Chapter 7 – On Trial?
Wednesday morning June 4, 2008 – 8:30 AM
Another long line greeted a weary Frank Newlan as he emerged from the elevator on the third floor of the courthouse. He hadn’t even made it through the bulk of the day yet, and he was already physically drained, right down to the very core of his being. After putting up with the traffic jam, the line to get into the parking garage, and the line at the security checkpoint, he was just about ready to go insane. But he gamely tried to make the best of a bad situation by passing the time eavesdropping on a group of middle-aged women who were standing in front of him at the end of the line, waiting to be marked off as present and accounted for.
The women had obviously just met, but that didn’t stop them from chatting as if they were life-long friends. The leader of the crew was an oriental woman who, although Americanized, still possessed a slight accent, and she was fervently chronicling everything you could ever want to know about the “three horrible hubbys”.
As Newlan curiously listened in on the woman’s high-pitched ramble, he had a puckish idea that he should introduce her to his co-worker, Bob Parant, seeing as how they both seemed to get off on dissecting a wide array of scandalous drivel.
The check-in line led to an oversized counter where two more court officers were assigned to the task of processing each prospective juror’s vital information and entering the details into their computer system.
When the zoned-out Newlan finally inched his way to the front of the line, he overheard one of the court officer’s shout out, “please have your juror questionnaires ready, and make sure you’ve answered all the questions or you’ll have to go to the back of the line.”
“Oh shit,” whispered Newlan. Although, judging by the scolding look that the oriental woman gave him, his whisper may as well have been a scream.
“Sorry, I never got the questionnaire,” rationalized Newlan in an attempt justify his social gaff.
“The form should be in the juror information packet that you received in the mail,” explained his newest friend. And although he was skeptical, he leafed through the envelope anyway…and sure enough, there it was.
After being through the “juror for a day” routine so many times before, Newlan figured that he had no real reason to review the juror orientation packet, and thus he neglected to ascertain that he was required to fill out the questionnaire and bring it with him when he reported for duty.
Newlan realized that he had no one but himself to blame for not having the form filled out, so he bid the oriental woman and her friends a good day, dragged himself out of the line, found a bench, and started scribbling away in earnest.
Most of the inquiries were fairly basic, but the flip-side of the form contained a handful of those mini-essay type questions; the kind of quizzes that Newlan always hated when he was in school. But nevertheless he softly read the queries, one by one, out loud to himself as he formulated the answers in his head.
“Are there any reasons why you couldn’t reasonably be expected to serve as a juror?”
Newlan was tempted to check the “YES” box and expand upon it by stating that he was a liberal wimp who blamed everyone’s problems on some traumatic childhood experience. But then he got serious, and after briefly pondering the question, he checked off the “NO” box and moved on to the next query.
Newlan waded through the remainder of the questions without much of a problem (although, he couldn’t resist adding a snippet of commentary, which included his trademark biting sarcasm, to each question), but the last inquiry had him momentarily flummoxed.
“Have you ever been arrested, been a defendant in a criminal trial, or been convicted of a crime?”
The question compelled Newlan to reflect back bitterly on an incident from his younger days where he got arrested for a petty transgression, and so he begrudgingly checked the “YES” box. And in keeping to his form, he expanded upon his answer in the space provided below the question.
“Illegally arrested on the outrageous charge of drinking in public 28 years ago, but was vindicated when I was found innocent by a district court judge.”
The words were short and to the point, but if you read between the lines you couldn’t help but detect that Newlan was still resentful regarding the circumstances surrounding the incident, even after all these years.
And with that in mind, Newlan’s memory banks drifted back in time as he thought to himself; “What a dumb thing to get arrested for.”
He then lazily closed his eyes for a moment, and just like that he was able to recall the entire episode, in dynamic detail, as if it had just happened yesterday.
…
Newlan’s parents lived across the way from a large park where the local kids hung out, and whenever they had nothing better to do, which was just about every night, they’d invariably end up drinking beers while staying hidden in the fringes of their playground hangout.
