Crime (14 page)

Ayana became pregnant. They rejoiced about the child. When the little girl was born, they named her Tiru. Michalka was proud and happy. He knew he owed his life to Ayana.

The village became prosperous. After three years, there were five trucks, the harvest was perfectly organized, the farmers’ plantations were growing larger, and they had installed a watering system and planted trees to form a windbreak. Michalka was respected and known throughout the neighborhood. The farmers placed a portion of their earnings into a communal cash box. Michalka had brought a young teacher from the town to make sure that the village children learned to read and write.

If someone in the village fell ill, Michalka took care of them. The doctor had put together a kit of emergency supplies and taught him the rudiments of medical knowledge. He learned quickly; he saw how septicemia was handled, and assisted at births. In the evenings, the doctor often sat with Michalka and Ayana, telling them the long history of the Holy Land. They became friends.

When quarrels broke out, it was the man with the red hair who was asked for advice. Michalka would not allow himself to be bribed, and he judged the way a good judge does, without regard to clan or village. People trusted him.

He had found his life. Ayana and he loved each other; Tiru was growing and was healthy. Michalka couldn’t grasp his good fortune. Only sometimes, but less and less often, did the nightmares return. When that happened, Ayana would wake up and stroke him. She said her language had no word for the past. The years with her made Michalka soft-tempered and calm.

At some point, Michalka attracted the attention of the authorities. They wanted to see his passport. His visa had long since expired; he’d been living in Ethiopia for six years now. They were polite but insisted that he go to the capital to clarify matters. Michalka had a bad feeling as he said good-bye. Dereje took him to the airport. His family waved after him; Ayana wept.

In Addis Ababa, he was sent to the German embassy. An official checked the computer and disappeared with his passport. Michalka had to wait for an hour. When the official appeared again, he looked grim, and two guards were accompanying him. Michalka was taken into custody and the official read him the arrest order of a judge in Hamburg. Bank robbery. The damning evidence, the fingerprints he’d left on the counter in the bank. His fingerprints were on file because he’d once been involved in a fight. Michalka tried to pull himself free. He was pushed down onto the floor and handcuffed. After a night in the cell in the basement of the embassy, he was flown to Hamburg in the company of two security guards and led before the examining magistrate. Three months later, he was sentenced to a minimum of five years. The sentence was mild, because it had all happened a long time ago and Michalka had no previous convictions.

He couldn’t write to Ayana because there wasn’t even an official address. The German embassy in Addis Ababa couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help him. And of course there was no phone in the village. He had no photo. He barely uttered a word, and became solitary. Day stretched after day, month after month, year after year.

After three years, for the first time he was granted privileges and unaccompanied daytime release. He wanted to go home immediately; he couldn’t go back to prison. But he had neither the money for the flight nor a passport. He knew where he could get both. In jail, he’d picked up the address of a forger in Berlin. So that’s where he hitchhiked. In the meantime, they were searching for him. He found the forger, but the forger wanted to see some money. Michalka had almost none.

He was in despair. He wandered the streets for three days without eating or drinking. He struggled with himself. He didn’t want to commit a new crime, but he had to get home to his family, to Ayana and Tiru.

Eventually, he used the last of his prison money to buy a toy pistol at the train station and went into the first bank he saw. He looked at the cashier as he held the pistol with the barrel pointed down. His mouth was dry. He said very quietly, “I need money. Please excuse me. I really need it.” At first, she didn’t understand him; then she gave him the money. Later, she said she’d “sympathized.” She took the money from the pile that had been specially prepared for such attacks and thus triggered the silent alarm. He took it, laid the pistol on the counter, and said, “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” There was a stretch of green grass outside the bank. He couldn’t run away anymore. He walked really slowly, then sat down and simply waited. Michalka had come to the end for the third time.

