“I have an idea – humor me on this.”
I would never have imagined saying these words to a client on the eve of trial. We were in court for a last-minute settlement conference. The jury panel would show up the next day. My client was about to make the most important decision of his life.
I showed my client a quarter that I had pulled from my pocket: “Heads you go to trial, tails you take the deal and go home today.”
My client’s grandmother sat in the first row of the courtroom. She clearly wanted to see what I was going to do next and she did not look at all alarmed at the proposition I had just made her grandson. Meanwhile, the district attorney paced in the back of the courtroom with his cell phone against his ear, trying to postpone a fundraiser for his upcoming political campaign.
Before we had come back into the courtroom, while we were in the courtroom’s attached holding cell, my client had asked me if he could ask his grandma her opinion on whether he should take the district attorney’s plea bargain or go to trial. I told him that he could, and I offered to tell the DA to do his campaigning outside the courtroom. “Fuck it, I ain’t got anything to hide. I didn’t do this and he can hear me say it.” I considered that a knowing and intelligent waiver of attorney client privilege.
My client’s resolve liquified – more than a little – after discussing his options with his grandma across the courtroom guard rail.
My client expressly asked me to share my impressions of his case with his grandma, so I gave them to her. She understood that my client was so drunk on the night of the incident that he had no idea that his friend was going to pull a knife, or that he was going to stick it in the chest of his sister’s ex-boyfriend who happened to be at that same party. She knew that he fled the scene only because he was afraid that the other people at the party were going to come after him for what his friend had done, and besides, the stabber was also my client’s ride to the party. She understood that her grandson had not heard his friend call out the name of his gang before sticking his knife between the victim’s ribs.
She also knew what the DA was going to argue: the red belt my client had worn in high school, the picture of him beneath a flag depicting a gang-related symbol that he used for his Tinder profile, and the red shoelaces on his Nike Cortez shoes proved that he and his friend were members of the same semi-organized criminal gang, and that they orchestrated this stabbing specifically to spread fear of their gang. She didn’t need me to tell her the tilted ratio of frightened white people swimming in our local jury pool, or that these same white people might believe the DA’s outlandish theory. If the gang enhancement were to be found true on top of the assault charges, my client would spend the next 24 years in prison. The only bright side would be that at his age, my client would be released by the time he was 42, with not an insignificant amount of life left to live.
I explained to the grandma that my client had one key that would let him go home; if he pled to just one of the several violent felonies he was accused of and admitted that he did it “for the benefit of a criminal street gang,” he would be released that day. The catch was that my client would be on gang probation for 5 years, and that gang P.O.s carried side arms and pat-searched the probationer and anyone in the home whenever they came for their unannounced visits. If they found any reason to violate his probation, he could wind up serving those 24 years anyway.
He was hopelessly torn, so I suggested the coin flip.
I tossed the coin into the air. It spun. I caught it as it fell. I slapped it against the top of my left hand. I failed to notice that the DA had hung up the phone and was no longer talking. I began to lift my fingers, as though I was about to pull away my hand and show the coin face underneath, but I did not pull my hand away.
“Now admit it – there is one side that you want to see more than the other.”
My client pulled in his lower lip, and nodded. “I want a trial,” he said. I kept eye contact with him while putting the quarter back in my pocket.
“You’re not going to show me what it was?” My client asked.
“No. Why does it matter? We were never going to decide this with a coin flip.”
My client sighed, straightened his back, and nodded his head again. His grandmother beamed with pride while her hands still clutched the guard rail in fear. Both thanked me for helping with his decision.
I had gotten the coin flip idea from an old episode of Frasier – I doubt that they would have wanted to know that.
Now, if you readers are wondering what happened in this case, whether he won or lost, I ask you whether that matters, and whether a decision that important should be determined by win or loss.
Respectfully Submitted,
Norm
