Chapter 35
Ethically Challenged
It had been a month since Robert began his job as runner for Slate, Jones & Walker, P.A. and a few days longer than that since Michael A. Thomas had pled guilty. So, approximately four months after the accident, a little more than a month after Robert started classes at UTA, he waited for closure of the most traumatic event of his life. Regrettably, so-called closure was elusive. The closer it appeared, the more out of reach it became. News of the latest setback was delivered by his own grandpa, though Charles was merely the messenger and not the cause. He told Robert the day before that the defendant’s attorney continued the sentencing for a competency evaluation, which meant yet one more postponement of justice. “The boy’s acting like a loon,” is how he explained it to Robert.
“Does that mean he’ll get off?” Robert asked Charles on the telephone.
“No. Not at this point. It’s just a delaying tactic. Thomas probably doesn’t want to go to prison sooner than he has to. I guess jail food is better then prison food…and the companionship still platonic.” He followed up his comment with a chuckle. He knew he was slipping into his pre-Christian attitudes as he considered what happened to young, physically slight boys in prison, but he didn’t care. “He’ll be the prison punching bag, and might just become someone’s girlfriend.”
He’ll get what he deserves, Robert thought as he allowed a sinister smile cross his face, realizing just for a moment that his Christian attitude was being overcome by a desire for justice. His gut burned slightly. It felt bad but good at the same time. It wasn’t justice he wanted, he realized not for the first time. It was vengeance. He wondered if this latest trick might not only delay Michael Thomas’s day of reckoning but avert it entirely.
What Charles didn’t elaborate on was how odd the timing of such an evaluation was. “Comp evals,” as they are commonly referred to in the criminal justice system, normally occur long before the plea is entered. They are most often requested even before the preliminary hearing, and certainly long before a defendant pleads guilty. He told Robert not to worry, that it was just a formality, but it concerned him nonetheless. The idea that the scumbag who almost killed his grandson would go free just because a psychiatrist said he was nuts was distasteful at best and disgusting at its worst. He wondered whether Jacob had the funds to hire a psychiatrist from outside Oklahoma, the only chance he had of receiving an evaluation that would even remotely find him crazy, or even remotely fit his psyche within the legal definition, “competent to stand trial.”
Such tactics seldom work, Charles kept telling himself. He told Robert a little more emphatically, “It’s just a defense attorney tactic to make sure the attorney doesn’t get censured for legal malpractice. It won’t work, I promise.” He almost said guarantee, but thought the better of it. Crazier things had happened. Instead, he said truthfully, “You’d be surprised how often the most loony, psychotic defendants are held at least competent enough to stand trial. All they have to know is that what they did was wrong and that they know they’re dealing with it in a court of law. It’s a very low bar.”
Robert got the news on a Monday. After receiving the update, he left his dorm room and crossed the parking lot. He parked his Mustang GT at the far end of the lot to protect it from other students who drove less precious modes of transportation, such as Chevy Camaros, which meant he had several hundred feet to walk after he left the dormitory building. He hopped into his Mustang to drive to work, arriving at the usual time, around 2:00 P.M.
From the point when Charles told him the news up to the moment he arrived at the firm in Bedford, the most recent information shared with him about the case dominated his thoughts. Indeed, it was the only thing on his mind.
On the drive to Bedford he did his best to drown out his thoughts with the classic AC/DC song Back in Black blaring out of the speakers full volume. Janie introduced him to Christian hard rock bands early in their rediscovered relationship, but he had already discovered that it was hard to linger on unwholesome thoughts such as vengeance when the words of those songs were piped into his head, so he would crank up secular tunes that forced him to meditate on selfish, even bad images and feelings. As he drove to work and considered the conversation he had with Charles about Michael, he wanted to feel hate. He wanted to linger on images of Michael getting what was coming to him in prison. But it didn’t work. As the words “Don’t try to push your luck, just get out of my way. . .’cause I’m back in black,” screamed through the car speakers, he actually felt the urge to pray. For a fleeting moment he actually wished he wasn’t a Christian. Unsatisfied with the temporary adrenaline of AC/DC as well as his grandpa’s assurances, as soon as he arrived he went straight to John’s office.
