the Onion Field (1973) (35 page)

He had driven to the Sears store in Glendale this particular time. That in itself was a little unusual. The store was a bit farther than he liked to go. Somehow though he had to go there that day. He had been stealing for a long time, almost a year. He had never been caught, never even come very close to getting caught even though he stole during peak shoplifting hours when the stores were sure to have watchers.

He felt very strange when he walked into that Sears store. Usually when he entered a store to commit crimes he didn 9t know what to steal, and just wandered until something struck his eye or he thought of something he might need. This time though, in the crowded store, in the middle of the dayy he had seemed to know exactly what to steal. He didn't consciously decide. It was very strange. He just found himself walking straight for the sporting goods department. Straight to the counter where the fishing plugs would be. But they weren't there! They weren't in the same place they had been when a young boy and his friend had pilfered them so many years ago. When they had been caught and warned by the store clerk. The store had changed the counters.

He looked around frantically. Then he spotted them. Now the pulse ticked in his neck, his lightly freckled face was crimson. He stopped breathing when he approached the counter. He looked around. He dipped into the tray of lead plugs. He stole them. He put them in his pocket. He looked around. His heart was cracking. He stole some more. He couldn't catch his breath. He walked slowly, deliberately from the store. There was no voice. There were no footsteps. There was nothing. He had escaped once more.

Chapter
11

At their annual Christmas party the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office always selected an earnest young deputy district attorney to be the recipient of the Marshall Schulman Nasty Prosecutor's Award. The namesake of this honor was the prosecutor chosen to try the killers of Ian Campbell.

Marshall Schulman was not deemed nasty because of his out-of- court manner nor by his appearance. On the contrary, he was youngish, tanned, with a touch of gray in the sideburns. His nose had just enough of a curve to make him forcefully handsome. His voice was good. He was enthusiastic. He could charm a jury. But when Schulman was on the attack, and that was just about all the time, he went for the throat. His voice could sneer though his lip didn't. He could confuse, worry and punish a witness without relent until that witness said what the prosecutor wanted him to say. He was not above inserting snide asides and derisive gestures which defense counsel would scream was cumulatively prejudicial. But he was deft in trial work and knew just how far he could go with a given judge and a given jury on a given day. He, like Pierce Brooks, knew that Gregory Powell was as good as dead, and his strategy was directed toward getting a death verdict for Jimmy Lee Smith.

Marshall Schulman had been assigned the sensational murder case while it was still in the early investigation stage. The district attorney asked Schulman to contact Pierce Brooks, and if necessary, to direct the police investigation himself to assure an impervious court case. Schulman met with Brooks briefly, saw what kind of investigation the detective was putting together and returned to his office saying, "That detective doesn't need me or anybody else."

Marshall Schulman had a few decisions to make. One of them was whether or not to file additional charges such as kidnapping for purposes of robbery. Ultimately, he decided that he wanted nothing to complicate his tactical thrust. He would file one count of first degree murder on each defendant and that was all. The jury would then not be tempted to choose among various lesser offenses. There could be no later wavering should some juror be loath to sentence men to death.

His other decisions were incidental, such as whether or not to subpoena the Campbell widow for dramatic effect, ostensibly to identify the picture of her husband taken in life. Schulman's wife decided that question: "Counsel, you will never be accused by anyone of being overly sensitive, on that you can rest assured." Schulman decided that Karl Hettinger could identify the pictures, and Adah Campbell was spared the subpoena.

But despite Marshall Schulman's self-admitted insensitivity he was nevertheless attuned to problems which might arise with his witnesses, which might disrupt testimony. And after his first interview with Karl Hettinger, the insensitive prosecutor became troubled by something.

"Karl, I think you did a hell of a fine job that night. You should be commended."

There was no response from Karl Hettinger.

"I don't think many men could've handled themselves so well. If it weren't for you keeping your wits, those killers would be free."

Karl did not respond.

"Did you see in the paper a couple of weeks ago about the two policemen getting kidnapped and taken to a graveyard where they were released? That's what anybody would've thought was going to happen."

Karl did not respond.

"From the first moment, you were right, Karl. From the moment you had to give up your gun right through to the end. No one could expect you to do otherwise, or hold you in any way responsible."

Karl Hettinger still did not respond, and the insensitive prosecutor began to wonder about something which none of Karl Hettinger's colleagues and superiors had even noticed.

Seldom had a preliminary hearing aroused such interest. It was held March 19. The defendants were still wearing their leather jackets. They had not yet learned to adjust to their new lives as cop killers, notorious on one side of the law, celebrated on another. They had not as yet settled into their bewildering new lives in the "high power" tank of the Los Angeles County Jail. They were still tense and drawn.

The young defendants were getting more deference than either would ever again receive in his life. No one wanted the slightest hint of ill treatment or prejudice to cloud the subsequent court record and interfere with swift retributive justice for the two men. There had seldom been such public opinion in any Los Angeles murder case. Hardly a day passed without letters to the editor, or editorial comment on television. The public could not fathom the ultimate cruelty: We told you we were going to let you go but. . .

Deputy Public Defender John Moore was an excellent foil for Marshall Schulman. He was no less aggressive a trial lawyer, but he was less apparent. He was thin, bookish, mild in voice and demeanor. A slashing attacker like Schulman could often look callous against a defender like Moore, but both men were experienced careful trial lawyers.

There was another public defender, Kathryn McDonald, a middle aged energetic spinster, assisting Moore with the defendant Gregory Powell. But Greg was frustrating his attorneys by adamantly refusing any suggestion of an insanity plea.

"I'm having a hell of a hassle with the public defender's office, Mr. Brooks," said Greg. "Oh?"

