Guilty As Sin

2

The Tombs

Although his client’s name may have been Alonzo Barnett, for as long as anyone could remember he’d been known simply as AB. Which made the two of them a pretty good match, considering that years earlier, long before he’d become Jaywalker the criminal defense lawyer, he himself had been born into the world as Harrison J. Walker.

Barnett came his way in the mid-1980s, which for many New Yorkers was a time of crime, cocaine and crack in epidemic proportions. For Jaywalker, it was also a time to hustle to pay the mortgage and his daughter’s tuition. And one of the ways he hustled was to accept court-appointed cases. The Legal Aid Society, where he himself had been broken in not too long ago, could handle only so many indigent defendants. The rest were doled out to private lawyers. Not the big-firm partners or the hotshots who were even then billing out their services for hundreds of dollars an hour. No, the ones who lined up to take the overflow were the young, the old and the journeymen who hung on but never got rich in the business. The Jaywalkers. Who else, after all, would be willing to work for forty dollars an hour for in-court time and twenty-five for out-of-court?

When a person gets arrested and is lucky enough to have money to hire a lawyer-or when his family is-he gets to choose the lawyer. When he doesn’t, the constitutions of both the United States and the State of New York guarantee him free representation. But the catch is, he no longer gets to choose the lawyer; the system chooses for him. Not that money necessarily insures quality representation. To this day, it’s Jaywalker’s firm belief that overall, there’s as much talent at Legal Aid and on the assigned counsel rolls as there is in the private bar. But when somebody else is doing the choosing, the defendant finds himself totally at the mercy of the luck of the draw.

According to Alonzo Barnett, the luck of the draw hadn’t been particularly good to him, and he’d been through two free lawyers already by the time Jaywalker was asked if he was interested in picking up a defendant charged with sale and possession of drugs.

“What is he, a troublemaker?” was his first question.

“No,” said Lorraine Wilson, the clerk who’d phoned him after he’d finally let it be known that he was ready to start accepting court-appointed cases again. “At least it doesn’t seem that way. I mean, I don’t see any ‘DD’ notation next to his name.” DD’s were Difficult Defendants, who earned the designation by punching or spitting at their lawyers, bringing frivolous pro se lawsuits, or lodging spurious complaints to some bar association they picked out of the phone book. Alonzo Barnett had apparently done none of those things, at least so far. The only things that stood out about him, as best as Lorraine could tell, were the multiple previous lawyers and the fact that by now his case was beginning to grow whiskers. More than a year and a half had passed since his arrest, something of an anomaly in a system that owed its very survival to its unfailing ability to rapidly dispose of huge numbers of cases. “Maybe he just tires lawyers out,” she suggested. “Want to give it a try?”

Jaywalker thought about it for a good second or two. Lawyers didn’t tend to tire out all that easily, especially when they were working on the clock. If anything, they were far more likely to be the ones that tired other people out. So chances were there had to be something wrong with the guy. But a major tuition payment was coming due the end of the month, with close to nothing in the bank to cover it.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

As Lorraine read off the particulars of the case to him, he jotted down the indictment number, the courtroom and the adjourned date. “Let me know how it turns out,” she said.

He promised he would.

Most lawyers who take assignments wait until the day the case appears in court to start working on it. Whether consciously or not, they’re immediately relegating the court-appointed client to a status inferior to that of the retained one. Jaywalker was different, even back then. Although he was trying hard to develop a private practice and would eventually succeed, he never would differentiate between the defendants who could afford to pay him and the ones who couldn’t. Those who noticed-and they included not only colleagues but prosecutors and judges, as well-were by turns impressed with his dedication and astounded by his stupidity. The object of being a lawyer, they all understood, was to make money.

