Criminal That I Am (17 page)

My attorney and I sit down in the gallery. I survey the room for possible press but don't see any. My eyes circle the room every few minutes to detect whether this changes.

On my visual tour of the courtroom, I watch a group of gentle
men get arraigned on tax crimes. One of them looks over at me as the extensive charges against him are being read and rolls his eyes. If I weren't awaiting the announcement of my own charges, I would probably laugh.

I also catch a glimpse of Some Prosecutor on the other side of the aisle. I had forgotten what he looked like, I recognize him only from the scowl he gives me when our eyes meet. I greet his disapproving look with a small smile that I have perfected in consultation with Best Friend the night before. The smile is not so large as to be arrogant but not so weak as to concede complete defeat. It assumes a middle ground, possessing a calibrated level of contentment that says merely: this did not break me.

By the time I execute it, Some Prosecutor has turned his attention to the papers in front of him. I decide that this still counts.

I continue to scope the door for entering reporters, but there appear to be none. Lawyers and defendants mill in and out of the courtroom, but as it becomes closer to lunchtime most of these have filed out. By the time my case is called, the courtroom is otherwise empty.

The court clerk announces: “The United States of America versus Jennifer Ridha.” It is the worst thing I've ever heard in my entire life. Everyone? I want to ask. Is there no one who isn't against me?

The proceedings begin as the magistrate judge takes the bench. I keep turning around to see if any reporters walk in. My attorney shoots me a look that says I should stop.

The magistrate judge reads me my rights. I am to confirm my understanding of these rights. He explains the charge against me. I am to confirm my understanding of this charge. He explains to me the terms of my deferred prosecution agreement. I am to confirm my understanding of these terms. He asks me a series of questions, the answer to all of which is “Yes, Your Honor” or some variation thereof.

It is quick and painless, over in less than ten minutes. The courtroom remains empty for the duration.

There is nothing out of order, nothing out of place. But something odd happens to me at the end. As the proceedings are about to close, the magistrate judge addresses me thusly:

THE COURT:
The Government has provided you with an important benefit and opportunity here. I trust that you will comply with the terms of the agreement and the case will be dismissed.

A sensible statement such as this one is expected for any defendant who is fortunate enough to avoid pleading guilty. And yet, as terrible as it is to admit, when I hear these words, I am internally consumed by a burst of anger. My own reaction is so unexpected that I feel as though I am possessed by someone else, someone who is so defensive about what she's done and so resentful of authority that this small admonition causes her only to curse in my head: “Why don't all of you take an opportunity to go fuck yourselves?”

This internal reaction lasts only a moment, but given the easy events of the day is so misplaced that I'm somewhat unsettled. The intensity of my anger, the velocity with which it has arrived, the ease with which this feeling could take me over, all of this leads me to the brief but troubling conclusion that what I've done is possibly not an isolated error in judgment as much as it is a flaw in my construction, a part of who I really am.

As I see everyone awaiting my response, I push away the thought. I look at the judge, seated on his bench, and with this harnessed focus my demons are seemingly exorcised. I am thus able to respond to his suggestion of gratitude with pitch-perfect acquiescence, like the obedient young woman I was raised to be.

The court transcript captures it this way:

THE DEFENDANT:
I will, Your Honor. Thank you.

W
ith the proceedings over, I walk out of the courtroom and begin to breathe a sigh of relief. I suck it back in quickly when I see standing in front of me the same reporter from the
New York Post
who interrupted the impromptu meeting with Cameron Douglas's father in the very same spot a year before.

For a brief moment my body seizes with fear that the reporter is here
to ask about my case. But he does not look up from the conversation he is having with another gentleman. I tiptoe around the two men and then move to a strategic spot close to the clerk's office. I motion to my attorney to join me and then position myself so I can keep my eye on the reporter's movements without having to crane my head or otherwise make myself conspicuous. If he comes my way, it's my plan to dart into the nearby ladies' room.

