now that we have done more than merely survive the election and are still slightly wondering if it can actually be true that Obama will be presdient, it's time to blog. apologies for being a slug about it, but everything has been so uncertain and worrisome that all i've wanted to do is knit. i've produced a couple of warm scarves, unlike the knitter who was driven to make cosies for the trees (above: thank you ingrid w. for the image).
some of the most alert readers had a chance to see the post "Pure Detroit" which survived on the web for less than 24 hours. i will repost it, now that i've made the blog unsearchable. i was alarmed to find that a google search for "Judge Vonda Evans" turned up my mentions of her on the blog and i sure didn't want her reading it and coming after me. so here goes:
Pure Detroit [This is part of a creative nonfiction essay about a day i spent in Detroit. it falls in the middle of the piece.] Crudely printed yellow signs were posted on all three entrance doors to the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice: NO CELL PHONES. Here at the Third Judicial Circuit Court next to the Wayne County Jail, you were on your own to get rid of your phone.
“OK, then what can I do with my phone?” I asked the beefy policeman sitting next to the airport style metal detector.
“Guy in the parking lot across the street‘ll keep it for you for a buck or two.”
I looked out at the large unpaved lot full of cars and the little shack by the entrance. Next to it a skinny old man in sunglasses and a baseball cap with the Tiger’s ‘D’ leaned back in an executive style office chair
Lawyers are allowed to keep their cell phones, so I called my son Andrew; he was waiting for a case to be called in a courtroom on the eighth floor. He said he’d come right down.
It was noon on a warm May day, threatening rain. There were dozens of people out on the plaza in front of the courthouse. They stood in little groups, usually including an easily identifiable lawyer: a man in a suit and tie or a woman in a pants suit, with either briefcases or stacks of files in their arms. The lawyers looked serious; the regular citizens didn’t look happy. No one comes to the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice to have a good time. It’s a twelve storey building, where sixty-three judges sit, adjudicating civil, criminal, and family matters from across Detroit and all of Wayne County. Built in the 1960s in a modern style called “Brutalist,” the tough slabs of its concrete exterior could never be described as friendly or welcoming. The building dwarfs Carl Milles’ bronze sculpture “The Hand of God” standing outside, threatening divine retribution.
Andrew had invited me to come downtown for lunch at noon. He’d told me he would be in court that morning, but his case was on the docket for nine thirty, and shouldn’t take too long. “It’s just another habeas corpus,” he’d said. He is a Federal Defender and the writ of habeas corpus (“you shall have the body”) is a federal statute. It’s a prisoner’s right to a hearing to determine if he or she has been unlawfully imprisoned. But why was Andrew here in the Wayne County criminal court today? This was not his usual beat.
He appeared, dapper and suitably lawyerly in a three-piece light gray pinstripe suit with his ironic polka-dot bow tie. “This place is crazee, just crazee,” he said. “But finally they’ve called the case ahead of us.”
Just then a tall thin lawyer in a trench coat hailed Andrew and came over to chat. When Andrew introduced me as his mother, the guy said, “Wow; you were married to Professor Wise? That must have been quite a trip…he was brilliant, but, um quite a character, wasn’t he?”
Yes, he was. This wasn’t the first time someone had commented on the challenge of being married to such an eccentric professor of criminal law. We had divorced and he had died too young. I wish he had lived to see Andrew arguing some very challenging cases, defending indigents accused of a variety of federal crimes from mail fraud to murder for hire
Andrew pocketed my cell phone, walked the through the lawyer’s entrance to the courthouse, handed it back to me, and we took a stuffy crowded elevator to the eighth floor. It didn’t seem like an appropriate place to ask him to explain the case to me.
There was a little family group standing outside the courtroom of the Honorable Vonda Evans. Andrew introduced me to Sean, a slender nice-looking young guy in a suit; Dave, a slightly younger and heavier nice-looking guy in a suit. I didn’t catch the names of an older unshaven guy in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt; standing close to him and holding his hand was a conspicuously pregnant young woman. There was an older woman who bore some resemblance to the guy in jeans. His mom, probably. I wondered what he had done to land him in court. They all politely said hello, but looked tired; they’d been waiting around for three hours.
“Might as well go in now,” Andrew said. “We’ve got to be next.”
Her Honor Judge Vonda Evans was rather pretty and petite with a very short afro and big earrings. She seemed dwarfed by her voluminous black robe. Andrew and I sat on one of the benches for lawyers at the front and the family settled in the back of the courtroom.
The judge was cussing out a young man in droopy hip-hop pants and an oversize green shirt that said WAYNE COUNTY JAIL PRISONER on the back.
“And did you send me a letter, like I tole you to?”