In front of John’s large and formidable door was an equally imposing secretarial workstation. No boring Formica-topped desk for Slate’s secretary, Robert noted—that lucky employee got a large oak L-shaped desk with computer and printer on the side perpendicular to the main section with the front of the desk facing out to all visitors. A little to the left of the secretary’s back was John’s door, and there was just enough room between the edge of her desk and the wall for two people to walk past, side by side. Clearly, absent approval from the secretary or a personal escort from John, which was how Robert had entered John’s office the first time he walked into the senior litigator’s private chambers, no one would get past this desk. He chuckled as he wondered if he might be asked for a password or perhaps to solve a riddle. “What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?” his mind wandered, thinking about the famous line in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
“Is John in?” he asked Martha Lane, John’s heavily made-up, middle-aged, slightly chunky, bottle-blonde secretary/gatekeeper, whose personal claim to fame was being the named plaintiff in one of the largest class action lawsuits in the country involving breast implants. From what Robert could tell, she still had the implants, that or two rolls of toilet paper stuffed in her brassiere. He barely controlled a growing compulsion to giggle and to ask her, “What is your favorite color?” Yet another question asked by the gatekeeper in the aforementioned Python movie.
“Why, sweetie, he sure is,” Martha answered in a pronounced Texas twang, winking her right eye at him. “Just let yourself in.”
Lots of winking going on in the building, he reflected.
He walked past her, winked back, and whispered to himself the answer that always put him in a good mood: “blue, no, yellow,” and then opened John’s door. He walked into the sanctuary. At that moment it dawned on him that thinking about his favorite Monte Python flick had almost made him forget about his real-world concerns. As he pulled the door shut behind him, he heard Martha talking to herself, though not quietly enough to not be overheard by him. “That boy is one tall glass of water. If I were ten years younger, I’d go for that.”
He blushed slightly and then thought, ten years? Try twenty.
John was initially startled by the interruption. He spun his chair around from the window to face Robert. His look of surprise was quickly replaced with a welcoming smile. “Hey, boy,” he said. “I’ve heard some good things about you.”
“Really?” Robert replied as John motioned him to take one of the two seats across his desk.
Robert took a seat.
“Yeah, really. Jonesey tells me that you found a case that saved him on a motion for summary judgment in an employment discrimination case. You’re a life saver.”
“Thanks.”
“Is there something you need?”
Looking down, slightly embarrassed that he was about to ask someone not family for a favor, a big favor, he answered, “Yes, sir.”
The idea he had was unconventional, he suspected, and considering the fact that it dawned on him in the middle of “Hell’s Bells” during his drive to the office, he seriously doubted it was morally right. The net result was that now he had an audience with the one man he needed guidance from, som
eone who would keep his confidences and not tell his grandpa, he suddenly felt reluctant to say what he was thinking. He further pondered whether the action he wanted to take was par for the course for attorneys, one of those moral gray areas he had read about. Malum prohibitum, his grandfather had once described, or “bad just because someone said it was and not in and of itself.” Or were his reservations just products of a kid’s naiveté and inexperience?
John interrupted the silence as he looked down at his watch. “I have to get over to the courthouse in five minutes, son. What do you need?”
“I’m sorry,” he replied, trying to avoid eye contact. “But you’ve got to promise to not tell Grandpa what I’m about to say.”
John shook his head back and forth, frowning. “Am I gonna regret this?”
“You don’t have to say yes to the request, just to telling Grandpa.”
“Okay, I promise.”
“It’s about the accident. The sentencing was postponed for a competency evaluation.”
“Don’t worry about that. It happens all the time. Chances are that he will be sentenced and the judge will hit him a little harder at the sentencing for wasting the court’s time. He’ll be punished for claiming insanity, that’s all. It’s a good thing, if you ask me, especially since he’s not my client.” John laughed at the last comment.
“I know. Grandpa told me pretty much the same thing. But that’s not what I need your help with.”
“Go ahead.”
“I want to see him, to ask him what he was thinking, why he did it.”
The room fell silent.