by Scott Pratt
“As you well know, there is no place for anger in a courtroom. You’re a respected and experienced attorney, Mr. Dillard. Frankly, I’m surprised you’d behave in such a manner.”
“You’ll understand my feelings more as this case proceeds,” I said. “At some point, I hope you’ll share my anger and put a stop to this charade.”
“You need to hold him in contempt, judge,” Armstrong said. “He keeps insulting the district attorney general’s office, the grand jury, the entire system.”
I wanted to tell Armstrong that I held him in contempt, but I’d pushed the envelope far enough. I’d walked in there wanting to make an impression on Judge Neese. I wanted to make sure she knew I was upset, that I thought Keven Davidson and his friends were being railroaded, and that something very wrong was going on with the district attorney general. I knew Judge Neese respected me. I’d known her for a long, long time. I knew her when she was a practicing attorney. I remembered when she got drunk and flashed her breasts at a raucous Christmas party many years earlier. I felt like I’d gotten her attention, and that she understood how strongly I felt about Kevin’s innocence. Mission accomplished. She would listen to me going forward.
“Mr. Demonte Wright,” the judge said. “Please step forward to the microphone.”
Demonte, a linebacker who had long dreadlocks and looked like he’d been carved from granite, shuffled forward.
“Have you spoken to an attorney, sir?” the judge said.
“I can’t afford a lawyer,” he said.
“What about you, Mr. Belle?” the judge said.
Evan Belle moved forward. His hair was long and unruly. He looked at the floor as he spoke.
“I can’t afford a lawyer, either,” he said.
Judge Neese turned to her clerk, was handed a couple of sheets of paper, and handed the papers to the bailiffs.
“I need both of you to fill these out,” she said. “They’re affidavits of indigency. List your assets and your debts and be truthful about it. If I find you’re unable to pay for a lawyer, I’ll appoint lawyers to represent you.”
“Can we talk about bail?” I said when the other two players shuffled over to a table at the side of the courtroom to fill out their forms.
“The state opposes bail,” Armstrong said.
“Of course you do,” I said, “but unfortunately for you, they’re entitled to a bail. This isn’t a capital murder case. My client was at the top of his class and has been accepted to law school, your Honor. Unfortunately, now that he’s been charged, ETSU will undoubtedly kick him out of school and his future in law school is threatened. He isn’t a flight risk. The case against him is as weak as any I’ve ever seen. His mother and father are paying his legal fees, which will more than likely be substantial if the case goes to trial. I’m just asking for a reasonable amount of bond so he doesn’t have to sit in jail while this plays out and so his parents aren’t forced into bankruptcy. I don’t represent the others who have been charged, but the case against them is as weak as the case against Mr. Davidson.”
“Mr. Armstrong?” the judge said.
“If you’re going to set a bail, the state asks for at least a half-million dollars,” he said.
“Totally unreasonable,” I said.
“Bond is set at seventy-five thousand dollars per defendant, cash or corporate surety,” the judge said.
“Does that mean I have to pay seventy-five thousand dollars to get out of jail?” Kevin whispered in my ear.
“No. You call a bail bondsman. He’ll charge you ten percent. It’ll cost your parents seventy-five hundred to get you out.”
“This is ridiculous,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry. It’s the best we can do for now.”
The other two players filled out their forms and passed them up to the judge. She looked them over and said, “All right, having reviewed these affidavits, I find both defendants to be indigent. Mr. Wright, I’m going to appoint the public defender’s office to represent you.”
Patrick Lonon, a long-time public defender, stepped to the podium. The judge looked over at the jury box.
“Mr. Beaumont, would you be willing to represent Mr. Belle?” the judge said.
“Happy to,” Jim Beaumont said, and he walked to the podium. Beaumont had been practicing law for more than forty years in the First Judicial District. He dressed like a cowboy, his mouth was covered by a long, white moustache and goatee, and he spoke in a deep, throaty Southern drawl. He was an excellent lawyer, and I was glad to have him on our side.
Both Demonte Wright and Evan Belle waived the reading of the indictment and entered pleas of not guilty.
“Bail is set at seventy-five thousand dollars for both of these defendants,” Judge Neese said. “What about scheduling?”
The lawyers all looked at each other. I decided to speak up.
“Set it for trial as soon as you possibly can, please,” I said.
“We’re still developing evidence and witnesses,” Armstrong said. “We’ll need at least six months.”
“If you’re still developing witnesses, you should have held off on indicting them,” Judge Neese said.
She looked through her calendar, conferred with her clerk, and said, “December tenth. Two months and one day from today. The deadlines for motions, experts, alibis, and discovery will be tight. I’ll send all of you a scheduling order. I suggest you get to work.”
I asked one of the bailiffs if I could speak to my client in the jury room before they returned him to the holding cell in back, and he agreed. He stood outside as I closed the door.
“Take a seat,” I said to Kevin.
His eyes were down and his shoulders slumped. When he raised his eyes to look at me, they were glistening with tears.