One of Michalka’s cell mates asked me to take on the case. He knew Michalka from Hamburg and said he’d pay for the defense. I visited Michalka in the prison in Moabit. He handed me the warrant on the regular red paper used by the court: bank robbery, plus the remaining twenty months from the old sentence in Hamburg. Any defense seemed pointless; Michalka had been captured in the act, and he had already been convicted of the same crime before. So the only question was going to be the length of the sentence, and that, naturally, was going to be dreadfully long. But something about Michalka impressed me; there was something different about him. The man was not a typical bank robber. I took on his defense.

In the weeks that followed, I often visited Michalka. At the beginning, he barely spoke to me. He seemed to have finished with life. Very gradually, he opened up a little and began to tell me his story. He didn’t want to divulge anything; he believed he’d be betraying his wife and daughter if he spoke their names in jail.

The defense can demand that a defendant be examined by a psychiatrist or psychologist. The court will accede to such a demand if it is likely to succeed in bringing out facts that suggest the defendant suffers from some form of mental illness, a disorder, or a striking behavioral peculiarity. Of course, the expert’s report is not binding on the court—the psychiatrist cannot
decide
if the accused is not criminally responsible or has diminished responsibility. Only the court can decide these matters. But the expert who writes the report helps the court by giving the judges the scientific fundamentals.

It was obvious that Michalka was disturbed at the time of the crime. Nobody apologizes in the course of a bank robbery, sits down in a meadow with the stolen cash, and waits to be arrested. The court ordered a psychiatric evaluation, and two months later the written report appeared. The psychiatrist was proceeding from a conclusion of diminished capacity. He would go into all other details at the trial.

·    ·    ·

The trial opened five months after Michalka’s arrest. The court was conducted by a presiding judge, plus her junior, and two female jurors. The presiding judge had set aside a mere day for the proceedings. Michalka admitted he had committed the bank robbery. He spoke hesitatingly and too softly. The police reported how they had arrested Michalka. They described how he had been sitting on the grass. The police captain who’d nailed him said Michalka had put up no resistance.

The cashier said she hadn’t felt at all afraid. She had felt sorry for the robber more than anything, as he’d looked so sad. “Like a dog,” she said. The prosecutor asked if she now experienced anxiety at work, if she’d had to report in sick or had to undergo any course of therapy for the victims of crimes. She said no to all of it. The robber had just been a poor soul, and more polite than most of their customers. The prosecutor was obliged to ask these questions: If the witness really had been afraid, it would have been grounds for a higher sentence.

The toy pistol was introduced into evidence. It was a cheap model from China, weighing less than an ounce and looking utterly harmless. When one of the jurors picked it up, it slipped, fell to the floor, and a piece of plastic broke off. It was impossible to take such a weapon seriously.

After the crime itself has been laid out during a trial, it is customary for the accused to be questioned about his “personal circumstances.”

Michalka was almost entirely withdrawn the whole time; it was hard to move him, at least initially, to tell the story of his life. It was only slowly, piece by piece, that he could try to recount it. He barely succeeded; words failed him. Like many people, he found it hard to express his feelings. It seemed simpler to let the expert psychiatrist present the life of the accused.

The psychiatrist was well prepared and he laid out Michalka’s life in every detail. The judge knew all this already from the written report, but it was new information for the jurors. They were paying attention. The psychiatrist had questioned Michalka over an unusually long series of sessions. When he finished, the presiding judge turned to Michalka to ask if the expert had rendered it all accurately. Michalka nodded and said, “Yes, he did.”

Then the expert witness was questioned about his professional evaluation of the accused’s psychic state during the bank robbery. The psychiatrist explained that the three days Michalka had spent wandering around the city without food or drink had measurably diminished his capacity for rational behavior. Michalka had hardly known what he was doing anymore, and he had lost almost all control over his actions. The hearing of evidence was concluded.

During a recess in the trial, Michalka said none of it had any point; no matter how much trouble people were going to, he was going to be found guilty anyway.

