 Try as we might, we just weren't
able to come up with a theme for this issue of Mimosa, other than our usual
mix of first person articles about fandom and things fans do. Next up is a good
example of one of the latter, by the chairman of the 1991 Corflu fanzine fans'
convention. 
"Have compassion!" Michelle reminded
me on my way out the door.This particular morning, I was
reporting to the county courts for jury selection. This duty is one of the fringe
benefits of being a registered voter, so I show up at the civic center theater at
pretty regular six-month intervals.I've never actually had to sit on a
jury, though. There are a number of reasons for this; for one thing, I generally tell
the judge in a marijuana possession case that I have problems with the law which could
interfere with my rendering an impartial verdict. Besides, Lord knows, that could be
any number of my friends up there in the dock...More often, I suspect, it's because I
was a television reporter for five years at El Paso's CBS affiliate -- KDBC,
Channel 4, the Big Four News Team. There's just something about a journalist
which seems to make lawyers leery of us during jury selection. In addition, I had the
courthouse beat for a few years, which means I probably was chummy with the prosecutor
or his adversary, or both.I landed a job with the Big Four fresh
out of college, and my facility with the equipment amazed my colleagues. Or, as they
remarked, "Most of the graduates who come in here, they can't write, they can't shoot,
they can't edit. But, Richard, they can drive."
My courthouse days began the night we
had a tip phoned in that a former county judge was being booked downtown for DWI. I
rushed my gear down to the courthouse, ran down to the booking desk in the basement,
and got plenty of shots of His Honor, grinning and winking at the camera and generally
having a whale of a time.Several years later, when the judge
passed on, our staff was frantically searching through our archives looking for file
footage, and this ended up being the only tape they could find on him. Be that as it
may, I found myself soon after pounding the judicial beat.The Federal and County Courthouses are
across the street from one another in El Paso; despite this wealth of jurisdictions,
there's not always anything newsworthy happening. Newsworthy, according to Channel
Four, being anything involving a murder or public officials. Both, if we could swing
it.Sometimes our own colleagues were
tossed into the brew. The El Paso Times had to fend off a couple of libel
suits, and we got a lot of mileage out of each one. One was brought by John Kerr, a
U.S. Attorney who had survived an assassination attempt in San Antonio, shortly after
a federal judge was gunned down in the same town. Kerr, who was in hiding under the
Federal Witness Protection Program (yet still managing somehow to work as a
prosecutor) contended that he and the judge were shot at because they had a
reputation for being tough on drug dealers. And how did drug dealers know this?
Well, they must have read about it in the paper, of course...A jury actually decided in Kerr's favor
on this one (another reason I'd hate to ever go in front of a jury), but a higher
court reversed the verdict. Another libel suit was brought by a former mayor and his
old buddy, a real estate developer. It seems our City Hall, which was planned to be
situated next door to the federal and county buildings, somehow wound up instead on
the outskirts of downtown, on land owned by the mayor's developer friend. The
Times got to thinking out loud whether any "hanky-panky" was involved, and the
resulting lawsuit dragged on for months. The reporter who had covered the story was
called in to testify; he had since resigned and joined a monastery in New Mexico.Channel Four narrowly avoided lawsuits
from time to time. I was covering a child custody case, distinguished by the father's
awaiting trial for murdering the mother. His in-laws were suing for custody, but it
was widely recognized that the defense was indulging in a little fishing expedition
to find out what the prosecution had in store. Unfortunately, I was off when the
verdict was handed down, and one of our, uh, less acute reporters called the judge to
find out what went down."Well," said the judge, "based on the
preponderance of the evidence, I'm awarding custody to the in-laws."So, on that night's newscast, our
reporter stood on camera and said, "The judge said the preponderance of the evidence
showed [the defendant] murdered his wife."She lost her job over that one. She's
now working in a bigger market, but that's another story.In one murder trial, the defense tried
the time-honored ploy of shifting suspicion onto a friend of the accused. For this
purpose, they enlisted the services of Jay J. Armes, renowned double-amputee private
eye. Jay wired another friend of the accused's for sound, sent him to the door of
their pigeon, and listened in while one tried to elicit a confession from the other.
