ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story) (46 page)

In the courtroom I got some more paper work. It was a list of the charges from the district attorney and a stamp that said the first offer for all six major felonies was 50 to life!

On the bus ride back to jail I read the police reports. The first report was from detective Pincher. It stated that I came to Mr. Dudley’s house wearing a hockey mask with a tech 22 hand gun equipped with a silencer on it and walked him to his bank vault and proceeded to steal his guns and jewelry. The next count read that I came back over the following day without a costume to get a check written out to my attorney. Count three read that I came back the following day without a costume and got another $7,500 in cash. Then the report went on to state that Mr. Dudley followed me out of his house and asked when I’d consider the debt paid? He said, I had threatened to burn down his house with his family in it! The rest of the report had Mr. Dudley collaborating with detective Pincher on how that threat could be credible. Mr. Dudley stated I was a cartel level gun and drug dealer who promised to shoot it out with the police!

I got back to my cell and tried to deal with the mounting pressure as best I could. I paced the cell, did handstand pushups and tried to talk myself through everything. I told myself, there isn’t a silenced gun and hockey mask, or a bunch of guns stolen from his bank vault, or a Rolex watch or men’s diamond ring! None of it was found at my brother’s residence! With my contract it will start to look like Mr. Dudley is making it all up. It has to… I have to prove he’s lying! Then a thought entered my head, what if Mr. Dudley, the ex federal firearm dealer, fabricated a silenced gun and a hockey mask, along with some of those other items he alleged I stole, and they just happened to get found in my stuff somewhere? The more I thought about it, the more unlikely it felt. I really didn’t own anything on paper other than my truck and Festiva. What if they placed it in it? That thought scared me so much I started shaking. I got claustrophobic in my cell with thoughts of not being able to do anything about anything. I started praying to God.

CHAPTER 123

The next morning I got on the phone and found out that detective Pincher had followed my brother and Lance around and kicked down doors with search warrants looking for the rest of the items mentioned. Instead of finding anything related to me, they found marijuana paraphernalia. They arrested my brother for a misdemeanor.

I got hold of my attorney first.

“How many times do they have to come up empty looking for the alleged silencer, hockey mask, guns and whatever else he said I stole before you can go against them for following bad information and abusing their power. Can’t you see what’s happening? Law enforcement is working for a criminal who is defrauding me in my investment with him. Can’t you do anything?”

“B.J. I’ve never seen our county want someone as much as they do you. We have to wait it out and let the dust clear. They keep coming up empty so that’s good for us…”

I listened to my attorney and wondered if I had the right one. It felt like I needed one from outside of our county who wouldn’t be afraid to buck up against the powers within it. I asked, “Shouldn’t we fight for our rights here! Where are they getting all of their search warrants, Cracker Jack boxes? Why aren’t you putting my business deal with Mr. Dudley on record?”

“B.J. there will be time for that later…”

I got on the phone with my brother right after he got released from jail. I found out that detective Pincher detained him and tried to get him to be a witness against me. He told my brother that he’d been watching his apartment for months and knew I had been selling drugs out of it the whole time. My brother told him that I had just moved in last week.

Detective Pincher told my brother he had two choices; to testify against me, or keep getting followed and searched. My brother said he moved back to our Dad’s.

CHAPTER 124

The next morning I took a shackled bus ride to court and got another police report from detective Maltobano interviewing Mr. Dudley. I read it in the holding tank waiting for court. Detective Maltobano took a much more detailed report that showed my investment dates going back the nine months and that I was showing up every day to work for Mr. Dudley, that I’d built up a portfolio, and then stopped showing up after the river run in Nevada. I felt a little hope reading because this was the most detailed look at my investment and was where Mr. Dudley’s fraud started and we could prove it! How though? I couldn’t call the Hell’s Angels as credible witnesses. We needed to send investigators to the dealership to document that my investment wasn’t for sale, it was a sham! I thought, shouldn’t that show where law enforcement started supporting a liar and a criminal?

I kept reading the report and saw that the first charge of Home Invasion, Robbery and Extortion were logged a day earlier than on detective Pincher’s report! The other two charges were a day off also! The end of the report ended completely different from detective Pincher’s in that Mr. Dudley stated that when he allegedly asked me when his investment would be considered paid? I’d said, “Only time will tell.” Instead of those insane threats that I’d light his house on fire with his whole family in it!

When I made it to the court room my attorney wasn’t even there. Then, when he showed up he was in a hurry and told me, “They are adding another charge of fortifying against you. That’s a building block for R.I.C.O., organized crime.”

I waved my new police report from detective Maltobano in the air and Mr. Barries said he’d already read it. He hadn’t even noticed all of the glaring discrepancies with dates and the massively different ending! He told me it wasn’t a big deal when considering the big picture and that they’d fix it by the time preliminary hearing came around!

CHAPTER 125

Back in my little single man cell in our neck of the county jail, the weekend arrived and I got a chance to get out of the cell for dayroom at the end of the tier. Outside of our cells there was a four foot walkway and a set of bars shoulder high to try and keep us from hopping over to the tier below us to identical cells and structure. Across from our cells, further down, there was a thick Plexiglas window that we could barely see through. We could see an eighty man tank for the lower security inmates living in a dormitory on the other side. We could also see our own reflection from our own cells with that window. I walked down the tier to our dayroom with my shower gear and realized half of our 12 cells were out together. Our dayroom consisted of a T.V., a phone, four tables, the newspaper, a couple of chess boards and a smaller enclosure made of bars for the shower. I set my shower gear down and met a few people.