Newlan was home from college on a frigid January night back in 1980, and he had just stepped out of the house with the singular goal of joining his partying friends who were about 30 yards away, goofing around in the shivering cold (apparently, even though the temperature reading was below zero when you factored in the wind chill, that didn’t stop the boys from pounding down a few beers).
Just as Newlan crossed the street, a high school buddy of his, Jackie Lester, happened to be driving by with his girlfriend, and upon recognizing that it was Newlan, he pulled over to say hello.
Newlan recalled poking his head in the passenger’s side window of the vehicle. He recalled how the warmth of the car’s heater, not to mention the sweet breath of Lester’s girlfriend, felt good on his face. He recalled how they were just shooting the breeze, reminiscing about their good old high school days (which at the time, they were only a few years removed from). He recalled how they were just minding their own business, not bothering a soul.
Meanwhile, a squad car pulled up next to where Newlan’s core group of friends were hanging out, and before they knew what hit them, two police officers jumped out of the cruiser and grabbed the first two guys they could get a hold of. In a matter of seconds, the cops had slapped handcuffs on them, while at the same time the rest of the gang dropped their beers and took off into the darkness of the park.
When one of the officer’s ambled towards Newlan, he figured he had nothing to worry about since, as luck would have it, he hadn’t begun his night of drinking just yet, and on top of that, he was a considerable distance away from where the real action was taking place. But be that as it may, Newlan’s old buddy Jackie Lester wasn’t taking any chances and so he slowly pulled his car away when he saw the cop approaching, which left Newlan out on an island, on his own to fend for himself.
There was nothing much that the well-mannered Newlan could do at that point but to nonchalantly offer up a friendly, “Good evening officer.”
He was expecting the cop to tell him to scram, but what he wasn’t expecting was for a pair of cuffs to be slapped on him as well.
“What the hell did I do? I wasn’t causing any trouble,” protested Newlan.
“It doesn’t matter, we’ve been getting a lot of complaints about you guys drinking, and selling dope, and making noise late into the night, so we’re gonna make an example out of you three.”
Newlan feebly attempted to plead his case, but the roughhousing cop was having none of it. He shoved his prisoner toward the police car and threw him into the back seat where wouldn’t you know it, by some stroke of shared misfortune, his two best pals, Pat Horn and Bruce Reardon, already sat waiting to be transported to the local police station.
“What’s your names you punks?” gruffly demanded one of the cops.
“I’m Joe Schmo from Idaho,” answered the wise-guy Newlan, which triggered the cop to take a swipe at him as he growled, “You think you’re a fuckin’ smart ass…well you better be careful big guy because you’re not as toug
h as you think you are.”
Newlan snapped his head back to avoid the swing -- a swing which was meant to intimidate more than anything else -- but the sudden movement caused the handcuffs, which bound his wrists, to dig in even deeper than they already were.
The cuffs became so tightly wrapped around Newlan’s wrists that he thought he was going to lose circulation in his arms, which, in turn, caused his claustrophobia to kick in.
Newlan was sweating profusely, and his dilemma had him in a state of palpable distress, and the fact that the cops were emphatically lecturing them, nonstop, on the ride over to the police station, wasn’t helping matters either. Not knowing what else to do, he interrupted the lawmen and tempestuously complained that his cuffs were on too tight. But the cops just laughed in his face and one of them offered up some sage advice; “You should have thought of that before you decided to become a punk”.
“Now wait a minute, I’m a college student and I’m studying law,” angrily declared Newlan, but the brutish cops laughed even louder at his foolishness, and the driver mockingly derided, “Like we give a shit.”
When it became clear that these particular officers of the law meant business, Newlan decided he had better pipe down and quit while he was ahead. But then, as if his panic attack wasn’t bad enough already, about halfway to the police station he remembered that he had a bag of marijuana cigarettes in his back pocket.
Luckily for Newlan, even with his hands tightly secured behind his back, he was able to reach the baggy and pull it out of his pocket. He then nudged Horn, who was seated next to him, and smiled mischievously as he exhibited the illicit contraband.
