Objection! (23 page)

I’m not saying it wasn’t hard, though. I can still remember coming home after class at nearly 10:00 P.M. and cutting my grass because I couldn’t afford a lawn service to do it. The neighbors were so good; they 1 5 4

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never complained. I wondered—and still wonder—how cops do it.

They have families to feed and second jobs to work through the night after they finish their shifts.

Low pay is a problem on the federal level also, to the extent that it’s actually causing a defection within the FBI. It also raises the risk of corruption and espionage. FBI officials have been quoted as saying high debt resulting from low pay could make agents more vulnerable to offers of spying on the United States for cash. Taking the oath of public service is more like taking a vow of poverty.

According to an April 2004 report in
USA Today,
the base salary for new FBI agents is about $39,000. Houston cops start at $28,000.

Chicago weighs in at $37,000, and in the capital of the world, New York City, rookies start at $44,000. Okay, Officers, rush out of the police station and stop a bullet for that!

Aside from rudimentary cost-of-living raises, salaries have not changed appreciably for the last decade. Think about it: Within that short time span, two U.S. counterintelligence agents were convicted of selling secrets to the Russians. Earl Pitts and Robert Hanssen both went down in history as traitors, making money off the sale of U.S. security secrets. Those are the two we know of.

Forget what you’ve seen in the movies. Prosecutors, unlike their silk-stocking opponents on the other side of the courtroom, very often do not have an army of flunkies and assistants. To prepare for a morning calendar call of, say, a hundred cases, I would sit in my office and dig through five or six boxes sent from the district attorney’s office trying to find the eighty files I needed for the next day’s arraignment.

Without fail they’d be in the wrong offices or lost in the filing room.

Hours would be spent just gathering cases for a calendar call—much less preparing for trial. There were no secretaries, no assistants, no paralegals. I wish I had a nickel for every time I had to go to the crime lab to drop something off or pick something up. I’d be rich if I had a dollar for all the days I had to drive to the police station, where I’d be O B J E C T I O N !

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hassled about where I parked when I was there to pick up fingerprint cards or a police report or simply to drop off a subpoena.

I can’t even guess how many times I would go to the local 7-Eleven to get two or three packs of film for my Polaroid camera. It would kill me, because at the time they were $8 a pack. I needed the film to take additional crime-scene photos to show to the jury the next day. If something came up during the trial that I wanted the jury to see, I would drive over to take pictures and tromp around in my high heels getting whatever I could. I kept my camera in the backseat of my car until it was stolen (twice) during a trial. Thieves busted out the back window of my Honda to get the cameras or the car phone (they were installed then), and the office threatened not to give me another one. I started locking it in the trunk when I went to scenes.

I often bought my own supplies to use for visual aids at trial and never turned in my receipts because I was convinced that the district attorney would think I’d been extravagant in buying markers and artist’s poster board—the big, thick kind a jury could see from a distance. Before closing arguments in a case, I would go to a local crafts store to pick up what I needed, then stay up half the night, crouched on the floor, listing summation points in blue marker on the boards from my trial notes. I can still hear them squeaking across the matte white surface. I’ll never forget the sharp smell of the ink that always seemed to wind up all over the sides of my palms. That was the extent of the high-tech razzle-dazzle
I
used to wow juries.

My state-of-the-art visuals threatened to break the bank in
State v.

David Lindsey Cook,
in which the defendant was accused of murdering his wife. For months before trial, I had to ambush his friends and colleagues in parking lots all over town to personally hand them a subpoena duces tecum—a demand for documents. Those documents were the defendant’s handwritten letters, composed behind bars, detailing how he planned to trick the system by acting crazy to get an insanity verdict. Cook first claimed that his wife’s death was suicide and then 1 5 6

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argued that if he
had
committed murder, he’d been insane at the time.

His friends and relatives begrudgingly handed over the letters that outlined his plan. I had the letters blown up at a local Kinko’s to show them in enlarged detail to the jury. That cost money I didn’t have at the time and I knew the D.A.’s office didn’t have it in the budget, so I had no choice—I charged it!

F O R T H E L O V E O F M O N E Y

In 1987, in the
first major drug case I tried, I was up against Bob Fierer, ironically pronounced “fear.” He was by far the slickest defense attorney in Atlanta. This wasn’t a case where the accused was a street-corner hustler or a drifter nailed at a traffic stop with a joint in his ashtray. This case involved a huge chunk of pure, uncut cocaine worth millions on the street.

I remember reading the file and driving by the luxury high-rise where the drugs had been discovered. I wanted to see what I could before the first calendar call on the case. The building was in Buckhead—one of the swankiest parts of Atlanta, home of multimillionaires, an area where old money is mixed with that of rich up-and-comers. The next morning, I got to court early. The defendant had managed to get out of jail on a huge bond before I was assigned the case. I naturally would have opposed bond, with such a large amount of uncut cocaine involved. What that indicated to me was that the defendant, Charles Ehrlich, also known as

“Charlie Tuna,” was no amateur but a major drug distributor in the city.

That morning in court, though, it was the lawyer himself who bowled me over.

For the first time in my practice of law, I was acutely aware that I was the underdog. Robert Fierer was wearing a suit that had to have cost $4,000. His shoes were polished Italian leather, his cuff links had diamonds in them. Even his hair was perfect—I found out later he got it highlighted every three weeks like clockwork (while I was still using bleach from the drugstore). I even noticed his nails, which were, of O B J E C T I O N !

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course, perfectly buffed. His briefcase had that dull glow of expensive leather. My files were organized in a plastic mail carrier’s box with handles on either side that I’d found in the hall of the courthouse. That’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks—I was outgunned.

