Sociopaths I have known; and a teaser for coming attractions

On the Community Blog, there is a post about what defines a sociopath. While I am a jack-of-some-trades and master-of-darn-few, this is a subject in which I have some relevant experience.

Here at No. 3, we represent people, not things. Bank of America will never be our client. Neither will any corporation of greater wealth than your average Mom & Pop operation. When people come to us, they are in trouble. Some of them are in criminal trouble. Some of them are referred to us by Courts to assist an indigent is his/her defense (really, assigned - in the Federal system, the operative phrase directed at this poor barrister is "respectfully commanded"). Others are in the midst of divorce, injury or other assorted ills. Thus, we see a somewhat skewed slice of society.

In my world, I live in shades of grey. It is sooooo much easier to live a black & white existence, right or wrong, moral or immoral, good or bad. That's where most conservative pundits live, and in some respects I envy them their certainty and simplicity of mind. I have noted elsewhere that the justice system is reasonably accurate in determining results and consequences, but woefully deficient in making "the punishment fit the crime, the crime, the punishment fit the crime." (Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado) That is, we're not very good at accurately looking into a persons heart and mind and finding the WHYs of their existence. Dead body = bad. Self-defense by homeowner = good. Case closed. But I see, or try to see, a few "why's." There is Tina the crack dealer/prostitute about whom I've blogged in recent months. Life has given her a few tough breaks. Mind you, she has made poor choices and others who have been given damn bad breaks and have overcome them. But as much as I realize that Tina will serve the sentence that the law mandates (minimized as much as possible by my advocacy, I hope, but still at or above the 10 year mandatory minimum), I like her and feel sorry for her. There is little John W. who I represented years ago. I was called out in the middle of the night for a detention hearing on a juvenile who had shot his grandmother in the back with a deer rifle. The Sheriff (a brother) had pretty much determined what was going on as he brought John back to the Courthouse, and he was already somewhat sympathetic with him. As well he should have been, in my opinion. John was not "insane," but the circumstances leading to this shooting were unusual, and he was treated as a juvenile. I haven't heard anything about John for years, other than he is grown, employed, married, and living far away from here. I can hear most of society saying now, it doesn't matter the motivation, he intentionally shot his grandma, he's got to pay the maximum penalty that the law allows. And I don't condemn that opinion, I actually understand it. I don't buy it, but I understand it. And here, I wonder if I should claim to have some sort of greater understanding of human nature and human foibles than others. Damn - will I be cocky or will I be evasive. OK, evasive - I see society from an unusual perspective, let's leave it at that. There's Mary T. I was called out for an arraignment one hot summer Saturday afternoon. (I called my dear friend Leah, who was an associate with the old firm at the time, and told her, "The game's afoot!," and to get down to the Courthouse. Mary had taken her husband's revolver off of the china hutch (a strange place to keep a firearm), and put a bullet up his nose as he lay sleeping on the couch. He died just as the Medivac chopper was settling out of the air to take him to a trauma center. In this case, I renewed my acquaintance with the "Battered Woman Syndrome" defense. Shortly before trial, I sat down with the prosecutor, a dear friend now deceased, and we had a long and honest no-holds-barred conversation about what our evidence would be at trial (there are no "surprise witnesses" other than in the old Perry Mason episodes) and what the right thing to do was. Shades of grey. Mary ended up serving 2-1/2 years at a minimum security prison, where she acquired job skills, and she is back in the same house in the same little community and, I hope, is having a good life. All of these people are human, somewhat moral, and not terribly dangerous.

Remember, however, that black and white are also shades of grey. They do not appear nearly as commonly as the simple-minded would believe, but they do exist.

