There Are No Children Here (43 page)

Anne asked to meet with the five boys—without the adults. She had five minutes to prepare for trial. She needed to hear their stories—quickly. She asked them what happened. She needed to figure out who should testify, who would be the most articulate. It was clear from listening to them and seeing them together that they weren’t all friends. That made it seem unlikely to her that they had all broken into this truck as an organized gang of kids. Moreover, they all seemed to have credible alibis—except for Derrick, who conceded that he had asked the man whether he wanted his car watched. The two cousins said they were on their way to the stadium to work in one of the parking lots for the game that night. Curtis and Lafeyette explained that they were returning from a store on Madison Street.

Even with adequate time, trial preparation was difficult with children, Anne thought. They could rarely remember where they were on a particular day. Every day seemed like the next to them. And they didn’t know which direction was north or south or east or west, so that when the prosecution asked them which way they were headed, they often got flustered. In the end, she felt, children just wanted to please adults, so they would do what they could to that end.

As Anne scribbled notes on her legal pad, she began to believe more firmly in the innocence of at least most of these boys. She thought they might have a good chance of acquittal in front of Calendar 14’s judge, Julia Dempsey. Judge Dempsey, a middle-aged former attorney for the Illinois Board of Education, heard all the cases from Horner. She was noted for her compassion toward the children. She went out of her way to make sure they got good counseling or adequate care from their probation officers or in the detention center. Most public defenders liked her because they thought her fair when it came to sentencing. The police thought her too soft. In one station house, they hung her picture on a wall and peppered it with darts. Anne chose the three most verbal of the boys to testify. Lafeyette was not
one of them. He’d barely said anything in the short meeting. He rarely did.

Soon after Anne met with the boys, the deputy sheriff called the case. The five boys and the adults walked into the spacious courtroom. Its high ceiling and sparse furniture made it look unusually large. To the left hung the American flag. Judge Dempsey sat behind a raised desk. The public defender and the prosecutor each had a metal table on opposite sides of the room. In the back were two rows of wooden benches where the adults all sat.

The five youngsters nervously lined up in front of the judge. Lafeyette leaned lazily on his crutches. “Lafie, Lafie,” LaJoe whispered loudly across the courtroom, “stand up straight.” He pushed his thin body up on the crutches, perched on one leg. Anne handed one of the boys a small piece of paper, pointing to his mouth. He spat a wad of gum into the paper, crumpled it up, and shoved it in his pocket. Another fidgeted with his hands. As the judge determined the identity of each child, the boys stood erect, almost automatically placing their arms behind their back. All LaJoe could think was that it looked as if they were handcuffed. Her stomach churned with anxiety. The judge told the boys to raise their right hands as a court officer asked them if they swore to tell the truth. In unison, they muttered, “I do.”

The trial lasted about twenty minutes. Michael Berger testified as to what happened and what he had lost. He pointed out Derrick in the courtroom as the boy who had asked if he could watch the truck.

“He approached the vehicle,” Berger said under questioning from Andrea Muchin, the state’s attorney. “I couldn’t get out of the vehicle. He was in the open area where the door was and he asked if I wanted my truck watched and I told him no. And he told me he sure would hate for something to happen to my truck.”

Andrea looked to another prosecuting attorney for help. This was her first trial. She was nervous, unsure as to what to ask the witnesses. She identified with the victim, whose catering service was located in the suburb where she’d grown up. She believed his story. But she wasn’t sure that all five boys had broken into his truck. She thought she’d be lucky if the judge found just
Derrick guilty. Her partner assured that she had asked the right questions.

After Berger, two police officers testified. The first, Bill Freeman, was stationed at the Boys Club and knew the neighborhood children well.

“What happened when you arrived in the area?” Andrea asked Freeman.

“I observed five male black teens running northbound,” Freeman replied.

“Did you see the five male black teens that you observe in court today?”

Freeman turned and pointed to the five boys, describing for the court reporter what each was wearing.

“What happened after you saw the minor respondents?” Andrea continued.

“I ordered them to stop and at that time they began dropping stuff from their pockets.”

“When you say dropping stuff, could you describe what stuff that was?”

“Screwdrivers, pliers. I couldn’t tell you which one dropped what, but they were dropping.”

“Did you recover any of this stuff?”

“Yes.” Freeman said he also found five tape cassettes.

The next officer who testified had arrived on the scene after Freeman apprehended the five boys. He testified that he found part of the truck’s radio on Derrick and, contrary to Freeman’s testimony, that he had recovered the screwdriver and pliers from Curtis. In cross-examination, Anne Rhodes tried to establish that the officer couldn’t remember whether Curtis was wearing sweatpants or shorts. In later testimony, Curtis said he was wearing shorts without pockets.

Anne called Derrick, Curtis, and one of the cousins to testify. Their alibis, filled with gaps and pauses, seemed unconvincing in the courtroom. When the state’s attorney asked Curtis what store he was coming from, he replied that he didn’t know the name of it.

“What did you buy at the store?” Andrea asked the youngster.

“I can’t recall that either. We just going up there,” Curtis answered.

“And so you don’t recall what you had bought?” she shot back.

“No,” he muttered.

Anne knew they’d have trouble remembering such specifics. It had been four months since the crime occurred. What kid could remember what kind of junk food he’d bought that long ago? Anne argued that the evidence was “purely circumstantial.” She also tried to point out apparent contradictions in the testimony from the police.

