Personal injuries

APRIL
CHAPTER 19

At the time I met Sherm Crowthers, I was a young State Defender and he was one of the stars of the criminal defense bar. Throughout my career, there have always been gifted black men renowned in court, great orators who borrow from the style of Baptist preachers. But Crowthers was unique. He was a stone fortress of a human being, nearly six foot six. His huge proportions had paved the way for a college scholarship to State, where he became a legendary football star in the fifties. After he had literally knocked down a wooden goalpost while catching a touchdown pass he had acquired the nickname Sherman, in reference to the tank, and I seldom heard anyone call him Abner, which was his given name. His size was also the foundation of a uniquely imposing personality. In court, he was seldom anything but belligerent. He terrified witnesses, including cops, treated judges with disdain, and did not even spare juries. He attempted charm in the early phases of a trial, but in summation he worked himself into a state of absolute fury in which he delivered virtual orders to the jurors, which, to the chagrin of the prosecution, were all too often followed.

Sherm was brilliant. But it was the aggressive character of his mind that especially impressed me. He was never back on his heels. He accused and quarreled and ridiculed and rarely met any argument head-on. His accent was still strongly flavored with south Georgia, where he'd been a shoeless boy, but it was no drawl. He spoke at bullet speed, never quite getting to the end of words before another thought was coming at you, the better to batter you down.

In my early days, I tried one case with him as co-counsel. I was scared of him throughout, just like everybody else I knew. Our clients were charged in a dice game murder; Sherm's guy had been cheated, and my client's prints were on the gun. Their defense was that the murder weapon had actually been drawn by the victim, whom, they said, had been killed as they attempted to wrest the.38 from him. The onlookers didn't seem to remember it that way, although they admitted things had happened quickly. But the pathological evidence appeared to show that the gun had been fired from at least three feet.

Sherm's cross of the police pathologist, Dr. Russell, was astonishing. He took the murder weapon and loaded it while Russell was on the stand, cleared the chamber, then put the weapon in the pathologist's hand and forced it back toward his face, engaged all the while in a barrage of questions about the physiology of wrists and fingers. As the gun lingered at his temple, Russell's voice grew watery and he appeared to have no confidence whatsoever in his opinions. Afterwards, the Chief State Defender asked me what I'd learned from the experience of trying a case with the legendary Sherm Crowthers. The answer was nothing. He was inimitable. It was hard to convince anyone that I'd actually seen a defense lawyer point a loaded gun at a witness during cross-examination, much less that the judge and the prosecutors never thought to object.

Nevertheless, the case left me with much to ponder. Sherm saw life in terms of angry essentials, inescapable categories-rich and poor; black and white-which as far as he was concerned defined everything and whose existence enraged him. Even worse, in his view, was the hypocrisy practiced by virtually everyone but him in refusing to acknowledge the all-determining power of these factors. When the jury went out, I was astounded that Sherm had no doubt they'd acquit.

`We gone win this case, don't you know that? No problem here. Cause it's just a nigger shootin a nigger. Happens every day. We gave that jury all the excuse they need. This here was just some drunks at a dice game, not somebody gone bust into their house. They don't care now. This idn't gone take two hours 'fore they send these two fellas home, don't give a hoot if they get drunk and shoot another nigger or two tonight.' Sherm was huge in every part, with a massive face, a long wide brow, and large throbbing eyes. His hatred for a moment stood magnified in all of his dark features. He despised me, not so much for being white as for not seeing what was plain to him. And the jury returned a not-guilty verdict in about ninety minutes.

When he was nominated for the bench, I was astounded. Sherm lived the black bourgeois life, not a lot different from Robbie's: big cars, diamonds, snappy clothes. And I couldn't imagine him enjoying anything in the law more than combat in the courtroom. Furthermore, every lawyer I knew, black or white, was terrified of facing Sherman on the bench. In the Bar Association there was a restless current of opposition. But it was the early eighties; the dispossessed African-American electorate was demanding more black hands on the levers of power; and no one could doubt Sherm's abilities. As my friend Clifton Bering, probably the county's most respected black politician, told me, `He's a son of a bitch, George. But he's the son of a bitch we all need.'