Over the objections of the prosecution, the tape recording was played in the courtroom,
and turned out to be totally innocuous.Jay sneaked us an old photo of the
deceased, so I should be kind to him, but truth is, he's a major flake. He lost both
hands in a childhood accident, and the resulting settlement allowed him to set himself
up as a self-styled James Bond. His office is set off the street by a barricade of
pointed rocks -- to discourage truck-bomb drivers -- and the first thing one sees when
the elevator doors open is a mannequin of Jay sitting on a couch, to throw off would
be assassins. His home, featuring a bronze statue of Jay on the porch, is set amidst
a private menagerie, a helicopter landing pad, and an artificial lake. After years of
running unsuccessfully for public office, Jay managed to get himself elected to city
council, so the whole city can realize just what a flake he really is.Murder cases were often the most
interesting, of course. Our district attorney, Steve Simmons, wanted to bring a case
against Henry Lee Lucas, the one eyed drifter who confessed to hundreds of killings
across the nation and later recanted. Lucas had come to El Paso to confess to the
rape murder of an elderly woman in the Lower Valley. Steve felt he could get an
ironclad conviction -- which wouldn't hurt his political aspirations -- and
subsequently the county spent a small fortune preparing the case. Unfortunately,
little discrepancies began to plague the case, such as eyewitnesses who placed Lucas
on the other side of Texas on the night of the crime. Blood and semen samples
recovered from the victim failed to match Lucas's type. It also developed that the
investigating officer was a nephew of the deceased, a clear violation of police
department policy, especially since several other relatives were suspects. The
Juarez police said the family gardener had admitted to the crime; the officer in
charge on our side of the bridge discounted the confession, saying he saw it extracted
with a cattle prod. A disgusted county judge finally threw out the case.Simmons put on quite a show in another
case, where he was questioning the father of a murder victim. He wanted the father
to re-enact the discovery of the son's body, so he took on the part of the corpse."Now, how was he lying when you found
him?""Uh, face down.""Okay. Now, when you came upon his
body, what did you do?""I ran my hands through his scalp,
looking for wounds.""Well, go on, then."Mostly, our job consisted of running
down the corridors, chasing camera shy suspects in order to get some video for the
evening newscast. At the trial I just mentioned, I asked my cameraman if he got any
shots of the father entering or leaving the courtroom."No," he said, "but it's okay -- I shot
some pictures of him through the window in the door."Naturally, I was aghast, as shooting in
this particular courtroom was verboten. I thought we'd get away with it, though,
until we got onto the same elevator with the judge hearing the case. Looking at no
one in particular, he opined that anyone caught taking pictures of his courtroom would
see his ass in stir.As a rule, federal court didn't lend
itself to theatrics; most of the cases involved drug runners apprehended at the border.
U.S. Attorney Michael McDonald distinguished himself in one case, however, beginning
his summation by casting a baleful eye over the defendant and declaring, "There is
evil in this courtroom today."I ran into Mike one night at my
favorite watering hole, where he and his staff were entertaining some colleagues from
Midland who were in town on a change of venue. They were also entertaining my friend
JeanŽMarie, who was perched atop Mike's lap."Richard," she inquired, "do you know
who these guys are?""These gentlemen are prosecutors from
the U.S. Attorney's office," I answered.She threw me an exasperated look.
"They told me they were gynecologists in town for a convention!"
Later, Steve Fisher, a defense attorney
we know, stopped by our table. Steve was all irate that his client, an Army nurse,
had just been convicted on a drug charge, while he was convinced of her innocence."She didn't do anything, and she's
getting five years! I've defended burglars and rapists and murderers and gotten them
off -- and they were guilty!"Jean-Marie turned to me and confided,
"Only Steve's innocent clients go to jail."My favorite courtroom performance came
in a manslaughter case involving a drunken driver who ran into a girl on a bicycle.
The prosecutor, Bill Moody, contended the defendant was driving 80 miles an hour in a
residential zone. The defense's expert witness, called upon to determine the
defendant's speed by examining the crime scene, was with Sandia National Laboratories.
His experience consisted of crashing trucks and freight cars into cement walls, to see
what impacts could be withstood by vehicles carrying radioactive materials.At one point, the defense attorney
asked his expert what could be concluded about the speed of the car judging by the
distance the victim's body was thrown. Moody promptly objected, on the grounds the
witness lacked sufficient expertise."Your Honor," the defense countered,
"this witness has over fifteen years' experience judging the impact of vehicles into
objects."Moody stared at him in disbelief."Into human bodies!?"The judge allowed as, yeah, he'd have
to sustain that one.Bill Moody is a judge himself now. As
for me, I got transferred off of the courthouse beat onto a desk job, when our weekend
assignments editor developed ulcers. The weekend desk is a prime location for burnout,
which is precisely what happened to me after a couple of years at it. As glamorous as
the news business must seem to you, I found the allure didn't necessarily compensate
for the pressures, and after working my way up to weekend producer, I quit for greener
pastures. (Didn't join any monasteries, though.)Not that I don't keep up with the
courts still. You never know what's going to come up -- such as the case of actress
Tracy Scoggins, in town to host the Miss U.S.A. Pageant, who was assailed by a would
be rapist at her hotel. The culprit was taken to night court, where he gave the
magistrate a fake name, address, and place of employment. After this was discovered,
it also came out that the public defender was an old buddy of his -- and the
magistrate on duty was the defender's law partner.After this display of our legal system
in action, an embittered Tracy Scoggins held a press conference to explain that she
wasn't going to bother coming to El Paso to testify -- which forced the prosecutor to
drop charges. She was, however, suing the city and the Pageant for $14 million,
claiming her assailant singled her out because the Pageant had given her a car with
the Miss U.S.A. logo on the side.As long as he isn't being prosecuted,
her alleged attacker is countersuing her for defaming his good name.Like I said, I still enjoy following
the courts; I'm just glad it's not my job to make sense of them anymore. All illustrations by Teddy Harvia |
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