Prosecutors with the United States Attorney’s Office have a 95% conviction rate and can get to thinking they’re invincible in the courtroom. But that sometimes makes them lazy. “Useless attorneys,” as we in the defense bar affectionately called them, can be beaten, sometimes by their own conceit.
I represented Jerelyn Grimes a/k/a Bunny who got herself caught up in an FBI sting operation. The FBI set up a fake chop shop in Berkeley County where they videotaped thieves fencing cars stolen in the Charleston area. Ms. Grimes didn’t appear in any of their videotapes but one of those cars belonged to her. Her chronically unemployed husband wanted her to trade in her car so he could get a pick-up truck and into the contracting business. A little thing like her refusal didn’t keep her good-for-nothing husband from selling her car to a fence and telling her to report it stolen to her insurance company. Technically she was charged with insurance fraud and the Useless Attorney prosecuting her case didn’t think her having to pay for the car she no longer had was a defense. He was probably right legally but Jeralyn didn’t and flat out refused to plead guilty.
We drew the Honorable David C. Norton as our trial judge. Judge Norton truly enjoyed being a judge and never lost his sense of humor as so many other judges do. But even he wasn’t real happy when Mrs. Grimes was the only defendant out twenty-three caught up in the sting who refused to plead guilty and he was stuck having to draw a jury for a trial. I wasn’t too happy either as I didn’t know what Jeralyn’s defense might be. I figured, the worse case scenario was the trial would be a slow motion guilty plea hopefully dissipating any urge for retribution from Judge Norton’s mind.
And so the case of the United States of America versus Jeralyn Grimes a/k/a Bunny was called for trial in the United States Courthouse in Charleston. For some unfathomable reason the U.S. Attorney felt compelled to refer to Mrs. Grimes as Jeralyn Grimes a/k/a Bunny every time he mentioned her name in his opening statement. Like Bunny was the nickname of som dangerous gun moll girlfriend of a badass gangster. Knowing I’d certainly bring it up if he didn’t, the prosecutor conceded to the jury it was her husband who sold her car to the fence who sold it to the FBI but he insisted it was Jeralyn Grimes a/k/a Bunny who falsely reported her car stolen to her insurance companythus violating the law. He gravely intoned in his summation it would be the jury’s duty to convict Jeralyn Grimes a/k/a Bunny of the offense charged as he concluded his opening.
As I stood up to begin my opening I put my hand on Jeralyn’s shoulder, then walked over before the jury box and waited until I had their full attention before saying, “When I asked Ms. Grimes how she got the name Bunny, she told me it was the nickname her father gave her when she was born on Easter Sunday.” That got two or three chuckles from the jury and broke the ice. The jury’s receptiveness grew stronger as the trial proceeded and I got each witness for the prosecution to admit Ms. Grines had never committed any criminal offense ever, it was her car bought and paid for with her hard-earned money, sold by worthless husband WHO WASN’T EVEN CHARGED without her permission or her receiving one red cent of the money. The prosecution witnesses’ fumbled their attempts to explain how her car wasn’t in fact stolen just like she told her insurance company. Things weren’t going well for the U.S. Attorney and they were about to get worse.
I noticed the prosecution hadn’t produced the videotape of Jeralyn’s car actually being sold to the fake FBI chop shop and, figuring it could only reinforce Ms. Grines having nothing to do with the sale, so I asked the agent if he had a copy of the videotape we could play the jury. The agent fidgeted on the witness stand and began looking at the U.S. Attorney for guidance. Like I said, useless attorneys can be lazy and I don’t think he’d had ever bothered to watch the tape. He couldn’t think of any reason to object, so decided to make a big deal of finding the tape to show the jury as if to say, I have nothing to hide. It took a few minutes for the prosecutor to find the tape and set up the video monitor all of which served to increase the suspense.
The videotape was shot from behind the FBI agent’s desk looking at the back of the agent’s head but you could tell it was the same agent who was testifying. The camera captured the fence, one of the defendant’s who had already plead guilty and was awaiting sentencing, being greeted like a long lost friend by the agent. They sat yucking it up in the agent’s office revealing they knew each other from prior dealings. The FBI agent knew the fence well enough to know he’d been arrested for auto theft in Berkeley County and had recently pled guilty before the Honorable Richard E. Fields, one of the first African American Judges we had in South Carolina. He asked the fence how he’d made out on his guilty plea and the fence replied, “The little nigger gave me probation.” Both the FBI agent and fence erupted in raucous laughter on the tape but the jury sat stone faced not thinking it was funny in the slightest and even the hapless U.S. Attorney realized he’d lost them.
What a defense attorney lives for are the words “we the jury find the defendant not guilty.” That is what the foreman of the jury said as he read the verdict but then added “and we have a few other things we’d like to say” which caught Judge Norton’s attention. He quickly gaveled the foreman to stop and explained, having found the defendant not guilty, there was nothing else the jury needed to say before quickly thanking them for their service and excusing them from the courtroom. Jeralyn gave me a great big hug and I celebrated a rare Federal Court acquittal but, as other cases required my attention, I moved on and almost forgot about her. Until maybe a month later, when I got a call out of the blue from Judge Norton.
He kindly congratulated me on my not guilty verdict and mentioned the fence was scheduled to appear before him for sentencing on a cooperating witness guilty plea negotiated between the U.S Attorney and his lawyer. He wanted to make sure it was the same fence who’d laughed about Judge Fields giving him probation on the tape during the trial. I said he was but suspected Judge Norton knew exactly who the fence was and just wanted me to know the fence’s sentence wasn’t going to be probation this time around.
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