I am reminded this evening of two other criminal clients, and I think that they do fit pretty well the profile of a sociopath. The first is Allen T. Allen T. was an inmate at a penitentiary, serving life for murder. (In that case, he charmed a city police officer into turning his back, and then shot him.) Due to an unfortunate and sloppy chain of errors, Allen T. escaped the penitentiary and, in doing so, killed another police officer. He was on the run all over the country for a year or two, and made it to the FBI's "10 most wanted" list. (End of the story - he was convicted at trial, and sentenced to another life term, plus 300 years, and he is now held in maximum security.) I got into the case when another lawyer dropped out and the Court needed someone to put together a case quickly and without being overawed by this guy. (For a murder, you can request additional counsel, and I asked for my brother Dave, who is now a judge.) In the course of the proceedings, Allen T. was kept in our old county jail, isolated from other prisoners, and I would interview him there in his cell. One day, the chief deputy (now serving his third term as sheriff) found out that the jailers were searching us when we went in to talk to Allen T., and told them, "Don't be shaking these guys down." I told him then that I wanted to be searched because Allen T. was such a terrible security risk. At trial, another deputy (now chief deputy, and a fellow I went to high school with) told us his "secret security plan." The plan was, "if anything bad happens, you lawyers get down on the floor because we are shooting the defendant." Good plan - clear, simple. One weekend, while the jury was out, I went to talk to Allen T., and he was somewhat voluble. He told me the most chilling story that I have ever heard, bar none. He said that while he was out, he was stopped by a lady trooper in another state for a taillight out, or something of the sort. At this time, he knew that his photo had been circulated to all police departments in the nation. He didn't have a driver's license, but he did have his "favorite gun," a pistol, concealed under a newspaper on the front seat. He told me that he smiled, looked into the trooper's eyes, and that if he had seen "one flicker of recognition" by her, he was going to kill her on the spot. I tell this story to every police officer I know. (If you're pulled over by the police, understand that this is a finite danger that they face in every traffic stop, so if they are not chatty and chummy, there is a good reason for that.) This guy is a sociopath. We can talk about justice and revenge and retribution, but the reason his fate doesn't bother me is that he must be separated from society. For this guy, I have to say that having penitentiaries is a good thing. This guy is one of the true sociopaths, for whom the only shade of grey anyone can honestly see is black.

I also think of Jimmy S. tonight. Jimmy S. had a horrible upbringing in the most dysfunctional home imaginable. (While preparing for trial, we talked to his kindergarten teacher. He had been kicked out of kindergarten. He was beyond much hope even then.) Jimmy S. went to a local bar (an extremely, extremely low class place with old formica tables scarred by burning cigarettes and the smell of urine from poorly cleaned toilets) to establish an alibi (which didn't work, because the time records were very precise), and ran across a bridge over the river to an apartment building. There, he poured gasoline on the stairway and in front of several apartments on the third floor, and lit it. I'll not go into the gruesome evidence, but 7 people died in the fire. He may have had a beef with one of the residents, but the proof of that was lost in the horror of the crime. Jimmy S. hung around to watch the fire (as arsonists are prone to do) and was questioned by the police. Without much prompting, Jimmy S. confessed rather glibly. After a week-long trial in the city where the prosecutor and I attended high school together (aside - here in WV, cases move VERY quickly - If O.J. had whacked those people here, the trial would have taken two weeks, tops - In Jimmy's case, there was testimony from 40 witnesses), Jimmy S. was convicted of 7 counts of murder. The sentence was a mandatory life without possibility of parole, so at sentencing, there was basically no advocacy to be done. And so, I took the opportunity just to tell the Court what I thought, which was that Jimmy S. had no appreciation of what he had done, didn't have a clue what a life sentence meant, and probably was going to have a better life in the penitentiary than he possibly could have had in society. Jimmy S. was and is purely sociopathic. He doesn't understand to this day that he did wrong. Again, it's easy (ok, nearly inevitable) to talk about retribution and eye-for-an-eye justice, but the plain fact is that we as a society cannot have Jimmy S. live outside a penitentiary.

I've done maybe 25 homicides. Every defendant had a story. Some were sociopaths. But I have also met a few sociopaths outside of the criminal realm. One of these was a lawyer who was a lying son-of-a-bitch (and who is now a dead lying son-of-a-bitch.) One was an abusive boyfriend on the other side in a custody case. One was a police officer. One was a businessman who I declined to represent.

This is my life - shades of grey. But even I have to acknowledge that there's some black out there.

The teaser - within the last week, I've seen a bit of a documentary on one of the history/learning channels about "Secret Societies," and how, for example, the back of the dollar bill proves sinister Masonic influences in our government. I am a Freemason, have been for many years. This post is rather long, so the next time, I promise to tell all of the real secrets of the sinister Masonic order, hold nothing important back. Unless, of course, announcing the intention to do so gets me chucked off the South Side Bridge.

Mizpah.

R