by Paul Levine
I had called A.U.S.A. Margaret Bolden, the lead prosecutor, and she told me to meet her at a coffee shop on Miami Avenue half an hour before the hearing. I guess she didn’t want to invite me to her office, where there’d be a triangular wall display of photos: Ringle and Kip at the top, then the parents and kids and coaches and proctors, all connected by red Magic Marker, as if they were an organized crime family.
I had yet to see Kip. Con Air did not deliver him within the day or two I had predicted. My inexperience with the federal court system was already showing, and we hadn’t even gotten to court. There had been four layovers—Minneapolis, St. Louis, Bangor, and Little Rock—and the aircraft took eight days to reach Miami. From what I could ascertain, there were no onboard movies or miniature bottles of Jack Daniels.
My agonizing eight-day wait was interrupted by the unsealing of indictments. The story, meanwhile, hit the news media with a tsunami of coverage, a frenzy of news, opinions, and lectures on morality. From the bold-face newspaper headlines, breathless television coverage, nasty Twitter storms, and frantic social media posts, you would have thought Allied forces had just landed on Normandy. But this wasn’t “Operation Overlord.” This was “Operation Flunk Out.” Yeah, the government is into branding as much as Gwyneth Paltrow and her lifestyle business, “Goop.”
I read all the indictments and every transcript of the taped conversations in which Ringle wrangled admissions from his customers. Some of the colloquies with the filthy rich parents were doozies. “Just so we’re clear, Max,” a tech company founder said, “You guarantee Yale for my eight hundred grand, right?” Ringle allowed as how that was the deal. “Man, ain’t it great being rich?” his client mused. “And don’t I feel sorry for those poor slobs who can’t work the system? Nope! I do not.” Guffaws of laughter from both men.
Reading Kip’s indictment wasn’t as bad as say, someone driving knitting needles into my eyeballs. Let’s just call it heartbreaking.
“United States of America vs. Chester Lassiter aka Kip Lassiter.”
If this were a boxing match, it was all fifty states in one corner and my nephew in the other. Three-hundred-thirty-million people against one kid.
The indictment contained 193 numbered paragraphs and 37 counts: 18 of mail fraud, 18 of racketeering, and one for alleged money laundering. Yeah, State Attorney Pincher had guessed right. Only Kip hadn’t written lies on postcards from Hawaii. He had taken the standardized tests or corrected wrong answers eighteen times.
I felt physical pain, each allegation a shard of glass jammed into my gut. Sure, I knew what Kip had done after the melee in Montecito where I had landed face down in the rose bushes. But seeing it all spelled out in black and white, paragraph after numbered paragraph, made me woozy, as if from loss of blood.
The indictment laid out all the instances of fraudulent test-taking by place, date, and test score. On taped phone calls with Ringle, Kip discussed his actions in carefree tones. “Yo Max, I can’t just go thirty percent higher on the total score for the Martelle kid. I gotta break it down between math and verbal, so one doesn’t stick out and raise a red flag.”
Ringle secretly had already pled guilty to four counts of mail fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and racketeering. Judging from the actual extent of his frauds and the millions of dollars that passed through his hands, those pleas represented only a tiny fraction of the crimes he had committed. But that’s the advantage of being first in the sprint to the courthouse.
I found Margaret Bolden standing outside the coffee shop, holding two cups. “I hope you like it black,” she said, handing me one.
“Thanks. That’s the first time a prosecutor has given me anything but a raw deal.”
“I thought we’d start out on the right foot.”
“I mentioned your name to Ray Pincher. He says you know each other from church. Says you’re a straight shooter, meaning you won’t lie to me, but if you fire your weapon, it’ll be to kill and not wound.”
She smiled and said, “I can live with that.”
We headed toward the courthouse. Margaret was a petite African American woman in her late forties. She wore a charcoal gray pinstriped business suit and a white silk blouse, the home uniform for female prosecutors on the Miami Federales. Recently, she’d been in the news for winning a month-long trial, convicting a dozen members of a ring of car thieves who shipped their bounty on freighters down the Miami River to the ocean and the Caribbean islands beyond.
