

  “Did you tell Brooks that Powell stood to Smith’s right, facing Campbell?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “When you were being interviewed by Brooks, were you aware that Mr. Powell had been arrested?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  The witness sat at the stand, his sunburned face like a baked apple, and listened in resignation to the district attorney explaining the well-worn chart to these jurors, as it had been explained to other jurors.

  “The green arrow points to a farm area called the Coberly West. The blue arrow is the Mettler ranch. The white arrow is another Mettler ranch. The light blue arrow is a place called the Opal Fry ranch. The red arrow depicts the place where a police officer died.”

  Red arrow, thought the witness. There was something about a red arrow once. What was it? The witness scratched his memory and planted the seed but it was not like scratching friendly soil. Most of the time his memory would not bear. The soil of his mind was inhospitable and barren like the choking dusty soil of the southern San Joaquin Valley when no water is brought to it.

  Then he remembered! A red arrow. It had made him cry once. He had seen a big one on a billboard. He thought it made him cry but maybe something else made him cry. He never was sure what made him cry. He had to force himself to think of something else. Quickly, what? The yard. Yes, the one with the stately pine he loved. No, tomatoes. That was it. Fat. Red. Meaty. Dew-wet and succulent. Acres and acres of tomatoes. His own land and he kneeling in the midst of tomatoes. In the sunshine, and it never turned to night. He loved the tomatoes. The tomatoes were so quiet.

  Charles Maple believed that Gregory Powell may have been a victim of a brain injury. And he never thought of brain injury without thinking of Donald, the son of an old friend who suffered an injury to the dominant side of his brain at age seven. Charles Maple handled legal matters for the boy and helped him be placed through the years in one institution after another, pitying the explosive, suffering boy, even taking him into his own home at some personal risk.

  He believed in his client and was now glad that the Public Defender’s Office had given him entirely to the defense of Gregory Powell. The case had become an important part of his life after so many months of back breaking work.

  Charles Maple was accustomed to caring for people with special needs. Both his wife and pretty daughter were partially crippled by hip disease, though, ironically, his other child, Charles Junior, was an accomplished ballet dancer. Maple was an elder in the Presbyterian church and he proved in his life that he was totally committed to the tenets of faith. But he was aware that there could exist a paradox of injustice when an advocate had too much faith.

  A video taping was done in 1969 through Maple’s request, at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Clinic. It was the first time that a video-taped interview involving sodium amytal was done in Los Angeles and later introduced in court.

  His opponent, Deputy District Attorney Joe Busch, said, “Oh, the sodium amytal is a lovely defense tactic all right. It enables our boy to tell only the part of the story he wants, without being subjected to cross examination.”

  A jury eventually saw the interview. Gregory Powell was on a bed in a room with draped walls. The bottle containing the drug was gradually dripping into his arm to achieve the desired effect. There were two nurses and three doctors in the room. During the interview the defendant spoke in drunken halting speech to a Dr. Suarez:

  “What happened in the car?” the doctor asked the patient.

  “There were several colloquies in the car,” said Greg thickly.

  “What?”

  “Colloquies,” said Greg, annoyed at the doctor’s unfamiliarity with legal jargon.

  “What did you discuss with Jimmy?”

  “Nothing. Jimmy was my subordinate,” said the patient testily. Greg then smiled drunkenly and said, “I told Hettinger to get his ass in the car. If he didn’t he was gonna be in reeeel trouble.”

  Then Greg closed his eyes when talking about the shooting. He wore a tiny gold cross around his throat, on a very short chain so that the cross was at the base of his long neck. The gold cross was clearly apparent to anyone viewing the taping.

  “Just explain what happened,” said the interviewer, as the patient’s speech got more halting.

  “Hettinger got out at my demand and moved past … Hettinger … past Campbell … so the … outside Campbell, and I raised my gun and shot Campbell.…”

  “What?”

  “I walked around the back and I raised my gun and I shot Campbell.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I don’t know. The gun had gone off by accident before … It had a real
funny hammer and trigger … pull it halfway back and let it snap forward and it would fire … I don’t know …”

  “Well, how did you feel about Campbell getting shot?”

  “Felt pretty sick.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was a nice guy. He’d been joking with me about the marines and everything and I just … uh … he was one hell of a nice person.”

