Wall to Wall Law
4.
For the first day of my jury trial I was told to
report to a trial courtroom #15 at two in the afternoon. This
was about seven weeks after my arrest. I was still living in the
back room of my bookstore. I dressed nicely, brought a book and
all my court papers. I brought some pictures of Khadija and some
letters she had written me. I arrived on the second floor of the
Hall of Justice, that Orwellian building, at the time scheduled.
The courtroom was locked. I sat down on a bench in the hallway.
As I waited, dozens of people came and stood around or sat and
waited. They all appeared to be waiting to go into Courtroom 15.
I sat among them. They read books, nibbled on snacks. I saw one
man talking on his cell-phone. Slowly a chill ran through me
when I realized that all these people were waiting for my case,
the case of the People of the State of California against me,
Scott Harrison. The prospective jurors were allowed in. I sat
alone out in the hall. Eventually Mr. Shoe came and said the
news was not good. My wife, Khadija, would be testifying against
me. She would have an Arab intepreter.
“But she speaks beautiful English!”
“We know that. We have the tape when the
detectives interviewed her. But that’s her right because English
is not her first language. In addition to your wife, the D.A.
will be presenting four San Francisco police officers who
arrived the night of the incident and they also have two
battered wife syndrome expert witnesses to testify against you.”
I asked Mr. Shoe what he thought. He said it
didn’t look good. It looked like they would find me guilty of
one or more of the charges. This could get me maybe six months
in jail, four with good behavior. Maybe worse. I went into my
usual complaints that this was so unfair and well, in fact, my
wife should be on trial, not me. Mr. Shoe looked at me with
impatience (or was it indulgence?). We were past all that now.
It seemed my innocence was irrelevant. The only thing that was
relevant from that point was how strong the case was and what my
chances were. Would the jurors pick a sweet young woman or me?
My chances were not good. (It was nothing remotely like TV,
where the innocent went bravely against the long odds and always
won at the final moment before the corn chip or breakfast cereal
commercial break.) So with the briefing Mr. Shoe gave me and the
realization that no witnesses were called for my side at all, no
expert witnesses, no evidence, nothing, nobody but myself, I
walked into the filled courtroom. The courtroom was full. All
the prospective jurors sat in silence. They all watched me as I
walked up to the defense table at the front-right of the
courtroom. I felt the weight of their eyes upon me. It generated
an indescribable fear in me. Later I counted the people. I
counted fifty-three. From that group they were to pick twelve
jurors plus two alternates. Judge Mary Weiss explained that this
was a case that would take anywhere from three to five days. She
explained that the attorneys needed to take care of some
pretrial business so everyone would be excused until the next
day, when the jury selection process would begin.
My attorney, Mr. Shoe, said I was free to leave.
I should have stayed. I should have stayed to watch everything,
but I just wanted out of there. I got a small taste of what a
man must feel before he is lynched. I politely excused myself
and left.
I had a terrible night. A night of waiting. I
thought of my wife up on the stand testifying against me. I saw
all those people and felt their eyes on me. I pictured jail so
vividly. The more people I had asked about my dilemma, the more
I heard that innocent people are locked up all the time. Some
men are on death row who are innocent. The court system tells
people it would rather ten guilty people go free before one
innocent person is wrongly convicted. It flatters itself.
Whatever horrific thing happens to you, you can be sure everyone
has a story of something worse. They told me I was presumed
innocent, but I saw that everyone, every step of the way,
presumed nothing but that I was guilty. Seven weeks had gone by
since the arrest. I couldn’t understand what my wife would have
to gain by testifying against me. She had obtained the paperwork
she was after. She had silenced a doubter. What did she want
from me?
It didn’t matter what anyone else thought, what
these strangers thought, what the police thought, or the judges
thought, or the attorneys thought, or the “expert” witnesses
thought. She and I knew exactly what had happened. I just
couldn’t understand: hadn’t she hurt me enough? Hadn’t she done
enough damage to my life? Was hurting me something she was
enjoying now? Did she feel my criticisms of her religion were
reason to destroy me? I pictured those people who murder someone
but then stab them fifty extra times. Was that her logic now?