The two contrived cases Robbie had in front of Crowthers, one assigned to him directly, the other transferred from Judge Sullivan, had dawdled along. The first of the cases, King v. Hardwick, was supposedly a sexual harassment suit, whose plot Robbie had dreamed up, apparently inspired by the story he'd later told about Constanza's daughter and her ex-boyfriend. In this version, a young woman, whom we called Olivia King, had been secretary to Royce Hardwick, an executive at Forlan Supply, who was two decades her senior. In her first year of employment, she and Hardwick had had a brief fling. Eventually, she met a man closer to her own age and broke off the relationship, enraging Hardwick. His wounded antics, ranging from pitiful entreaties to furious ridicule, had forced her to quit her job. Even then Hardwick persisted. He followed her to work, harassed her by phone, and sent silly defamatory letters to her new boss, which, while unsigned, were clearly from him. Finally, in desperation, Olivia had contacted a female superior of Hardwick's. An investigation was initiated in which a company attorney interviewed him. Hardwick casually admitted virtually everything Olivia claimed, laughing it off as a prank. He was astonished when the company fired him.

Now that Olivia had brought suit, Hardwick's story had changed. He defended with a mixture of outright denial and failed recollection, explaining objective evidence like phone records and Olivia's coworkers' sightings of him lurking around the elevators as simply part of his efforts to retrieve needed information from his departed secretary. As for Hardwick's confession to the company attorney, his present lawyer, James McManis, asserted that it could not be admitted into evidence because of the attorney-client privilege. The central question in determining whether the interview was privileged was whether Hardwick could have reasonably believed Forlan's lawyer was acting in his behalf, rather than for the company. On April Fool's Day, Robbie and McManis appeared before the Honorable Judge Crowthers to argue the issue.

As a judge, whatever else might be said against him, Sherm never had problems arriving at an opinion about a matter. He was pontifical and often brutal with the lawyers before him. Today he shook his mighty head as he read through the papers Robbie and McManis had filed.

"Where's your client?" he demanded of Jim. With the bench elevated six feet over the well of the court, Crowthers appeared the size of Zeus. McManis was wordless as Sherm leered down at him. "You want me to deny this motion, don't you, Mr. Mack Manis?"

"Yes, sir," said McManis when he finally found his tongue.

"And the reason's cause your client believed he was speaking under the confidence of the attorney-client privilege to this lawyer from Forlan Supply. Isn't that what you're sayin here in your papers?"

"Yes, sir."

"Am I gonna take your word for that?"

"Sir?"

"Am I supposed to let you tell me what your client thought, or is your client gonna get up on the witness stand here in my courtroom and tell me for himself?" Crowthers always took a particular glee in eluding attorneys' expectations. Practicing before him was a little like hitting a ball toward the front wall of a handball court without realizing that it could come back and smack you from behind. "So where is your client?" Crowthers demanded again.

The matter was set over for one week to bring in Hardwick. McManis sent a Teletype to D.C. to find an FBI Special Agent from out of town to play the executive. But UCORC intervened. It was one thing for Robbie and Jim to make misleading statements to Crowthers and the other judges who were under investigation; the courts had long approved of that kind of governmental deception as part of an undercover operation. But an FBI agent, sworn on oath, claiming he was Royce Hardwick and testifying about events that had never happened looked and smelled a lot like perjury. That was one of the reasons UCORC's protocols had sought to avoid trials of the contrived matters.

Both McManis and Sennett had to fly out to make a personal appearance at Main Justice, and supposedly the decision to go forward was made by Janet Reno herself. In any case, on the morning of April 8 a rock jawed agent from somewhere in America was in McManis's office, prepared to play Royce Hardwick.

Jim remained unnerved by his performance the week before and amazed at the primitive awe Crowthers was capable of inspiring with that murderous stare compressed beneath his graying brows. Robbie and Stan spent more time coaching McManis than our pseudo-Mr. Hardwick. The agent was relaxed and seemed to understand his part, although he'd be less convincing if he was required to show Hardwick's seedy side.

As they were all heading for court, Sennett pulled me into McManis's office.

"Go with them."

I was incredulous.

"You're the referring attorney," Stan said. "It would make sense if you're there. And I'm worried about Jim with Sherm. We don't want people to start wondering if McManis is really a lawyer. If he needs some cues, it'll look less peculiar if they're not all coming from Robbie."

This was exactly the kind of thing I'd been afraid of. But Stan claimed the request had McManis's blessing, and Jim, in fact, repeated it. Crowthers was a lot to handle, even for courtroom veterans, and Robbie had no objections, so I tagged along, vowing to myself to do nothing, unless there was a four-alarm fire.

