Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 29

The Days Before A Day That Changes Everything

Coquille, Oregon, late April 1996 continued…

Gwen’s addition to the D.A.’s Office broke a lot of ice. She had a warm, engaging personality with a generous sense of humor that a lot of people took to quickly. She was eager to get started, and I was more than ready for the relief.

On her second day of her second week on the job, I got to hand off the psych cases to her. After getting through the morning arraignments and pleas, we were greeted with a brand-new psychiatric hold with a hearing set at the hospital for that afternoon. She got a taste of the baptism by fire. After walking her through the basics of what we had to prove and how the informal bedside hearing would take place, I asked her if she wanted to take the lead on it. She was all for it.

The case was of a 72-year-old man, single and alone in the world, who was a schizophrenic alcoholic. He was found during a safety call made by the man’s low-income housing landlord (i.e., slumlord) after not getting paid his rent and not getting any answer from attempts to knock at the door. He could hear random low moaning noises on his last attempt, so he called the cops and let them in with his master key.

“The cop says this guy was found under his bed, rolling around back and forth, moaning incoherently,” Gwen said as she read the police report while I drove. “The officer says he counted fourteen empty bottles of whiskey strewn around a mostly barren apartment. Along with several spots of what appeared to be dried vomit on the hardwood floor. And urine spots, too.”

“Sounds ugly so far,” I said.

“Oh, it gets worse,” Gwen said. “The Officer said, ‘The subject had multiple open sores on his skin that I could see. He was wearing an undershirt and underwear, and I could easily see at least a dozen open sores, with several more than an inch wide.’ What the fuck?!”

“Ever hear of meth sores?” I asked Gwen.

“No,” she replied. “I’ve been around plenty of druggies in my life, but I’ve never heard of that.”

“Me either until I started this job,” I went on. “It happens when these fucking tweakers get so much meth in their system that their bodies can’t process and expel it through their livers, so the toxins start leaching out of the skin.” It was amazing how much I had learned in just over six months.

“That’s so fucking gross,” Gwen said seriously disgusted.

“Yeah, but it’s very real. You’ll start noticing it in court pretty much every morning, and once you see it, you can’t un-see it.”

“You think this guy’s on meth, too?” Gwen asked.

“Who knows? I have heard about the same thing happening with really hard-core drunks, but I haven’t seen it yet,” I said. “Liver’s shot…probably more than that…this fucking guy is probably very close to being dead from organ failure if he’s been living like that long-term.”

Gwen was quiet as she thought it over and got ready for “court.” As we pulled into the hospital parking lot, I told her to just relax, walk the officer through his testimony, then the attending physician, and make your case that the respondent is a danger to himself and unable to care for his own basic needs. “It should be a slam dunk,” I assured her. This time, it was.

Judge Gaines would have done the exact opposite of what she eventually did had the hearing been by video or otherwise not in person, but after seeing this poor old degenerate drunk nutjob up close, she made the right call. He had no family or friends at all – nobody to speak for him beyond the appointed public defender (who privately agreed with the outcome). The guy was incoherent at bedside, moaning randomly and occasionally bursting into angry gibberish at nobody or anything in particular (yes, he was restrained in the bed). The toxin sores were starting to scab over with medical attention and hospital time, but they were quite obvious to all of us. The best thing that this man’s future held was likely a long hospital stay while gently exiting out of the material world, and that’s what I think Judge Gaines had in mind when she ordered a thirty-day full mental health evaluation at the State Mental Hospital. We all knew it was very unlikely he would see “freedom” again given his physical and mental conditions.

Sad as it may be, that was the best possible outcome for him. Letting him rot himself into oblivion would have been far more cruel. At least while in the custody of the State Hospital, his basic needs would be cared for, extensively.

When we got back to the D.A.’s office, we walked into another absurd bullshit session going on. This conversation was primarily between Sandy and Ted, but there were other nearby ears and attitudes to be had. The crux of the light-hearted discussion was about relationship boundaries. Ted had a long-distance girlfriend who he was trying to convince to move to Coos Bay, and Sandy was…a spirited debater for the woman’s perspective.

“Why wouldn’t she want a ring before moving all the way out here?” Sandy asked Ted.

“She could want a mansion and a yacht before she moves out here, too,” Ted spouted back. “That doesn’t mean I can give it to her. Not with what the freakin’ County is paying me!” Ted laughed. He was in emotional release mode, I learned, having just settled an gnarly bitch of a case triumphantly.

“I suppose you make her pay half on a date, right?” Sandy asked with some snide.

“Only on the first date!” Ted played back, laughing.

“She really paid on the second date,” I chimed in just to fuck with him a bit. Some of the nearby ears sprouted mouths enough to giggle.

“Ouch,” Gwen chipped in with a big grin.

“Yeah, okay. But what happened with that girlfriend of yours I heard something about?” Ted asked, surprising me that he had any clue at all. The courthouse talks. “I suppose she saw that big pile of saw dust on the way into town and said, ‘Oh, hell no! I’m outta here!’” (There were two mountains of woodchips at a mill on the way into Coos Bay that were hard to miss. Looks backwards to city kids, I guess.)

I laughed, and that allowed a few other people to laugh lightly at my painful plight. “Something like that,” I replied with suppressed embarrassment.

Sandy came in for the save for me, saying, “I met her. They were a really cute couple.”

“Thanks,” I said to Sandy.

“I saw you when you were going to your car and you opened the door for her,” Sandy said. “I thought that was sweet…Do you do that for your girlfriend, Ted?” Sandy pushed with just the right sarcastic look at Ted. He blushed.

“She’s an equal, right?” Ted said. “Why shouldn’t she offer to open the car door for me?”

“You a bit squishy, Ted?” I jabbed. “You need to be treated ‘like a lady?’” Now I was having fun with this.

“No, come on, that’s not what I meant,” Ted deflected. “If we’re supposed to be equal and treat each other that way, why would that even be expected?”

“I don’t know, courtesy and respect?” I shot back, still all in fun.

Sandy piped up with a zinger: “Ted, would you go to the store and buy tampons for your girlfriend?”