Some Prosecutor follows us to discuss some housekeeping issues. He and my attorney chat for a bit, and then he enthusiastically takes my attorney's hand and shakes it. I am only half paying attention because I am keeping my eye on the reporter.

I at first don't notice that Some Prosecutor has extended his hand toward me. When I do, I realize that the time has come for the fake handshake. I don't want it. I stare at his hand for a moment, until I see my attorney giving me a look. I begrudgingly take Some Prosecutor's hand, and, as if on cue, he dramatically turns his eyes away.

Dammit, I think to myself. I was so close to getting through my case without it.

Some Prosecutor walks away, and shortly afterward my attorney leaves me to deal with the odds and ends. At Pretrial Services, I am told that my Pretrial Services Officer (PSO) is away conducting home visits, that I should call her later in the day to arrange for my reporting schedule.

I step back into the main hallway of the magistrate's court and take a quick look around. The
Post
reporter is gone. I exit the courthouse undisturbed, not a camera in sight. I begin to run from the courthouse, my heels pressing the snow, running as though if I don't move fast enough I will be apprehended and the whole thing will start all over again.

I don't stop running until I am several blocks away. When I return to my building, I see that the blizzard is approaching—the sun has departed and the sky is gray. I have narrowly escaped the storm.

I
enter my apartment and immediately go to the computer to check the news: there is not a single piece of press about my case. Relieved, I call my PSO to check in. She is confused as to why I am calling.

“Didn't you get your reporting instructions?” she asks.

The man at Pretrial Services did hand me a form, which I had stuffed into my purse without reading. “Yes, I'm sorry, I don't think I realized what that was.”

“Well, you're supposed to call in once a month, the first Friday of the month. Don't call me until then.”

“Okay, but when do I have to come in?”

“You don't.”

“I don't have to come in?”

“No. Talk to you next month.” She says good-bye, and then hangs up.

I'm puzzled. I had prepared myself for weekly meetings, random drug testing, home visits. I feel so certain that these are required that I consider calling her back to make sure I understood her correctly.

I decide to leave the matter for now. My court date is officially over, and I feel unprecedented relief. Not because I survived something today—a kid sent to the principal's office would have it worse—but because this is no longer the point in my case that Churchill would call, if Churchill ever cared to describe this juncture of my criminal case, the end of the beginning. Instead, I believe this is the beginning of the end.

I kick off my weather-inappropriate high heels and stand at the foot of my bed. I fall into the mattress face-first, like I used to do as a child, like I did the day the federal authorities came to my door. This time, I am smiling. For the first time in months, sleep arrives in mere moments. As though making up for lost time, it pours over me like dense syrup, absorbing me to such an extent that when I finally wake, the brightness of the day will lead me to wonder if all of this hasn't simply been a dream.

M
y PSO was not exaggerating. The sum total of my obligations to the Pretrial Services Office consists of six phone calls, one for each month of the term of my deferred prosecution agreement. Each of these calls consumes something on the order of forty-five to ninety seconds.

On five occasions, I call her on the first Friday of every month. On the sixth occasion, she tells me that she will provide a recommendation
to the U.S. Attorney's Office to drop the misdemeanor charge that had been lodged against me.

There is no in-person reporting, no home visits, no drug testing.

It is an odd incongruence, the start of my case as compared to its ending. The brute arrival of the feds, the possibility of prosecution, the fear of the press, and the threats of extortion all seemed to portend my status as a criminal worthy of heavy punishment. And yet, this is hardly what transpires.

My family and friends insist that I should be happy about the apparent exceptions that have been extended to me. It could have been so much worse, they say. But as it is happening, I find myself distrustful of the disparity. That I have been spared what even the most privileged defendants are forced to endure makes me question why I have been put through it at all. I feel as though this has been more of an exercise in humiliation than an attempt to address wrongdoing.

