May It Please the Court

When I had picked up the eighty-eight-year-old judge at his townhouse in Marlton, I had assumed that I was driving. I had been wrong. I had also thought we were headed to a Trial Lawyer’s Conference for the New Jersey Association of Justice. Wrong there too. The problem was, I had strict orders from Judge Stein to get his former mentor to the conference on time, and I had promised Judge Redmond’s wife, who literally made me swear on a Bible, that I wouldn’t let the old man drive.

It had started in the garage.

“So you’ll be my chauffeur today?” the Judge said, derisively.

“Not a chauffeur. More like your fellow panelist,” I said, “and I will get you there on time.”

“That so.”

The judge grabbed a pair of Valentio rounded sunglasses with gunmetal side shields from a tool chest and tossed on a Belfry Casto classic flat cap with a shepherd’s check of copper, gray and navy—and grabbed the keys right out of my hand with a wink. Rather than a tie, he wore a gold men’s ascot beneath the collar of his white button down. 

Judge “Red” Redmond’s jet-black Porsche 911 Turbo S-993 convertible was like training wheels for adults. Judge Redmond floored the throttle out of the drive. He then took a turn in his development at about sixty miles-an-hour, but you would have never known it if you weren’t looking at the speedometer—which I was. All the way to the gas station, Judge Redmond ignored the lane lines and seemed unconcerned with driving in a straight line, but the wheels were glued to the ground and mopped up turns like a janitor. No matter how much Judge Redmond swerved, this rocket stuck the landing and trued up straight as an arrow.

I worked for Judge Stein as his law clerk. But a long time ago, when he was just my age, Judge Stein had worked for Red. We were connected by this chain of apprenticeships. Judge Stein is an austere German Judge who has two notable characteristics: first, an eerie resemblance to Abraham Lincoln with his stately but lanky build, and second, an obsession for punctuality. As his law clerk I had a whole speech that I was required to give to attorneys who dared to show up late for conferences with ‘His Honor.’ From what I’d seen so far of Red, it was hard to imagine these two men forming such a deep bond. They couldn’t be less alike. Judge Stein was punctual to a fault. Red was notoriously tardy. Judge Stein was tall, Red was short, shorter than me, perhaps 5’4”. Judge Stein was humble and unassuming, Red was larger than life. Judge Stein was practical and a government lifer, Red was a famous trial lawyer, who spread an infectious passion for life. Judge Stein was predictable. Red displayed a combative demeanor that made him seem dangerous, his intellectual repartee giving off a muted warning that hidden below the surface was a deadly threat.

“How long until we get to the conference,” I asked.

“We aren’t going to a conference,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“For a drive,” he said.

When we arrived at the gas station, Judge Redmond said, “fill ‘er up with premium” and disappeared into the convenience store. He re-emerged with Marlboro Reds, some beef jerky, and a tall coffee. I supplied a full tank and was waiting in the driver’s seat. I texted Judge Stein: Redmond is taking us on a detour. He wrote back: No good. 

“Would you like me to drive for a bit Judge,” I asked.

“Not on your life.” I slid over.

“Well then, I guess you can drive a bit further and I’ll take the wheel when we get a few miles down the road.” The Judge looked back at me as if to say it would be a cold day in hell before I drove his car. “Judge—we’ve got to get you to this conference—you know that right? You are delivering the keynote!” The Judge looked over at me from the driver’s seat, rolling down the convertible top, and lit a Marlboro Red cigarette, blowing it provocatively in my face.

“They sayyy that you settle down with age and maturity. They sayyy you lose the wanderlust. But, boy, I tell you straight, the joy of the open road, where the way outward is broad and straight and sweet and full of mystery nevah loses its allure.” He flashed an alarming grin as he said all of this. Red handed me a map he had bought at the convenience store.

“What is this,” I asked.

“It’s a map, boy. Haven’t you ever seen one?”

“Not since I was a kid.” 

“It’s what we used in my day. I tell you. You can’t get properly lost with one of those gizmos always shouting at you where to turn next. And you have to get terribly lost if you ever want to be found—terribly lost.”

“But what do we want to get lost for? Isn’t the whole point not to do that?”

“Do you think Columbus discovered America because that is where he was headed? The man was looking for Asia! If he had not gotten lost you’d still be in Europe!”

“But, we are going somewhere, Judge—we are going to a conference—one where you are the keynote speaker and about two hundred lawyers are waiting to hear from you—and in case your brain isn’t working so good, this is all happening pretty soon. In about 43 minutes to be exact. So, why don’t you let me take the wheel and get us down to New Brunswick.”

“Let’s don’t and say we did. There isn’t much for us at that conference.”

“Judge, you’re going the wrong way! I know which way to go here… if you’ll just—”

The Judge flicked he Marlboro Red cigarette he was currently smoking directly at my head, and I dodged it, beginning to get angry.

