Wasted (36 page)

“No, it was a reaction,” Thomas proclaimed.

“Was it funny?”

“Given the way the system works in this county, yes, it was funny. It was something I knew ... was coming.”

“Didn’t you think that by laughing they would think that you didn’t care? That you were making a mockery of what they did?”

“What I think of this whole thing has been a mockery of what it’s supposed to be.”

“But isn’t that the real reason why you wanted to testify first, to discount all the witnesses, to discount all other evidence?”

“The reason was to try to let them see from my viewpoint, stand in my shoes. I know that can hardly be done, but for them to understand the reason why I think the way I think, why I would like to have [it] happen the way I would like to have it happen.”

“I just want to ask you—”

“Yes. I’m not suicidal. I don’t want aided suicide. But in the best interest of my future, how things turned out, to impose a death sentence is in my best interest, I believe. I don’t need to go any further than that because then that’s where I believe I will be—or they might feel me trying to manipulate them into something, and I don’t want to do that.”

“But there’s a reason why you want a death sentence and it’s not to die?”

“Right.”

“Can you tell the jury that reason now?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m asking you.”

“Then I don’t get what I want—I don’t get what I need, excuse me. And I seen how you twisted everything to get happen what you want happen. You’ve outmaneuvered me again.”

“Isn’t what you’re talking about is there’s been things you wanted me to do in this case and I haven’t done them?”

“Several. Several. Yes.”

“And I told you that my job as your lawyer is to tell this jury why your life should be spared, correct?”

“Yeah, that’s your job.”

“You told me not to do that. Would that be fair?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Thomas’s laughter filled the courtroom. “If the jury returns a sentence of life without, I won’t be afforded the—”

Scalisi objected, and was overruled.

“The attention, scrutiny, and resources that I would with the death penalty that I think I deserve because of the prejudicial, biased rulings, lack of funds to adequately investigate and prepare the whole case. I mean, for seven years this case has went in one direction that I’ve not wanted it to, and I’ve asked, begged, and pleaded with you and Mr. Scalisi and investigators numerous times to proceed with the strategy that I was asking and that didn’t happen.”

Exum noted that Thomas’s strategy would have led to the death penalty.

“It wouldn’t have, had we done it my way from the beginning,” Thomas replied, “but now—”

It would, Exum agreed.

And Thomas began arguing with his attorney, saying they were off track, complaining that they hadn’t discussed this or his answers. “This is another thing that I’ve been pointing out to everybody from the beginning, man. You guys just—”

“I know,” Exum stated. “Strike that. I’m sorry.” He asked if the defense attorneys’ strategy had been to get life without parole.

“What happened to a strategy of not guilty?” Thomas complained.

They returned to drugs, with Thomas stating that from ages seven to nine, he took drugs because he “wanted to get where they would take me.”

Exum asked why.

“I guess I thought it was better than where I was at.”

They talked about Thomas’s days as a football star, with Thomas stating that football was the best thing that ever happened to him. Among other things, it reduced his drug use.

Exum pulled out and displayed Thomas’s many football awards, from junior varsity to varsity, from California to Oregon, emphasizing that Thomas’s play sent his teams to championships. He brought out Thomas’s team pictures. He noted that in high school Thomas was six feet three inches tall and 245 pounds, thirty pounds heavier than Thomas’s prison weight. He mentioned Thomas’s drug dealing in high school, but quickly moved to Thomas playing semipro football.

“I got all the rookie awards that season, defensive player of the year, rookie of the year. . . .” After his second year, he was asked to try out for an American Football Conference team. But drugs, which he was using to give him a football speed edge, destroyed his dreams. He was a meth addict at age twenty.

When Exum showed a photo of Thomas at age nineteen with his mother, Thomas laughed. At that age, he was smoking marijuana primarily and used meth only once or twice a month when he needed to stay up to make his drug rounds, he said.