  Later, when asked if he meant to shoot Karl Hettinger, Greg would deny that he had, saying, “Oh, hell, I could shoot a jackrabbit in the head thirty yards away when he’d jump out of the brush, no sweat.”

  During the final address to the jury, Deputy District Attorney Raymond Byrne, the co-prosecutor, commented on the tape which had been introduced by Maple over the objections of his client Gregory Powell, who was unsatisfied with it.

  “At the end of the video tape, may I inquire,” said the prosecutor, “would a person call for his lawyer? I would perhaps suggest that Mr. Powell had reasons, and he can certainly outpsyche the psychiatrist. And I would wonder why Dr. Suarez never asked anything about the Little Lindbergh Law. The video tape, I would suggest, was a work of art. Hopefully it may even be put in for an Emmy Award.

  “I would submit at this time that Mr. Maple, for his client, will inquire of you whether or not it was not Mr. Powell who did the shooting, but perhaps his mother—that familial concept. Or perhaps the shot was really fired by defendant Powell’s sisters. Or perhaps by his brother. Or by the parole officer. Or by the institution. Or the state of California. Or by the world. Just so you lay the blame of the dead man, the killing of that person, on somebody other than defendant Gregory Ulas Powell, because he is, of course, the only one here who is charged with murder.

  “I submit that you tell this defendant, Gregory Powell, by your verdict that his act that night was nothing less than a calculated expression of accumulated rage that resulted in the cold blooded, willful, premeditated killing of Ian Campbell, a police officer and human being. I thank you very much.”

  In June, 1969, Helen Hettinger worried as she watched her husband stare at the television news without hearing. Gregory Powell had once more been found guilty. The penalty trial too was finished and the jury was expected to bring in a swift verdict of death.

  “Come on, Karl. Let me make you a sandwich.”

  “No, I’m not hungry.”

  “You didn’t eat any dinner at all.”

  “No thanks, Moms.”

  “Well, the Powell trial’s over. You won’t have to go again on that one.”

  “No. Once more with Smith. That’s what the D.A. promised me the other day and maybe once more in Smith’s penalty trial. Maybe two times more. Maybe.”

  “Maybe they’ll reverse it again,” said Helen angrily and was instantly sorry she said it.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever do it again, Helen,” he said, making his wife afraid.

  “Let me fix you a sandwich or something,” she said.

  It was later that evening when the phone call came.

  “I’m sorry, Karl,” said the voice on the telephone. “The jury hung. There was a holdout. It’s a mistrial. We’ll have to try him again on the penalty part of it. Damn! We’ll have to select a new jury and of course they’ll know nothing of the guilt trial so we’ll have to go into the whole thing in detail again. Damn, I’m disappointed.”

  The new penalty trial would be as thorough as a guilt trial. All the witnesses were once more subpoenaed. It lasted four and one half months.

  Prosecutor Raymond Byrne was a tall man with a long face and a crooked nose that bent to the left. He was forever pushing his drooping glasses up. He began staying during recesses or returning early to talk with Gregory Powell who seemed to enjoy the conversation and the cigarettes and sunflower seeds the prosecutor gave him.

  On August 2, 1969, Byrne learned that it was Gregory Powell’s thirty-sixth birthday. When Byrne came back from lunch that day he carried with him a cupcake.

  “Happy birthday,” said Byrne, giving it to the defendant.

  From then on, the defendant talked freely to the prosecutor about life on Death Row, the thousands of things they planned, how they made home brew and whiskey. And his recent conclusion that homosexuality was at the root of his behavioral problems. And of his ambivalence toward his father and particularly toward his mother, who ruled the family in his absence.

  One day Byrne asked the defendant, “How do you really feel about those kids, Greg?”

  “What kids?” asked Greg.

  “Campbell’s kids,” said Byrne. “And about Campbell?”

  “To tell you the honest truth, Mr. Byrne, I feel nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing about them. Any of them. But I will send them money if I ever make any. Because I said I would.”

  There it was, Byrne thought. The sociopathic personality. Greg looked at the tall prosecutor apologetically. “It was as though he wished he could say he felt something about the murder,” Byrne explained. “Wishing he could feel something, because he knew other people did. It was the first time I ever truly understood sociopathy. It just wasn’t there. He just had no remorse in his makeup.”