Based on Newlan’s history, Horn and Reardon shouldn’t have been surprised in the least by his cache of reefer, but nonetheless they looked on in horror as he calmly stuffed the baggy into the crease of the back seat so that it was no longer visible to the naked eye.
Newlan couldn’t definitively say for sure, but to this day he believed that the baggy may have fallen all the way through the fold of the back seat and ended up in the trunk of the cruiser.
With his problem solved, Newlan breathed a huge sigh of relief, and when they arrived at the police station and the cops marched them inside, they were none the wiser that a packet of reefer had just been deposited in the rear of their vehicle, a gift courtesy of one Mr. Frank Newlan.
While they were holed up in the holding area, waiting to be booked, Newlan chortle to himself as he conjured up a scenario where a no-nonsense sergeant found the baggy while doing some sort of inspection, and then he accused the two asshole cops of hiding the weed for their own use. And as the scene flashed through his mind, he boldly boasted, “Serves ‘em right for messing with Frankie Newlan.”
Newlan wasn’t sure how much longer he could have endured being restrained in handcuffs, so he was categorically mollified when the metal cuffs were finally removed from his wrists. But to complete their conquest, the two cops still had to frisk Newlan and his friends before they passed them along to the processing area.
“Thank God they didn’t pat us down before we got in the car,” implored Newlan in a prayerful tone after the cops left him and his friends unattended for a few minutes, but then he brazenly concluded, “It was probably too cold outside for them…pussies.”
And when the obliviously boorish enforcers of the law returned, they had an older cop in tow with them.
“Gentlemen, this is Captain Hansen who is gonna take things over from here,” announced one of the arresting officer’s, but before leaving, they sarcastically said their goodbyes.
“Have a nice night boys,” grunted the antagonizing cops in unison as they tipped their hats to Newlan and his pals.
Newlan had visions of mug shots and fingerprints, which never actually happened, presumably because they were arrested for such a minor offense, and much to his surprise, Captain Hansen turned out to be a nice enough guy. He was as polite and professional as could be, and he followed procedures to a T as he explained that they would have to hand over their possessions, and also remove their belts and shoelaces.
Newlan willingly complied, but at the same time he cynically griped; “don’t worry, we aren’t about to kill ourselves over something so stupid.”
“Well we still have to take every precaution young man,” retorted Captain Hansen who had a bit of John Wayne about him; both in accent and in mannerisms.
Newlan emptied his pockets which contained a wallet, a few dollars, and a condom that he kept for good luck since “well you never know”, he slyly explained to Captain Hansen with an impish smile plastered across his face.
Newlan also pulled out a folded-up wad of paper from his back pocket and added it to the inventory.
“What the hell is that?” wondered Captain Hansen.
“It’s a short story about the meaning of life and love that I wrote for my Creative Writing class,” explained Newlan. “So if you find yourself getting bored, hanging out here at the station with nothing to do, maybe you should read it. Hey, you never know, you might actually like it.”
Newlan got an “A” on the paper, and he was so proud of his work that he made copies of the story which he carried around with him and distributed to people (mostly women) who he thought might be interested in that sort of thing.
“Believe it or not,” Newlan would brag to his friends, “that yarn has actually gotten me laid a few times…you know, the intellectual coed type…they prefer a sensitive guy like me. I’m telling you, don’t let those bookworm looks fool you, those gals are wild between the sheets!”
After his belongings had been itemized, Newlan went on to protest his innocence again, this time to Captain Hansen. Despite his uneasy predicament, he recounted the details of his arrest to the best of his abilities (leaving out the part about the marijuana that he had deposited under the back seat of the police car of course), and at the conclusion of his breathless alibi, Newlan was pleasantly surprised to find that Captain Hansen actually seemed to believe him.
“Then again he should believe me since I’m basically telling the truth,” muttered Newlan under his breath while Captain Hansen was busy processing Horn and Reardon’s possessions.
