Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 36
Facing Harsh Realities
Coquille, Oregon, August 1996 continued…
None of Blanchett’s fucking pigs would put up the money for draining and searching the slough for the gun, and Peter sure as shit wasn’t going to, either. Ted was stuck in an extremely uncomfortable and difficult position – go to trial on circumstantial evidence and the jail tapes with no murder weapon and reluctant witnesses or let Jesse James plea to the lesser offence of Manslaughter 1 and thereby have that murdering motherfucker back on the streets in ten years. I didn’t envy him.
In the end, Ted followed Chuck’s old advice to take the bird in the hand and NOT leave your case (especially a shaky one) in the hands of a stupid jury to fuck up. Ted made the deal for Man 1. It was a bitter pill for him to swallow, but he did. Now, I was left with consequences of my own to mop up because I still had the Lurch trial scheduled for Burglary 1 after he refused to testify against Jesse James.
The longest part of the jury trial for Lurch on the Burglary 1 charge was picking the 12-person jury. It took all morning. We started with opening arguments after lunch. It was a straightforward case with simple facts, and that’s how I presented it to the jury. The defendant came to the victim’s residence (he was staying with his parents temporarily), uninvited, banging on the door loudly while threatening to kill the victim (I’ll call him “Stan”). The defendant (“Lurch”), who was about 6’4” and 260 lbs +, then kicked the door down and entered the residence with the announced intent to murder Stan. Lurch got about ten feet inside when he realized that Stan was pointing a .357 magnum at his chest. Lurch did what anybody would do – he turned and ran out before getting shot.
The Defense case was pathetic – they didn’t really have one. Lurch’s attorney was part of the “consortium” of attorneys contracted to do public defender work, and also a former Coos County Assistant District Attorney, meaning he was very familiar to our Office. His reputation was not very good. He was known for being an okay attorney, but he also tended to push chicken shit cases to trial. Maybe it was damaged ego, maybe the need to build more credibility, or even the need for more billable hours, I don’t know what his problem was…but he would have been wise to take my offer and have his client testify.
Whether or not Stan had sex with Lurch’s girlfriend was completely irrelevant to determine Lurch’s guilt, which was clear on the facts and the law. Most non-lawyers think of the crime of “burglary” as getting your home broken into and robbed. The specific legal definitions vary from State to State on some details and levels of offense, but the essence of the common law crime of burglary that all those statutes are modeled upon is the breaking and entering of the dwelling place of another, at night, with the intention to commit a crime therein. The intended crime could be theft, as people imagine, but it can also be anything else, like assault or murder. In my case, all of those elements were a slam dunk to establish because Stan was recorded in his 9-1-1 call that he made seconds after the pounding on the door started. I had it all, in Lurch’s own words, from the death threats to the door crashing down.
The Defense tried to rely on the jury’s sympathies for the betrayed boyfriend. All that accomplished was solidifying the motive for Lurch’s attack and his rage at Stan. Next, they pushed the idea that nothing bad really happened. “It was just a broken door. Nobody got hurt. They’re making mountains out of molehills here,” claimed my opponent repeatedly in closing arguments.
It didn’t work. My argument about how the defendant “violated the sanctity of his parents’ home” and “is lucky to be alive” won the day. The conviction came back in about an hour, just enough time to pick a foreman and take a first vote. “Guilty as charged” on all counts.
I almost felt bad about how that case went, and the resulting aftermath. Lurch got 90 days in County jail per the sentencing guidelines because his record was fairly clean up until then. About a month after he was sentenced, a new charge came across my desk for him for “possession of illegal contraband” while out on a jail work crew. Someone gave him cigarettes, and he got busted. That automatically violated his probation and added a new felony count, for which he would get another 90 days on the new charge plus another 90 for the probation violation, and reduced jail privileges. I’m pretty sure he’s spent a lot of time in and out of prison since then – I consoled myself with the idea that he assigned himself that life-track.
But that’s where I had a twinge of doubt: I had to pursue the case to the fullest, as threatened, to maintain our credibility, but there was no longer any other purpose to be served by doing so since the Jesse James case was done. Had Lurch, or his attorney, been smart and testified against Jesse James, sweet Justice could have been done all around with James in prison for life for pre-meditated murder and Lurch getting a second chance while on a short leash. Instead, Jesse James got a far lesser conviction and shorter sentence than he deserved, while Lurch was set upon a life in and out of the System out of a stupid sense of misplaced loyalty.
As it all turned out, nothing felt “Right” or “Just” about any of it. I guess sometimes, that’s how the wheels of “Justice” grind. I didn’t have to like it, but I did have to live with it. My only consolation was knowing that Lurch did the crime, and I did my job. The rest was out of my control.