The only other white man introduced himself as Shotgun. He looked about 45 years old, had some dated archaic tattoos in a choreographed strategic manner, wore glasses, shaved head, and looked sharp and somehow dignified at about six feet tall and 200 lbs. We went over some preliminaries and I found out Shotgun had been in the same cell fighting a three strikes case for two years.

I watched him wrap a towel around a corner of the bars along the shower enclosure and realized it was for doing pull-ups. I started working out with him and listened to him talk about the three strikes law and his case.

“The three strikes law in California was enacted after a sex offender got out of prison and raped and murdered a little girl in Santa Maria. Her father was a senator and the media had a field day enraging the public with sentiment about a revolving door justice system. The politicians should have focused on the nature of the crime and dropped the hammer down on sex offenders instead of lumping us all together. Besides getting that part wrong, the three strikes law in California has a constitutional problem that goes to the nature of double jeopardy. I signed a plea bargain for a case in the 1970’s that is now considered a strike. Now they are using it against me again. That’s being convicted of it twice. If I would have known back then that this law was coming I would have taken the case to trial.”

I explained my case to Shotgun and he stopped me when I told him my first offer was 50 to life.

“Listen to me carefully. You can only catch one strike per case. That means you can’t catch all three, or six in your case, in one shot. If that was the case the county could just turn one strike-able felony into a list of them. Here is an example. Let’s say John Doe beats up Joe public and takes his wallet and runs away. The county could charge John Doe with assault and battery and add a charge of great bodily injury as a strike-able offense. Then they could add another strike-able offense for robbery for taking the wallet. Then they could add another strike-able offense for mayhem. Then another one for street terrorism. Now, just because I said they can’t do it don’t misunderstand that they aren’t doing it. They are. People are signing those kinds of illegal plea bargain sentences every day.”

“How do you know all of this Shotgun?”

“I’m getting literature about the three strikes law from the supreme court. Let me tell you something. The courts here on the ground floor in our county jails across California were grossly unprepared for this strike law. Like anything that has to do with law and lawyers the kinks get worked out over time as mountains of paperwork get pushed to the Supreme Court and back. What I’m telling you about not being able to catch more than one strike in one case is going to be responsible for the biggest backlog of paper work ever in California. The only time you can catch more than one strike per case is if it falls under what is called a crime spree and that is very rare.”

“Shotgun, why is my attorney letting me stress over the 50 year to life offer that’s on the table right now if it’s not even a legal offer?”

Shotgun looked at me like I was naive. “You have to understand something right now. Your attorney, Mr. high powered Barries, probably hasn’t taken more than a case or two to trial a year. Some of these attorneys don’t ever take a case to trial. Everything is a plea bargained conviction. You, as a client, will be a lot easier to manipulate into signing a deal after you have marinated long enough stressing on 50 years to life. That’s how this business works. It’s not like it used to be where the D.A. could stand firm with a 70% conviction ratio. That allowed some room for witnesses to have a motive for lying! Or a detective to be wrong, or even biased, or for circumstances to be a little different than they first looked. Now in Orange County the D.A. points to their 99% conviction ratio to show they are tough on crime and keep the price of real estate at a premium. That means everything that is alleged against you is going to stick and follow you for the rest of your life.”

I had to find out if my attorney already knew I couldn’t catch more than one strike in one case. I got on the pay phone and called him.

“Mr. Barries. I just found out that I can’t catch more than one strike per case. Is it true?”

I heard Mr. Barries clear his throat. It sounded like my attorney had me on speaker phone and I heard another attorney in the background talking to mine. I heard the other attorney asking mine, ‘Ask him how he found out?’ I heard my attorney clear his throat again and offer, “I just found that out, also, but I also just did the math on all six of your charges. The midterm on all six would come to 20 years, so it’s not that much of a difference. By the way, how did you find out?”

At that Moment I realized I was screwed. I was fighting for my life against the county and my attorney couldn’t be trusted. I lost it. “Mr. Barries how in the fuck can you let me stress over a 50 to life sentence and then as soon as I catch it’s not even a legitimate offer, you’re there to put me back over a barrel with my ass in the air with a 20 year offer? Let’s get something straight! I didn’t do it! Are you going to defend me and get my investment on record and prove Mr. Dudley is lying, or are you going to manipulate your own client?”

I got off the phone and came back to work out again with Shotgun feeling conflicted. It felt like it was me against the world in a high stakes poker game for my life.

Shotgun laughed and said, “You remind me of someone who just left. He was in the same cell you’re in now.”

“Who?”

“A guy named Dennis Chavez. He said almost the exact same thing to his attorney.”

I explained how I knew Dennis and found out he’d signed a ten year deal and that Natasha had been released for medical relief. He told me what I already knew, she died a week later. I stared at Shotgun in shock and listened to the rest of his words drill a hole in my chest.

“The difference with your case and Dennis’s is that he was entering the residence of a drug dealer to get a pregnant 16 year old runaway out. In your case, you’re the drug dealer invading a regular Joe’s house.”

I went back to my cell and stewed on what Shotgun said. It didn’t matter what was true in my case, it only mattered what had been alleged and written about me. The more that was alleged and written, the less the truth mattered. I prayed to God, I know this is happening for a reason… But why?

CHAPTER 126

For the next ten months the system ground me down with the sharpest tool in their shed to get me ready to plea bargain, with an almost daily, long, shackled down bus rides to court. I learned that people don’t like to get packed like sardines and transported from a holding tank, to a bus, to a holding tank, to a courtroom, back to a holding tank, back to the bus, back to another holding tank and then finally back to their cell to do it all again the following day. They tend to want to get that process over with and sign a deal to get to prison where they’ve heard it’s better. I saw a lot of them signing those illegal sentences with wild accusations that weren’t defended and were now labeling them for the rest of their life, just to get it over with.