But Jaywalker and money have always had something of an uneasy relationship, and he knew even then, even back in the ’80s, that he’d never be a big earner. So already he’d begun to measure success not in terms of dollars and cents, but by other, vaguer yardsticks, such as the appreciation of those he worked for and the respect of those he worked in front of, against or alongside. To his way of thinking, this difference in how he looked at things didn’t deserve medals or accolades. The truth was, he’d simply dropped out of the money chase because he was genetically ill-suited to compete in it. Sort of like how a dog might concentrate on fetching a stick instead of trying to drive a car. Focusing on getting the best possible results for his clients, regardless of their means, and along the way treating them more like family than freeloaders, didn’t necessarily make Jaywalker a better person than his colleagues.

But it did tend to make him a better lawyer.

Not the lawyer he’d eventually become, winning ninety percent of his cases in a business where he wasn’t supposed to win half that many. But already, even back then, he was doing things no other lawyers were doing, and the results had begun to show.

So even though Alonzo Barnett wasn’t scheduled to be back in court for another week and a half, on the day following his conversation with Lorraine Wilson, Jaywalker made a trip to Part 91, the courtroom on the fifteenth floor of 100 Centre Street where Barnett’s case was pending, right up to and including a trial, if there was to be one. There he found a friendly clerk and traded a notice of appearance for a look at the file.

To Jaywalker’s way of thinking, reading through a file before meeting the defendant had to be something like a doctor’s studying a patient’s workup before the actual exam. You weren’t going to learn everything, but you were going to get a pretty good idea of just how good or bad things were going to be. You’d learn the person’s name, as well as any other names he might be known by, his sex and his age. There’d be a printout of his past history, always important to factor in. Next there’d be a bunch of numbers, totally indecipherable to a layman but immediately telling to the trained eye. Finally, there’d be a little narrative of sorts, a paragraph or two describing just what it was that had brought the person in-whether the “in” happened to be to the office, the emergency room or, as was the case in Alonzo Barnett’s situation, the criminal justice system. But it didn’t much matter, the point being that from studying the reading materials, you were generally going to get a pretty good idea of what you were looking at and how bad it was.

For Alonzo Barnett, the news wasn’t good.

To begin with, his past history was absolutely terrible. It took Jaywalker a good five minutes just to read and decipher the NYSIS sheet, the computer printout of Barnett’s prior arrest record. By the time he’d finished jotting down the relevant highlights, he was able to count no less than five felony convictions amassed over the past thirty years. Almost all of them were for drugs, either sale or possession. In addition to the felonies, there was a scattering of misdemeanor convictions, somewhere between eight and twelve of them. And while incomplete sentencing data made it impossible to determine exactly how much time Barnett had actually served, it was apparent that he’d been behind bars for well over half of his fifty years. Make that fifty-one, since the printout was by this time more than a year old.

There was no dearth of names, either. In addition to Alonzo Barnett, the name the defendant had given at this latest arrest, he’d also been know at various times of his adult life as Alonzo Brown, Alvin Brown, Alonzo Black, Alonzo Bell and AB. Simply from the repeated recurrence of the first name, Jaywalker guessed that at least the Alonzo part was correct. The true last name was anyone’s guess. Not that it mattered. With only one name himself, Jaywalker had always made it a habit to address his clients using their first names, and he always would.

Next there were the numbers. The ones that stood out were 2, 4, 220.43 and 220.21. Again, not much to a lay-person, except perhaps one interested in playing them in some combination, whether on the street or in some Lotto game. But to Jaywalker, they immediately told a story, and once again, it wasn’t a good one. The 2 was for the number of ounces of a narcotic drug that Barnett-or whatever his name was-was charged with selling; the 4 was for the ounces he was accused of possessing. And the fancier numbers, the 220.43 and the 220.21, were the particular sections of the New York State Penal Law that he’d allegedly violated in the process of doing so, the first representing Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance in the First Degree, the second Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the First Degree. Both charges were A-1 felonies, indistinguishable from murder in terms of the sentences they carried. Thanks to a long-ago governor named Rockefeller and a never-ending succession of lawmakers panicked at the notion of being branded soft on crime, each charge carried a maximum sentence of twenty-five years to life, the absolute minimum being fifteen to life.