If Newlan didn’t know better, he would have sworn that from the way Captain Hansen was counseling him, this fair-minded solder of the law didn’t like the way the younger cops operated any more than he himself did.
“Just explain your story to the judge, and hopefully everything will turn out alright,” advised the good-natured captain.
“Judge!” anxiously yelped Newlan as the reality hit him that he was going to have to go to court over this ridiculous trumped-up charge.
Somehow Newlan assumed that maybe he could just pay a fine and be on his merry way, but he was learning the hard way, at a very young age, that everything doesn’t always turn out alright, despite Captain Hansen’s assurances.
Things got even worse, when after Newlan and his friends had been processed, another cop led them to their cells. It took only a few hours in the slammer for Newlan to come to the realization that the two bastard younger cops were winning the battle since they had in fact taught him a lesson; and the lesson was that he wasn’t cut out for jail.
Newlan decided right then and there that he needed to start getting his act together, and soon; after all he was going to be a college graduate in a few months.
With his decision to take the straight-and-narrow finalized, Newlan had nothing much else better to do than to kick back in his cell, and so he flopped up onto the metal bunk and stared up at the ceiling, dreamily admiring all of the intricate graffiti that had been etched into the paint.
“Geez, some of these jailbirds are way too talented to be in prison,” gathered Newlan, and with nothing but time to kill, a musical mood struck him. Absentmindedly, he began singing, and for obvious reasons, the song “Who Are You” by The Who, which tells the story of a street-corner drunkard who gets ha
uled off to the drunk-tank by the local cops, popped into his head.
Newlan and his buddies were all full-fledged, card-carrying members of The Who’s “My Generation” ethos, which stated that they’d rather die young and free-spirited than to grow up to become stodgy old buzzards, and they waved that flag proudly. And so when he got to the catchy chorus of the boisterous tune, he wasn’t too shocked to find that Horn and Reardon were ready to join in for a rousing off-key rendition of the existential refrain which basically repeated the song’s title using vocal phrasings of various lengths.
Then they all joined in for an ad lib coda which included many more expletives than The Who ever dared to slip into the original recording…and then some.
The trio of friends were acting bravely, singing and shouting and swearing at each other as if they were in their bunks at summer camp, but deep inside they were masking the fact that they were all just a little bit scared.
Meanwhile, at the far end of the lockup, an old-timer who was out of Newlan’s line of vision, but definitely not out of earshot, was retching and moaning to beat the band.
Newlan thought that the poor guy was about to die, and he felt as if he had to do something. He couldn’t just sit there and let the old geezer croak on his watch, and so with panic in his heart, he screeched out to no one in particular; “somebody help this motherfucker.”
Between the boozy singing, and the heaving upchucks, and the frenzied cries for help, the cacophonous commotion in the cavernous cellblock was deafening, and so in short order a big, mean-looking cop with a fully shaved head came storming into the dungeon-like chamber and told Newlan and his pals in no uncertain terms to quiet down or he would take them out back to the padded cell and beat the living shit out of them.
Newlan had never given it much thought before, but when he considered the countless stories he had heard about defenseless guys in handcuffs getting roughed up by sadistic cops, he quickly decided that he was done singing and complaining for the night; and furthermore the old drunk was on his own as well.
“Now that would have really taught me a lesson,” swallowed a shivering Newlan, and apparently the threat worked to perfection because Horn and Reardon also became noticeably more subdued after the bad-to-the-bone cop left them with his rancid food for thought.
However, a few days later, when he was able to analyze the situation more rationally, Newlan came to the realization that there was probably no such thing as the “padded cell” and he laughed resentfully at what a bunch of gullible idiots they were.
After a few hours of antsy captivity, which found the troika of friends pacing back and forth and climbing the wall of their cells like a bunch of caged animals, Captain Hansen sauntered into the holding area and conveniently announced to the three beaten comrades; “Oh, and by the way, I forgot to tell you guys, but you are each entitled to a phone call.”
And so with this link to the outside world suddenly opened up for them, Horn grudgingly offered to call his mother who angrily made her way down to the station and bailed them out for fifty dollars apiece.