  Deputy District Attorney Sheldon Brown was chosen to help prosecute Gregory Powell in the new penalty trial. He was dark and slim and walked as though his feet were always sore.

  Brown found Greg ingratiating. “Good morning, Mr. Brown. Did you have a nice evening?”

  Public Defender Charlie Maple, always resourceful and thorough, admitted to a completeness compulsion. When he had first learned that Karl Hettinger had been pensioned off the police force, he subpoenaed the personnel and pension files of the former officer. He had been astonished to learn that the former policeman had resigned under fire on a shoplifting charge.

  The public defender read all of the psychiatric reports. He was by his own admission more “personally involved” in this case than any he had ever tried. He called Dr. George N. Thompson, whose report was so unlike the others. The report that said Karl Hettinger mentioned having been involved in a “gun battle” with two robbery suspects before he started shoplifting.

  “You made a diagnosis,” said the judge to Dr. Thompson, “that there is some type of a character disorder involved in this case, which some people might call kleptomania? And you have some mixed feelings as to whether it amounts to kleptomania or not. Is that right?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t refer to it as mixed feelings, but that I was attempting to, for the Pension Board, clarify the diagnosis to some extent. And so I discussed it further. That was an afterthought apparently, that one might consider a diagnosis of kleptomania. However, I thought it was probably not true kleptomania.”

  “Do you have any recollection,” asked Prosecutor Sheldon Brown, “in reading those files, of anything being inconsistent in the file with relation to what Mr. Hettinger told you in the interview?”

  “No.”

  “If the court please, I have here a department pension report, city of Los Angeles, and I ask it be marked for identification. Does that report appear to be one that you examined during your preparation of the report on Mr. Hettinger?”

  “Well, I can’t recall,” said the doctor, “if this was in the file or not. If it was, I can only say that I know this doctor was one of the examiners before the board.”

  “If it was in the file then I take it that you would have reviewed it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you will notice in the clinical history of this report that it’s apparently over a year prior to your seeing Mr. Hettinger. It sets forth a statement of facts as to how Mr. Hettinger’s partner actually met his death.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there a statement in this other report that he and his partner were kidnapped and taken in the vicinity of Bakersfield where his partner was killed and he managed to escape?”

  “Yes.”

  Charles Maple was anxious the day he examined Karl Hettinger on the inconsis
tency he had found in the Thompson report.

  “In discussing the shooting out there in Kern County when Officer Campbell was killed, did you ever tell anyone that you were involved in a gun battle with two robbery suspects? That you and your partner were fighting the two suspects when one of the suspects shot your partner and your partner died?”

  “I don’t recall saying those words,” said the witness. “Words were said to a medical secretary as to why I was there. She stated words to the effect, ‘Was it a gun battle or a robbery?’ or something to that effect. I didn’t wish to go into it with her, knowing I would be seeing a doctor shortly.”

  “What doctor is that you are speaking of?” asked Maple.

  “I don’t recall his name.”

  “Do you recall what time of year it was?”

  “No.”

  “And did you relate to the doctor your version of what happened up there in Kern County?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  Out of the presence of the jury Maple argued to the court: “It turns out that he has a prior history of theft that’s concealed from the police department. Never disclosed when he became a policeman! These kinds of matters it seems to me do have a bearing.”

  Deputy District Attorney Brown told his superiors:

  “Maple believes Hettinger made an ego-enhancing statement to Dr. Thompson about a gun battle to impress Thompson, so it wouldn’t jeopardize his pension chances. Even though Thompson had prior reports on Hettinger and knew all the facts. It’s absolutely absurd, but the judge let him call Thompson as a witness.”

  “Now, sir,” Maple said to the doctor, “in the course of that particular interview, did Mr. Hettinger in substance and effect state to you that on March 10th, 1963, he began to develop an emotional problem and did he state that he was in a gun battle with two robbery suspects, and that he and his partner were fighting with the suspects when one of the suspects shot his partner and his partner died?”

  “Yes, so far as I know, he said something to that effect,” said Dr. Thompson. “Perhaps not in those exact words.”