Exum noted that he and Scalisi had tried to get Thomas to have an MRI to examine his brain for damage. Thomas had refused the scan “because I don’t feel that I’m brain damaged or predisposed to the drug use or abuse in my life.” He told the jury, “I chose the path that I lived and I’m here because of it.” He’d refused other medical evaluations after one expert had ruled he had an addictive personality. Thomas stated that such tests weren’t in his best interest “if that’s used to show the jury that life without is a better sentence.”

Exum mentioned the testimony of the jail deputy who had found a shank in Thomas’s boxer shorts and asked Thomas how many times he’d been stabbed.

“Seventeen stabbings and twelve lacerations on four different occasions.” The scars lined and dotted his neck, chest, and arms.

He asked why Thomas had warned the deputy about the shank in his boxers.

“Because I didn’t want him to get hurt.” But Thomas did say if he needed to defend himself, he “most definitely” would stab someone.

Exum asked his client to explain how he got stabbed.

“The path you choose when you’re inside, if you choose to get involved in politics, if you choose to get involved in drugs, anything that has to do with power inside.” With a glint in his hazel eyes, Justin Thomas loved to hint that he was involved in jail politics.

“And from time to time, you’ve had people who—who are close to you like that, who have done injury to you. Would that be fair to say?” Exum asked.

Thomas again sat silently in the witness chair.

Exum repeated his question.

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“Justin, there was something else that you’ve been telling me for the past couple of days that you wanted to say to the jury, and I’m going to give you that chance to say it now.”

Thomas wanted to know if he could recite it. “That’s just the easiest way. I don’t want to get tongue-tied.” So in his Hispanic rapper voice that he’d adopted in jail, Justin Thomas began to recite a poem he’d composed.

“‘To give you all peace of mind and lighten the heavy burden on your hearts and your spirits, know that the path that I’ve chosen for myself in the past thirteen years that I’ve been locked up, either sentence is a sentence of death. If you found the elements to find me guilty, then you’ve also found the elements to impose the death sentence.

“‘For those who love me, hold on if you must, but the spirit of the warrior is not geared to indulging or complaining, nor is he geared to winning or losing. The spirit of the warrior is geared only to the struggle, and he knows every struggle is a warrior’s last battle on earth. A warrior allows his spirit to flow free and clear. He dreams of beautiful things and wages his battle, knowing his will is impeccable. He embraces death as part of the struggle. For those who hate me, a warrior laughs and laughs and laughs.’”

 

 

Darryl Exum had to turn this around. “Correct me if I’m wrong, you’re basically telling the jury that it’s not because you’ve been using drugs since you were seven years old? ... It’s not because of anything related to how you were born? . . . It’s not because of anything related to your brain? . . . It’s because of the path you chose?”

“The path I chose.”

“Not because your father gave you cocaine when you were eight years old, right?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“It’s not because you got your first taste of alcohol when you were three years old, right?”

“I believe in my heart, no,” Thomas stated. “It’s not.”

“Does shooting up have anything to do with it when you were fourteen?”

“No. If I was an addict, as much drugs as I’ve had in my lifetime in one time, many times I could have ODed if I was an addict. An addict has to use it. They don’t have control over it. I’ve stopped my use.”

Exum asked Thomas if he could have chosen to stop when he was a free man, walking the streets.

“I believe so.”

“But you didn’t choose to stop, did you?”

“Didn’t want to.”

“Right. Because your father wanted you to keep doing it, for one. Would that be fair?”

“No, that’s not fair.”

Exum quoted Thomas: “‘I think he wanted me to do it.’”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“I’m asking you,” Exum persisted.

“You’re very sagacious,” Thomas responded. “You probably did get that out of me, but I don’t remember that.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

“On some level, he wanted me to.”

“Yeah. Showed you how to tie off your arm?”

 

 

“Looking back now,” Exum said, “you think the drugs had an effect on you?”

“Throughout my whole life,” Thomas stated.

And if they’d had an effect on him, was he truly sure he’d chosen his path? Exum wondered.

“Yes,” Thomas stated.