There were reasons to stage a fake incident, but there were no
reason for her to falsely testify against me other than pure
vindictiveness. It occurred to me more then once that maybe my
wife had gone totally insane. Maybe she saw me as someone trying
to murder her beloved God so she had to go after me. It really
saddened me. Words do a bad job of conveying how hurt I felt
that she had turned into this cruel person I did not know.
The next day I returned to Courtroom 15. We were
asked to come about two o’clock.. I again sat up front at the
defense table with the eyes of a full courtroom on my back.
It was a Friday. I had been warned that the jury
would be selected and the prosecutor, Allison Grey, might have
time to give her opening argument but Mr. Shoe might have to
wait over the weekend. I was told that would be bad. The jurors
would have an incomplete picture, a false picture set into their
minds.
I sat and waited. The attorneys went back to the
judge’s chambers. The prospective jurors sat attentive and
quiet. Seconds ticking like a little hammer on my head. My heart
beating. Those eyes upon me. How could these people know me? How
could they know even a sliver of all my wife Khadija and I had
gone through?
The lawyers came out from the back. Mr. Shoe
asked me to accompany him alone out into the hall. We walked out
there. The courtroom doors closed behind us. We sat down on the
wood benches out in the hallway.
“They have made another offer.”
“Who?”
“The D.A. They are willing to let you plead to
one count of battery. You would have three years probation.
Fifty-two weeks of counseling. A fine. Some community service.
The stay-away order would stay in place for three years. You’d
have no jail time.”
“So, what do you think?” I asked him.
“If you want my personal opinion, I think it’s a
good offer.”
“So tell me. Does ‘battery’ mean that I hurt my
wife?”
“Yes. That means you caused an injury to her.”
“Then I can not accept the offer.”
“It’s up to you, Scott, but if you want my
honest opinion, I think they probably will find you guilty of
one or more of the charges even if you are innocent. You have to
understand that you might be innocent but still be found
technically guilty. The way battery is defined is any uninvited
contact. You could bump against someone in an elevator and you
are guilty of battery. That’s the law because it’s uninvited
contact. All I can tell you is that if a jury finds you guilty
instead of you pleading guilty, you might face jail time. Your
wife is also going to introduce copies of your journal where she
alleges you made threats.”
I told him I never made threats so I don’t know
what she was referring to.
“Take it from me, Scott, you do not want them
entering your journal into evidence, no telling what you might
have written down not intending the D.A. to look over it.”
“But I don’t think there is anything
incriminating in there. If anything, I think it would help prove
my case.”
“Do you want to accept their offer or not?”
“No, I cannot accept their offer. I will not
accept any offer that says I harmed her. I never harmed her.”
“They have one final offer. They made two. You
can pick the one you like. The judge tried to work a deal where
you wouldn’t plead to anything but she wanted to make sure you
get counseling. The other offer is to plead to the one count of
dissuading your wife from calling the police, 136 in the penal
code.”
“I only told her that she should not call the
police, she should call her friend Najet or her friend Fatima. I
never stopped her from calling the police. I never took the
phone out of her hands. I never hung up. In fact, she was on the
phone with the police when the police arrived.”
“That is still dissuading her.”
“Is that against the law?”
“Yes.”
“She was on the phone to the police when the
police arrived.” I repeated.
“Doesn’t matter. If you plead to this charge,
you would also have to fulfill all the other conditions of
probation I mentioned before.”
So these were the cards dealt to me. Mr. Shoe
himself was telling me I very likely would be found guilty,
although for technical legal reasons. I saw how overloaded he
was. I saw how the police were. I saw how the detectives were. I
saw what the counselors thought. I imagined this woman whom I
loved throwing dirt on my grave. I still wanted to get past this
disaster and get back to something wholesome, peaceful, loving,
and good with her. And I thought of Victoria, who had been
coming to the bookstore for five years, and I imagined her going
by an empty and vacant bookstore, me in jail because I was just
too proud to bow. I hadn’t planned on taking any deal, but I
told Mr. Shoe I would accept it. I would plea “no contest.”
The judge politely thanked all the people in the
courtroom and the room full of prospective jurors was dismissed.