In a trial, it is the district attorney who presents his closing argument first. Unlike in the United States or England, the prosecutor takes no position; he or she is neutral. The DA’s office is neutral; it also establishes exonerating circumstances, and thus it neither wins nor loses—the only passion in the DA’s office is for the law. The law is all it serves—that, and justice. That at least is the theory. And during preliminary proceedings, it is the rule. But circumstances often change in the heat of a trial, and objectivity begins to suffer in the process. That is only human, because a good prosecutor is always a prosecutor, and it is more than hard both to prosecute and to remain neutral. Perhaps it is a flaw woven into the very fabric of our criminal justice system; perhaps the law simply demands too much.

The DA demanded nine years for Michalka. He said he didn’t believe Michalka’s story. It was “too fantastic and probably a total invention.” Nor did he want to accept an argument of diminished capacity, because the psychiatrist’s explanations rested solely on the accused’s statements and lacked substantiation. The only fact was that Michalka had committed a bank robbery. “The minimum sentence for bank robbery in the law is five years,” he said. “It is the second time the defendant has committed this offense. The only admissible cause for leniency is that the money was secured and he made a full confession. Nine years are thus the appropriate sentence for the crime and the defendant’s guilt.”

Of course it cannot all turn on whether a defendant’s statements are
believed
. In court, what is at issue is proof. The accused thus has an advantage: He doesn’t have to prove anything, neither his innocence nor the accuracy of his statement. But there are different rules for the district attorney’s office and the court: They may not state anything that they cannot prove. This sounds much simpler than it is. No one is so objective as to be able always to distinguish conjecture from proof. We believe we know something for sure, we get carried away, and it’s often far from simple to find our way back.

Final arguments are no longer decisive in trials these days. The DA’s office and the defense are not speaking to sworn witnesses, but to judges and juries. Every false tone, every bit of hair tearing, and every pretentious turn of phrase is unendurable. The great closing arguments belong to earlier centuries. The Germans no longer tolerate pathos; there’s been too much of that already.

But sometimes one can allow oneself a little dramatic production, an unanticipated final request. Michalka himself knew nothing about it.

An acquaintance of mine worked in the diplomatic service. She was stationed in Kenya, and she helped me. By many roundabout routes, she had located Michalka’s friend, the doctor from the local town. The doctor spoke perfect English. I had talked to him on the phone and begged him to testify as a witness. When I told him I would cover the cost of the airfare, he laughed at me and said he was so happy his friend was still alive that he would go anywhere to see him. And now he was waiting outside the door to the courtroom.

From one moment to the next, Michalka woke up. He leapt to his feet as the doctor entered the court, tears poured down his face, and he tried to get to him. The guards held him captive, but the presiding judge waved them away and allowed it. The two men embraced right in the middle of the courtroom, Michalka lifting the small-boned man right off his feet and hugging him. The doctor had brought a video, and a guard was sent off to get a player. We saw the village, the cable railway, the trucks, all the children and grownups, who kept laughing into the camera and calling “Frroank, Frroank.” And then at last we saw Ayana and Tiru. Michalka wept and laughed and wept again, completely beside himself. He sat next to his friend and almost squashed the doctor’s fingers in his own enormous hands. The presiding judge and one of the witnesses had tears in their eyes. It was nothing like a normal scene in a courtroom.

Our system of criminal law is based on the requirement of personal guilt. We punish according to someone’s guilt; we ask to what extent we can make him responsible for his actions. It’s complicated. In the Middle Ages, things were simpler: Punishment was only commensurate with the act itself. A thief had his hand chopped off. It was all the same, no matter whether he’d stolen out of greed or because he would otherwise have starved. Punishment in those days was a form of mathematics; every act carried a precisely established weight of retribution. Our contemporary criminal law is more intelligent, it is more just as regards life, but it is also more difficult. A bank robbery really isn’t always just a bank robbery. What could we accuse Michalka of? Had he not done what all of us are capable of? Would we have behaved differently if we had found ourselves in his place? Is it not everyone’s deepest desire to return to those they love?