I was a novice prosecutor, and at the time I didn’t know a thing about organized crime. Ehrlich was clearly a player of some sort in a drug cartel, serving as the distribution hub in that part of Atlanta.

Amazingly, his bust came about by accident. Ehrlich had received a FedExed brick of pure, uncut, white cocaine in the lobby of his apartment building. When it was delivered, the doorman signed for the package on behalf of the tenant. As I worked with that doorman (who, I quickly learned, was not, let me say, afraid of a cocktail) during one of our many interviews, he explained how he discovered the contents of the package. He told me that ordinarily he never looked in people’s packages, because he could lose his job over such a violation. On the night Ehrlich’s box was dropped off, the edge of the package was already torn open, and the doorman could clearly see inside. The brick was obvious, so he called the cops. When the police searched “Charlie Tuna’s” apartment, things got even worse. They discovered that the place was wired, so he’d know if someone got in. Cops found a silencer in the closet. Who needs a silencer? That did it. This was a bad guy, and he had to be stopped from poisoning the streets of the city.

I knew this constituted a warrantless search when there’d been plenty of time to get one, but those rules are for the cops conducting a search (the opening of the package), not private individuals like neighbors or doormen who spot your friendly messenger service dropping off cocaine. With Fierer as the defense, I knew he would have a fleet of assistants poring over the law as it applied to these facts, so I had to get ready. I researched for days in order to prepare for what was sure to be a down-and-dirty court battle. On that first day, I felt ready and armed to the hilt with law and testimony for the suppression hearing. According to my research, this was the bottom line: Sorry, Charlie, but the Constitution doesn’t protect you from the doorman.

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For the first day of the trial, I wore my lucky black trial dress and shoes (recently resoled) and got to court early to set up all my legal documents. I sat behind the state’s table, closest to the jury box, with the beat cop on the case seated beside me. We had been through a lot together working the case. His part was done—it was now up to me to win the legal battle. Right before court was gaveled into session, Fierer, who stood six foot three, strode into the courtroom looking like a quarterback about to toss the winning touchdown. Instead of going to counsel table, he went straight up to the bench, where, as if by cue, the judge came out from his chambers, black robes flowing, hand extended to shake Fierer’s. They both broke into broad smiles and chatted like old friends. My heart sank.

Were
they friends? Had Fierer dumped lots of money in the judge’s last campaign for the bench? I didn’t know what to think. Without looking at them, I strained to hear what they were saying but couldn’t. I sat there stunned when I realized what favoritism could mean to my case.

The defense announced it wanted a bench trial—one without a jury.

I fought the motion, which of course offended the judge, and was overruled. The sole decision in the case would be that of this judge. I couldn’t do anything but argue my guts out. I knew to at least act as if I were used to arguing against lawyers of Fierer’s caliber. Then it was time for witnesses. I put up the beat cop first to pave the way for the weaker witness, the doorman. From what I could tell, the doorman was stone-cold sober, and he testified looking straight up at the judge, like an angel singing—to me at least. At the end, I argued not just the law but the importance of the case. I spoke about how all the eyes of the community were on this courtroom, how so many people were counting on us to do the right thing. I had little hope when the judge went to chambers and left us to stew, waiting on the ruling. The Honorable Don Langham honored the bench and ruled for the state. The cocaine was in evidence. The case was over. My faith in the system, including judges, was bolstered.

Afterward Fierer refused to speak to me. He just gathered his files as if nothing had happened and stormed out of the courtroom. He didn’t speak to me for a very long time after the trial, which was perfectly O B J E C T I O N !

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okay with me. Even when we’d meet in the courthouse elevator, just the two of us, we were like two wet cats in a barrel.

Here’s an interesting postscript to the story: Ehrlich went to jail, and Fierer continued his high-flying, high-profile practice of law. We never crossed swords again. But years later, the feds launched a secret investigation of Fierer and his alleged practice of scamming clients out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It boiled down to a carefully executed scheme in which Fierer and his associates, Conviction Consultants Inc., arranged for federal inmates to exchange fake information against other inmates in order to “cooperate” with the feds.

If it worked, the feds would reduce the snitches’ jail time consider-ably in exchange for the phony information. Those behind bars who could afford to cough up about $25,000 a pop were then connected to outside in-formants who supplied information helpful to unwitting agents and prosecutors in other cases. Fierer’s scheme erupted into a major scandal and threatened the legitimacy of multiple convictions based in part on informant testimony. The whole concept of rewarding inmates for their information became fair game for defense attorneys to then argue to judge and jury, jeopardizing hundreds of verdicts and investigations. Fierer went to the federal penitentiary and lost his law license. There is a moral here, I’m sure, but what I’ll remember most is the untouchable defense lawyer who unwittingly taught me to believe that justice can and will happen if you fight hard enough. You have to have faith in the system. I have the vivid memory of Fierer entering the courthouse for his own sentencing at the federal courthouse, much the same way he strode into the courtroom that day, as if he had the world by the tail. Head held high, hair carefully blown back, with that million-dollar smile—that’s how I remember Bob Fierer.

P R O S E C U T O R S O N T R I A L

As a prosecutor, you
definitely pay a price. You get paid slave wages and are then attacked as the bad guy at every turn. Your every move is 1 6 0

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publicly painted by the defense as nefarious and sneaky. After all, defense attorneys argue, you are responsible for and dedicated to putting innocent people behind bars. After fifteen years in the courtroom, I have come to the realization that very rarely is there an evil plan or a conspiracy hatched by the prosecution.

And you know why?

Because, frankly, when you’re looking at a workload of about eight hundred to a thousand cases, you really don’t have time to plot and plan to put innocent people behind bars. It’s all you can do to prosecute the guilty ones! But that has never stopped the defense from painting a very twisted and dark picture of the prosecution.