Coquille, Oregon, Late-February 1996 continued…
I got to the jail at around 6:30 that night after Court recessed for my ongoing DUII trial. The southern Oregon coast is usually very dark and wet by this time of day during the winter, and today was no exception, making for slow traffic out of North Bend. I was at the jail to find the jailor who booked my defendant, Dean Johnson, into custody the night of his arrest. It turned out that she was on duty this evening, so I got to talk to her right away.
“Juanita” was a short white lady in her early fifties who looked the part. She was a bit thick around the middle but had the remnants of an athletic body. Her demeanor was very pleasant and relaxed, but she was also keen in her memory of that night. Before she even retrieved the jail inventory for Johnson’s arrest, she told me she remembered him wearing white sneakers with shoelaces. She was sure that they were confiscated and inventoried along with a belt and the rest of his valuables.
When Juanita came back with the inventory of Johnson’s possessions, low and behold: a leather belt and white sneakers with shoelaces were removed from the defendant (along with his wallet and keys) and logged in jail’s possession and inventoried under Dean Johnson’s name. I had his ass now, and his buddy! I filled out a subpoena for Juanita for the next morning and told her the game plan – she was all for it!
I was energized for most of that night, strategizing on how I was going to play out tomorrow’s continuation of the slipper-defense DUII trial against a sleazy defendant and his master-of-bullshit defense attorney. It sincerely aggravated and angered me that in every single trial I had had, there was at least one person who was lying. Obviously lying, but usually unproveably so. On too frequent of occasions, I believed a cop was lying, too. Cops always tended to shade the truth a bit, and that was annoying enough. The street term for it is “testilying.” The worst for me was when they lied by omission through failure to disclose certain facts or events of the arrest encounter, which would be embarrassing in front of the jury and almost always meant a lost trial. On a couple of occasions, such disclosures may have swayed my charging decisions had I known them, and those cops REALLY pissed me off. But in this case, I had two lying pieces of dog shit – the defendant and his drinking buddy Rex - who swore in Court under God to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Then they both lied.
Righteous wrath was coming.
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