The Case Against William (6 page)

"Roger
Clemens won his three hundredth game."

Dad
grunted.

"Sammy
Sosa hit his six hundredth home run."

Another
grunt.

"Oh,
shit—Kobe got arrested!"

That
got Dad's attention. Kobe Bryant was a huge star in the NBA.

"Language,
William. For what?"

William
read the story.

"Rape."

William
knew generally what rape was—a man forcing himself on a woman—because he had
asked his dad, but he wasn't entirely sure what "forcing himself"
meant. He had started to ask his dad—Dad's rule was, "If you ask a
question about stuff like that, I'll tell you the truth. Just make sure you
want to know the truth"—but he wasn't sure he wanted to know that truth.
Not yet.

"They
say he raped a girl at a hotel in Colorado. Desk clerk."

"Where?"

"His
room."

"Witnesses?"

"Nope."

"He
said, she said."

"Huh?"

"Her
word against his."

"He'll
win."

"Why
do you say that, William?"

"Because Kobe's special. He's a star athlete. No jury will
convict him."

"He
might be special on a basketball court, son, but that doesn't make him any more
special as a human being than that girl."

Hid
dad always said stuff like that—"Innocent until proven guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt" … "No man is above the law" …
"Every person is equal under the law"—same as William's social
studies teacher. But even kids his age knew adults didn't really believe all
that stuff. They just said it because they were supposed to. Except maybe his
dad. Sometimes William thought maybe his dad really did believe it.

"We're
all God's children?" William said.

He
remembered the priest's sermon from that morning.

"That's
right."

"Well,
maybe so, Dad, but God must've liked His son Kobe a heck of a lot more than he
liked His daughter the desk clerk."

"Why?"

"Because
He made Kobe six-six and gave him a killer jump shot. So he's a rich and
famous basketball star. He didn't give that girl shit. So she's a desk
clerk."

Dad
grunted. Which made William proud. Because when Dad grunted, that meant
William had said something that made him think.

"Language,
William."

A
thought struck him.

"Hey,
Dad, maybe Kobe will hire you to be his lawyer. I bet he could pay you millions.
You'd be really famous if you were his lawyer."

"He
doesn't represent clients accused of rape," Becky said.

Frank
Tucker represented wrongly accused defendants in white-collar criminal cases.
Corporate executives and politicians. Corporate executives charged with
various kinds of criminal fraud—Houston was home to thousands of multinational
corporations; consequently, the white-collar criminal defense business was
booming—and politicians charged with violations of state and federal ethics and
campaign finance laws and official misconduct—this was Texas, so that business
was always booming.

White-collar
criminal defense attorneys seldom became famous like the defense lawyers who
represented accused murderers. Everyone knew who Johnnie Cochran and F. Lee
Bailey were after they had represented O. J. Simpson in his murder trial. But
white-collar cases generally weren't as sexy as murder cases. Consequently,
Frank Tucker had been well known only to other lawyers who referred their
indicted clients to him. But he had made the leap to the front page the year
before when he had represented an Enron defendant. Enron Corporation had been
a high-flying energy trading company headquartered in Houston in the nineties.
It had gross revenues of $100 billion. It had assets of $60 billion. It had a
stock price of $90. It had engaged in pervasive criminal fraud. After the
company collapsed in 2001, corporate executives, including Ken Lay, the
chairman of the board, and Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO, had been indicted. Even
Enron's accounting firm, the venerable Arthur Anderson, had been indicted for
obstruction of justice.

