Part 22 (1/2)
”If I remember,” I said, ”I'll be in touch.”
I went to see a judge again and secured a court order. Then I bought two decks of playing cards and put them in my briefcase. The next day I drove down to Raiford. After I'd presented the court order to Raymond Wright, I waited an hour and a half on a bench in a hallway until I was escorted to the cell on death row. Today Darryl wore a Mickey Mouse T-s.h.i.+rt and bluejeans. He was shackled and chained, and the two correctional officers sat outside again, at the proper distance.
”I'm going to file a pet.i.tion for a retrial,” I told him. ”There may be a hearing. Will you cooperate with me?”
Darryl asked, ”Where there gonna be a hearing?”
”Jacksonville. With a different judge than before.”
”Do I get to go?”
”You have to go.”
”What do I have to do?”
”Just keep quiet, listen to what goes on, don't try to strangle anybody. If it's overnight, you stay in the Duval County Jail.”
”You say may be this hearing. You don't say going to be.”
”That's right. No promises.”
”You promise, I don't believe you nohow. What you want me to do for you?”
”I want you first of all to agree that I represent you. That I'm your lawyer, your attorney, your counselor.”
”Lot of weird things happen in my life,” Darryl said. ”This got to be near the top of the list.”
I gave him the two decks of playing cards.
Just after 5:00 P.M., from the deep shadow of the gun tower at the main gate, I stepped forward onto the gravel. Two men were waiting for me. I noticed how their boots shone in the slanting sunlight. They wore the pale blue-gray uniforms of Bradford County deputy sheriffs.
”Edward M. Jaffe, sir?”
”That's my name.”
”We have a warrant for your arrest for aggravated battery.”
”You have what?”
But I had heard him clearly, and he really didn't have to repeat it. ”Look”-I tried to smile and be nonchalant-”I'm a lawyer, and I'm here to see a prisoner, a client. My home is down in Sarasota. I'm a former chief a.s.sistant state attorney from Jacksonville. I'll be glad to show you all the ID I've got and give you some numbers to call.”
They read me my Miranda rights and asked me to place my hands behind my back in order to be handcuffed.
It would be tempting, but inaccurate, to say that I didn't believe this was happening to me. I understood the process all too well-I had been part of it many times. But I'd never played this role. I may have been in shock.
One of the deputies took my briefcase from me. Cold steel cuffs clicked into place on my wrists. I was stuffed into the caged back seat of a patrol car.
It didn't take me long to figure it out. Clive Crocker had filed a complaining affidavit that I had hit him and broken his nose. He had sworn that he hadn't provoked me, and undoubtedly he produced witnesses who filed other affidavits, including a doctor's statement.
But I recalled that the law stated that unless the injury was permanent or disfiguring, it was simple battery, a mere first-degree misdemeanor. Normally I would have been asked to stop off at the sheriff's office and tell my side of it. That would not have been a custodial interrogation.
”It's simple battery, not aggravated battery,” I explained to the deputy sheriffs who were driving me to jail. ”I'm a lawyer. I know what I'm talking about.”
”You can explain it to Judge Burch.e.l.l.”
We reached the sheriff's office in the courthouse on the main street of Starke. A red ribbon stretched across the courthouse door, proclaiming that WE ARE NEIGHBORS DRUG-FREE AND PROUD. But we didn't stop there for me to see the judge; we stopped so that one of the deputies could pick up his coffee thermos, which he'd left on a chair. From the courthouse we drove to the Bradford County Jail, a two-story red-brick building on a side street.
”I can't get out of this car,” I said.
”Why not?”
”My knees are stuck.”
”Try,” the deputy with the thermos said.
It was important to stay calm. I asked if I could make a telephone call to a lawyer.
”After you've been booked,” the deputy said.
Was that how the law worked? That didn't seem fair. There was a great deal, I realized, that lawyers didn't know.
In a small room downstairs I was booked, fingerprinted, and photographed. I was stripped of my belt, wrist.w.a.tch, shoelaces, wallet, and keys. A deputy placed me in a green-walled cell upstairs with a single frosted window that opened on a hallway. The deputy left. I heard the downstairs door clang. I heard a car engine start.
I had seen no one in the other cells. They weren't doing a very good business here. Starke, understandably, wasn't the crime capital of North Florida.
My cell had a toilet with no seat, two double-decker metal bunks, a fire extinguisher, and a black telephone on the wall. But when I picked up the telephone and put the receiver to my ear, there was no dial tone.
”This phone doesn't work!” I yelled.
But there was n.o.body there to hear me.
”G.o.ddammit!” I yelled. ”What's going on? Who's here? Isn't there anybody here?”
It began to grow dark. I shook the bars, hoping to rattle them. But they were solid. They made no sound.
Chapter 20.
AT SIX-THIRTY in the evening another prisoner arrived, to be placed in the cell with me. With him came spaghetti and meatb.a.l.l.s and two slices of white bread on a yellow plastic tray, as well as a deputy I'd not seen before.
”This phone's broken,” I said, as calmly as I could. ”I haven't made a phone call yet to a lawyer. Can I do that from another cell?”
”Phone doesn't work after five o'clock,” the deputy said.
”None of them?”
”You want c.o.ke or Sprite?”