As the trio made their mad dash for the exits, free at last, Captain Hansen was counting the bail money, which Mrs. Horn was nice enough to contribute on an emergency loan basis, and he jokingly exclaimed, “nice doing business with you fellas…come again anytime.”
“What a jerk…just when I was starting to like the guy,” grumbled Newlan, although he couldn’t help but chuckle at the wisecrack.
When Captain Hansen returned Newlan’s possessions, he recalled counting the meager sum of money in his wallet, just as he did today with the court officer in the security line. Apparently not much had changed in the last 28 years. But nevertheless, as the convoy was getting ready to leave the police station, with Mrs. Horn bring up the rear, giving them one hell of a lecture, Captain Hansen added, “oh and by the way, Mr. Newlan that was an excellent story you wrote. You know, you should consider spending more time writing, and less time drinking beer.”
“Thank you officer, you’re a good man,” replied Newlan and then he added his own reminder; “oh and before I forget, the guy in the last cell sounds like he’s really sick, maybe someone should check in on him.”
Captain Hansen appreciated the concern in Newlan’s voice, but it wasn’t a concern he shared, and so he just shook his head vigorously and resolutely replied, “Don’t worry about him. He’s a regular visitor to our fine establishment. We bring him in to sober up once in a while, and so we have the corner unit reserved for him, but thank you anyway.”
After Newlan and his friends had put some distance between themselves and the police station, he recalled that, out of nowhere, a dark cloud of depression came drifting over him. It seems that the plight of the alcoholic in the corner cell weighed heavily on his mind for the remainder of the evening. However, as he and his buddies rejoined the rest of the gang in a remote corner of the suburban park for a few beers and countless exaggerated retellings of the ordeal that they had just experienced, he hid his deeply-seeded despondent emotions from the prevailing winds of his youthful peers. And even though all the while he bit his lip and kept a cheerful outer-disposition, deep down inside he couldn’t help but count his blessings and silently ponder; “there but for the grace of God goes me.”
To this day, Newlan still recalls having an awful, reoccurring nightmare for the next two months while he apprehensively counted down the hours until his day in court arrived. He dreamed that the judge had decided to make an example of him and his friends, and as a result, he sentenced them to six months of hard labor in the House of Correction.
In his dream, Newlan proclaimed his innocence as the court officers dragged him away in shackles, but he knew full well that if the cops had arrived a few minutes later, he would have been drinking with the rest of his friends, and so in the end, he accepted the fact that he deserved his fate.
On the morning of their real case however, Reardon picked up his co-defendants in his father’s car, and as they drove in nervous silence over to the district court, which was located just across the Medford city line, a steely Newlan was unwilling to admit defeat to anyone.
They triumvirate arrived at the courthouse early, so they decided to go across the street to the Dunkin Donuts for a quick cup of coffee, and who should they bump into in front of the coffee shop but the two cops who had arrested them.
Newlan stared them down, but he didn’t say a word, although in his mind he was thinking, “If looks could kill, then these bastards would be dead right now.”
But in return, the swinish cops just smiled and squealed, “See you in court gentlemen.”
However, after enduring months of anxiety, the court hearing itself turned out to be a joke-and-a-half for Newlan and company. The audience in the gallery, which was made up primarily of people who were waiting for their own hearings, laughed heartily at the thought of three young punks being pulled into court for something as stupid as drinking a few beers on a street corner.
Overseeing the proceedings was a Judge DeMarco, who also seemed to be a bit annoyed at the officers for wasting the court’s valuable time with such a trivial matter.
There was no district attorney on hand for minor cases such as this, and so the way it worked was that one of the officers was asked to testified, and then some sort of court clerk asked him a few obviously leading questions.
The cop, who Newlan now learned was Officer Graves, told his story fairly accurately as far as the details pertaining to Reardon and Horn’s arrests; since they were essentially caught in the act, no hyperbole was necessary. But when it came to the specifics of Newlan’s unexpected confinement, Officer Graves embellished his account to such a disturbing degree that Newlan suddenly felt a sense of outrage creeping up from somewhere deep within him.
