Grif Stockley: Illegal Motion

As my neighbor lets me in his house, a rangy black man in his early forties stands up in front of a couch and waits for me to come over to him.

“This is the lawyer,” my neighbor says to him, “I was telling you about. He represented Andrew Chapman.”

“Gideon Page,” I introduce myself, and offer my hand, thinking most people forget that Andy Chapman, a black psychologist accused of murdering a retarded child, actu ally was found guilty of negligent homicide. Still, he only got probation and didn’t go to jail, so I’ll take the credit.

“Roy Cunningham,” the man says, and engulfs my palm in his. No wonder his son is a wide receiver. His hand is practically the width of my notebook. Cunningham studies me with an intense expression. I doubt if there is going to be a lot of small talk.

I retreat to a chair opposite the couch. My neighbor’s living room is small and decorated with family pictures.

A snapshot of the Cunningham brothers sits on the table beside my chair. In the picture, which seems recent, they are smiling. Today they are not.

“Have you talked to any other attorneys?” I ask, checking to see if I have any competition. If he has already retained someone, in theory

I’m not even supposed to be talking to him. Rules governing professional conduct among lawyers have somewhat unrealistic expectations if you are trying to earn a living in solo practice.

Roy parks himself beside his brother, who is an older, softer version of himself.

“A couple,” he says brusquely, “but I don’t know nothing about criminal lawyers. My wife and I own a grocery store near Hughes in St. Francis County. We’ve got four other kids to feed.”

I guess he is telling me he couldn’t afford them. Yet, it occurs to me that there are plenty of lawyers who would be willing to take this case for nothing on the hope that if Dade is acquitted, the attorney would soon have a great shot at the opportunity to negotiate his pro contract. With the kind of money these top players at the skill positions are getting, ten percent would be in the millions. Damn, I wish I had taken two seconds and changed clothes. I look like a beach bum. I cluck sympathetically, “These athletes are sitting ducks for women. Your son probably can’t walk down the street without being harassed by them.”

Cunningham sighs and looks at his knees.

“My wife and I told him a million times to stay away from white girls. They’re guaranteed trouble. I saw him in the jail for a little while yesterday afternoon. He said this girl practically attacked him.”

“Had he been friends with her before this took place?”

I ask. With grainy pouches underneath his eyes blacker than the rest of his visible skin, Cunningham looks as if he hasn’t gotten much sleep in the last twenty-four hours. He probably hasn’t. St. Francis County, only thirty miles west of Memphis, is over a five-hour drive from Fayetteville, which is close to the Oklahoma border in the northwest corner of the state.

“He knew her a little just because she was a cheerleader,” he says, smoothing out a wrinkle in his khaki pants, “but he’d had a speech class with her the previous spring, and he said they had worked together some. But that was all until this semester. They have another class together this fall, but he hadn’t talked to her much until the last couple of weeks.”

“Are you sure he hadn’t had sex with her before this incident?” I ask bluntly, guessing their relationship may have more of a history than the father knows. It sounds like date rape to me. If Dade had been warned to stay away from white girls, he might have a hard time admitting he ignored his father’s advice.

Roy Cunningham stifles a yawn.

“I as’t him. He says he didn’t. He says they were studying together at a friend’s house off campus. He said she was all over him from the time she got over there.”

I jot down what he says, knowing there is a lot more to this situation than I’m hearing. If I want this case, I’ve got to give the Cunningham brothers a reason to hire me.

“Has his bond been set?” I ask, wondering what James Cunningham thinks of me. We’ve lived on the same street for years and have barely nodded since Rosa’s death.

When she was alive, we went to a few parties in the neighborhood, but I never felt comfortable around the black males. Too much history and not enough future. I always had the feeling I was on their turf and never felt quite welcome. Still, one on one he seems like a nice guy, and Rosa liked his wife.

James answers, “It’s fifty thousand. I’ve told Roy I’d help him take care of the bond once we got a lawyer for Dade.”

I wonder if James is calling the shots on this job. I wish I had been more friendly over the years.

“Good,” I say.

“The sooner he’s out of jail, the better.” I ask Roy, “Do you know anything about the girl?”

Anger comes into Roy’s voice.

“All Dade had time to tell me was that her name is Robin Perry and she’s from Texarkana. She didn’t even go to the cops until the next morning.”

“It sounds like a classic case of a woman changing her mind after the fact,” I suggest, knowing that this is what the father wants to believe; in this instance it is plausible.

The girl may have decided to scratch an itch and later realized Dade wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Not the end of the world in most cases, but this particular guy is black, which her parents would probably object to and would give credence to the questionable things that hap pen in the Razorback athletic program. In ‘91 there was a major incident in the athletic dorm involving a white woman and four black Razorback scholarship basketball players that is still talked about. No charges were filed because the woman was admittedly drunk and couldn’t get her details straight, but it sent shock waves through the entire state. Who knows? Perhaps Robin Perry had mixed emotions at the time and convinced herself that she had tried to resist. Maybe we can put some pressure on the girl to drop the charge or at least reduce it. What if it had been Sarah? Would she pull a stunt like that? I can’t imagine it.

“That’s what it sounds like to me,” Roy says, as his brother nods in agreement.

“Do you know if alcohol was involved?” I ask Roy. It is obvious that he thinks of his son as a victim.

“Dade said he hadn’t had nothing to drink,” he says defensively

“I was thinking the girl might have possibly been drinking before she got there,” I respond quickly, noting this is a touchy area with the father. His problem or his son’s? Alcohol and women don’t make for the greatest combination in the world. I’ve had a few problems in that area myself.

“She could have,” James Cunningham says, his voice sounding like his brother’s. Eastern Arkansas is like Mississippi The Delta clings to your speech like rich soil.

“Even if he did,” Roy says, his voice low and sullen, “my boy never raped nobody. I didn’t raise my son to be a fool! He knows he doesn’t need to force a woman. Just like you said, he’s always had ‘em runnin’ after him.”

I glance at my neighbor, who appears slightly uncomfortable at these remarks. Less sophisticated, or perhaps just more honest, Roy Cunningham isn’t worried about how he is coming across to me. His son doesn’t rape, be cause women line up to go to bed with him. Yet, in truth, he may be right. If women stopped wanting sex, we’d take it anyway. On the Discovery channel last week there was a program on apes in Saudi Arabia. The females seemed so loving and protective, so human. The dominant males were insanely jealous, forming harems of up to twelve females and demanding and getting sex at will.

“You know this is different,” James says to his brother.