INDEFENSIBLE: One Lawyer's Journey Into the Inferno of American Justice (7 page)

      
“Okay, sweetie, you know I love you,” I told her, leading Cassandra to the door to the courtyard, “but I need you to wait in the courtyard with me while we figure out what we’re going to do. ’Cause you’re a little bit stinky, and I can’t really have you inside right now, okay?”

      
“Okay, David,” she said with a resigned smile. “I know. I do have an odor. I do. I admit that.” She nodded as if considering the whole situation. “I’ve been on the streets for a lot of days too. Begging and drinking . . . people are nice you know . . . they give me soup sometime. And money too, real nice . . . everyone’s real nice.”

      
As I led her from the client interview room, the stench followed us through the library and out into the fresh air. Passing through the library, I noticed for the first time a little blister on her lower lip.

      
I was at a loss --I hadn’t seen Cassandra this disheveled in ages. From what I could tell, over the past six years we’d tried almost every program and shelter we could think of. Hospitals were unlikely to keep her for any more than a day or two; shelters and programs were essentially out. I could turn her back to the streets, of course, where her suicide attempts would continue, or she’d find herself back in jail, possibly for a long period of time.

      
Carefully positioning myself upwind of her, I proposed a radical solution --something that goes against everything I believe.

      
“Sweetie,” I said, “do you think a little time might help?”

      
I had never, in my entire career,
tried
to put someone in jail, but I had also never had someone whose mental health and addiction problems were as intractable as Cassandra’s. Downwind, Cassandra seemed to consider the question seriously, and there was a long pause before she answered.

      
“Yes, David,” she said, “I think so --maybe two or three weeks, a month maybe, just to clean up, to sleep.”

      
The idea filled me with self-loathing and a profound sense of failure --personal and systemic. It was bad enough that there might not be any better solution than locking Cassandra up at Rikers Island, but worse was that
she
could see it as a viable solution to her life’s problems. I felt tears welling up in my eyes.

      
“Is there anything you need right now?” I asked.

      
“Maybe some soup?” Cassandra said simply. “I’m a little cold.”

      
Raiding the food usually kept for the hungry kids in the youth program, I found a can of Wolfgang Puck’s egg noodle and chicken soup --a fancy last supper in a can.

- - - -

      
With Cassandra considering a jail stint, I started thinking about just how to get her in. I needed to think of a crime minor enough that I could control the outcome, but serious enough that a cop who might not otherwise want to arrest a malodorous homeless person (rather than just issue a summons) would actually have to take her in.

      
First I considered a ploy I learned from another homeless guy who used to come through the system at the beginning of almost every winter. When it got too cold and too hard to survive on the street, he’d take himself to a rib joint near Times Square --and order himself a feast. He’d eat slowly and deliberately, savoring his meal. When the check came, he would quietly but insistently refuse to pay or leave. When the police came, he was unfailingly polite, standing up and placing his hands dutifully behind his back so they could cuff him. When he saw the judge, he’d always plead guilty right on the spot despite his lawyer’s attempts to keep him from doing so --sometimes even asking for a little extra jail time, just enough to ride out the worst of the winter.

      
Sadly, there wasn’t any place Cassandra really wanted to eat, and she was so smelly and disheveled there wasn’t any place likely to serve her anyway.

      
“Is there something you’d like to do since you are going to get arrested anyway? Any crime that might at least bring you some joy?”

      
“No, David,” Cassandra said in her flat, vacant tone. “I’ll do what you say.”

      
Maybe turnstile jumping is the way, I thought.

      
“Okay, we’ll go down to the train station together,” I told her. “I’ll find a police officer and try to explain that he needs to watch because you are going to violate the law. And then when I say so, but not before, you try to climb over the turnstile.”

      
Cassandra just nodded.

      
Just before we set out, I went over the pre-arrest checklist.

      
“You know they’re going to search you when you get arrested,” I warned her, “so I want you to go through all your pockets right now and make absolutely sure that there is nothing in them that can get you in any extra trouble --it’s really important that we don’t have any surprises.”

      
Digging around in one of her many pockets, Cassandra came up with a small, round chipped piece of glass. The crack pipe was short --around three inches long and about the width of the barrel of a ballpoint pen. The end was blackened and sticky from the flame and the tarry residue of crack, the rest smudgy but transparent.

      
“I think we’ll need to throw this away, sweetie.” I sighed.

      
After rummaging through the rest of her pockets, Cassandra came up empty --seventeen cents and some rough deli-counter napkins, all she had left in the world.

