Wall to Wall Law
2.
To back up a bit: I had pleaded guilty to one count of
dissuading my wife from calling the police. This was a plea
bargain made six weeks after my arrest. In San Francisco, plea
bargains are the rule, not the exception. In fact, more than 90%
of all cases are resolved with plea bargains. D.A.’s pile on as
many charges as they can in order to have the best possible
bargaining hand. It’s like poker, but with months and years of
people’s lives instead of chips.
As a result, the vast majority of people like myself find
themselves never going to trial. We are given plea bargains and
many of these people end up on probation. Probation sounds
harmless, but anyone on probation soon finds out differently.
Probation means you have given up many of the normal rights and
protections that ordinary citizens enjoy. Probation officers can
show up unannounced and make a search of your home without a
warrant. They can require any number of conditions regarding
employment and limitations about leaving San Francisco City and
County. Often you are subject to drug and alcohol tests. (I was
required to be tested at the counseling facility) You must
follow all laws, but you must also follow all probation
conditions and show up to all court and probation appointments
or you will immediately and suddenly find yourself in jail.
Having a probation officer is like having your own private Big
Brother watching you. Former public defender Matt Gonzalez told
me, “Now you know what one in three black men all across America
are going through.”
In my case, if I had gone to trial and been found guilty of much
more serious charges than the one I pleaded “no contest” to (if
the jurors had believed my wife instead of me, which was very
likely), the most time in jail I would have realistically done
was four months. But now, any small infraction can result in a
charge of violating my probation and a longer time in jail. I
agreed to a plea bargain because I thought it would take away
the risk of being sent to jail and resolve my legal problems. I
believed at the time that this action would absolve me of any
suggestion that I had been violent to my wife.
But then I went off to domestic violence counseling. I’ve
related what happened there.
And I went to meet with my probation officer.
In our first meeting I told him I was relieved that the more
serious charges had been dropped because I had never harmed my
wife.
“But you did!” he informed me.
“But I didn’t plead guilty to any counts of domestic violence.”
“Doesn’t matter. I am a deputy probation officer specially
assigned to domestic violence cases. If you didn’t commit
domestic violence, you wouldn’t have been assigned to me. As
long as you are here, I will consider you guilty of being
violent with your wife. As far as I’m concerned, you are guilty
of everything it says here in the police report.”
“Look, you cannot hold me guilty for things the court didn’t
find me guilty of. That just doesn’t make any sense!”
“The court did find you guilty or they would have dropped
charges. Or you needed a jury to acquit you. A jury didn’t
acquit you, did they?”
“No. I pleaded “no contest” to dissuading my wife from calling
the police. That isn’t domestic violence,” I told him.
“You’re not listening to me. You are coming in here with
entirely the wrong attitude.”
He was adamant that I was guilty and he wasn’t going to back
down one step. He went on to inform me that I had to be aware of
the kind of lady I was dealing with. Was she someone who would
report any contact or not. If she would, it was my
responsibility to make no contact, and if she was the other
type, then he didn’t want to ever hear anything about it or he
would be bound to report it to the judge.
What the heck was he saying? One minute he’s telling me I am
guilty of things I didn’t do, and the next minute he’s telling
me he knows restraining orders are broken but make sure I don’t
get caught? Is that what he was saying?
I
know something about restraining orders. In my opinion they
often impose a massive force in conflicts that should not be
criminalized at all. They get so far off the track of the
realities of a particular relationship that they are just
ignored. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that more are ignored
than are obeyed. I was in court one day when a couple came
before a judge to get their restraining order modified. He
denied their request, telling them that they still could not
have any personal contact. Afterward, three blocks from the
courthouse, I saw them arm in arm. I heard from many guys in
counseling (outside the counseling room) that they too were
ignoring the restraining orders. It seemed to just come with the
territory.
I
had heard someone say that the truly violent are the most likely
of all to completely ignore a restraining order. Sometimes the
restraining order has a tendency to aggravate men and increase
violence. Maybe this is pure myth.
There was a young woman who lived with her boyfriend in the
hotel next to my bookstore. She loved him, but he’d get drunk
and violent. He punched her. He struck her. He threw things at
her. He threw things out their five-story window, including the
TV and their kitten (the kitten broke both paws but survived).