McManis had rehearsed the direct examination with the visiting agent at least a dozen times and he was quite poised going through it. `Royce Hardwick' testified according to his script that he'd believed the Forlan lawyer was there to act in his interests and that he had figured what he'd told the lawyer was confidential. McManis tendered the witness for cross-examination, but Sherm never allowed Robbie to stand, or Jim to get out of the way.

"Now just a second here," Sherman demanded. "You mind if I ask your client a couple questions, Mr. Mack Manis?" Caught again in the headlights, Jim failed to answer and Sherm flipped a dismissive hand in his direction. He could do pretty much as he liked on a matter like this. "Now listen here, Mr. Hardwick. You tellin me that when that lawyer from the company asked you what happened you were thinkin he was gonna keep what you told him a secret?"

'Hardwick' took his time with the question. His hands were folded on the shellacked birch rail of the witness stand and he maintained an impressive executive timbre in answering yes.

"So you must have told him the truth, then, huh?"

Caught short, Hardwick sat back. Sherm had scooted his chair all the way to the partition between the bench and the witness stand, but that apparently was not advantage enough. He now stood, looming seven or eight feet over Hardwick.

"Heard me, didn't you? You wouldn't lie to your own lawyer, would you?"

"Well, Judge, I really-I don't know."

"You don't? You mean you'd send Mr. Mack Manis here to tell lies to me?"

Hardwick, who'd had to lean back to about forty-five degrees to face Sherm, said of course not.

"No," said Sherm, and shook his huge head. "I didn't think so. So if this lawyer's got some notes and memos about what you said had been passing between you and Olivia King, those things must be true. Right?"

"Well, I don't really remember what happened back then anymore," Hardwick said, repeating the lines he'd rehearsed. "My whole life fell apart. It's just a big jumble."

"I been hearin you say that. But you don't have any memory of lyin to that lawyer, do you? That's what I'm askin you now. Did you lie, far as you remember?" Sherm put his hands on the partition and pushed his large face down toward Hardwick's, breaching a space between interlocutor and witness that he would have drawn and quartered any lawyer for violating. Hardwick actually let one arm rise up defensively before he said no.

"That's what I'm sayin. Course you wouldn't lie. So if that lawyer says you admitted you were all worked up over Olivia King, that you'd been bothering her and pestering her, following her to work and calling her vile names in these letters, you were tellin the truth, weren't you, best you remember?"

Hardwick's eyes lit first on McManis, who still stood mute, then revolved past him as the witness searched the courtroom for help. I had some dwindling thought of passing Jim a note to tell him to object, but that only figured to inflame Crowthers more. Besides, I reminded myself, McManis was there to lose.

"I guess," Hardwick finally answered.

"Idn't any reason to think otherwise, right?"

"Right."

"Okay," said Sherm and finally beat his large head up and down. With that he returned his attention to McManis at the podium. "Okay. So what I'm tryin to figure is what we-all are doin here, Mr. Mack Manis. Client just admitted on the record in this case same things he supposedly said in confidence to that lawyer. Di'nt he?" Sherman revealed his large irregular teeth in a mischievous smile. "Nothin for me to rule on, is there? Dudn't matter whether the statements he made before are privileged, cause there's no way what he just said right here doesn't come into evidence-is there?"

Sherman, when he laughed, let his tongue slide through his teeth, and he emitted a wet sputter under his heavy gray mustache. He enjoyed himself while his mean lesson sunk in around the courtroom. He'd obviously demanded McManis produce his client so he could batter a new set of admissions out of Hardwick, avoiding a difficult ruling in the process. Sennett, when he heard about this turn of events, was delighted. Talk about a judge on the take! But, sitting there, I had no thought that corruption played any part in what Crowthers had done. It was just Sherm being himself, savoring the gratification he got by clobbering a jerk like Hardwick and by demonstrating that the best attorney in the courtroom was the one up on the bench.

As Sherm took his seat again, still chuckling and tossing his head in amusement, McManis came out with his only line of protest.

"But, Your Honor!" he said.

Crowthers threw his big hand Jim's way, disregarding the objection, and went on drafting the order.

We all left the courtroom together and climbed into an elevator, where we were alone in the car. Robbie, who'd had the good sense not to speak a word during the hearing, finally piped up.

"'But, Your Honor,"' he wailed, just once. Hardwick had no comprehension what the laughter was about.