Because I’m never in federal court and she’s never in state court, we hadn’t met. Ray had told me that she played the old game of iron fist in a velvet glove. She spoke softly in court, a ploy to make the jurors pay attention by straining to hear her. That was her shtick, along with being an even five feet tall, so that when a lummox like me towered over her, she seemed so defenseless that the jurors wanted to protect her. Then, when she chose to change the equation, she’d raise her voice. The flute player became a full brass band, her volume startling jurors and opposing counsel alike.
“I know why you’re treating me to coffee,” I said.
“Go ahead, take a shot at it.”
“You feel guilty. You went after Max Ringle, Mr. Big, but you ended up flipping Mr. Big on a dozen Mr. Littles. Or in this case, roughly fifty Mr. and Ms. Littles and one Kip Lassiter.”
We stopped at a “Don’t Walk” sign at the Fourth Street intersection, and she said, “The FBI went to your nephew first. He turned them down and rather rudely. That was a big mistake, doubtless made without your advice. His second mistake was telling Ringle about the FBI’s approach.”
“A kid. He didn’t know any better.”
“He blew the lid off the investigation and pissed off the Bureau and my bosses as well.”
We crossed the street, and I said, “Let me guess. Knowing he was in the crosshairs, Ringle had one of his fancy lawyers call the Justice Department. He could nail all those rich parents. That would make for an even better press conference than just prosecuting him, an unknown grifter. Oh, he’d also turn on this kid who worked for him. His ‘partner,’ according to your bosses, so it wouldn’t seem as if they were letting all the big fish skate.”
“It’s an imperfect system, I’ll grant you that,” she admitted.
“Still the best gosh-darned legal system in the world, with the possible exception of trial by combat. Thirty-seven counts? Don’t you think that’s overkill?”
“Once it goes over a dozen, does it really matter?”
We walked up the steps of the courthouse, ready to be scanned for contraband. “Before we go in,” I said, “I want to talk to you about bail.”
“I’m sure you do.” She gave me a sad smile. “Unfortunately, my instructions are to vigorously oppose your motion.”
“Vigorously? Really?”
“This motion and any others. Those are my marching orders.”
Marching orders.
I pictured an Army regiment heading toward me. Marching troops, rolling Jeeps, heavy armor. I furiously dug a foxhole for Kip and placed my body over his in a pathetic attempt to protect him, moments before we were both crushed into dust.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Brain Matters
Melissa Gold . . .
At about the time Jake and Margaret Bolden walked into the courtroom, Melissa sat at her desk in the medical complex reviewing the PET scans of the subjects in her new study. Mostly former NFL players, but a smattering of former hockey players and soldiers who’d been too close to IED’s when they exploded.
She had told Jake the truth about his condition, but not exactly the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yes, his build-up of tau proteins was in the median range of those tested. But, in fact, everyone tested had symptoms of brain disease tentatively diagnosed as C.T.E. To be in the middle of that pack was akin to being in a herd of bison galloping full speed toward a cliff. Without a cure, their fall was certain and fatal.
All subjects in the study were taking the experiment
al AY-70 protein antibodies. Would these curb the growth or reverse the process that had created the deadly tau proteins? It would be months or even years before there would be conclusive results.
Her research needed to yield novel therapies and eventually a cure. Lately, Melissa and her colleagues were looking at re-purposing a leukemia drug known to clean toxic proteins from the brain. It would take government approvals and a substantial grant to try it out.
So much waiting, so many delays, so much frustration.
She’d learned today that her proposed study at the National Institutes of Health was still alive but being slow-walked through Congress thanks to NFL interference. No word yet whether the League had succeeded in cutting her from the team or whether she still had a shot at running the program. Jake was making inquiries about her competitor for the job, the “helmet guy,” as he called Dr. Jeffries, the biomechanical engineer. But there, too, no news.