“One of the minors stated in court that he had two tapes,” Anne told the judge in her closing remarks. “The officer testified that he found three tapes on him and the other officer said he found five. The inventory said five tapes, and none of them were listed.” She also pointed out that the radio part allegedly found on Derrick had never been inventoried by the police.

“Further, Your Honor,” Anne continued, “there has been no eyewitness testimony as to anyone actually seeing these minors breaking into the truck. There was a conversation between one of the minors and the complaining witness. The complaining witness did not give any testimony that he saw any of the other four minors here in the area of the automobile … We believe that the evidence put in the testimony today falls woefully short of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And we ask for a finding of no delinquency.”

Judge Dempsey, though, felt differently. She had seen many cases like this. Cars by the stadium got broken into all the time. The kids always denied they were involved.

“I have no doubt whatsoever but that these minors broke into the car and took all of those things,” she told the two attorneys in front of her. The faces of the five boys, who sat in the first row of benches, remained blank. No smiles or smirks. No anger or tears. Expressionless. Judge Dempsey continued, “And just because some of the things were not found does not place any doubt on the guilt of these minors … I am going to enter a finding of delinquency that is against all five of them on the case. Do any of them have any background?”

“No,” Andrea replied.

“No background? This is the first?”

“Yes.”

“If they had background I would have taken them into custody,”
the judge said. “I think they are really a big threat to the public … out there breaking into cars that are parked. The disposition [sentencing] date on all five is October eighteen.”

Both Anne Rhodes and Andrea Muchin were surprised by the verdict. Anne truly believed that at least four of them were innocent. She’d done what she could—but that, she conceded, was limited. Five minutes to prepare for trial. One attorney for all five boys. “We’re looking at our future [in these kids] and we’re not doing our job,” she would say later. The rookie prosecutor, Andrea, hadn’t thought she’d be victorious in her first trial. She felt certain that the judge would find one of them guilty. But not all five. In later months, she, like Anne, would become perplexed and saddened by the huge volume of cases and the little time she had to prepare for them. For her and for Anne it made no sense—such little attention paid to the defendants, all of them children, who most needed it.

Lafeyette thought the judge would lock them up, and when she didn’t, his immediate reaction was relief. His face didn’t show it, though. It looked angry. Angry that Derrick had not confessed his crime. Angry that he didn’t have a chance to say he hadn’t broken into the truck. Angry that the judge said he had done something he adamantly denied doing. Angry that even his public defender didn’t seem to believe him. The five boys walked out of the courtroom without exchanging a word. Though on crutches, Lafeyette was the first one out the door. He didn’t linger. He hobbled ten feet in front of his mother until he left the building through the revolving doors. There, he waited for his mother and muttered something unintelligible under his breath.

“What’d you say?” she asked.

“Mama, I got a case, don’t I?” he repeated.

“You don’t have a case. You have a record,” she explained.

“For what?”

“For breaking into a truck.”

“But I didn’t do it,” he insisted.

“They found everybody guilty.”

“Ain’t nothing you can do?” he pleaded.

“No.”

Lafeyette raced ahead on his crutches.

• • • •

Once home, Lafeyette went straight to his room. He hadn’t said anything since the short conversation outside the courthouse. An hour later, Pharoah came home from school, his heavy bookbag slung over his shoulder.

“Where’s Lafie?” he anxiously asked his mother.

“He’s in the back,” LaJoe said.

Pharoah ran to his bedroom. LaJoe could see he was happy that his brother hadn’t been locked up. He had been worried. The two brothers looked out for each other. Pharoah, in particular, now worried about Lafeyette.

As LaJoe sat on the couch braiding the hair of one of the triplets, she heard shouts from one of the back bedrooms. It was Lafeyette and Pharoah arguing over a shirt. Lafeyette had lent Pharoah’s Bulls T-shirt to Tyisha without asking.

“You better get it back!” Pharoah shrieked.

“
I
ain’t gonna get nothing,” Lafeyette huffed.

“Yes, you is!”

“No, I ain’t!”

As LaJoe walked toward the back to break up the fight, she smiled. At least, she thought, I still have both of them. At least they’re still mine. She never thought it could be such a comfort to hear her sons arguing.

Epilogue

   
IT HAS BEEN nearly a year since Lafeyette was found guilty of breaking into a truck. He was given a year’s probation and was required to perform a hundred hours of community service at the Boys Club. After school, he worked with small children. He taught them how to catch a ball and played games with them. He said he tried not to be too mean with the younger children and that if they cursed he told them to stop rather than kicking them out of the club, as he was supposed to do. Lafeyette loved being a big
brother to small children. But his troubles didn’t end with probation.

I helped get both boys into a private school a couple of miles west of Horner. Providence—St. Mel had been a parochial school until 1978, when the city’s archdiocese threatened to shut it down. The school’s principal, Paul Adams, kept it open as a private institution. All of the five hundred students there are black; three quarters of them are from the surrounding neighborhood. Paul Adams runs a strict school. No gangs. No drugs. No excessive absences or tardinesses. The children are financially rewarded if they make the honor roll. Over 90 percent of each graduating class goes on to college. Funding is a constant struggle, though. Half of the school’s annual $2 million budget comes from private sources, mostly individuals, foundations, and corporations.