the Onion Field (1973) (53 page)

Karl Hettinger listened to the things the doctors told him. Some of it made sense, some of it didn't. He had confidence in Dr. Griffin and decided to return. Then he began worrying about the cost to his family of psychiatric visits. He had already punished his family enough and could not inflict a financial burden on them. So he stopped seeing the doctor after only a few visits. He reasoned that he was feeling a little better about things after seeing the doctors. That was all he could probably expect anyway, all he had a right to expect.

Sergeant Norm Moore waited outside at the pension hearing. The detective argued and raged at everyone who would listen.

"He should get a seventy-percent pension, goddamnit! Who can quibble? How can you measure somebody's hurt? Did you read the psychiatric report? Well, baby, those shrinks didn't even know about the goddamn memorandum. They don't have any idea that this department overtly criticizes this boy, lays the blame square on his shoulders. Did. anybody in the hierarchy have the guts or brains to officially tell him, Tou should have given them your gun under the circumstances. You did the right thing'? No, they wrote an order. You can't write that kind of order. I blew my top and called the chief's office back then as soon as I found out he was being asked to tell it to the rollcalls and letting them pick him apart. And then when he got in that shoplifting thing. It was pathetic! But the department just wrote him off like a common thief so we could maintain our integrity. Jesus Christ!"

Norm Moore knew he had won when he heard a voice in the hearing room say, "I don't care. We're going to give this boy seventy percent."

It is unknown whether Dr. Griffin's unsolicited recommendations to the police department were ever heard in the chief's office.

Internal Affairs Division still worked much the same as always, considering it their job to get antisocial policemen to resign as quickly and painlessly as possible to avoid criticism of the department. The bad-apple theory would endure.

The training which purported to prove how an ex-policeman named Karl Hettinger had allowed his partner to be killed was still regularly given. The command never to surrender a weapon under any circumstances was made part of the department manual. It was most official.

One man connected with the granting of the pension ironically observed, after reading all of the psychiatric reports, that the police hierarchy was in a sense much like the two condemned men who started the misery. He said the archetypal police mentality and the psychopathic mind were both utterly unable to identify with their victim in this case.

One of the pension doctors he saw, not the last, just one of many, wrote a very different kind of report on Karl Hettinger.

The doctor was George N. Thompson, well known in the Los Angeles area to lawyers who needed a psychiatric expert to testify. His report on Karl Hettinger, based on one visit, described the event of the shooting inaccurately.

He and his partner were fighting with two suspects and one of the suspects shot his partner.

The findings of the doctor were also markedly different:

He seems to have a minimum feeling of guilt with regard to what happened on the police department and his episodes of petty theft go back into even his childhood. It may be said, of course, that his childhood petty theft episodes are not unusual, that they are in fact rather common with children. On the other hand, I can see no direct relationship between his episodes of shoplifting and any factors at his employment. It is the opinion of the examiner that his present disability is a result of the internal causes within his own personality and not due to the factors at his employment.

The paragraph under "treatment" was perhaps the most startling in light of what six other doctors had said.

There is no indication for any specific treatment. Reexamination is indicated in a period of one year. Thank you for the kindness in referring this case.

After his signature, Dr. Thompson did decide to add a paragraph.

PS. I might add that although some of the history would seem to indicate that the type of character disorder from which he suffered is kleptomania, on the other hand there is not specific indication in the examination of him that this compulsive stealing is sufficient to be diagnosed as kleptomania.

Dr. Thompson's minority report would be culled from the rest and this particular doctor would be called into court to discredit Karl Hettinger.

All the faces of all the doctors had merged in his mind. He couldn't remember any of their names or any of the faces. The pensioned ex-policeman during the remainder of that year became in every sense a gardener. He did such a good job of putting his former life out of his thoughts that sometimes when he-wanted to remember police work he was unable to. He would of course remember the events of the night in the onion field, would still relive it in his dreams. And he would still remember his crimes. They were impossible to forget. He doubted that he'd ever forget his crimes. But everything else concerning his former life he came to forget except for his service revolver. He began thinking of it more and more.

He even forgot the doctor who had won his confidence. Even Dr. Griffin's face had faded from his mind. He had hated sitting in psychiatric waiting rooms with sick neurotic people, but he occasionally thought that perhaps he would go back one day if the thoughts of the crimes didn't go away. At least he didn't dream about his crimes. He only dreamed about the killing of Ian Campbell. He never believed the doctors who said he felt unconscious guilt about Ian. They didn't understand. He only felt guilt about the stealing.

It had confused him when one of them asked: "Do you ever dream about the stealing?"

"No sir."

"You only dream about the murder?"

"Yes sir "

"The thing which you feel no guilt about?"

"That's right, sir."

They were trying to make him say he felt guilty about Ian. It wasn't true. He'd never say that. If it were true it might mean there was a reason to feel guilty. That they were right. All of them. All those who implied he killed Ian the moment he surrendered.

But this was crazy. He mustn't think like this. After the retrial had come and passed, then he'd feel better. Then at least he'd stop thinking about the gun. The gun he had surrendered to Jimmy Smith. The gun he now so often longed to press to his head.

Chapter
16

The case was given to Deputy District Attorney Phil Halpin even before the California Supreme Court reversed it. After the Dorado decision there could be no doubt it would be _ reversed.

Halpin was glad to get a head start. The transcript was 7,735 pages long making it a lengthy murder case. The young prosecutor could not have dreamed at this time that the transcript would eventually contain nearly 45,000 pages, the longest in California history.

Halpin was thrilled when Joe Busch, the assistant chief of trials, picked him to try the case. Busch was the number one trial lawyer on the staff and this case would go a long way toward establishing the young prosecutor's reputation. Halpin had all the tools. He had youthful good looks, a convincing baritone voice, was articulate and bright, a most promising trial lawyer.