The guy mumbled, “No ma’am.”
“No ma’am, YOUR HONOR?”
He drawled, “No ma’am, your honor.”
“Louder. I couldn’t hear that, boy.”
He shouted it back at her.
At 12:30 the clerk finally called the case and the two suits went up before the judge. Now I understood that the younger one, Dave, was the defendant. Sean was his court-appointed lawyer. I couldn’t hear everything that the judge said, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with Andrew’s usual line of lawyering. I caught the words ‘shooter’ and ‘drugs’ and ‘gang’ and ‘sealed juvenile record’ and ‘felonious armed robbery’ and ‘FBI’ and ‘witnesses’ and ‘lawyer debarred’ and ‘transcription of testimony’ and ‘extra expense’ as they flew by.
I wrote a note on Andrew’s yellow pad:
Why are you here? I was his lawyer for his habeas case. I’m here to support the family & in case the judge tries to lock him up today. She can’t but she might try. Suddenly the judge proclaimed loudly, “I’m tired of all this fooling around; this is some sort of tactic by the defense. Y’all are jes’ stalling now.”
She paused and
whack went her gavel. “At this time, the court is going to commit you to the Michigan Department of Corrections for no less than 16 to 30 years with 3,307 days off for the time you’ve already served.”
Whack, went her gavel again.
“I’m taking him into custody.”
Whack, whack. Two enormous police officers moved in to stand on either side of Dave. One took out his handcuffs.
Then Andrew quickly pulled out a file and swung into action, doing that thing you see on Law & Order, “May I approach, your honor?”
The policemen sat down.
It was hard to hear what was said in a few minutes’ conversation at the bench, but the judge’s conclusion was loud and clear:
“Awright, now you listen to me. You say there’s an order but I ain’t seen it. I want to see an original, sealed order from Judge Tarnow. I don’t want no copy; I don’t want no email; I don’t want no fax; I want a sealed order. Signed. By the judge. Original. Till I’ve got that, I’m taking him into custody.”
Whack WHACK. “Court adjourned till 2:30.”
The police officers moved in again. In a practiced gesture, Dave pulled out his wallet and took off his watch and handed them to the guy in jeans, his brother, who had stepped up to take them.
We all went out into the hall. No one looked especially worried, except probably me. Dave was convicted of a second-degree murder? He’d already done 3,000 days in prison: almost ten years? Now he’ll have to go back? Doesn’t his mother feel bad?
Andrew got on his cell phone to Judge Tarnow’s office and found that everyone with any authority to produce the order was out to lunch. He assured the family that they’d surely have it delivered by 2:30. Sean and Dave’s mom both said how much they appreciated Andrew’s help in the case and we all separately went off for lunch.
“I need a drink,” Andrew said to me. “This is nothing like federal court. Let’s go to Greektown.”
And so we went to Mosaic, an upscale new restaurant. It’s down the street from the old New Hellas, recently closed after decades of serving wonderful lemon chicken soup and garlicky grilled lamb ribs, perfect with turpentiney ouzo as late as 2 a.m.
While we had a glass of bland Pinot Grigio and ate predictable yuppie goat cheese and mesculun salads, Andrew started explaining the case, in between making and receiving numerous phone calls and several text messages.
“The judge is just messing with us,” Andrew said. “The state prosecutor sent her the original order at least a month ago; but she says she hasn’t seen it.”
When he was seventeen, Dave was a member of a gang in southwest Detroit and somehow involved in a drive-by shooting that left a teenage girl dead. He had been roughed up in an interrogation by the police and eventually confessed to second-degree murder and a drugs charge. He’d been in prison since 1996. From prison he had filed a habeas brief based on the improper police procedures and, with Andrew as his lawyer for the appeal, Dave had been granted a hearing.
Judge Tarnow had ruled that Dave be released on bond until the habeas appeal was finished; that’s the order Judge Vonda hadn’t seen. She couldn’t legally lock Dave up again right now but, given her personality, Sean (Dave’s original court-appointed lawyer had since been disbarred) had a hunch she would try and had called Andrew to come for support.
Now that I had some understanding of it all, I felt really rattled. This wasn’t television, it was real life. Dave looked like a perfectly nice guy and his family like just folks. But a young girl, someone’s daughter, sister, girlfriend, was dead. Andrew said that Dave seems well rehabilitated and might be released before long.
As we shared a piece of Key Lime pie, he got word from the Judge Tarnow’s office that the sealed order would on its way across town by messenger.
Dave would be released from Wayne County Jail that afternoon.
I asked Andrew, “Do you think he was the shooter?”
Ever the defense attorney loyal to his clients: “Well, I’m pretty sure he was in the car.”
