Lawyers, Hallways and Elevators
The hand being offered to me was roughly the same color as mine. It was well manicured and bordered by a crisp, white dress shirt at the wrist. It belonged to a physician who had sexually molested his two daughters over a period of years. This morning in 2003, in the long hallway of the felony criminal courtrooms in Alexandria, I had run into him and his lawyer on the way to court. I knew much about the man, of course, from his victims and his wife. A detective and I had spent months building the case against him; the one that was finally and mercifully ending in a guilty plea. With no agreement as to sentencing, he would plea to the charges, and I would ask for prison time while his attorney asked for minimum jail time and treatment. The attorney was a decent, honorable man I’d worked with on many cases. We greeted each other cordially. And then the defendant, the doctor who had methodically, sexually abused his own helpless children, altering the landscape of their lives forever, nodded in my direction and offered his hand.“Good morning,” he said plainly. Our eyes met. I glanced down at the offered hand. I shook it. “Good morning, doctor,” I said. And then we went into the courtroom and argued his fate.That’s how it’s done, sometimes. Prosecutors don’t often have direct contact with defendants. Defense attorneys, some of whom are old friends of mine, deal with offenders face to face much more often and intensely then I do. Nevertheless, probably the most common question I got asked as a child abuse and sex crimes DA was some variation of “how do you look at these guys and not want to strangle them?” Most of the time I just shrug. The fact is, when you come face to face with the kind of persons we all fear and guard against, the actual response is something akin to confusion. They generally don’t seethe or laugh maniacally. They don’t strain against shackles or spit venom. Mundaneness is the usual face of evil.My two favorite stories about dealing directly with the men I’ve prosecuted both revolve around elevators. The first came about because of a guy (I’ll call him Mr. Smith) who appeared in court one Friday morning in May of 2001 as a result of a direct indictment I’d filed against him in Alexandria. Mr. Smith had raped his step-daughter many times over several years, resulting in her becoming pregnant at 15, the event that finally revealed the abuse. For various legal reasons, I filed an indictment against him rather than seeking an arrest warrant. He received word of the indictment, bonded out at the police station, and then dutifully appeared in court on the appointed day, not yet represented by a lawyer. Don Haddock, the spry, folksy, impossibly southern chief judge, looked over the paperwork that Mr. Smith handed him when the case was called.“Mr. Canaff filed this indictment,” Judge Haddock said in his typical drawl. “Go down to the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office on the third floor and ask for him. Bring him up here.” A few minutes later I beheld Mr. Smith. His abuse of the child in his care had begun when she was less than 10. He now stood at the receptionist’s desk, politely informing me that Judge Haddock had requested my presence upstairs. I straightened my tie, put a suit jacket on, and walked with Mr. Smith back to the elevator.“Mr. Smith,” I said, “you understand who I am, correct?”“Yessir. You’re the ACA. You’re the one who indicted me.”“Basically, yeah. The thing is, you don’t have to talk to me, and it’s probably better if you don’t. You’re gonna need a lawyer. Does that make sense?” He nodded.“Okay. Just follow me. When we get in, the judge will see us and he’ll tell you what to do.”In retrospect, I’m honored. Judge Haddock didn’t suffer fools well and he could be hard and caustic. But he was a good judge, and he wouldn’t have sent an unrepresented defendant facing a life sentence for rape to my office if he thought I’d try something underhanded with him, like “Hey, Mr. Smith- how ‘bout you tell me your side of the story while you’re here?” He trusted to me to be professional and even-handed with this accused person, and I had been.Fast forward to last year. I was at the New York state Attorney General’s office, trying civil management cases. Long story short, that means focusing on guys with sex offense convictions who are about to be released from corrections or parole, and whom we can prove have a “mental abnormality” which would require them to spend time either in a mental hospital or on continued intensive parole. The case I was working involved a 60 year-old man (we’ll call him Mr. Jones) who had committed two brutal home invasion rapes in the early 70’s followed by an attack on a woman he stabbed multiple times in an elevator. In 2009, after years in prison and a decade or so on parole, he was set to be released altogether and became a candidate for civil management. He remained on parole during the process, making court appearances as directed.One day we had a long, tedious court appearance involving pretrial matters in Manhattan. At the end of the day, the judge set a new date and released us. Jones’ attorney had other cases to deal with in the same building, and split off as we left the courtroom. Mr. Jones and I reached the elevator bank alone, and he politely motioned me in first when it arrived. As the door closed, it occurred to me that I was sharing an elevator with a man who 1) had stabbed a woman 26 times in an elevator not three miles from this one, and 2) was now being prosecuted by me for what could result in a life sentence, for all practical purposes, in a mental health facility.The elevator made its slow descent through the floors of the criminal courts building. Mr. Jones looked over at me as we reached the first floor.“Long day,” he said, congenially. I nodded. The doors opened.“It was,” I said. “Keep in touch with your attorney, Mr. Jones. See you next time.” He held the door for me as we left the building onto Centre Street, and promptly disappeared into the stream of humanity that is lower Manhattan.That’s how it’s done, sometimes.