The Hanging Judge (9 page)

Judge Norcross began. “We are here, as I understand it, to take the plea of the defendant Ernesto, aka Pepe, Rivera to a one-count information, charging him with conspiring to participate in a racketeering enterprise.” He read from the file. “The overt acts committed in furtherance of this conspiracy, according to the information, include two homicides in which he acted as the driver. Before we get started I’m going to ask counsel to identify themselves for the record and also identify the parties sitting at counsel table. We’ll begin with the government.”

The AUSA, an elegant Latina woman with luxuriant dark hair and an aura of quiet competence, had appeared before the judge many times. He liked and respected her.

“Judge, for the record, my name is Lydia Gomez-Larsen, and I appear on behalf of the United States. With me at counsel table is Holyoke police officer Alex Torricelli, who was injured apprehending the defendant.” Torricelli half stood and nodded, shooting a look toward Gomez-Larsen to be sure he’d acted properly, before lowering himself again. The prosecutor missed this gesture, pivoting to let her eyes sweep the gallery. “I see that Holyoke Police Captain Sean Daley is also present in the courtroom.” From his seat in the front row, Daley nodded, keeping his arms folded and shifting his jaw as though he were sucking on a Tic Tac.

Gomez-Larsen sat down, and the attorney to the judge’s left fumbled to his feet. “Clyde Goodman for the defendant, Judge. For the record, Mr. Rivera is with me in the courtroom.”

Goodman had a long neck, a self-conscious grin, and an oversize blossom of curly red hair. The man’s professional qualities seemed doubtful. Judge Norcross would need to take things slowly with him.

Maria didn’t know anyone. She had come to court straight from the New Life Pentecostal Church in the Flats, where she and the pastor had been offering prayers for the protection of her son’s soul since early that morning. At the moment, her eyes were fastened on the depression just below the hairline at the back of Ernesto’s head, a place she had kissed so often. A sob was pressing up into her throat, and she was struggling not to do anything embarrassing.

Ernesto was Maria’s only child, and she was his only parent. She remembered how well he’d started life: a robust, affectionate little kid, running around her parents’ living room with his stuffed monkey, Jocko, or sitting placidly with a coloring book watching cartoons. Now this.

The judge was talking. “This is a proceeding pursuant to Rule Eleven of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Our task today is to ensure that, if the defendant does admit his guilt to the charge against him, he does so knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily. I need to say a few things to you, Mr. Rivera, before we go any further. Please listen to me carefully.”

Maria thought,
It’s like a movie
.
It’s like sitting in the dark and realizing that the person up on the screen is your son. The judge is treating Pepe the same as any criminal, because to him that’s what he is.

Rivera rubbed his ear, using a slow circling motion with his pointer and middle finger, round and round, as though he were trying to massage away a buzzing noise. This was a trademark gesture of her son’s, something he’d done since he was a toddler whenever he was nervous or on the spot somehow, and the familiar sight pushed the sob higher until it was touching the roof of Maria’s mouth. It really was him. She must not cry.

Up on the bench, Judge Norcross was encountering the recurring problem of eye contact. The sheer number of plea colloquies he’d conducted, using virtually the same words each time, threatened to reduce the process to a meaningless drone. Specific, individual attention needed to be paid, and looking right into the defendant’s face seemed like one way to make sure his words really penetrated.

On the other hand, he’d found that eyeballing a defendant could be misinterpreted as an effort to dominate. Stupid, frightened, overproud, or confused offenders sometimes reacted with a look of defiance, or sulky indifference, which, to Norcross, curdled the whole proceeding.

Directing his gaze toward the defense table, Norcross saw that Rivera would be a defendant of the blank variety. In response to the judge’s attempt at eye contact, Rivera left off rubbing his ear and lifted his eyes briefly, showing only a flicker of passive inscrutability before dropping them. The corners of the defendant’s mouth turned down, and he ran his tongue along the inside of his upper lip as though he had a sore on his gum. The gesture deformed Rivera’s face just enough to make it impossible to read his feelings.