“Why are they doing this to me?” he said. “Everything I’ve worked so hard for is gone. I guarantee you the paperwork has already been signed to kick me out of school. I’ll get a notice soon from UT’s law school that my acceptance has been rescinded. And for what? Because I was stupid enough to let a stripper come into our house at a party. That’s all I did. I didn’t lay a hand on her.”
“I know,” I said, sitting down next to him. “I believe you. Right now, though, I’m concerned about your safety. Where are you planning to go when your parents get you out of jail?”
He shook his head slowly.
“I don’t know. I won’t be able to move back into the house if they kick me out of school. I was surprised they didn’t make us leave when they kicked us off the team, but nobody told us to go. They’ll tell me to go now, for sure. I guess maybe I could get a job and rent a place somewhere around here until this is over. I doubt it, though. Nobody will give me a job after all this publicity.”
“Maybe you should think about going to Collierville and staying with your parents.”
“Why? I don’t want to move back in with my parents. Besides, it’s six hundred miles away. I’d like to stay closer, maybe try to help out somehow.”
“I’m afraid somebody will try to hurt you,” I said. “A lot of bitterness and hatred has come boiling to the surface in the country over the past couple of years. You’re a black man accused of raping a white woman. This case has received national publicity. I think you’re going to have to be extremely careful.”
“What are they going to do to me that hasn’t already been done? Kill me? Dying would be better than this.”
“If you don’t want to go home, why don’t you come stay with my wife and me? She’s pretty sick right now, but you can help me out with her if you don’t mind. You can help out at the law office some if you want. Help us out with your case. I’d feel a lot better knowing you’re safe.”
“Really?” Kevin said. “You’d do that for me?”
“Yeah, and I don’t even have to ask my wife, because I know what her answer would be. She’d say, ‘If he needs a place to stay, if he needs help, we’ll help him.’”
“You’re a good man,” he said.
“You don’t know me that well. But I expect you to pay it forward someday.”
“Mr. Dillard, am I going to spend the rest of my life in jail?”
“No. I’m not going to let that happen. But you’re in for a hard, hard ride over the next few months. You’ll have to be braver and tougher than you’ve ever been. Bad things happen to good people, Kevin. My wife has had cancer for years, but she fights through the pain every day because she wants to live. I want the same thing for you. I want you to live. But you have to want it, too. You can’t give in to despair. Do you think your parents will be okay with you staying with me?”
“I think they’ll be okay with it.”
“Good. There’s only one problem we have to deal with.”
“What’s that?”
“You have to make friends with the guardian of the property at my house.”
He looked at me curiously.
“He’s a German shepherd. His name is Rio. If he likes you, and I think he will, nobody will get anywhere near you.”
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9
Kevin Davidson had lunch with his parents after they bailed him out of jail. They called me while they were still all at the restaurant. I was apparently on speaker while we talked. They must have been outside because I could hear the wind whistling lightly over the phone.
“Can you guarantee his safety?” Mr. Davidson asked me.
I had returned home to find Caroline doing better after receiving some pain meds and a thousand milliliters of sodium chloride through an intravenous drip. I’d asked her about Kevin staying with us, and her response was, “Of course,” just like I knew it would be.
“There aren’t any guarantees,” I said to Mr. Davidson. “We live out in the county, on a bluff that overlooks the lake. We don’t have any neighbors we can see or hear. I have a German shepherd who is extremely territorial and I have weapons in my house that I know how to use. In fact, I wouldn’t hesitate to use them to protect your son. But I can’t watch him every minute of every day. I’m sure he’ll have places he wants to go occasionally just to keep from going stir crazy. I’ll do all I can, but honestly, no, I can’t absolutely guarantee his safety. The only way to do that would be for him to disappear until the trial. He’d have to go into hiding. That might be something you want to consider.”
“But he hasn’t done anything wrong!” Mr. Davidson yelled.
“I understand that, but for whatever reason, he’s been accused. Racial tensions are extremely high. They were high before this happened. Kevin will be a target for white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, all of those groups. I feel sure there are some who would want to make an example of him.”
“You said you know how to use the weapons you have,” Mr. Davidson said. “Do you mind if I ask what kind of weapons are in your home?”
“Dangerous weapons. The kind that can kill people from close range or long range.”
“Do you have a military background, Mr. Dillard?”
“I was a US Army Ranger when I was young.”
“Did you see combat?”
“I did.”
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
“These are extremely personal questions, Mr. Davidson.”
“If I’m going to put my son’s life in your hands, I want to know. Have you ever killed anyone?”
“I have.”
“How many?”
“More than I care to admit.”
“I don’t want to send him into hiding like a coward, especially since he’s done nothing wrong,” Mr. Davidson said, “and from what you’ve told me, I think you can do a better job of protecting him than I can. I have no military background; I’m not some kind of bad ass. I don’t even own a gun. I’d feel better if he stays with you.”
“Fine,” I said. “I tell you what. Kevin has his own car, right?”
“I don’t know if you’d call it a car, but it has four wheels and occasionally gets him from place to place,” Mr. Davidson said.