"They're pushing me and want me to plead insanity, and Mr. Brooks, I'm not insane, never was. And they're coming up with all this malarkey about my brain operation and all this other jazz and I don't know enough about the law to know whether I can fight them or not. They're gonna drag this goddamn case out for two or three years. If it was possible to plead guilty, I would plead guilty and to hell with all these lawyers. I know there's a law that allows a man to represent himself."

"Well, let me give you a piece of advice if you'll accept it," said Brooks. "There's an old saying in the courts that only a fool represents himself. Even great and famous judges say that if they were in trouble they'd have an attorney represent them. You should be represented by an attorney that understands the law."

John Moore was incensed to learn that his client was still seeing the detective. And Greg was to confront Moore saying, "I want you to know that Sergeant Brooks has my permission to see me anytime he wants to."

Moore replied in disgust to Brooks, "You don't have to ask my permission if that's the way he wants it."

Moore found his client to be intelligent, headstrong, egocentric, and extremely unappealing from the standpoint of jury impression. It was even impossible to direct the young man how to sit less straight and rigid at the counsel table, and how not to look at the jury with his intimidating fearful blue eyed stare.

Perhaps the most difficult job belonged to court-appointed Ray Smith, an aging, white haired defense attorney from the old school, given to homespun ways and homilies, who became thoroughly despised by his client Jimmy Smith almost from the first. He perhaps never believed that Jimmy Smith might not be lying when he protested his innocence, when he adamantly denied firing the four shots in the officer's chest. Ray Smith saw his job as that of saving Jimmy Smith from the gas chamber, of somehow salvaging a life sentence from the overpowering people's case, and accepting a life verdict as total victory.

The only witnesses to testify at the preliminary hearing were the autopsy surgeon, Dr. Kade, and Karl Hettinger, who looked different to the defendants, thinner and younger without the glasses he had lost that night and not replaced. Marshall Schulman would be told a hundred times in later years that he could have put on an impregnable case in one week with just these two witnesses. But that, he would bitterly answer, was hindsight.

The hearing was held before Judge Edmund Cooke. The defendants were held to answer on the charge of first-degree murder and bound over for trial. It was an uneventful hearing marked only by the frightening testimony of the surviving officer.

At five minutes before ten in the morning, after the witness had recited the events of March 9th, his voice breaking at the end, Marshall Schulman approached the witness, who was sitting hunched over in the witness box, his hands clasped between his knees.

"Would you identify the party in this picture?"

"That was my partner, Officer Ian Campbell."

"You saw him in life, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"And you saw him in death?"

"Yes."

Judge Cooke looked down at the eyes of the young policeman and said, "We'll take a recess. I think the officer has had enough."

There was, from the witness's point of view, only one question asked of him that day which was to return to him that night as he lay next to his sleeping pregnant wife, himself unable to sleep. The one innocuous question asked by the elderly lawyer for Jimmy Smith: You were not restrained in any way in the back of the car, were you?

Why did he ask that? thought Karl. What did he mean by that? What could I have done back there? Weren't those guns in the front restraint enough? I knew someone would say it, that I should have done something back there. Hit them with a tire wrench? Sure, in that little car, and a cocked gun in Ian's belly, and three more guns. Sure. You were not restrained in any way ....

But maybe he didn't mean it that way. Maybe he was just trying to show that his client wasn't really so bad after all. No, not really so bad. They didn't handcuff you. They weren't so bad. Maybe that's all he meant. Maybe he didn't mean the other thing.

By now Karl was sure that almost all policemen were critical of his behavior that night. The way they looked at him in the Hollywood coffee room and especially in the police building cafeteria. The way so many heads turned as he entered. He was sure there were whispers. It was that memorandum that started it. Surrender is no guarantee of safety to anyone. Surrender. . .

All right now, hold on, he told himself. Let's be logical about it. And Karl Hettinger, for the first time, deliberately thought through the entire night of March 9th, gouging his memory to focus on each word spoken, each nuance of each word, each gesture and nuance of gesture of Powell and Smith and Ian, and of himself. His side of the bed was dripping wet when he finished. It was after one in the morning. He decided he was absolutely blameless in the death of Ian Campbell. He vowed never to deliberately think of it again. But he couldn't sleep. He got up and drank a can of beer and watched a television movie.

Greg's daughter Lisa Lei was born to Maxine on May 13, and Greg's attorneys brought him into court two weeks later when they feared his recent moods of depression would infringe upon the coming trial.

"Dr. Crahan, tell me what medication the defendant is receiving now, if you know, sir," the witness was asked.

"He's been receiving three types of antacids and some tranquilizers."

"What is the purpose of the antacids?"

"To allay his verbal complaints."

"I note you have checked the defendant's blood pressure. Did you check to compare that with prior blood pressures of the defendant?"

"Yes. The blood pressures range around 110 to 120. That's normal."

"Dr. Crahan, you are here, of course, to aid the court in determining the merits of Mr. Powell's contentions that he hasn't been able to hold any food down for fourteen days. Did you check his weight yesterday?"

"Yes."

"What was it?"

"One hundred and fifty pounds, the same he claimed on admission to the jail."

"Do you have a record on any other weight?"

"Yes."

"What was that?"

"He was weighed a week or two ago, and he weighed one hundred and forty-nine pounds at that time. He gained a pound since."

"Thank you. That is all."

Jimmy Smith was a celebrity in the high power tank reserved for murderers and escape risks. His picture had been on front pages for days and everyone recognized him. Jimmy was delighted with the waves and deferential glances from the other inmates. They passed magazines and cigarettes to him and clucked sympathetically when he told how he'd been wronged and then betrayed by that snitch Gregory Powell.