Over time, I gain better perspective. I come to the conclusion that of the two theories of punishment, I am subjected to the approach in which the criminal is punished only insofar as needed to prevent her from committing further crimes. And in determining how the interests of justice could be served in my case, the system did not consider my conduct to be that of a repeat offender as much as that of a complete idiot.

What really matters, I tell myself, is that it's all over.

Or so I think.

CHAPTER 7

Thank You for Your Cooperation

W
hen my case is over, I hold out hope that I can move forward with my life.

It doesn't work out the way that I intended.

Once the charges are dropped, my lawyer calls to check in with me to see how I'm doing. I tell him that I am making the most of my second chance. I am elated, I tell him, that my case has come to an end.

“There's just one thing,” he says.

And that thing is cooperation.

W
hen boiled down to its essence, cooperation is an exchange of evils. It operates on the straightforward premise that the cost of leniency for one act of evil is worth the ability to harness two such acts.

Cooperation is usually heralded as a situation in which everyone wins. The cooperator gets off easier than he normally would. The government saves precious resources. Crime rates go down. Cooperation is quick, it's easy, everyone is happy.

But.

Because cooperation deals in evils, it has many of its own. Cooperation has a bad reputation for promoting dishonesty. One often finds that individuals who are comfortable (a) committing crimes, and (b) turning in their accomplices for personal gain, are just as comfortable
(c) lying about it. Cooperation can, and sometimes does, harm the innocent.

Cooperation's evils can obviously befall the cooperator as well. For some cooperators the leniency offered by cooperating can come at the price of one's own life. Cooperation can, and sometimes does, harm the guilty.

When you really think about it, cooperation's evils can be traced throughout history. Jesus Christ himself was famously ratted out, his identity and subsequent arrest provided by a paid informant who sold him out at a dinner party. And although that particular instance doesn't end too badly—it did bring about one of the world's great religions—similar betrayals have brought about nothing less than mass atrocity. Cooperation is the fuel in genocide's engine. Cooperation is how death marches and pogroms come to be.

Because of these evils, our legal system recognizes that cooperation has limits. This is why husbands and wives, doctors and patients, attorneys and clients, clergy and congregants have all been deemed sacred relationships in which loyalty is protected. Left unfettered, cooperation tears at the social fabric, rips through community trust, causes more harm than it seeks to prevent.

I have seen in practice the filthy residue that cooperation can leave behind. So when my attorney tells me that cooperation bears on my ability to move forward with my life, I am right to be concerned.

I
n order to explain how cooperation comes to touch my criminal case, I need to go back in time to the summer of 2009, months before I even join Cameron's case. Shortly after his arrest, Cameron identifies his drug suppliers as two brothers named David and Eduardo Esca­lera. The Escaleras befriended Cameron when he moved to California in 2003 and are alleged to have served as Cameron's personal dealers before joining him in the drug conspiracy that is being pursued by the government.

The expected next steps after Cameron provided this information were these: The Escalera brothers would be arrested; they would decide to either plead or go to trial; if they chose to go to trial, Cam
eron would take the stand. If they pleaded or were found guilty, they would be sentenced. Then, after all of this, Cameron would be sentenced, the full fruits of his cooperation taken into consideration by the judge.

But this is not what happened. The Escalera brothers somehow managed to elude arrest. Perhaps owing to the publicity surrounding Cameron's arrest, they made themselves scarce, possibly absconding to their native Mexico. For the duration of Cameron's case, they apparently were nowhere to be found.

This was good news for Cameron. He had been dreading any arrest of the Escaleras, not wanting to cause them harm and also not wanting to reveal his begrudging decision to cooperate. Because his sentencing was expedited, true to his wishes, he was sentenced without any arrests having been made.

After his sentencing, I tell a hopeful Cameron that maybe they will never be arrested at all. Maybe, I tell him, this is all over.

