“In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups…”
I was just starting up with a new girl friend who had a third floor walk up apartment in Charlestown MA, which had a reputation as a tough town.
She told me that not too many days ago she had been raped in her apartment. An actual real home invasion sort of rape. The guy had climbed up the fire escape and came in through a window and used a kitchen knife he found to threaten her.
It was the sixties, things moved fast and I wound up staying over with her. After we had gone to bed we heard something in the hall. We thought it was her cat, but then the guy appeared in the bed room door.
He had a cowboy style bandana mask on his face, and his junk hanging out. Instead of a knife, he was brandishing a knife sharpener he had found in the kitchen. I was naked and stood up and looked at him. He looked surprised and asked me what I was doing there.
I was scared but tried not to show it. I told him if he left now there would be no trouble. He thought for a moment, and then seemed to agree. He left.
We then realized that he had been in the apartment the whole evening, hiding in a closet. We had been out, and we’d come home, he was already inside. Shudder.
We called the police and the uniformed officers didn’t seem to have ever seen any TV about policing. They handled, with their bare hands, the knife sharpener and just casually looked around and really didn’t seem to take note of anything.
The two detectives were different. They said their name fast and we always referred to them as Mike&Jimmy. They too didn’t seem to care much about evidence, but acted like they were on a mission.
A couple of days later they said they were pretty sure they knew who did it and asked us to come to the police station to identify the guy. They had had him called in on a phony excuse about his driver’s license. He was standing in line. Mike&Jimmy pointed him out.
A chill went up my spine. Although I never saw his face, I knew it was the guy. My girl friend felt the same way.
Mike&Jimmy took us to their office. They showed us a picture of the guy. Then they said, here’s a book with a bunch of pictures. Go through it and pick out his photo.
We did. (TV crime viewers will know this was, of course, an illegal identification.)
They told us when we got to court we would be asked if we did the identification by looking at the book of photos first. We should testify that that is what happened.
There was a back story. This guy had been involved in a number of rapes in the town. One of the most recent was of a nine year old girl. Mike&Jimmy had the guy, had the girl’s testimony and were ready for trial.
Then the parents of the girl decided she couldn’t go through the trauma again, and moved to Baltimore before the trial.
So Mike&Jimmy had no option left but to leave the guy on the streets and wait until he struck again. When he did, that was my girl friend.
They did not want to let him go again, which is why they made sure they got an identification from us, which is why they told us how to testify.
We met with the prosecutor. He also knew exactly what was going on, and we rehearsed how the questions at the trial would go. (Witness tampering, also illegal.)
It turns out this guy was borderline functioning with an IQ of around 70. He was assigned a public defender. Although I don’t know for sure, I suspect he was also in on what was happening.
The judge read the charges. The guy was charged with “ravaging and carnally knowing” the defendant.
We were asked the questions on identification and the incidents, and gave our answers. Sounded bad for the guy.
The defense was an alibi. The guy’s cousin said how wonderful he was and how he had taken his nephew to a Red Sox game that day. When asked if she remembered who they played, she confidently said yes. The Tigers, and the Sox won 2 – 1.
The prosecutor was showing a little glee, as he asked for a recess while they located and brought in a special witness, the scheduler for the Red Sox.
Turns out the Sox were on the road that day.
In the summary arguments, the last statement by the public defender was “… and we heard she had cats. I ask you, where were the cats?”
He was put away for seven years.
But still, we couldn’t go into the apartment without first checking every possible place a person might be hiding. It became a ritual. For at least five years, we couldn’t not search where we were living as that fear of a home invasion stayed with us.
So my question is, did we do the right thing? Did Mike&Jimmy? The prosecutor?
Years later I was watching the OJ Simpson trial. Testifying about the glove which might have been planted, detective Mark Fuhrman described how police, detectives, prosecutors and witnesses often worked together on evidence to make sure they put the bad guys away.
He was ridiculed as people said: the prosecutors and the detectives working together to fix a case? No way.
All I thought was, way.