Frank's
client, a thirty-year-old vice president in title but in fact just a
Harvard-educated paper-pusher, had been charged with criminal fraud. He was
guilty only of criminal stupidity, and there weren't enough prison cells in
America to incarcerate all the executives guilty of that offense. He was just
a kid who had followed orders and believed in the company; he had put every dime
he made into Enron stock. He had lost everything—his job, his savings, his
retirement funds, his reputation—just like the employees. But he had been
caught up in the wide net of justice thrown out by the Justice Department in
response to political posturing by members of Congress. They netted the sharks
but also the shrimp. After a four-week trial, the jury had acquitted his
client, one of the few Enron defendants who weren't convicted. As he walked
out of the courthouse after the verdict, angry former Enron employees spat on
Frank. That was a first. Many Americans had cheered O.J.'s acquittal, but
then, he had only been accused of brutally murdering two innocent people,
including his ex-wife whose head had almost been cut off. Frank's client had been
accused of financial malfeasance resulting in the loss of jobs and the value of
Enron stock. But Frank had long ago learned that being a criminal defense
lawyer meant having the courage to live with the fact that just verdicts often
were not popular verdicts.

And
that the hardest verdict to live with was his own verdict of himself.

Frank
gave William a man hug and a high-five and Becky a bear hug and a forehead
kiss.

"I'll
see you guys Thursday or Friday. Becky, you're in charge until Mom gets home."

His
wife was house hunting.

He
would rehearse his closing argument during the three-hour drive to Austin. He
would face the jury at 10:00
A.M.

"Ladies
and gentlemen of the jury. Over the last two weeks, you have witnessed
something that is not supposed to happen in America: a political persecution.
A politically motivated criminal prosecution brought by a politically ambitious
district attorney. Mr. Dorkin, the Travis County District Attorney,
desperately coveted the seat in the United States Senate that the defendant,
Martha Jo Ramsey, now holds. Mr. Dorkin, a life-long Democrat, sought support
for a campaign run from the leading Democrats in Texas. But he received no
support. So he plotted his revenge. Not against his fellow Democrats, but
against the defendant. Against a Republican. He took trumped-up charges to
two grand juries, both of which declined to indict. But as they say, the third
time's the charm.

"He
finally got his indictments.

"Four
charges of official misconduct. Second-degree felonies. He claims that
Senator Ramsey, while serving as Texas Secretary of State, used state employees
to conduct her personal and political business and then ordered them to destroy
records evidencing such acts.

"Wow.
That sounds pretty serious, doesn't it? A corrupt politician in Texas. We've
seen a few of those, haven't we? We've had politicians who bought prostitutes
with state money. Who used inside connections to make profitable stock and
land purchases. Who even stole state welfare funds. So what was the felony
crime Senator Ramsey is alleged to have committed?

"She
had her secretary write thank-you notes."

Two
jurors rolled their eyes. The senator was very well liked in the state of
Texas. So Frank had tried not to alter that affection. Each morning on their
way into the Travis County Justice Center, she had given interviews for the
throng of reporters, smiled for the cameras camped out front, and signed
autographs and taken photos with her constituents. She looked like a
television mother, like the mom in that show Frank watched reruns of as a kid,
Leave
it to Beaver
. Would June Cleaver intentionally break the law? Frank
didn't think so. Neither would this jury.

"Thank-you
notes, and now she stands before you, a sitting United States senator from
Texas, indicted by a jealous prosecutor. Mr. Dorkin wants you to send her to
prison for thank-you notes. To serve hard time with murderers, rapists, and
drug lords. For thank-you notes."

Frank
Tucker pointed at the district attorney.

"He
has wasted your time and your money to seek revenge against his rival. He is a
failed politician taking his political frustrations out on an innocent
defendant. He's like the school bully, using his power to abuse a classmate.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as American citizens, you are the senator's
classmates. Are you going to stand by and let him bully your friend? Or are
you going to stand up to the bully?"

Judge
Harold Rooney charged the jury in the matter of
The State of Texas versus
Martha Jo Ramsey
and sent the jurors to deliberate at 11:04
A.M.
After the jury had left the
district courtroom in downtown Austin, the judge motioned counsel to the bench.

"This
could take a while, gentlemen. I'm thinking Thursday at the earliest."

He
turned to defense counsel.

