No Matter How Loud I Shout (46 page)

“I was about to say he's clearly guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but you can't say guilty in Juvenile Court,” Peggy says. “We just say, petition sustained. Well, I ask you to make the equivalent finding of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in light of the overwhelming evidence that Ronald Duncan is a murderer.”

When his turn comes, James Cooper makes a game effort to earn his fee, talking of Jason's changing story, his motive to lie in order to get immunity and avoid the death penalty, the possibility that favoritism led police to Ronald when they should have pursued Jason. There's not much he can say about Marvin's damning testimony, so he avoids mentioning it, and instead complains about the lack of fingerprint evidence showing Ronald had even been in the victims' car that night (ignoring the fact that, had Peggy presented such evidence, it would have been meaningless, since Ronald had been in his bosses' car on many nights and could have left prints there any of those times).

“There is an absence of corroborating physical evidence,” Cooper drones on. “You'll see that when the court reads the autopsy.” Cooper knows, of course, that Scarlett will not read the autopsy report. He can see
the judge rocking back and forth in his chair now, impatient, looking at the clock, after eleven now, with four trials and a full calendar still ahead of him. Cooper glances at the judge, stops talking, makes a vague gesture of surrender with his hands, then quickly winds up and sits down.

Scarlett turns to Peggy then with a big smile. “Do the People want to rebut?” He manages to load the inflection of this sentence sufficiently to make the unspoken subtext quite clear. No transcript will ever show it, but this is what the judge is really saying:
Don't waste my time with more talk. Let's just get it done.

Peggy knows, then, for the first time, that she has won. She shakes her head and says, “The People submit it, Your Honor.”

Scarlett doesn't waste a second. There is no retiring to chambers to deliberate or to study the evidence, no solemn ritual assembling of jurors to pronounce justice. Scarlett just does it. Without looking at Ronald, he says, “The court agrees with the People. The evidence in this case is overwhelming. The petition is found to be true, that the minor committed murder in the first degree, with enhancements, personal use of a firearm.”

Peggy feels no elation at this. She just watches Ronald. He scowls as the judge's words sink in, a look, it seems to Peggy, of genuine surprise. Though Cooper told him over and over, along with his parents, that no other result was possible, he still appears stunned. He covers his eyes with his right hand, while his father, huge tears rolling down his lined face, begins to sob loudly, staggering to his feet and walking blindly from the courtroom. A minute later, still crying, but silently now, he walks back in, wanting to flee, but afraid he will miss something. Ronald's mother is weeping now, too, loudly sniffling. The bailiff hands her a tissue.

Cooper, meanwhile, is already talking about sentencing—“disposition,” in Juvenile Court parlance. Adults are sentenced; children are “disposed of.” Cooper wants a delay, insisting that Ronald must have a psychiatric report before disposition.

“But why bother?” Scarlett wants to know. “There's only one place he's going. There's no way in the world he's going anywhere but CYA.”

But the judge gives in once Cooper asks for another conference in chambers, where the lawyer explains that, even though the sentence is automatic, failure to grant a psychiatric exam is reversible error. They'd just have to do it all over again. Peggy has to agree. Besides, Cooper says, making the prosecutor want to shudder, they'll need the psychiatric report for later. When Ronald comes up for parole. Scarlett grudgingly agrees.

As they prepare to return to open court, though, Judge Scarlett makes a
remark that Peggy finds particularly satisfying. “This kid is so repugnant. I can't believe the lack of remorse. In my forty-year career, fourteen years on the bench, this is one of the worst killings I've ever seen.”

Back outside, Ronald is motionless now, head down on folded hands, quiet, dry-eyed, disinterested. Scarlett has one more task today: He sets a day for disposition, choosing the first available date. But Ronald's mother begins to wail at this, a final blow. She screams, “No, no. That's his birthday. No!”

The judge quickly reschedules the sentencing, then eagerly says, “Next matter?” The resolution is anticlimactic, like a movie inadvertently shorn of its last few minutes of film. Ronald's father just sits in the gallery, face blank; his mother walks out of the courtroom, shaking her head, saying over and over, “They set him up, they set him up.” Behind her, a cadre of lawyers is scrambling to its feet to see who among them can get his or her case called next, hoping to squeeze in a hearing before lunch, trying to keep the machinery of juvenile justice turning. Peggy walks past the Duncan family out in the hallway, feeling their stares on the back of her neck.