Officer Graves asserted that when he approached Newlan, he was leaning into the passenger’s side window of an unidentified vehicle, and that he dropped a packet
into the car which then sped off.
“This guy is trying to insinuate that I’m a drug dealer,” conjectured an annoyed Newlan, although in the back of his mind he fully understood just how lucky he was that he had been able to ditch the baggy of high-grade marijuana; otherwise, he truly might be headed off to the House of Correction.
Graves added that he observed Newlan drop a beer bottle into the gutter so he placed him under arrest. And while he was telling his tall tale, his partner approached the podium and handed him a plastic bag that contained two doctored beer bottles. The labels had been peeled off and replaced with an exaggerated skull-and-crossbones sticker which was marked with the word “POISON”.
“What a sham,” snarled Newlan as the peanut gallery audience howled with muffled glee over the charade they were witnessing. Although to his credit, he reluctantly gave the cops their due for creativity.
After all was said and done, Newlan curiously speculated that the bottles, what with the skull-and-crossbones art, would have made a cool cover for a Grateful Dead album, and he wondered why the band members of the Dead themselves never thought of it.
At the moment however, Newlan had more pressing issues on his mind. The presentation of the bottles marked the end of the prosecution’s feeble case, which was Judge DeMarco’s queue to address the triune of friends with an inquiry regarding whether they had any questions for Officer Graves. The three youthful friends huddled up and intently discussed the situation before Horn and Reardon bowed out; they decided that they wanted no part in asking anyone any questions. But Newlan, on the other hand, saw this as an opportunity to put to use what he had learned in his college law classes.
When Newlan thought about it now, in the present tense, he realized that he must have looked ridiculous. There they were, three red-eyed burn-outs with long, stringy, greasy hair, wearing dirty jeans and concert tee shirts. Did he really expect to be taken seriously by the judge as he questioned a police officer in a court of law? But serious or not, at the time of Graves’ outlandish testimony, Newlan was damned if he was going let this jerk get away with his lies without at least putting up a fight.
Newlan shot up from his seat and roared (probably a bit too loudly but he was so amped-up he couldn’t help it); “Officer Graves, if you saw me drop a packet into the car, then why didn’t you order the vehicle to stop? Or write down the license plate number? Or maybe even radio in for help?”
Graves was visibly stunned by the audacity of this little punk, questioning his authority, but all he could come up with was that the car sped off too quickly for him to take any of the pursuing actions that Newlan had recommended.
Newlan glance over at Judge DeMarco who nodded for him to continue with a somewhat fatherly look, and he seemed to sense that the judge also doubted what Graves was insinuating, which gave him even more confidence.
“Officer Graves you say that I dropped a bottle of beer into the gutter?”
“Yes,” firmly responded Officer Graves with a nod of his head, but it suddenly dawned on Newlan that Graves’ partner had only offered up two bottles of beer as evidence, and he seized on the inconsistency.
“Well then, did you pick up the bottle?” demanded Newlan, and again Graves’ reaction was one of utter contempt.
“There were so many empty beer bottles in the gutter…I wasn’t sure which one was yours.”
“What a ridiculous story,” silently groused Newlan, and despite the gravity of the situation, he couldn’t help but wryly grin at the absurdity of the whole silly affair. And with his wit came a plucky aplomb which was gathering up speed so rapidly you could practically feel it as he addressed Judge DeMarco.
“Your honor, Officer Graves wants us to believe that the gutter was inundated with such an endless sea of debris that he couldn’t distinguish the bottle I allegedly dropped amongst all the other bottles. This story just doesn’t make any sense, none whatsoever, not one iota. Your honor, if you please, let the record show that my family and I live across the street from the location of which Officer Graves speaks, and I can assure you that the good tax payers of Medford would never allow a nice suburban stretch of road, such as the street in question, to be littered with beer bottles.”