She’d been closely watching Jake for outward manifestations of his brain disease. There had been some bouts of confusion. He’d be thinking of one movie, say The Godfather, and say another, Goodfellas. He’d misuse words, saying “Interstellar Waterway” when he meant “Intracoastal Waterway.” And he’d fumble with the remote, yelling at the TV screen when he forgot the channel number for ESPN, something he knew as well as his own birthday.
His irritability and verbal outbursts also had been increasing. Mostly cursing at other drivers on I-95 and getting angry when discussing Kip and Max Ringle. But he never lost his temper with her. She tried to process that, concluding that whatever mechanism controlled his emotions was tuned to its highest frequency with her.
Melissa called two of her girlfriends who knew Jake longer than she did. Both Victoria Lord and Paulette Pincher-Popkin were hesitant to say anything. Victoria admired Jake, who, after all, had defended her lover, now husband, Steve Solomon, in a murder trial.
“Mostly he seems fine,” Victoria said, “but there are moments when he just seems to zone out. You can see his eyes drift off.”
Paulette, whose medical skills Melissa respected, said she hadn’t spent enough time with Jake recently to answer the question. “But my father thinks it’s a mistake for him to defend his nephew. Too much pressure.”
Solomon and Lord had the same advice and had offered help as co-counsel.
“I’d rather fly solo,” Jake told her. “Just Kip and me at the defense table, Kip looking like a kid, me a little ragged around the edges. At the government table, two or three prosecutors, the FBI agent in charge sitting behind them with a couple investigators. A bunch of support staff and who knows what other worker bees buzzing in and out of the courtroom. It won’t look like a fair fight because it isn’t.”
He sounded reasonable and rational. How could she say he wasn’t fit for the job he had taken on, no matter how heavy the burden? She knew the perils of treating the man she loved. Her objectivity had always been a bulletproof vest. But when your loved one is hurting, you, too, feel the pain. She would watch Jake closely as the trial neared. She would give him all the support a woman—and a physician—could give. And she would hope for the best.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Short Leash, Big Dog
I’d never hugged a client in the courtroom. Sure, some of my customers, as I sometimes call them, have embraced me after a winning verdict, weeping their thanks. Others have tried to slug me after a losing verdict. Today, when Kip was led in from a holding cell, I picked him up and squeezed him hard, noticing he’d lost weight. He was five foot eleven and a-buck-fifty tops. So skinny and fragile in an orange jumpsuit, he looked like a 12-year-old dressed as a con for Halloween.
“Uncle Jake, Uncle Jake.” His eyes teared up. His face was peach-fuzzed, his hair a matted mess, his face that of a frightened kitten. He must have seen my worried expression. “I look like shit, huh?”
“Nah. But orange isn’t your color. You look like a Syracuse cheerleader.”
His eyes darted around the courtroom, settled on Margaret Bolden at the government table. I caught the prosecutor’s look, and it surprised me.
Compassion. Empathy.
I didn’t expect that, given the conversation minutes earlier when Margaret revealed her marching orders. Not just for the initial appearance and the setting of bail, but for trial.
“I have to oppose pretrial release. I can’t stipulate to anything except ‘good morning.’ I can’t offer you a plea, and even if I did, it would be so ludicrous, you’d laugh.”
“I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t find it humorous.”
But now, I could see a softness around her eyes. I tried not to give it too much meaning. Ray Pincher had told me that Margaret Bolden never missed a Sunday church service. She and her husband, a licensed contractor, lived in Pinecrest, just a few miles down Old Cutler Road from my place. They had two children: a boy, a senior in high school, and a girl in tenth grade. Is it possible, I wondered, that she looked at Kip and thought of her own son, hoping that he never strayed from the straight and narrow? I made a mental note to try and get as many parents as possible on the jury.
When the case was called, Kip and I stood at the defense table. He wobbled a bit, and I thought I heard his knees knocking, but it was probably my imagination.
The magistrate judge was Selena Vazquez. Unlike federal judges, who preside for life—far longer than we lawyers desire—the magistrates serve eight-year terms. Vazquez, in her forties, was in year three of her first term on the bench.
“Good morning, Ms. Bolden,” Judge Vazquez said. “And . . .” She looked at the court file where my appearance had been filed. “Mr. Lassiter. Welcome.”