At the end of the day, Peggy leaves her office and drives to Chuck and Ada's Baskin Robbins store to explain to the family what happened in court. The prosecutor had previously suggested they stay away from the trial, not wanting them to see those awful photos or to hear the unpleasant testimony. They said fine, they trusted Peggy to see that justice was done, to keep them informed. Now she wants to explain to them that Ronald was finally found guilty and will be punished.

When she gets there, a small table is reserved for her, with special Thai coffee and Thai food set out, made in the family's own kitchen. Ada's brother Montri and sister Tina come out with a huge bouquet of flowers for Peggy, and she stays with them for an hour, explaining the verdict and the likely sentence, and the fact that Ronald will someday be freed, in nine years or less. She promises to do what she can to fight any early parole for the boy. Then, somewhat gingerly, she also explains Jason's involvement, his immunity agreement, the fact that he will not pay for his crime, but that, hopefully, he will never do anything like this again. Peggy is not sure these recent immigrants to America fully understand her deal with Jason, but they seem satisfied, even grateful that the killer has been convicted at least. They admit, though, that a year later, they still find the crime and Ronald's role in it inconceivable.

“I would just like to ask Ronald why,” Tina says. “I would like to know why he would do this thing. Did he say he was sorry? Is he sorry?”

Peggy shakes her head, then has to watch the sadness creep across Tina's face. No, Peggy says, Ronald did not say he was sorry. Maybe he will someday. But not so far.

After that, Tina and Montri are interested primarily in talking about how wonderful Chuck and Ada were, remembering how everyone in the neighborhood mourned their loss, and how tough it has been for their two surviving children without a mother or father. And they cannot stop thanking Peggy. She is
their
lawyer.

But the next day, the local newspaper publishes a story highly critical of the immunity agreement with Jason, the article Peggy had been dreading. Neighbors have been coming in the ice-cream shop talking about it, how Jason planned the crime all along and is getting away with murder. Now Chuck and Ada's family isn't so happy with their lawyer Peggy after all.

“We want Jason in jail,” Tina says angrily over the phone.

All Peggy can say is “I'm sorry.” She offers the family the opportunity to come in and read the file, so they can understand what happened and why, but she knows they won't do it. Any sense of victory Peggy felt about the case vanishes after that, leaving only weariness. The feeling is compounded by a conversation she has a short time later with one of her deputies, who reluctantly tells her of a chat he had with Judge Scarlett. The young prosecutor, aware of Peggy's mixed feelings about giving Jason immunity, asked the judge if he would have convicted Ronald without Jason on the stand. He was hoping to find comfort for his boss, but it did not work out that way.

“Sure, I would have convicted him,” the prosecutor reluctantly quotes Scarlett as saying. “The evidence was overwhelming. As far as I'm concerned, she didn't need to give the accomplice immunity at all.”

Cecil Jacks walks into Commissioner Gary Polinsky's courtroom, a small, dark twelve-year-old with large doe eyes and a fidgety, can't-wait-to-get-out-of-here manner about him. He is anxious to leave court so he can return to the abandoned trailer home he calls his “clubhouse.” A rusting hulk parked in a weedy vacant lot amid the broken glass, used condoms, and dog droppings, Cecil's clubhouse is the one place he feels at ease, in command, safe. “It's the place where I do my stuff,” he says.

Eleven months ago, Cecil and his best friend, a fifteen-year-old budding transvestite named Danny, sporting lip gloss and fingernail polish, escorted a neighborhood boy to the clubhouse. The boy, Joshua, was fourteen years old and bigger than little Cecil, but he was developmentally disabled and mildly autistic. Mentally, he functioned as a six-year-old, if that. He is awkward and shy, and some of the kids in the neighborhood made a point of torturing him on days when there was nothing better to do, which appeared to be many. Cecil and Danny were among these, but one day, they pretended to befriend him instead. They even suggested he come do some “stuff” with them in the old trailer. He followed them like a puppy.