Watching from the shadows, Maria felt the judge closing down, just like the teachers when they complained during meetings that her son couldn’t sit still, wouldn’t do his work on time, and kept bothering the other kids. She wanted to stand up and explain. Ernesto was not being rude; he was just a little scared. With patience, he would begin to show the sweet side of himself. At the same time, she wanted to march the boy out into the corridor, tell him to sit up properly, pay attention, and behave. He knew how to act.

Judge Norcross cleared his throat and pushed ahead. “Mr. Rivera, I have a number of important warnings to give you and some questions to ask you this afternoon. If during the course of what I say, you do not understand me, or if there is some noise in the courtroom and you do not catch something, please ask me to repeat or explain myself. I will not be bothered or offended by this at all. Do you understand, sir?”

Rivera glanced in his lawyer’s direction, but Goodman was down at the floor, rummaging in his briefcase. The defendant directed his eyes at the judge’s forehead and nodded minutely.

Judge Norcross forced himself to keep a neutral tone. He’d have to be content simply to get the mandatory questions and answers into the transcript. Maybe the kid understood, maybe not.

“Good. Let the record reflect that you’ve nodded to indicate that you understand. I want to tell you how this proceeding will go. In a moment, I am going to ask you to take the witness stand. Here.” The judge pointed to a wooden enclosure on his left. “Ms. Johnson will place you under oath. I will then have, as I just said, some warnings for you and some questions. After that I will have five or six questions for Mr. Goodman.” Attorney Goodman stiffened and sat up straighter. At least now he’d know what was coming. “Then, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gomez-Larsen will summarize the evidence the government would have offered if your case had gone to trial, and after all that, if I’m satisfied that it’s appropriate, we’ll take your plea. Do you understand, sir?”

Rivera cast a blank look at his attorney, turned to the bench, and nodded.

“Mr. Rivera, you’ve been answering me up to now just by nodding. In our everyday lives, of course, this presents no problem. But we have a stenographer here”—Judge Norcross gestured down at his court reporter—“who is making a transcript, and your answers need to be audible. You need to speak. So, I’m going to ask you again, do you understand, sir?”

Rivera sniffed. “I understand.”

“Thank you. One aspect of the plea is so important that I want to emphasize it now. I will return to it in more detail shortly.”

At that moment, the big public door banged open and the comic bane of Judge Norcross’s existence wobbled into the courtroom. It was eighty-six-year-old Florence Abercrombie, bosoming a stack of files in one arm and holding a wicker basket topped with a red-and-white checkered napkin in her free hand. “Oh, thank you
so
much,” she said in a stage whisper to the court security officer, causing both Alex Torricelli and Attorney Goodman to twitch and look around. AUSA Gomez-Larsen, recognizing the voice, only sighed and rolled her eyes.

Mrs. Abercrombie was a wacky pro se litigant who had represented herself in a half-dozen lawsuits in the Springfield federal court. The judge found it hard, despite the extra work she made for him, not to admire the harmless old screwball. She’d sued Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes on a theory of promissory estoppel when she had not received her twenty million dollars, filed a civil rights complaint against her electric company for adding a surcharge to her bill, and, more than once, named the president and the secretary of state as defendants based on allegations that they had snooped into her emails. In careful, polite memoranda, Norcross had dismissed each of her lawsuits.

She had long, white hair pinned up in barrettes over her ears and shiny brown eyes as fanatical and unblinking as a peahen’s. On one of her appearances, she’d been inspired to bring a basket of homemade ginger snaps to the clerk’s office, and unfortunately someone had taken them, probably as the simplest way to get rid of her. Now she brought cookies every time she came to court. From the center aisle of the gallery, Florence was grinning up at the bench and waving the wicker basket back and forth at Judge Norcross. Despite her lack of success, she appeared to think the world of him.

“Good morning, Mrs. Abercombie,” the judge said. “Nice to see you. I’m tied up at the moment, as you can see, so you’ll oblige me if you have a seat. Or you might wait outside.”

To the Norcross’s relief, Mrs. Abercrombie said nothing—merely began easing herself onto a pew—and he turned his attention back to the defense table. “As I said, there is one aspect of the plea agreement … excuse me, Mr. Goodman?” The defendant’s lawyer was still fascinated by Mrs. Abercrombie, who had dropped one of her files and was busy collecting it. “Are you with us?”