But I'm wrong. The very day that Cameron was transferred from MCC to his facility in Pennsylvania, the Escaleras were arrested near their homes in California. They were then brought to New York City to be tried along with the other members of the conspiracy.

When I learn of the Escaleras' arrest—one month after Cameron is sentenced and two months before Burly Man arrives at my door—I am inexplicably disturbed on Cameron's behalf. There seems little reason to be: with guilty pleas from everyone else in the drug conspiracy and with the existence of multiple government cooperators it seems reasonable to expect the brothers to plead guilty as well. As Cameron's lawyer, there is little cause for concern.

And yet, I am left with a persistent queasiness that something is not quite right. It is as though I already know that the filthy residue from Cameron's cooperation is about to become my own.

T
he first order of business after the Escaleras' arrest in May 2010 is to let Cameron know that it has happened. This is a delicate task, not only because any phone communication we have at his new facility is monitored, but also because he will undoubtedly find the information distressing. I decide it best to discuss the matter with Cameron in per
son. To do that, I will make a prison visit.

Soon after he arrives in Pennsylvania, Cameron mails me a visitor's form, the subject of which we have discussed in advance. The form asks how long you have known the BOP inmate. Cameron, fearing we haven't known each other long enough for my visitation to be approved, insists on putting a date prior to the start of the case.

“We had to have crossed paths before that,” he says.

I shrug my shoulders. I believe this to be technically true. We compare notes as to our whereabouts in New York City over the past few years and the various nightclub events we have both attended over that time. Most of these date back to when I was in law school, when Cameron was a DJ in the city. But I feel uncomfortable putting on the form that we've known each other for ten years. I agree with him, though, that our first meeting was technically before his case began and so, perhaps somewhat inexplicably, I split the difference and put “2008.”

(It's not a great move. The government later shows me the form during my proffer session, doubts that this entry has any truth to it. Some Prosecutor goes so far as to threaten to bring a charge for making a material misrepresentation on a federal form, but at some point the issue is dropped.)

I'm looking forward to our first visit. It is early July 2010, nearly two months since we have last seen each other. This experience provides a brand-new context for Cameron and me: the visiting room. According to the visitor's manual, because this is a personal visit, Cameron is permitted to sit at my side, hold my hand, and even provide a kiss “that is conducted in good taste” at the start and close of the visit.

Though by this time our feelings for one another are out in the open and have been readily discussed in detail, I find myself somewhat nervous at the prospect of being in such close proximity to him. In this way, our meeting is the stuff of Victorian novels, if ever there was a Victorian novel about prison visits between a reformed drug dealer and his attorney.

In truth, I have found something comforting in the forced distance that is always between Cameron and me. In his restrictive environment, our interactions are necessarily restricted, too. Cameron can only call me at certain times and for certain durations. He can only see me when I am willing to see him. Our manner of intimacy is set forth by
strict federal regulation. As someone who has come to possess a clinical fear of emotional intimacy, I find my relationship with an incarcerated felon to be one of the safest choices I can make.

When I arrive on the prison's grounds, I discover that Cameron's facility is appended to a larger, maximum-security institution. I encounter this facility first. Its facade is actually stunning; one would presume it to house inmates only because of the large tower at its center and the eerie silence that surrounds it. A voice from an intercom commands me to state my business and allows me to pass through.

The minimum-security prison camp presents much differently. As I walk down the hill to its entrance, I see three flat buildings with some sort of sporting event transpiring in between. With its institutional smell, the drab buildings present less as a correctional facility than an underfunded middle school. I line up with the other visitors and feel as though we are waiting to go to a decrepit study hall.

I survey the line, consisting mostly of women and children. The women look comparable to those who would stand on the sidelines of my second-grade soccer games. They don't appear as what I imagined women cavorting with incarcerated men to be, but I suppose I'm not what I pictured either.

When it is my turn to encounter security, the corrections officer is exceedingly polite. I find this almost disconcerting. He asks to see my driver's license and checks my name against Cameron's visiting list. He then motions me toward the visiting room.