“You, the kid who between seven and thirteen took at least four different kinds of drugs and drank, right? I mean, is that a fair characterization?”

“That’s fair, but I’m not looking for an excuse or a reason.”

“It’s not an excuse?” the defense attorney questioned.

“It’s not an excuse. It’s not a predisposition.”

“It could be a reason,” Exum argued.

“No.”

“If it’s a reason, then this jury might have a reason not to give you death?”

“Exactly.”

 

 

Chuck Hughes looked at Justin Thomas and greeted him.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hughes,” Thomas responded.

“Let’s not dance around it,” Hughes said. “You want the death penalty, not because you want to die, but because you want lawyers for the rest of your life. Is that right?”

“Not the rest of my life,” Thomas replied. “Just as long as it takes to prove the injustice I’ve suffered the past thirteen years.”

“You think you’ll get better appellate work if you get the death penalty. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you want the death penalty. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

He asked about Thomas’s spirit of the warrior philosophy, declaring it was a “prison thing,” more specifically a Mexican prison-gang philosophy.

Thomas repeatedly denied being a prison gang member, despite his tattoos to the contrary, which Hughes emphasized were prison tattoos and were gang-based. Scalisi repeatedly objected to such references. But, indeed, Thomas’s favorite tattoo read
SUR 13
(Sur short for
Surenos,
Spanish for Southerner, 13 for the thirteenth letter in the alphabet—M), which could indicate membership in or affiliation with the Southern California Mexican Mafia. Hughes insinuated that Thomas had been a prison gang member in Texas, too. A tattoo across Thomas’s shoulders, one he’d had while imprisoned in Texas, read
Sureños,
another indication he might be affiliated with the Mexican Mafia.

Thomas’s responses hinted that the prosecutor might be correct.

Hughes referred to letters the defendant had written while in Texas stating that “people who break down in a fight are hos,” and “what you do to hos is you make them commit sexual acts and make them clean your cell” and make them pay protection.

“I didn’t force it from them,” Thomas responded. “They voluntarily gave it. They wanted my protection.”

Thomas had been in many prison fights, Hughes argued. Though Thomas may or may not have actually started them, he’d frequently egged them on. While incarcerated in Texas, he’d bragged to his family that he’d won six fights, lost one, and had one draw.

Thomas admitted he’d been in three fights since arriving in Riverside, but he argued he’d never stabbed anyone with his shanks.

Hughes countered that Thomas didn’t have to stab anyone himself because he had others who would do it for him. “Don’t you run the jail?”

“No, sir.”

“Didn’t you on March 9, 2004, tell Correctional Deputy Galindo that you run the jail?”

Thomas again denied that.

But Hughes insisted that on March 9, 2004, after Deputy Galindo had handed the inmate his
Maxim
magazine and Thomas had complained about the disappearance of other magazines, Thomas had told the deputy, “Don’t you know who I am? I am ‘Russo.’ I’m running things here and that’s no secret.”

Thomas denied saying such a thing, but stated that he was called “Russian,” not “Russo,” a moniker he’d picked up in Texas.

Hughes asked him if he was a “shot caller” in jail, a title often associated with the Mexican Mafia. Thomas hesitated before answering, “No, sir.” Hughes jumped on that hesitation.

“Well, I mean, it just doesn’t make sense to me. I wouldn’t gain any ground for me to put it out there like that,” Thomas stated. “In fact, it would do the opposite. It would draw too much attention to someone if they were, so that doesn’t make any sense.” He then asked the prosecutor if that was the only instance he had on him.

“No,” Hughes said.

“Pray tell,” Thomas returned. “Go on. If there’s more, let me see it, because that’s news to me.”

“The way it works is I’ll ask the questions. And cover the areas that I need to cover.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

Hughes argued that Thomas had lied on the witness stand in Texas. Sometimes Thomas denied that and sometimes he admitted it. “So the truth is,” Hughes demanded, “you’re willing to lie to a jury to try to avoid a murder conviction. Isn’t that right?”