“Yes, Your Honor. Sorry.”

“There is one aspect of the plea agreement I want to emphasize. The charge against you carries the penalty of mandatory life imprisonment, without possibility of parole. This means that, ordinarily, a person pleading guilty to this charge would be imprisoned and would never, ever be released. Have you discussed this point with your attorney, Mr. Rivera?”

The defendant looked uncertainly at Attorney Goodman, who nodded encouragingly.

After a pause, Rivera nodded. When the judge raised his eyebrows at him, the defendant added a barely audible response: “Yes.”

“Thank you.”

In the corner, Maria took a shaky breath and closed her eyes to absorb this news once more. She had always been active in her church, but in the past decade, with so much happening, she had surrendered herself entirely to the will of Providence. There was not a doubt in her mind about the imminence of divine judgment, permanent and unbendable. What would it mean to depart this short life in prison? Could her son expect to find mercy?

The judge kept talking. “The only way under the law by which you can avoid life in prison, Mr. Rivera, is if the government files a motion requesting a lower sentence based upon your substantial assistance in the prosecution of another person. If Ms. Gomez-Larsen does file this motion, which is called a 5K1 motion, I will have the power, if I choose, to impose an agreed sentence of twenty years on you. If the government doesn’t find your cooperation adequate, you’ll stay in prison until you die. Simple as that.”

Judge Norcross reached over to retrieve his cup of water and took a sip, a deliberate pause to allow his words to sink in.

“You are dangling from a cobweb this afternoon, Mr. Rivera. The severity of your punishment, if I allow you to plead, will be mostly in the hands of Ms. Gomez-Larsen and her boss, Mr. Hogan, the United States attorney. I want to assure myself that you know where you stand from the get-go. Do you?”

Goodman was leaning forward with his elbows on the table and his hands clasped at the level of his forehead. The attorney looked over his shoulder and shrugged quickly back at his client. In response, Rivera waited for a beat, then shrugged, too.

“I understand.”

“Good. Please come forward and be sworn in.”

Right at that moment, for the first time, the defendant revealed something. It happened briefly, like a sparrow flying past a window.

Rivera stood, shorter and much younger than Judge Norcross had realized, turned his head, and looked over his shoulder toward the back of the gallery. With the distance and the distortion of the fluorescent lights, the expression on the face of the small woman seated there was too wavering for the judge to read. But as Pepe’s head turned to where she would be able to catch his features, this brown, doll-like woman hugged her elbows together, hard, as though a freezing wind were passing over her. When Rivera turned back, Judge Norcross could see that the moment had transformed the boy. For a count of one, two, three, four seconds, Ernesto, aka Pepe, Rivera dropped his disguise, exposing the face of a wounded child, desolate and dumbfounded. Then the moment passed, and in the light of the courtroom, he congealed into his assumed persona again, screwed his mouth around to suck on his teeth, and walked slowly across the burgundy carpeting to take his place in the witness box.

Watching Pepe grudgingly raise his hand to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God, Maria felt her heart tighten. From the whispers she’d overheard, she suspected that at least one of Pepe’s uncles—including her half brother Carlos—and perhaps others in her neighborhood, knew very well who shot Peach Delgado and that poor nurse, and she was very afraid that they all knew, and Pepe knew, that it was not the black man her son had identified. Her child might be on the point of stepping over a line from which he would not, in all eternity, be able to return.

11

T
hanks to Crazy Abercrombie’s interruption, and Norcross’s ponderous approach to plea colloquies, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gomez-Larsen made it back to her office, two floors below the courtroom, barely in time for a scheduled phone call with her boss, Buddy Hogan.

Everyone in Springfield assumed Lydia Gomez-Larsen was Puerto Rican, except the Puerto Ricans. They knew as soon as she shifted into Spanish that she was Cuban. Nevertheless, despite her Havana-Miami idiom, the western Massachusetts Latino community was proud of the AUSA, followed her victories, and looked forward to her predicted appointment to the next state Superior Court vacancy as an overdue sign of growing Hispanic political clout.