Phil Halpin was twenty-nine years old when the important case was given him. He was thirty-one when he quit the district attorney's office because of it. But in 1967 he was enthusiastic. He was ready.

The prosecutor had been divorced in December, just months before being handed the notorious case which was to him more important now from a legal standpoint, after having been reversed by the Supreme Court. He was ashamed of divorce, had always felt there was some stigma to it. And no one at the District Attorney's Office even knew when it happened. Halpin lived alone in an apartment in the hills over Silverlake. He lived quietly, did not own a television, and against the orders of his employers, did not have a telephone. The Powell-Smith case afforded him a blessed opportunity to become totally immersed in something.

His had been a teenage marriage to a girl he had known since the second grade, and now he was alone. He had two daughters and a normal share of divorce's guilt. He wanted to lose himself in this assignment. The Powell-Smith case would do that for him, to an extent he had not dreamed possible.

Judge Alfred Peracca was, like Judge Mark Brandler, a patient man, but more gentle and kindly. He had a thin sallow face and a long upper lip, often pursed. Judge Peracca looked like one's image of a Victorian public school headmaster. He gestured often with his large hands.

Judge Peracca's courtroom was in the Hall of Records, a decrepit building that smelled of sewer, especially on the elevator, and it was even shabbier and more dismal than the Hall of Justice.

During the pretrial motions Gregory Powell sat at the far end of the counsel table dressed neatly in a suit, and stared at the prosecutor. Next to him was Deputy Public Defender Charles Maple, then Jimmy Smith, Irving Kanarek, and Phil Halpin. For a time the young prosecutor was assisted by Deputy District Attorney Pat McCormack, eleven years his senior.

Judge Alfred Peracca had a serious heart condition. He started the case looking fresh and rested each morning during those first few weeks, but by noon he would be bone weary and find it necessary to take his medicine. He was a good and charitable judge. But even in the best of health Deputy District Attorney Halpin doubted that he could have handled what he was faced with in those interminable months.

It was estimated by the district attorney that never in Los Angeles history had so many motions been raised in one trial. There were motions to change venue, motions to sever the trial, motions to quash the whole jury list, challenges to the jury system, motions to get Karl Hettinger's personnel file, and even Ian Campbell's. News commentators who had commented on the case were subpoenaed. Smith made a motion concerning the sanity of Powell. Charles Maple, attorney for Powell, made what the prosecution would deem a ghoulish motion to exhume the body of Ian Campbell now buried five and a half years. There was a motion to appoint a psychiatrist for Hettinger. Irving Kanarek made a motion to quash the entire master panel of jurors due to neo-racism. There were motions to continue, motions to discharge attorneys, motions to reinstate attorneys, bail motions, withdrawal of bail motions, motions for mistrial, motions to film a reenactment of the crime, motions made almost daily concerning inadequate treatment by jailers.

There were hearings which would in themselves go on for days, having nothing whatever to do with the case.

"Your Honor," Kanarek said one day, "Mister Halpin, I am told, just made the statement that I am going to get knocked on my ass."

"Oh come on, Mr. Kanarek!" said Judge Peracca, arching his brows.

"Well, your Honor ..." said Kanarek.

"Please," said the judge, a word he would utter a hundred times daily, pleading with Kanarek, pleading, it turns out, for his life. "I will hold you in contempt for constantly reiterating. And Mr. Halpin as well. Now please get on with the case."

"I have not said a word to Mr. Kanarek," said Halpin. "Not in five days and I'm not going to."

"Your Honor," said Jimmy Smith.

"Oh, I'm not going to hear from you, Mr. Smith," said the judge.

"All right," said Halpin. "I want the record to reflect that the court just finished admonishing me for something that's supposed to've occurred while I was at a drinking fountain and that I had no part in. I want the record to reflect that this man has stood up and made constant statements about things that I'm supposed to have said, that I'm getting admonished now by this court. I would just ask the court to quell this sort of thing."

"All right, sit down, Mr. Kanarek; You too, Mr. Halpin."

"I'm afraid for Mr. Kanarek, your Honor," said Jimmy Smith. "Suppose he hits him?"

"Well, Mr. Smith, Mr. Kanarek can take care of himself," said the judge wearily.

"Suppose he hits him?" said Jimmy Smith, seizing an issue. "This man is defendin me for my life. You mean I don't have a right to inform the court?"

"Your Honor," said Halpin. "Mr. Smith was also told to be quiet."

"I should sit here idle?" said Jimmy. "Like a piece of furniture?"

"Please, Mr. Smith. Please," said the judge.

A day later, Kanarek said suddenly: "Your Honor, I am informed that Mr. Halpin has carried a gun in his belt in the courtroom."

Deputy District Attorney McCormack held the younger prosecutor's arm and kept him in his seat as Halpin gaped in disbelief at Kanarek, who said, "Mr. Smith wants to take the stand under oath and so testify that Mr. Halpin has had a gun in his belt, and he has indicated a lack of control of his temper in these proceedings. He has come to court ... I offer sworn testimony that he has come to this courtroom with a gun!"

"Put Smith up and I'll take the stand just to the contrary!" said McCormack, who was now on his feet, no longer trying to keep his associate in his chair.

"Get him up! Get him up there!" roared Halpin.

"If we're going to have a man lose his temper . . ." offered Kanarek.

"I've never lost my temper in this courtroom!" said Halpin.

"The record reflects Mr. Halpin's temper," said Kanarek.

"Oh, Mr. Kanarek," said the judge. liPlease. Please. Please. Please."