I bowed slightly. “Nice to be here, Your Honor.”
She studied Kip with a look nearly identical to that of the prosecutor a moment before. Compassion and empathy and maybe a question: What’s the kid doing here? It could be a female thing. I amended my mental note: Get mothers on the jury.
Judge Vazquez zipped through the formalities. She noted that Kip was represented by counsel and informed him of his right to remain silent and a few other boilerplate provisions of the law. She then thumbed through the indictment and stated, “You are charged with eighteen counts of mail fraud. I am obliged to inform you that each count carries a maximum penalty of . . .” She looked toward the prosecutor.
“Twenty years, Your Honor,” Ms. Bolden said.
“You are also charged with eighteen counts of racketeering with similar penalties and one count of money laundering for thirty-seven counts in all.”
I sensed Kip turning toward me, thought I heard a gurgling in his throat, hoped he didn’t hurl on our table.
“Whaaaa,” Kip exhaled, his knees buckling. I grabbed him by the elbow and propped him up. Again, the magistrate looked at him sympathetically. Maybe at trial, we could work on him collapsing on cue.
“Is everything all right?” Judge Vazquez asked.
“Your Honor, we ask that the defendant immediately be granted pretrial release secured by reasonable bail and proffer that he’s a lifelong resident of Miami-Dade County with deep ties to the community. He’s not charged with a violent crime. There’s no chance of his repeating the conduct alleged while released, and he’s not a flight risk.”
Margaret Bolden got to her feet, looking even more petite standing behind the prosecution table in this high-ceilinged courtroom. In a soft, melodious voice, she countered, almost apologetically, “Unfortunately, the defendant is a flight risk. He’s facing substantial time, virtually life in prison. He’s traveled out of the country on multiple occasions in the last year, and he maintains a bank account with more than $1 million in a foreign country.”
“What?” I heard myself ask.
“No way,” Kip said.
“Hush, Kippers!” I shushed him.
“Your Honor, we are today filing a motion for a restraining order freezing the defendant’s account in the Cayman Islands.” Bolden handed a document to me and a copy to the deputy court cler
k, who gave it to the judge. “As you can see, there’s an account in the name of Chester Lassiter in First Caribbean Bank on Grand Cayman. Current balance, $1.3 million dollars.”
Kip was shaking his head. “That’s Max’s,” he whispered. “I don’t know anything about it.”
I stepped around the table into the well of the courtroom. “Your Honor, this is just another act by the government’s star witness and chief perjurer calculated to set up my client. The account is a sham. It’s Max Ringle’s money, opened without my client’s knowledge or consent.”
I was winging it. And sometimes when you wing it, you get shot down.
Margaret Bolden handed me another sheet of paper and said, “The government proffers bank documents showing the defendant’s signature on the account. These funds are accessible only by him.”
Ouch! That stung. But the first rule of the trial lawyer is not unlike that of the football player. Never let them see your pain.
“We demand that this document be examined by a handwriting expert,” I said. “And we insist on a bail hearing, and if bail is denied, we demand a speedy trial, by which I mean Monday morning at 9 a.m.”
Bolden snickered. “I seriously doubt Mr. Lassiter is ready for trial.”
“Really?” I turned to the prosecutor and addressed her, instead of the judge, a no-no in courtroom procedure. I held up a blank yellow legal pad. “I’ve got this. I’m ready for trial. You’ve got the burden of proof. Put on your case, counselor! Throw out the first pitch! Let’s see what you’ve got when the cameras aren’t rolling, and your boss isn’t posturing about the biggest scandal in history.”
“Slow down, both of you,” the magistrate said. “And get up here, now.”
The judge turned her chair toward the empty jury box, and both Bolden and I headed that way for a quiet sidebar conference. When the court stenographer grabbed her machine and tried to join us, the judge said, “That’s okay, Gloria. You take five.” Then she turned to Ms. Bolden. “Margaret, what the heck’s going on here? Are you saying I should keep this kid locked up the next eight or ten months prior to trial? Really?”