One older man with bushy white hair said to me, “I hope you made
a good deal.” I wish I could have answered him, “I just want
these insane people to let me go. I don’t ever want to step into
another courtroom for the rest of my life.” After the courtroom
was emptied, the judge read the charge and the various rights I
was giving up. She asked Mr. Shoe if there was a factual basis
for my plea. Mr. Shoe said there was. (Where, Mr. Shoe? Where?)
My plea was accepted. I thanked Allison Grey, the deputy D.A.,
because I felt at the time I had been released from the
presumption that I had hurt my wife and I would not go to jail.
So I wanted to thank her. She said to me, “No, thank you.”
She had scored another conviction. The ballgame had gone her
way.
Mr. Shoe personally took me down the hall to the
probation office. He said the years would go quickly and before
I knew it, it would be past.
Walking up 7th Street toward BART, I
felt rotten. I felt this plea bargain in no way addressed what
had been done to me. It was not justice. It did not reveal
anything about what had really happened. This deal memorialized
a lie. Yet I was happy to not be heading into jail. I was glad
to keep my modest bookstore afloat. I wanted to spend my days
looking at books, not bars. It was later that night that I was
served with divorce papers.
In the months that have gone by, with the horror
of counseling and all the threats of being sent for a year in
jail if I don’t admit I was violent to my wife, I’ve learned
many things about the law. Officially I was guilty of a minor
charge, but unofficially the system considered me guilty of
everything my wife and the police report said.
I also learned about this curious thing called a
“plea bargain.” In theory, a person guilty of a few violations
could have one or more of those violations dropped in exchange
for saving the state the time and money of a full-dress jury
trial. On paper, it looks like a way to give criminals a break.
But in my case, I saw this was a pure illusion. The police had
done a perfectly horrible, negligent job. Not only had they
coddled the criminal and trotted the victim off to jail; they
had also used duress during “unofficial” questioning, they
forgot to read Miranda rights, they seriously misrepresented
what I had said in their abbreviated report, they neglected to
gather evidence critical to my ability to prove my innocence,
and they had smugly and arrogantly refused to give my protests
and grievances any consideration. Because a plea bargain was
made, no jury ever could review any of this. No judge could be
aware of the deficiencies. Not only that, but it gave them an
insurance policy, preventing me from suing them and freeing them
from even looking at any wrongdoing by my wife. And because of
the plea bargain, I had no right to challenge the legal
representation I was given and no chance to appeal mistakes made
by lawyer, judges, or detectives. So in the shadow of plea
bargains, a filthy corruption of due process has grown. It
allows the system to eliminate checks, balances, and
accountability. Is it any wonder that as years pass the police,
the detectives, and the D.A. get bolder and bolder in their
abuse of authority? I fear to think of the thousands of people
behind bars who would not be there if the system itself had
retained its integrity and been more honest.
D.A.’s have no reason in the world to play with
a full deck of cards. They are rewarded when they beef up
charges. They are rewarded for picking out technical legal rules
and statues. It all seems somehow legitimate until any
reasonable person stops to consider that if these technical
violations were always imposed indiscrimately, then everyone
would be in jail. Even the judges. Push someone in an elevator;
go to jail. Mention to anyone at any time, “Do not call the
police,” and you have committed P.C. #136. Have an argument and
experts will be called in to testify that you are classifiable
as a wife abuser. And when the laws don’t seem to decrease
crime, then turn the screws harder. Silence the howls. Just
build more prisons. It makes someone ask why, in a country like
Japan, one person is behind bars for every seventeen we have
(per capita). And if the books are to be taken so literally and
if it is against the health and safety code to sell a known
dangerous substance that may injure or kill them, then why are
cigarettes sold everywhere? Maybe I’m missing some point. There
must be some logic that evades me, but when individuals in a
society misstep and are antisocial and the system comes with
vindictive rules and massive force and mutilates them in a
broken-down criminal justice system that is as blind as it is
bureaucratic, why is it so hard for that society to see why
these people never get better? Maybe I’m not the sharpest tool
in the toolshed, but honestly I just can’t figure it out.