Once the door slammed closed on that leaning trailer, Cecil and Danny molested Joshua for more than an hour. They forced him to fellate them, sodomized him, even compelled him to kneel behind them and eat their
feces. That the ringleader—twelve-year-old Cecil—could even conceive of such things had astounded police and prosecutors alike. Afterward, Cecil and Danny had made Joshua swear to keep silent or, they said, they would kill him. But when he went home, Joshua complained to his aunt about being sick to his stomach. He wouldn't stop brushing his teeth. After repeated, anxious questioning, Joshua described what had happened in broken, tearful sentences, first to his aunt, then to the police.

After a long investigation hampered by Joshua's disabilities and fears, Cecil and his friend Danny were charged with various counts of sexual assault, then released to their families, who then called Peggy Beckstrand to scream about their children's innocence and the racist propensities of LA cops and prosecutors. They said they were good families—Cecil's father was a tradesman, the mother a health care practitioner. And, in any case, Cecil would never do such a thing. Why, Joshua still comes over and asks to play, the mother railed.

These protestations slacked off when, while awaiting trial, Cecil was arrested again, this time for robbery and aggravated assault. Cecil had tried to snatch someone's purse. When his intended victim resisted, he hit her with a brick, then sped off on his mountain bike (also stolen). Even then, because of his tender age, Cecil was not detained, but allowed to roam free for months, continuing to terrorize his neighborhood, his classmates, his teachers.

Now, after months of delays, his trial date has finally arrived. But Cecil knows all about Juvenile Court. “Ain't nothin' going to happen to us,” he whispers to his nervous-looking crime partner, Danny, while waiting for the commissioner to take the bench. “You wait and see.”

Soon enough, Cecil begins to smirk as he watches Joshua on the witness stand, a pitiful sight. The boy is afraid, incoherent, rendering his testimony interminable. He keeps putting the witness-stand microphone in his mouth and sucking it. In the end, he stands up and faces the wall, testifying to the faded walnut paneling about “sucking Cecil's dick” and “eating shit from his behind.”

When Joshua finally leaves the courtroom, Commissioner Polinsky, a twelve-year veteran of the Juvenile Court bench, says he cannot convict anyone beyond a reasonable doubt based on the word of a witness like Joshua. The prosecutor, Todd Rubenstein, argues in vain that it was simply the pressure of facing off with his attackers in court that was too much for Joshua. He points out that the police detective who painstakingly interviewed Joshua many times has gotten a consistent, coherent story from the boy in more relaxed, less threatening settings. The DA also reminds the commissioner
that Cecil and his friend previously accused one another of assaulting Joshua—further evidence of their combined guilt. But Polinsky disregards these points. The whole case comes down to an unreliable witness, he says, and that requires him to find Cecil and Danny innocent. The commissioner says he feels terrible for Joshua, and that his ruling will make for the worst possible outcome for everyone involved. “But I have no choice,” he says. “The law leaves me no choice.”

It soon gets worse. The woman Cecil robbed was an illegal immigrant. She is too fearful to come to court, the prosecutor announces—she has disappeared. No witness, no case. The robbery charges, too, must be dismissed.

With that done, Commissioner Polinsky sternly lectures the kids, ringleader Cecil in particular. Shape up or you'll be back, facing worse, the commissioner tells him, but everyone in the room knows this for what it is—impotent rambling. Cecil has beaten the system, just as he knew he would. He is free. He openly laughs outside the courtroom after the lecture.

“All three of those kids need help,” Polinsky later reflects. “And so do their families. But there's nothing I can do. I know those kids almost certainly are guilty, but I couldn't convict on the testimony I heard. We have to use the same standard as in adult court: guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Without that, I can't order them to do anything. It's all so frustrating. They are time bombs.”

The prosecutor is bewildered by the decision. “If everyone knows he's guilty, and everyone knows he needs help before he commits worse crimes, what kind of system still turns him loose? Polinsky could have gone the other way—it's not like anyone is going to go to the time and expense to appeal a conviction in a case like this. So how can a court commissioner arrive at a decision that everyone—including the commissioner himself—understands to be the worst possible outcome for everyone involved? It's nuts.”