And while Newlan was making his final stand, Graves glared at him every step of the way. The insinuation was clear; the roles had been reversed; this kid was calling him a liar.
For his part, Judge DeMarco was equally surprised by Newlan’s performance, but in his case, the astonishment was due to the fact that he was quite impressed by the young maven in the making, and he was pretty sure he knew who was telling the truth.
“I have no further questions your honor,” announced Newlan, and Judge DeMarco frowned as he peered over at Officer Graves and simply said, “You may step down sir.”
Judge DeMarco then took a moment to explain to the court that Newlan and his friends had a right to testify if they so desired. And again, knowing full well that they were guilty as charged, Horn and Reardon decided not to testify, but naturally Newlan took to the stand in his own defense.
Newlan repeated his story, just as he had to Captain Hansen, making sure to mention the fact that the driver of the unidentified car was merely an old acquaintance of his who happened to be cruising by as he tiptoed out of his house.
“Your honor, I had just stepped outside, so I never had a chance to have a beer with the guys even if I wanted to,” confessed Newlan, which drew another chuckle from the gallery.
“But in all seriousness your honor, I’m not denying that Mr. Horn and Mr. Reardon are my friends. All I’m saying is that on this particular evening, I was absolutely not drinking a beer in public, and I did absolutely nothing wrong. And on top of that, Officer Graves flat-out informed me that he was going to make an example out of me, regardless of whether I had been drinking or not.”
When Newlan completed his well-rehearsed oratory, Judge DeMarco asked the court clerk who had halfheartedly questioned Officer Graves whether he would like to cross-examine Newlan, and much to Newlan’s surprise the clerk answered with a meek, “no questions your honor.”
After the formalities were out of the way, Judge DeMarco announced, “Let me think about this for a minute,” but within thirty seconds he declared, “Mr. Newlan I find you not guilty, you are free to go.”
And with his good name vindicated, Newlan was awash with contentment. The entire experience had somehow changed him, and it all felt so surreal. As he traipsed out of the courtroom it seemed as if he was walking on air, and as he ambled down the center aisle of the gallery, he looked directly into Officer Graves’ hateful eyes and smiled a short response.
“Have a nice day officer!”
After his victory march, Newlan lingered triumphantly outside the courtroom eagerly waiting to be apprised of Horn and Reardon’s fate. As it turned out, Judge DeMarco continued their cases without a finding, which, in essence, meant that if they stayed out of trouble for six months then their arrests would be dropped from the record as well.
Newlan left the courthouse that day with a renewed sense of confidence in our justice system, proudly thinking to himself, “I guess the system does work.”
He was unsure whether most judges would have taken the word of a wise-assed college student over the word of a police officer, no matter how unreliable the police officer’s narrative seemed to be, and he was pleasantly surprised that Judge DeMarco had the foresight to see through the improbability of Officer Graves’ story and find him innocent.
Newlan was so impressed with the jurisprudent machinations of Judge DeMarco’s thought-process and his ability to filter fact from fiction that he ended up writing him a gracious letter, thanking him for his impartiality, and for giving the case his full attention, even though it was such a minor offense. He recognized that it would have probably been easier for Judge DeMarco to continue all three of their cases without a finding, and he was duly impressed that the wise ju
rist went out of his way to treat him differently than his friends based on the details presented before him.
Much to Newlan’s astonishment, Judge DeMarco actually wrote back to him; a neatly worded, handwritten note on official Commonwealth of Massachusetts stationary. In his brief letter, he eloquently stated something to the affect that our system of justice may not be flawless, but it is still the best system in the world, and that he treated each and every case with the same level of sincerity.
As a matter of fact, Newlan still had the letter saved somewhere in his file cabinet along with all of his other mementos, which isn’t too unexpected, since of course, Newlan had always been obsessive about saving old letters.
…
And now all these years later, as Newlan filled out his juror questionnaire and harked back on the long ago episode, little did he realize that he was once again about to have his faith in our justice system tested to the max. But of course this time it was not he who would be on trial; although, then again, in some ungodly way…maybe he would be.