"Frank,
if you want to go home to Houston, I'll hold the verdict until you have time to
drive back up. The senator should stay in Texas."

"Thank
you, Harold."

Frank
felt the district attorney's eyes boring holes in his skull. Dick Dorkin and
he had been classmates at UT law school twenty years before. Frank had
graduated number one in their class; Dick had graduated number
two-thirty-three. Out of four hundred. Frank had hired on with a large
Houston firm; Dick had hired on with the district attorney's office. Frank was
a good lawyer; Dick was a good politician. Twenty years later, Frank was a
name partner in the firm; Dick was the elected district attorney of Travis
County. Having failed in his attempt at a Senate seat, word was he now had his
eyes on the Governor's Mansion just a few blocks from this courtroom. A
high-profile conviction could shorten that distance.

Dick
Dorkin had been Frank's rival in law school; he had never really known why.
Today, Frank Tucker had made him an enemy for life. But that is what a lawyer
must do when an innocent defendant faces the loss of her freedom. A lawyer
must fight for his client, even if that means making enemies. A lawyer must be
able to live with himself. With his own verdict. Of himself.

"So,
Frank," the judge said, "I hear your son's quite the football player
down there in Houston."

"He's
twelve."

"Only
six years till he's playing for the Longhorns."

The
judge was also a UT law grad.

"Well,
that's a long—"

"Excuse
me, Judge Rooney."

The
bailiff had walked up to the bench.

"Yes?"

"The
jury has a verdict."

"A
verdict
?" He looked at the clock. It was 11:19. "In fifteen
minutes?"

The
bailiff shrugged. "Yes, sir."

The
judge looked at counsel. His eyebrows arched. He turned back to the bailiff.

"Well,
bring them in."

The
jury acquitted the senator on all counts.

The
first college scout showed up when William was fourteen.

"He's
the best I've ever seen, Frank."

The
last two years had been a blur. The case against Kobe in Colorado had been
dismissed; the case against Enron in Houston had not. Kobe paid the desk clerk
a reported $5 million to go away; the Enron chairman of the board and CEO were
going away to prison. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the
obstruction of justice conviction of Arthur Anderson, Enron's accounting firm,
but it was too late to save the company or its eighty-five thousand employees.
Martha Stewart served prison time for insider trading; the speaker of the House
of Representatives did not. George W. Bush won reelection, and then Hurricane
Katrina inundated New Orleans and Bush's presidency. Tom Brady and the
Patriots won their third Super Bowl. Major League Baseball instituted a
steroid testing program after most of the record-breaking home run hitters of
the nineties had been implicated in the performance-enhancing drug scandal.
Lance Armstrong won his seventh straight Tour de France; at least there was one
clean athlete in America. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan waged on. Something
called Facebook was launched, as if thousands of people were really going to
put their entire personal lives on display for the world. Frank tried more
white-collar criminal cases and won them all. William played more private
school football games and lost them all. It was a Thursday afternoon in late
October, and his eighth-grade team was losing again. His father stood along
the chain link fence that surrounded the Academy field. Sam Jenkins stood next
to Frank and smelled of Old Spice and tobacco. Sam was short and stocky and
smoked a cigar. He was a college scout.

"He's
fourteen," Frank said.

"He's
special."

"He's
a kid."

"He's
an athlete. With a big-time future. If you manage his career correctly."

"His
career
?"

"That's
right. His career. A career that could be worth a couple hundred million
dollars, Frank. Top pro athletes make more than movie stars today … and a
hell of a lot more than lawyers."

"He's
playing eighth-grade football."

"He's
four years from playing college ball, eight from pro ball, maybe six if he
leaves college early."

"He
won't."

"Play
pro ball?"

"Leave
college early."

Sam
nodded. "That's what they all say. But when an NFL team offers millions,
a college degree doesn't seem so important."

"What
are the odds of William playing pro ball?"

"What
are the odds of winning the lottery? But someone always wins."