Finally, there was the narrative. Jaywalker knew better than to look for it in the indictment. That was merely the instrument drawn up by some computer in the D.A.’s office and rubber-stamped by a grand jury. It would be couched in legalese and contain the formal accusations, but little in the way of helpful detail. So he looked instead at the Criminal Court complaint, a single sheet of yellow paper typed out the old-fashioned way the day or night Barnett had been brought to 100 Centre Street to make the first of a long series of appearances before one judge or another.

It was in affidavit form, the named deponent being the detective who’d sworn to its truth and accuracy a year and a half ago.

The defendant, Alonzo Barnett, on or about the 5th day of October, 1984, at 1830 hours, in the vicinity of 127th Street and Broadway, in the County of New York, State of New York, did unlawfully sell to a law enforcement officer known to deponent a quantity of heroin in excess of 2 ounces, and did unlawfully possess a quantity of heroin in excess of 4 ounces.

In other words, Alonzo Barnett was looking at a direct sale to an undercover cop. That said, the phrase “law enforcement officer” caused Jaywalker to pause for just a moment. The usually language was “a police officer.” But then he looked back at the deponent’s command and noticed for the first time the initials “JCSFTF.” Although he’d never before heard of such a unit, Jaywalker felt he was on pretty safe ground translating it as “Joint City, State and Federal Task Force.” Which would explain the “law enforcement officer” bit. The undercover cop hadn’t necessarily been a cop at all; he might just as easily have been a state trooper or a federal agent on loan from the New York State Police, the DEA or the FBI, called in to work on a major investigation.

Your tax dollars at work.

There was still one more item in the file that caught Jaywalker’s attention. It was a small color photo of the defendant, no larger than the ones they stick on passports. Not your traditional mug shot with a pair of images-one full face and one in profile-above a series of numbers. No, this one was a single exposure, a shot of the defendant looking directly into the camera, taken hours after his arrest. He was dark-skinned, but not so dark that Jaywalker didn’t have to check his race under the pedigree section, where he found it listed as “black,” “African-American” not really being in vogue yet in law enforcement circles. Barnett was described as five-foot-seven inches and one hundred and sixty pounds. His graying hair made him look every bit of his fifty-one years and then some. Staring out at Jaywalker, as he’d stared at the camera a year and a half earlier, he looked neither belligerent nor defiant, the way a younger man might have. If anything, he looked sad. If he was angry, he was angry only at himself.

Before returning the file, Jaywalker jotted down the A.D.A.’s name and number. He took a look at the earlier notices of appearance that had been filed in the case. There turned out to be three of them, not two, as Lorraine Wilson had thought. The two court-appointed lawyers- Jaywalker now being number three-had been preceded by a private attorney, some guy who’d walked away from the case after making a single appearance. Maybe he hadn’t been paid enough, or maybe he had suspected early on that Mr. Barnett was going to be hard to deal with. Whichever had been the case, later on he’d somehow managed to sneak the words For Arraignment Only onto his notice. It was the different color ink that gave the notation away as an afterthought. So one thing was certain, at least. Whether it was Alonzo Barnett’s long record, his lack of money or his disinclination to take a plea, it seemed nobody wanted any part of him.

Nobody, at least, until Jaywalker.

Having done the unusual by looking through the file a full week before the case was scheduled to appear in court, Jaywalker next did the unthinkable. He went to visit Barnett.

He would have done it the hard way, killing a full day by making the round-trip out to Rikers Island and back. That’s where the vast majority of the city’s detainees were housed while awaiting trial or some other disposition of their cases. But it turned out Jaywalker didn’t have to go that far. Barnett was a guest of what was at that time known as the Manhattan Detention Center. In its later incarnations it would become the Bernard B. Kerik Complex, and then-following Mr. Kerik’s indictment, conviction and fall from grace-the Manhattan Detention Complex. But to everyone familiar with it, whether as an insider or an outsider, it had always been, and would always be, the Tombs.