The guy was really bad news. But she worshiped him and used her
considerable intelligence to make excuses for him. He had a
restraining order against him, but he slept every night in the
same bed with her.
As for me, I didn’t dare have any contact whatsoever with my
wife, as badly as I wanted to see her (I kept taking out
pictures of her and then hiding them from myself). Because
she had deliberately started this thing, I was at great risk
that she would entrap me again.
I
think she was well aware of the dynamics - namely, that if I
tried to talk to her, she could report me and greatly help her
cause in securing a green card - because even though she moved
several miles away, to live with her friend Fatima, she took a job
a block and a half away from my bookstore, at a café we had gone
to regularly. It was directly across the street from the Mission
Police Station. When this didn’t ensure a violation, she got
another job directly around the corner, less then 50 yards from
my bookstore. The restraining order said I had to be a minimum
of 100 yards from her, her place of work, and her residence.
This prevented me from even walking to the corner to go home.
All of this had started to shape into something quite nasty when
I made my second appointment with my probation officer. This
time I decided to keep my mouth shut. I was trying to go with
the flow without getting drowned.
At my second appointment the probation officer was very upset
with me. I sat down and he said, “I have a complaint from your
wife that you have been harassing her!”
“How could I? I have had no contact.”
“You tell me. She has filed a complaint with victims’ services.”
“But how could she?”
“Look, I advise you to tell me the truth. I will be talking with
her later this afternoon and, depending on what she says, you
can be subject to immediate incarceration.”
“I haven’t done anything!”
“That’s not what she says. If you tell me what happened first,
Scott, it’s going to go a lot easier for you. I see you haven’t
done much jail time. You might need some jail time to take these
matters more seriously.”
“I do take them seriously.”
“So explain what this complaint could be about. As I said, I
will be talking to her.”
Boy, talk about a hot seat. I just told him over and over that I
had no idea what he could be talking about and he kept telling
me I hadn’t done much jail time.
He let me go but told me to call him in the morning. He said he
might ask me to come directly in. (Do not pass go, go directly
to jail). When I called, he told me to call him back. When I
called back, he set up another appointment in two weeks.
During the next two weeks, the crisis lingered. I scrambled to
prepare myself for jail. I paid bills ahead of time. I tried to
arrange for the bookstore. I was a nervous wreck. I was afraid
that I would suffer yet another attack by my wife, where she
would accuse me of something totally untrue that I would have no
way of disproving. (“He said, she said,” yet again.) This
probation I was under, I was learning, was a huge weapon
for her. With probation they eliminated pesky things like
witnesses or trials. If my wife talked to my probation officer
and my probation officer believed her, that was it. A brief
hearing, then I was gone. And, mind you, not for a crime but for
picking up a phone, for dropping off a letter, for walking past
her business, for pressing rose petals into her hand as I try to
give her cheek a kiss and run out again. (No, I didn’t do that,
but I thought of it many times). The lines had shifted. The
lines were around my neck. Maybe you can see that I was a
nervous wreck.
When I went in to see my probation officer again after two
weeks, he was calm. I asked about the complaint my wife had
filed. He said, “Oh, I’m not sure what that was.”
“Huh?”
“See, if she calls victims’ services, it comes up on my computer
screen.”
“Yes, but her complaint? You said she had filed a complaint?”
“Doesn’t show anything here. See, if she calls, then there is a
record. I don’t see any problems.”
So I somehow got out of that corner.
Then a couple months later, when I went in, he said, “So let’s
talk about the phone calls.”
“What phone calls?”
“To the victim.”
“I didn’t make any phone calls.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m looking at another case.”
And in a few more weeks this same probation officer told me that
I would definitely do six months or a year in jail if I didn’t
get into a domestic violence program. I’m not violent. I’d never
been violent with my wife. If I didn’t get into a program that
required admissions of violence, then I’d be put in jail for not
lying about what I didn’t do. No trial. No evidence. No
cross-examination. Nothing. Just the guillotine of a process
called probation. Some system! (I’ve already written how I got
out of that stranglehold).
My hot seat never did cool off. Next time I should glance down
and see if there are any high voltage electrical wires going to
it.
