Justice My Ass!

By Fred Kelly Grant

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2009 Fred Kelly Grant
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-2180-3

Chapter One

I wanted to be a preacher-an evangelist. I wanted to inspire congregations with moving sermons, ending with a choir roaring out "Precious Lord, Take My Hand and Lead Me On." I heard Governor Frank Clement of Tennessee give such a speech at the 1956 Democratic Convention, and saw all those conventioneers jump to their feet as the Great Organ sprang into the hymn. I wanted to bring a crowd to its feet like that. What a way to make your way to heaven.

Instead, I became a lawyer and no doubt diverted myself to Dante's Eighth Circle of hell. But if I hadn't gone into the field where "truth" is at best a variable, I wouldn't be able now to write this book.

What now could I write about preaching that hasn't been written better, by better authors and better people? In this book, I can write about strange experiences that better writers don't even know about. So, it's a good thing I suppose, that I became a lawyer.

Chapter Two

How did it happen? How did I get off course so far? Ego-that inner element that is designed to keep one balanced, if you can control it.

I was always shy, with an inferiority complex. But, for some reason that didn't stand in the way of my participating "on stage." I loved dramatics, and then in the ninth grade, an English teacher named Byron Yoseloff introduced me to the wide world of competitive speech through debate. Once experiencing the rush of winning a debate, I was hooked on speech and performance.

Then, starting with a high school prank, I took performance up a notch and got the feel of persuading a "jury" to interpret facts the way you want, regardless of what the facts actually support.

My good friend Bill Mainwaring was a straight arrow kind of guy. His father was a prestigious newspaper publisher, far removed from the type of mentality that would condone prankster activities in school. In many ways Bill was like his dad, and he would become the editor and then publisher of the Salem, Oregon, newspaper. Bill unfortunately fell under the spell of my good friend Bob Campbell and I. One night on the way home from an upset victory over our rival in basketball, we came to a stop at a portable stop sign in the middle of the town of Meridian. We decided that it would be a good trophy for our night of victory. Bill was assigned to get the sign dislodged and loaded into the backseat of Bob's two-door, cut-down hot rod. Somehow, he managed to accomplish the task. Riding in back hunched up with the sign, Bill survived detection from several police cars we passed on the twelve-mile drive home.

We took the sign to Bob's parents farm equipment store and hid it among the equipment waiting to be repaired, then forgot about it. Not until years later was it discovered when the store was sold to be moved to a new location. By that time none of us knew anything about the sign. With his new-found spirit of rebellion, Bill initiated the prank that led me to a "mock trial" where I got a taste of jury performance-and liked it. Bill and I both had physics class "taught" by Webster "Doc" Caldwell, part-time teacher, full-time realtor, and part-time Justice of the Peace. Doc was an interesting piece of work, but hardly an inspirational teacher. He really did know his physics technicalities, but he couldn't help one decipher instructions, much less build a lever or explain a lever and pulley. But Doc was a fun guy to run a class hour.

There was a "Doc Clique" that gathered each day during the first period "home room" and the lunch-time hours. Doc gave a seminar on virtually everything in the world, whether he had any specific knowledge about the subjects or not. I used his home room first period as the time I went to practice debate or speech; our agreement was that I wouldn't bother him about teaching me physics. I could use the hour to do my extra work, and he would provide me with the answers to study, along with the questions. Doc presided over the Clique workshops with a gavel that was his pride and joy. It wasn't linked to any special occasion, just a gavel, but to him it was a symbol of authority.

We all joked about what would happen if the gavel disappeared; even joked with him about it and he threatened torture to anyone who took it.

Well, one day the gavel was gone. Doc wasn't quite sure when it disappeared. He worked as hard at pinpointing a suspect and time as Captain Queeg did in measuring the strawberries in The Caine Mutiny.

He finally focused on a time right before the "Clique" arrived before school. Bill had opening period home room, so Doc decided that Bill was left alone with the gavel while Doc was in the office picking up bulletins for the day. So, he accused Bill of taking the gavel.

Obviously, Bill denied guilt. Doc, who always loved to hold forth on trial techniques that he had observed as Justice of the Peace, decided to hold a "mock trial" to determine guilt. He named two of his key Clique leaders to be prosecutors, and told me I had to defend Bill. It must have been by sheer instinct, but I didn't ask Bill whether he had taken the gavel-I just assumed that he had.

Never having studied anything about law or trials, other than in history classes, I needed help. My dad knew Earl Garrity, one of the most famous trial lawyers in Idaho. Garrity had been Owyhee County prosecuting attorney when my dad was Justice of the Peace and Coroner in the county. They had become steadfast friends. Dad liked to tell of the day he met Garrity on a road out in the county just after Garrity had lost re-election to his job. Dad was freighting supplies from Murphy to Silver City (which at the time was the County Seat even though it was hours and hours of travel from every populated area of Owyhee County; the County Seat designation still survived the Gold and Silver days of the late 1880s when Silver City was a metropolis of over 50,000).

Dad had just delivered the week's supplies to a moonshiner. Dad always left the supplies under a bridge on the creek, and picked up a jug of moonshine that was left hanging by rope from the bridge, just low enough to dangle in the cool water. As he moved on up the road, he ran into Garrity coming down by horseback. They stopped to talk, and Garrity was worried. He had not campaigned, thinking that he was a shoo-in for re-election. But, he had been defeated. He told my dad that he didn't know how he would survive without the salary. I think Dad said it was $35 a month. Dad assured him that he was a good enough trial lawyer that he could make a good living in Nampa, the nearest town to Owyhee County-and a railroad town with lots of litigation. Dad broke out the jug of illegal moonshine the two sat and got pretty drunk. Dad had to camp out there by the creek until morning and then finished his trek into Silver City. Garrity decided to head on down and somehow he made it safely.

My dad suggested that I go talk to Garrity about trials and get some ideas as to how to defend Bill. He arranged it, and I spent over two hours with a guy who by then was a trial giant in the state. Garrity told me that the key for me would be to object to hearsay evidence. He said that since no one actually saw the theft of the gavel, almost everything that would be offered against Bill would be "hearsay" and inadmissible. He explained the hearsay rule to me, and then loaned me a handbook on evidence to study. I spent more time on that handbook than I did on class homework for the three weeks before the...