The good thing about the Tombs was that, rather than being plunked down in the middle of a river, it was conveniently located at 125 White Street, at the northern end of 100 Centre Street. So in order to get to it from the Criminal Court Building, all you had to do was walk around the corner. In fact, if you were unlucky enough to be a guest of the city, you didn’t even have to do that. Both an underground passageway and a twelfth-floor covered bridge-imaginatively referred to as “the bridge”-saved you the trouble. Jaywalker, who’d been a guest of the city on more than one occasion-whether for mouthing off to a judge or committing some other minor breach of courtroom etiquette-took the trouble on this occasion of walking around the corner.

The other thing about the Tombs was that it was then, and continues to be to this day, reserved for the more desirable detainees in the system. Not that there’s any written policy decreeing it as such. But it can’t be purely by accident that at any given moment the population of the Tombs is considerably older, whiter, more fluent in English and less prone to committing crimes of violence than the inhabitants of Rikers Island.

An hour after arrival, Jaywalker found himself sitting across a table from Alonzo Barnett. It was an old wooden table, covered with peeling paint and cigarette burn marks, and it was securely bolted to the floor. But sitting across it sure beat trying to carry on a conversation through iron bars or bulletproof glass, or using telephone handsets manufactured sometime during the last Ice Age.

Barnett looked about like he had in his photograph, only older. And not just a year and a half older. Even in the Tombs, time has a tendency to take its toll. But other than that, he was the same man the photo had promised. Relaxed, mature, self-aware, sad and somehow dignified despite the predicament in which he found himself. And if you think it’s easy to look dignified while wearing an orange jumpsuit and paper slippers, sitting at a bolted-down table in a room walled by steel and cinder blocks, try it sometime.

“I suspect my previous attorneys have warned you that I’m a bit of a pain,” were the first words out of Barnett’s mouth. “And the prosecutor, as well.”

Which wasn’t quite the opening line Jaywalker had expected. Defendants didn’t generally make a habit of using terms like suspect, previous and as well. Or even attorney, for that matter. Not to mention prosecutor. Evidently, what Mr. Barnett was trying to say was, “I bet all my otha lawyers and that muthafuckin’ no-good D.A. been bad-mouthin’ me, huh?”

But he hadn’t said it that way, and the almost quaint manner he’d used to express himself instead brought a smile to Jaywalker’s face. “Actually,” he said, “I haven’t spoken with any of them.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Well,” said Jaywalker, “if I understand the way things are supposed to work, I’m assigned to represent you, not them. So I figured I’d come in here and see what you have to say first, before I talk to any of them. If that’s okay with you.”

Which evened the score at one smile apiece.

They talked for an hour that first day, maybe a little more. Alonzo Barnett came across as a gentle, thoughtful and intelligent man. Born on a farm in central Alabama, he’d had almost nothing in the way of formal education, finally earning his GED at the age of forty-eight in a place called Green Haven. A GED is a high school equivalency degree, a not-quite-diploma that the state corrections system used to hand out, back when there was enough money to hold classes behind bars. And despite its bucolic name, Green Haven was and continues to be a maximum security prison surrounded by a huge wall topped with miles of razor wire. It was no doubt given its name by someone who never set eyes on it.

Barnett had made his way north at the age of fourteen, alone. He slept on the floor of a Harlem shooting gallery, a large room shared by upward of twenty men and women who otherwise would have been out on the street. In summer, it was cooled by a single window cracked open at the top. In winter, it was heated by the open lit burners of a gas range. And lest there be any confusion, there are no targets to shoot at in a shooting gallery, and no trophies awarded for marksmanship. What is shot is heroin, what are aimed at are veins, and the only prize for hitting one is an hour or so of oblivion.