“Son, you don’t know your own country. You probably don’t know this county. Maybe not even your hometown. If you want to be a trial lawyer, you need to know about the world—get lost in it—find your way as you go—observe the comings and goings of people—their habits, the way they talk, the way they walk, their general attitudes and preferences, and most of all—how they see the world.”

“We are going to find that out by getting lost on Rt. 31 in Flemington?”

“Son, you’ve been lost your entire life.”

“I’m not lost. I got through law school, passed the bar, and I’m studying under your protégé to be a trial lawyer. The last thing I am is lost.”

“Hooah! Some spit and fire, at last. You have it all figured out—do you—at twenty-five? Do you think you are the first to pass this way… to fancy himself a litigator? A ‘trial lawyer’? Hmm? Do you? Let me ask you this—what kind of cases do you want to handle?”

“I was thinking of starting out in insurance defense.”

“Insurance defense! Good God, son. Kill me now. No, literally—kill me.”

“What’s wrong with that? Judge Stein has always told me the best way to learn how to be a plaintiff’s attorney is to learn the trade from the other side—learn how to find the weaknesses in a case and expose them—then you will know how to make yours.”

He waved his right hand and shook his head. “Judge Stein is a fool! Listen to him and you’ll end up the same—wasting away as a trumped up bureaucrat. Insurance defense! That won’t do. Won’t do at all.” Red jolted the car forward, swerving recklessly into the left lane and began weaving in and out of traffic. “Let me get this straight,” he said, “you studied literature—the finest exemplars of man’s yearnings, the distillation of the misfortunes men face on the way, the tug-of-war against their inadequacies. Then you took up law—the science of conflict and resolution. And you want to put that training to work pouring over medical records and find incongruence in injury reports? No, no, no!”

“I suppose you have a better idea.”

“Doesn’t anyone tell you people to think of what you want to do with your lives before you sign up for your first Civil Procedure course? My idea. Yeah. It’s better. It’s called being a lawyer, son. And a lawyer makes the case he’s given, deals with the subject at hand—tells a man’s story because it deserves to be told. Stop thinking of being a trial lawyer as a trade. It is a craft. Something you are, not something you do.”

“So where are we headed, then?”

“Ahh, finally a good question. You know, in my days on the bench, these lawyers would come into my courtroom complaining about how they weren’t provided necessary discovery by opposing counsel or how they needed to take a deposition of this one or that one. When we’d go back in chambers to discuss their matters, they’d say they had a ‘case.’ But they didn’t know what the case was about. Always the same pedestrian dribble. You aren’t going to be one of those slopsuckers, are you?”

“You just described exactly what I see everyday in Judge Stein’s courtroom.”

“Speaking of. Judge Stein told me you were a quick study, a boy with promise. I hate to tell you this, but I’m beginning to doubt his judgment, beginning to doubt it more than I already had.”

“So, you’re saying that just having a case isn’t enough, just making a case isn’t enough?”

“Dear God! Son! No! I imagine these clodhoppers sitting in their office. A client walks in with a problem, right. They’ve been gravely injured. So what? They tell them what the going rate is for a bum knee or a bad back and how the legal process works. Those are not lawyers. Those are clerks taking orders for auto parts at a dealership. If a lawyer stood in my courtroom and said, ‘Judge, I’m here to get my client what they deserve,’ that was code for—I don’t have the slightest clue about the human condition or what a case actually is. But, if a lawyer walked in and said, Joe Schmoe’s life has been irreparably altered and he needs this money for a damn good reason, to set the course he was set on back straight—maybe we were on the path to an actual case. The path to redemption. You follow?”

“Not exactly.”

“Someone suffers an injury, right? It’s a problem. It’s a problem for his employer. It’s a problem for his wife. It’s a problem for his children. Hell, it’s a problem for society at large. Maybe our boy Joe was saving up for his son to attend medical school, and maybe he can’t ply his trade now that he’s in tormenting agony twenty-three hours out of the day. Now we are out a doctor. So, a lawyer tells me that he needs a million dollars to compensate for his client’s inability to do what he was perfectly capable of doing before—putting his son through medical school. Now we have a case. Maybe our boy Joe was an avid runner who took all his joy in life from running marathons, and his running shoes are gathering dust in the ga-rage, never to be laced up for a race again. This poor lamed and mangled soul has become a sad sop. He’s no good to his wife. He’s half the father he used to be. So, a lawyer tells me he needs a million dollars to compensate him for the lost joy of a life. Now we have a case. Cases are a lot like road trips. They don’t mean a thing unless you get a fix on the destination.”

“So where are we going?”

“You tell me son.”

“I don’t have anything in mind.”

“That’s a pity. Hmmm. I have an idea!”

