Being Oscar Read Online Free PDF Page B

call 9-1-1 and tell the police dispatcher, “I’ve been . . .” Most people will say, “robbed.” Wrong! You’ve been burglarized. Robbery is taking something by force or threat of force, but burglary is an illegal entry. What’s the practical difference? For a defendant, about ten years. A robbery conviction carries a lot more time than a burglary conviction.
    When I first get involved with a client, the only thing I really want to know from them is if they have an alibi. That’s something you can work with in court. However, most times they don’t.
    Lewis Crockett didn’t have an alibi, but he insisted he was innocent. Crockett was thought by law enforcement officers to be a major drug dealer on the West Side of Las Vegas, which was the black community. In the 1960s, Las Vegas was the “Mississippi of the West.” Back then, communities were segregated. There were still a lot of Jim Crow laws on the books in several states, and in Nevada there were people with Jim Crow attitudes. A lot of that has changed for the better.
    Crockett came from a well-known family in his part of town. His dad, Johnnie, owned a barbershop, and the family had status in the community. Of course the police said the family’s power and influence came because of drug dealing. There might have been something to that, but there was also a hint of racism. When I first started practicing law, that attitude was part of every case involving a person charged with a crime from the West Side.
    Crockett was a young guy, fairly well-spoken, and easygoing. He was charged with killing a guy named Curtis Wheeler who was planning to testify against him in a drug case. Wheeler drove a delivery truck for Dot’s Dry Cleaners and was making a pickup at an apartment in North Las Vegas one morning. When he went to the door, he was greeted with a shotgun blast to the chest. That eliminated Wheeler as a witness in the drug case, and a short time later Crockett was arrested for murder.
    The key witness to Wheeler’s murder was a guy named Bingham who had been painting parking lines at the apartment complex that day. Bingham was from a prominent Mormon family in town, which added another dynamic to the case. As the only one at the scene to testify, he swore that he saw Crockett climb out of a window carrying a shotgun. He said Crockett then ran to a car and took off. The identification was based on about twelve seconds’ time and from a distance of maybe fifty yards.
    I wasn’t involved in Crockett’s first trial, which ended with a hung jury. The vote was eleven-to-one to convict. One female juror had locked herself in a bathroom during deliberations and refused to be a part of the process. Maybe she was scared, or maybe she decided she didn’t want to be involved in a death penalty case. But the judge threw the case out and set a date for a retrial.
    The judge appointed me along with another lawyer to represent Crockett. Although I was supposed to be second chair, I ended up handling most of the case. I was paid about $900, which was the fee for a court appointment on a murder case back then. We contested everything during the trial: cross-racial eye-witness identification, withholding evidence by the prosecution. But Bingham’s testimony was overwhelming.
    There was one juror, Mrs. Homer Black, who kept making eye contact with me. She seemed like a nice lady. But when the jury came back with its verdict, I looked at her and saw that there were tears in her eyes, and I knew we had a problem.
    There’s a rule of thumb that most defense attorneys agree is a fairly accurate assessment of the jury process. If the jurors return to the courtroom to announce their verdict and they don’t look at the defendant, it means they’re coming back with a guilty verdict. When I see a juror crying, particularly after a hotly contested trial, I know my client is in serious trouble. That certainly was the case in this trial.
    In Crockett’s case, the verdict was guilty