      
“Cassandra, I want you to think really, really carefully now --have you been arrested since I saw you last, or have you gotten any tickets that you were supposed to go to court for but didn’t? Are there any warrants out for your arrest for any reason at all?”

      
A long pause.

      
“I think I got some tickets,” Cassandra said, nodding.

      
“Do you remember what they were for?”

      
“For loitering and having an open beer, I think, and maybe one for sleeping in the park.”

      
“Did you give them your actual name?” I asked, suddenly seeing a perfect way out of the whole problem.

      
“Yes, David.”

      
Ten minutes later, I was on the telephone with an incredulous sergeant at the Bronx Warrant Squad.

      
“You’re her lawyer?” he asked.

      
“Yes.”

      
“And you want us to come and arrest her?”

      
“Right.”

      
“You don’t want to turn her in voluntarily?”

      
“Right --she’s here now, and if we wait until tomorrow, I’m likely to lose her to the streets again.”

      
“And she knows she’s gonna be arrested?”

      
“Yes. That’s what we want.”

      
“And you want me to call you when she’s in court?”

      
“Right. And make sure that the lawyer doing her arraignment tomorrow gets the letter that I’m going to give her.”

      
“Okay, Counselor, you got it. Gimee your address and I’ll send a team over.”

      
“Thanks, Sergeant. I appreciate it.”

      
“Be about twenty minutes.”

      
“Perfect. Thanks.”

      
Hanging up the phone, I turned back to Cassandra. “What medications do you need and in what dosages do you need them?”

      
“Ah . . . I’m not on my medication, David.”

      
“I know, Cassandra . . . but when you get to the jail, they are going to put you back on them. That’s the point.”

      
“Ooooh . . . okay,” Cassandra said slowly, then listed the particular drugs and specific dosages she should have been taking. After jotting all of it down, I headed upstairs and typed out a quick letter to accompany Cassandra on her journey through the system --a letter I hoped would ensure that at the very least she’d get her medications and that I’d be notified before she saw a judge. I printed three copies --two for Cassandra (in case she lost one) and one for the detectives.

      
The Warrant Squad arrived as promised. There were three of them --one African American man and two white guys --all big and muscular with cold gazes. I led them to the courtyard and introduced them to Cassandra. I explained that we’d decided that she needed to spend a few weeks in jail and that I’d hoped that they’d help me out by making sure that when she got to court her attorney got the letter I’d prepared. The African American cop offered to take the letter. “It has a list of the medications she needs, my home and cell numbers, and a specific request that the judge set five hundred dollars’ bail and adjourn the case for two weeks,” I told him.

      
“Counselor,” one of the white detectives said, “your client . . . ah . . . she knows we’re gonna have to cuff her, right?”

      
I told him we knew.

      
Just before the white guy reached for his cuffs, the African American detective interrupted. Turning slightly away from his colleagues, he leaned close. “You know they’re gonna search her when we get to the precinct --are we okay or do you need a minute to, ahh, talk to her?”

      
I smiled up at him, grateful for his decency. “We’re okay,” I told him. “Already took care of it --we’re good to go.”

      
“Okay, Counselor,” he said, nodding to the others. “Thanks.”

      
“Ms. Stallings, could you turn around please?”

      
Cassandra stood up, put her hands behind her back, palms out, thumbs touching, and waited to be handcuffed.

      
“B-Bye, David,” she said, and then, seeing the look on my face, she added, “it’s okay, I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you, David.” And with that she was gone.

      
Today, I realize as I sip my coffee, is the day Cassandra comes out.

- - - -

      
Every morning it’s the same --up the West Side Highway past the procession of cars stuck in traffic streaming toward midtown, across Harlem, along the ridge at the top of Sugar Hill, and eventually down a long viaduct and across the Macomb’s Dam Bridge into the Bronx.

      
Three clients and three murders are going to start my day. One of them is certain to be my next trial. I just don’t know which one. A hint would be nice.

      
All three homicides are pending before the same judge, and having them together allows me to get a sense of which prosecutors are pushing for a trial, how the judge sees each one, what I can expect. All of this will help me prioritize. Having all three on the same day also means that I can spend some time in the pens with each client. And so, as the 155th Street cemetery glides by, surrounded by an army of trucks crammed with movie equipment, I make mental notes on each case to be sure I won’t forget anything later.

      
Just past the cemetery, from the top of Sugar Hill, the Bronx spreads out below me. Yankee Stadium, abandoned for the winter, dominates the landscape. Above it, perched on the Grand Concourse, its golden windows shimmering in the winter light, I can make out the Supreme Court building, home to all three of this morning’s murders.