The judge drove north onto I-95 toward Trenton. And he didn’t hold back on the throttle.

“There were three great trials in the twentieth century. There was the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee. That was Clarence Darrow as the inquisitor against the Good Book. The devil won that one. There was the O.J. Simpson trial. And we know the devil prevailed there too. Last, was the trial of Richard “Bruno” Hauptmann, for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby, Junior.”

“I haven’t heard of that one.”

“I expect you haven’t. That was 1935. It was even before my time. The fact it involved ‘The Lone Eagle’--Lucky Lindbergh--who flew the Spirit of St. Louis and famously flew from America to Paris, which made him a hero and hence a target, turned this whole trial into a circus. It was a post-World War I German vs. American showdown with Lindbergh as hero and Hauptmann as villain, and the media piled on and the public ate it up. And it all went down in the Hunterdon County Courthouse right across from the Union Motel. If I were to tell you about the cast of characters involved in this fiasco, you’d think I was making it up! There was Dr. John Condon, a retired principal in the Bronx, who had a clandestine meeting with the kidnapper in a cemetery, Attorney General David Wilentz—patriarch of the Wilentz Law Firm—for the prosecution, a green young lawyer who had never tried a case, defense attorney Edward J. Reilly, the hard drinking “Bull of Brooklyn” as he was called—always wearing the pinstripes and a white carnation, claiming 2,000 acquittals, and claiming that Isidor Fisch did it, and there was the good judge, Thomas Whitaker Trenchard, who ordered Hauptmann’s execution after he was convicted, even though Governor Harold G. Hoffman wasn’t so sure. Then there was the maid who committed suicide and the posthumous Isidor Fisch himself, who may have been the real killer. There were 162 witnesses on the Trial! Can you imagine?”

“Was Hauptmann really guilty?”

“Seems not. Some say it was the greatest fraud in the history of our country. If we really fried an innocent man, then it would seem the devil has gone three-for-three. But who can say what justice is – time has closed the books – all there is now is speculation.”

“You really think they got the wrong man?”

“I don’t know. For want of a good lawyer, son—for want of an honest lawman—we will never know.”

* * *

The boy wore a hooded sweatshirt with the words “Lion’s Wrestling Camp” on the back. He sat forward at the diner counter playing with his spoon and looking at the clock. When we strolled in, Red put his arm around the boy’s back and said, “hey there Champ! You look to be in good form, son!”

“Thanks Red—thanks for seeing me.”

Red pointed at me. “This here is Steven Werner, esquire. You can call him Bruiser. As a boy, he was on the Shawnee team—best defensive wrestler in the state, then, this one. Known for his throws—never taught him how to shoot though.”

“That’s alright Red. Good to meet you, Steven. Boy… where do I begin…” the boy said pushing an article in front of me, which I read as we spoke.

The headline of the news article read, “Wrestling Star Chokes Dishwasher To Death at TJ’s Pancakes.” The facts were that two high school boys, Jamie “Slim” O’Brien and his best friend Mick Gordon had a run-in with Hauptmann’s great grandson, a dishwasher, Boris Petrov. It happened on a May night. After the run-in Boris was dead. There was a fatal struggle, and the case was homicide. But it took a while for Prosecutor, A.P. Roger Madsen to receive conclusive cause of death evidence of death by strangling. The state Medical Examiner’s autopsy showed extensive injuries and a fracture of the throat cavity. Since Petrov had been robbed, Slim was a person of interest out of the gate, since he had a prior record for pushing drugs.

“So, the thing is… I worked at the pancake house… I pushed drugs, cocaine, some Adderall, stuff like that. And I was all-state. Boris was a friend. But the guy was always watching us, knowing what we were up to and all. He had a bad rap, family was cursed—and he was old yo, like mad old. Old old. No offense Red, you’re like a cool old man. He wasn’t that kind. He was like the Boo Radley kind. He was an old recluse they let stay in a boarding house upstairs. No one really knew much about him. And he had a vicious temper—if he ever actually spoke.”

“Where were you on the night he died?”

“I left man. I was out of there. But they don’t believe me. When the old man was getting choked to death, I was out training, running the loop at Bernadette Park, down the street from the Pancake House.”

“So is there anyone---”

“No, before you even ask it—no, no one saw me there.”

“And you have no idea who did it?”

“Can you help me brother… Bruiser… they want life in prison man, life.”

I looked over at Red. There was no clear defense. The evidence was circumstantial. Red nodded his head and tipped the flat cap. This boy’s whole life was on the line. “What’ll it be?” Red said. A text came in from Judge Stein and I responded: not going to make the conference—important—fill you in later.

“Let’s talk about what else happened that night,” I said.

“I’ll let you two talk,” Red said, walking out of the diner.

“Don’t even think of getting back behind the wheel without me, old man!” I said.