“That's it?” I ask.

“That's it, ma'am.”

The visitor's room resembles a large cafeteria. Filled with tables and chairs, along one wall are a series of vending machines and an old microwave. In the center of the room is an elevated podium from which our lunch monitor—a corrections officer—can observe the proceedings. Off to the side, there is a small room with a television set and toys, lest children become bored with the visit. There is also an enclosed outdoor area with picnic tables.

I observe the scene but am not sure how to place myself in it. This does not seem like an ideal place to sit in someone else's seat. I watch the women scramble as they await the arrival of the inmates. They
methodically storm the vending machines, retreating with armfuls of junk food that they then arrange on the visiting tables as though setting the table for dinner.

I remain standing, hedging as to what to do next. A woman stands a few feet away, examining the contents of a vending machine. She resembles a friend of mine, but for her cherry red–dyed hair, which accents her pretty face.

I approach her with some timidity. “Excuse me,” I say. “This is my first time visiting here.”

“Okay,” she says.

I am not sure how to phrase my question. “What exactly should I do?”

She smiles. As she points out to me the preferred seating, two other women join our conversation. One woman indicates the most sought-­after vending machines and warns that these are the quickest to sell out.

“You might want to get your stuff now,” she advises.

“Oh. I'm not really sure what he would like.”

The women look at me. It seems as though I should know this.

The women also explain to me the visiting calendar—some weekends the inmates have two visits, some weekends three, and some weekends none at all—and advise me about places to stay nearby. It turns out that by staying at a bed-and-breakfast one town over I'm located farther from the facility than I need to be. I stop short of explaining that I preferred to stay in the quaint college town so that I could enjoy my free time away from the visiting room. This doesn't seem like the right thing to say.

The women ask me about my inmate. “How long has he been here?” one asks.

“Less than two months.”

“So you're new to this. You poor thing. How long is he in for?”

“With good time it works out to a little over two years, I think,” I say.

“It's hard at first,” Cherry Red tells me. “But it does get easier. In the beginning I used to have trouble sleeping, but now I'm much better.”

I have had no trouble sleeping, at least not yet. But I nod anyway.

“Do you guys have kids?” she asks me.

“Oh, no,” I say. I do not add that we've only just kissed, that it's quite
possible that I am just a goose in a gaggle. “Do you?”

“No,” she says. “Not yet.”

The other women look at her sympathetically. This seems to be a topic that has been discussed before. “He'll be out soon,” one of them says.

“I know, I know.” Cherry Red is smiling, but her eyes look sad.

I have no real standing to say anything, but want to fill the awkward silence. “If you guys can make it through this, you can definitely handle children,” I offer.

“I know, I know,” she says again with a smile. “You're going to make it through, too.”

She is heartfelt in saying so, and I thank her. But I am obviously a fraud standing among these women. I know nothing of their hardship. They have had to sacrifice plans and pick up slack and put on brave faces. They regularly drive hundreds of miles so that their family can be together for a few hours.

I've heard people say that the families of the incarcerated serve time alongside their inmate. As I listen to these women and observe the children of the visiting room ready to burst with excitement at the imminent arrival of their fathers, I see that this might be painfully true.

I have made no sacrifices. I am serving no time. I am here to simply see Cameron, sit next to him rather than across, and find out what happens next.

Speaking of which, I notice that inmates are starting to slowly stream into the visiting room. I turn to tell Cherry Red and the others that I should probably find a table, but they are already dispersing. It is something unsaid, like the flickering of lights at intermission, that indicates that the time has come to take a seat.

C
ameron emerges from the crowd with a smile on his face. His new prison attire consists of khaki pants—oversized, of course—and a matching khaki shirt. He looks as though he has just returned from safari, a supposition bolstered by his sunburned face. It seems that after spending most of the previous year indoors, his skin has forgotten
all about natural light.