Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

Judge Redford took the bench again and we all quieted down and came to order.

“Is your true name Timothy G. Landry?” she asked the defendant, who was standing with the public defender.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Then she went into the monotonous reading of the rights even though they’d been read to Landry a hundred times by a hundred cops and a dozen other judges, and she explained the legal proceeding to him which he could have explained to her , and I looked at the clock, and finally, she tucked a wisp of straight gray hair behind her black hornrimmed glasses and said, “Proceed.”

She was a judge I always liked. I remembered once in a case where I’d busted three professional auto thieves in a hot Buick, she’d commended me in court. I’d stopped these guys cruising on North Broadway through Chinatown and I knew, knew something was wrong with them and something wrong with the car when I noticed the rear license plate was bug-spattered, but the license, the registration, the guy’s driver’s license, everything checked out. But I felt it and I knew. And then I looked at the identification tag, the metal tag on the door post with the spot-welded rivets, and I stuck my fingernail under it and one guy tried to split, and only stopped when I drew the six-inch and aimed at his back and yelled, “Freeze, asshole, or name your beneficiary.”

Then I found that the tag was not spot-welded on, but was glued, and I pulled it off and later the detectives made the car as a Long Beach stolen. Judge Bedford said it was good police work on my part.

The D.A. was ready to call his first witness, who was Homer Downey, and who the D.A. needed to verify the fact that he rented the room to Landry, in case Landry later at trial decided to say he was just spending the day in a friend’s pad and didn’t know how the gun and pot got in there. But the P.D. said, “Your Honor, I would move at this time to exclude all witnesses who are not presently being called upon to testify.”

I expected that. P.D.’s always exclude all witnesses. I think it’s the policy of their office. Sometimes it works pretty well for them, when witnesses are getting together on a story, but usually it’s just a waste of time.

“Your Honor, I have only two witnesses,” said the D.A., standing up. “Mr. Homer Downey and Officer Morgan the arresting officer, who is acting as my investigating officer. I would request that he be permitted to remain in the courtroom.”

“The investigating officer will be permitted to remain, Mr. Jeffries,” she said to the public defender. “That doesn’t leave anyone we can exclude, does it?”

Jeffries, the public defender, blushed because he hadn’t enough savvy to look over the reports to see how many witnesses there were, and the D.A. and I smiled, and the D.A. was getting ready to call old Homer when the P.D. said, “Your Honor, I ask that if the arresting officer is acting as the district attorney’s investigating officer in this case, that he be instructed to testify first, even if it’s out of order, and that the other witness be excluded.”

The D.A. with his two months’ extra courtroom experience chuckled out loud at that one. “I have no objection, Your Honor,” he said.

“Let’s get on with it, then,” said the judge, who was getting impatient, and I thought maybe the air-conditioner wasn’t working right because it was getting close in there.

She said, “Will the district attorney please have his other witness rise?”

After Downey was excluded and told to wait in the hall the D.A. finally said, “People call Officer Morgan,” and I walked to the witness stand and the court clerk, a very pleasant woman about the judge’s age, said, “Do you solemnly swear in the case now pending before this court to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

And I looked at her with my professional witness face and said, “Yes, I do.”

That was something I’d never completely understood. In cases where I wasn’t forced to embellish, I always said, “I do,” and in cases where I was fabricating most of the probable cause, I always made it more emphatic and said, “ Yes , I do.” I couldn’t really explain that. It wasn’t that I felt guilty when I fabricated, because I didn’t feel guilty, because if I hadn’t fabricated, many many times, there were people who would have been victimized and suffered because I wouldn’t have sent half the guys to the joint that I sent over the years. Like they say, most of the testimony by all witnesses in a criminal case is just lyin’ and denyin’. In fact, everyone expects the defense witnesses to “testilie” and would be surprised if they didn’t.

“Take the stand and state your name, please,” said the clerk.

“William A. Morgan, M-O-R-G-A-N.”

“What is your occupation and assignment?” asked the D.A.

“I’m a police officer for the City of Los Angeles assigned to Central Division.”

“Were you so employed on January thirty-first of this year?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On that day did you have occasion to go to the address of eight-twenty-seven East Sixth Street?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At about what time of the day or night was that?”

“About one-fifteen p.m.”

“Will you explain your purpose for being at that location?”

“I was checking for drunks who often loiter and sleep in the lobby of the Orchid Hotel, and do damage to the furniture in the lobby.”

“I see. Is this lobby open to the public?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Had you made drunk arrests there in the past?”

“Yes, I had. Although usually, I just sent the drunks on their way, my purpose being mainly to protect the premises from damage.”

“I see,” said the D.A., and my baby blues were getting wider and rounder and I was polishing my halo. I worked hard on courtroom demeanor, and when I was a young cop, I used to practice in front of a mirror. I had been told lots of times that jurors had told deputy D.A.’s that the reason they convicted a defendant was that Officer Morgan was so sincere and honest-looking.

Then I explained how I chased the guy up the stairs and saw him run in room three-nineteen, and how naturally I was suspicious then, and I told how Homer showed me the register and I read Timothy Landry’s name. I phoned R and I and gave them Landry’s name and discovered there was a traffic warrant out for his arrest, and I believed he was the man who had run in three-nineteen. I wasn’t worried about what Homer would say, because I did go to his door to get the passkey of course, and I did ask to see the register, and as far as Homer knew about the rest of it, it was the gospel.

When I got to the part about me knocking on the door and Landry answering and telling me he was Timothy Landry, I was afraid Landry was going to fly right out of his chair. That was his first indication I was embellishing the story a bit, and the part about the window opening could have been true, but the bastard snorted so loud when I said the gun was sticking out from under the mattress, that the P.D. had to poke him in the ribs and the judge shot him a sharp look.

I was sweating a little at that point because I was pissed off that a recent case made illegal the search of the premises pursuant to an arrest. Before this, I could’ve almost told the whole truth, because I would’ve been entitled to search the whole goddamn room which only made good sense. Who in the hell would waste four hours getting a search warrant when you didn’t have anything definite to begin with, and couldn’t get one issued in the first place?

So I told them how the green leafy substance resembling marijuana was in plain view on the dresser, and Landry rolled his eyes up and smacked his lips in disgust because I got the pot out of a shoe box stashed in the closet. The P.D. didn’t bother taking me on voir dire for my opinion that the green leafy substance was pot, because I guessed he figured I’d made a thousand narcotics arrests, which I had.