Days, Barnett worked for street corner dealers as a gofer. A gofer is someone who’s willing to go for this and go for that. This and that might include coffee, soda, lunch, cigarettes, change or more product. The product could be heroin, cocaine, marijuana or pills. At the end of the day the gofer would get paid in the form of a few dollars or, more typically, a few glassine bags filled with white powder.

Barnett’s first arrest came shortly after his fifteenth birthday and was for possession. Too young to be brought to criminal court, he was treated as a juvenile delinquent and placed on probation. He succeeded for a full twenty-seven days, before being rearrested for sale. This time he was sent to Spofford. Until 1998, the Spofford Juvenile Justice Center, located in the Bronx, was the facility where they sent boys so they could learn how to grow up to be adult criminals. Although the curriculum did indeed include mandatory education classes, that fact had little or nothing to do with how its residents referred to it.

They called it Crime School.

The juvenile justice system has jurisdiction over its subjects until they reach their twenty-first birthdays. Most are released much sooner, so they can be supervised while on the equivalent of parole. At the time of Alonzo Barnett’s stay at Spofford, probation officers typically carried caseloads upward of two hundred juveniles apiece. Which allowed an officer to spend four minutes with each of his charges, oh, every six weeks or so. When it came to Alonzo Barnett, they didn’t even bother. Seeing that he’d already flunked probation once, they weren’t about to give him another chance. Instead, he was released outright two years later, having been outfitted with a shirt, a pair of pants, a pair of ill-fitting shoes and a subway token, all courtesy of the Fortune Society, and a ten-dollar bill, thanks to the largesse of the taxpayers of New York State.

He was seventeen at the time.

As interested as he was in Barnett’s account of the years that followed, Jaywalker figured that could wait for another day. With eight dollars in commissary funds and no bail set, Barnett certainly wasn’t going any where. Besides which, Jaywalker knew the odds. No doubt there were some uneducated, unemployed, unskilled, seventeen-year-old African-Americans with no families who came out of lockup, defied the odds and went on to succeed. But a look at Barnett’s rap sheet had already told Jaywalker more than he needed to know. In addition to Green Haven, he’d seen the sights at Sing Sing, Great Meadow, Fishkill, Dannemora, Auburn and Attica. As for the little time he’d spent out on the street between visits, it didn’t require all that much imagination to fill in the blanks.

What Jaywalker was more interested in right now was the case at hand, the one that looked like it might turn out to be Alonzo Barnett’s final encounter with the court system. Not that it didn’t promise to at last provide Barnett with something he hadn’t had since his fourteenth birthday.

A permanent address.

As seamlessly as he could, Jaywalker gently steered the conversation toward the current charges. Unsure if, GED or no GED, Barnett could read-Jaywalker had made that mistake once with a client, and like most mistakes he made, he would never repeat it-he read the complaint aloud and then summarized the ten counts of the indictment.

“Funny,” said Barnett. “You’re my fourth lawyer on this case. But you’re the first one who’s bothered to read me the charges. Thank you.”

Jaywalker nodded but resisted commenting. He didn’t make criticizing other lawyers a habit, not unless he recognized their names and knew they were $750-an-hour blowhards. None of the ones listed on the previous notices of appearance came close to fitting into that category. So he simply said, “What can you tell me about them?”

“The lawyers?”

“No, the charges.”

He half expected Barnett to deny them, to say he was being framed, that he was the wrong guy, that he had an alibi, that he hadn’t known it was heroin. Once a client of Jaywalker’s had explained that he had diplomatic immunity. The guy was an American citizen, born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, who worked as a pipe fitter and had never once been out of the country. But he’d taken a few correspondence courses from an outfit he’d seen advertised on a matchbook, after which they’d mailed him a piece of paper with the word Diploma printed across the top of it. So having received the diploma, he’d figured immunity came along with it.

Kind of like fries, he’d explained.

Alonzo Barnett wasn’t asserting diplomatic immunity. Nor was he claiming frame, ignorance, alibi or mistaken identity. Without missing a beat, he looked Jaywalker squarely in the eye and said, “The charges are true. Every word of them.”