“What time are you planning to go to Kevin’s house and pick up his things?”
“We were going to go as soon as we’re finished here.”
“Give me an hour. I’ll get my son to drive me to Johnson City and I’ll meet you guys at Kevin’s house. We’ll load up his things and he can follow us out here to my house. I’ll make sure we’re not tailed. No one will know he’s here, at least for a while. Someone will most likely find out eventually.”
We hung up and I called Jack. He agreed to come and pick me up and take me to Johnson City. When he showed up, I kissed Caroline and told her I’d return with our new house guest in a couple of hours. I climbed into Jack’s Jeep, and the first thing he said was, “Are you sure this is a good idea, Dad?”
“No. Not at all. I’m just trying to do what’s best for Kevin.”
“Some crackpot might try to kill him.”
“That’s the whole point of him coming to our place, Jack. You remember a few years back when that sick coward John Lipscomb killed three of Elaine Barlowe’s girls out on the lake and then wound up sending a group of sicarios from Columbia to kill me and our entire family?”
“How could I forget it? You took us to Michigan and made us stay there with your old Army buddy until it was over.”
“The point is that the house is defensible. If someone were to come, Rio would let me know. I have a pretty nice little cache of weapons. I can still shoot.”
“But why would you want to take that risk?”
I turned and looked him in the eye.
“You’re my son. Do I even have to answer that question?”
He shook his head and turned back to the road.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “Living up to your very ridiculously high moral code.”
“That’s right. And it’s a code you share, or at least I hope you do. I just feel like this is what I should do. And maybe I’m over thinking it. Maybe nobody will bother Kevin.”
“I hope not,” Jack said. “But if they do, I want to be there, too.”
Jack was as good with many of the weapons as I was. I’d taken him shooting with me hundreds of times over the years. But he’d never been in combat. He’d been in his share of fistfights, but fistfights and firefights are two entirely different animals. He’d wanted to enlist after he graduated from law school, but I’d talked him out of it. I just couldn’t bear the thought of him putting himself in harm’s way so the military industrial complex that had come to dominate our government and our foreign policy could continue to feed itself. It was feeding itself just fine without him. In fact, it was downright bloated. The budget for the U.S. military was more than $825 billion and there were active duty U.S. military personnel in roughly one hundred and sixty countries around the world. It was completely out of control, accompanied by one of the most masterful marketing campaigns ever devised. When I got out of the service, nobody noticed. Now, every soldier was a hero until they came home and tried to get help from the Veterans Administration. The VA was a bureaucratic mess. Congress had been bought by the defense industry, and it wasn’t going to change anytime soon. Jack finally agreed that he could do more good at home than somewhere in the Middle East, where he had a far better chance of losing a limb or winding up in a body bag than making some kind of meaningful difference.
When we pulled alongside the curb in front of Kevin’s house, there was a Johnson City Police Department cruiser sitting in front of us. There were several cars nearby, both in the driveway and on the street. Jack and I went up and knocked on the door. It was opened by a Johnson City officer named David Milhorn. He was a young guy, thick and muscular like Jack. I’d seen him in court a couple of times, but I didn’t know anything about him other than he was inexperienced, maybe even still a rookie.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“I’m Joe Dillard, Kevin Davidson’s lawyer.”
“So?”
“I’m here to help him move out.”
&nb
sp; “I don’t think you should come in,” he said.
“Get out of my way,” I said, and I shouldered past him. I stepped into the house and said “Kevin! It’s Joe Dillard.”
“Stop right where you are.” The voice came from behind me. I turned to see Officer Milhorn pointing a taser gun at me.
“You intend to use that, do you, Officer Milhorn?” I said.
“I told you not to come in.”
“No, you didn’t. You said, ‘I don’t think you should come in,’ but this isn’t your property. You don’t control it. Until Kevin walks out the door, he controls it and he invited me. Now put that thing away before you get yourself sued and lose your job.”
“Who do you think you are?” Milhorn said. “You can’t just disobey a police officer.”
“You’re wrong about that,” I said. “There’s no law that says I have to obey police officers, especially when the police officer is young, out of line, and full of shit.”
About this time, Kevin and his parents came through a doorway and into the room.
“Good, now I have witnesses,” I said. “Kevin, do I have your permission to be here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You and your parents invited me, didn’t you?”
“Yes, we did.”
I stared at Milhorn. I could almost see his mind working, trying to decide what to do.
“Just put it away,” I said. “We’ll chalk it up to a rookie mistake and move on. No hard feelings. I’m only here to help Kevin move out.”
He finally lowered the taser and I felt a pang of relief. I had no desire to be zapped by fifty thousand volts of electricity.
“Why would a lawyer come help his client move out of a place?” Milhorn said.
“None of your business. Why are you even here, Officer Milhorn? Do you have reason to believe a crime is being committed?”
“I was ordered by my watch commander to post here until your client came and moved out. I believe the university called and asked for police assistance. I’ve been instructed to get his keys and make sure he doesn’t do any damage.”
“Fine. Just let us do what we came to do. We’ll be out of here shortly.”
