24

SENTENCING

For my second court appearance the bus didn’t arrive, so the police handcuffed the prisoners together in pairs, assigned each pair a guard, and we had to make our own way to court. There was an odd number of prisoners, so I was handcuffed to my escort instead of a prisoner.

‘Can’t we catch a taxi?’ I asked him jokingly.

‘Of course. If you pay,’ he answered.

We took a taxi, as I was worried that we might be late if we walked.

My guard was from Santa Cruz. During the taxi ride, we joked about which city had the best-looking girls and the best-tasting beer.

‘The Paceñas are too cold,’ he told me.

‘The beers or the women?’ I asked, remembering that they shared the same name.

‘Both,’ he answered and we fell about laughing in the back seat. The taxi driver who was listening in on our conversation and watching us in the rearview mirror started laughing so much that he forgot to watch the road and almost crashed into the car in front. ‘I think it’s the altitude,’ he said, slamming on the brakes.

My escort’s name was Fernando. By the time we arrived at the court building, he and I were best friends. We arrived half an hour before the other prisoners, but rather than sending me to the holding cells, he let me sit outside the courtroom.

‘Are you thirsty?’ I asked him.

‘Claro. I’m always thirsty.’ Fernando laughed. ‘Will you shout me a beer?’

‘Maybe afterwards.’ I didn’t think drinking before my trial was a good idea so I sent him downstairs to buy some cigarettes and a Coca-Cola for each of us instead. He handcuffed me to the chair. As I waited, I began to notice some very strange things about the way the court system worked in Bolivia. For a start, absolutely everyone in the building knew each other – the judges, the police, the prosecutors, the defence solicitors and the administration staff. And they all seemed to be friends. Inside the courtroom, they kept a straight face, but as soon as they were outside, they shook hands and made jokes with one another and visited each other’s offices, which were all on the same floor. It didn’t seem like a place where people’s futures hung in the balance.

As it turned out, all my worrying about arriving at court on time was unnecessary. My trial was postponed until the following week because one of the prosecution’s documents hadn’t been officially stamped. This was the first of many, many delays and postponements in my trial.

‘Are you still thirsty?’ I asked my escort on the way back to prison, directing the taxi driver to pull over at a nice restaurant down on the Prado.

‘Always.’

‘Shall we stop and have a Paceña?’

‘The beer or the woman?’ he asked, then we said at exactly the same time, ‘Both!’ before bursting into laughter. If I ever needed to escape, Fernando was my man.

Towards the end of my trial, I sensed that things definitely weren’t going my way. Colonel Lanza didn’t testify himself, but the prosecutor called policeman after policeman to give evidence that they had seen me arrested at the airport. With the exception of one man, I didn’t remember seeing them there. Besides, none of the questions was about whether the merchandise actually belonged to me, but the prosecutor used the same trick with each witness to make me look more and more guilty.

‘And can you identify the man you saw that day?’ he would ask them.

‘Yes,’ they would respond solemnly, pointing at me. ‘That man there.’

The policeman I did recognise was one of the two who had searched through my possessions at the FELCN offices, putting aside all my clothes that he liked. When he pointed me out as the owner of the suitcases that contained the merchandise, he held his hand up and extended his finger a second longer than the others had, which was how I noticed it: he was wearing my gold ring.

‘That’s my ring!’ I shouted in English, forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to speak out of turn. My lawyer nudged me and shook his head for me to be quiet.

‘The defendant will remain silent,’ the judge reminded my lawyer. He never addressed me directly.

‘But he’s wearing my ring!’ I shouted again. The judge became irritated that I hadn’t obeyed him. He glared at me and his face started to turn red. However, I was one hundred per cent certain that it was my ring. I’d had it for years and it was unmistakable.

‘Tranquilo,’ said my lawyer, trying to calm me down. Even the translator, who wasn’t supposed to speak to me, tried to persuade me to keep quiet. But I wouldn’t let the matter drop. I thought that if I could prove that the police were corrupt and had stolen my property, it would help my defence that they had set me up. I kept complaining and eventually I jumped out of my chair and made a lunge for the policeman. Two guards rushed forward and pushed me back into my seat, then stood there guarding me, waiting for the judge to say something.

At that point, the judge couldn’t ignore me any longer. He was forced to interrupt the proceedings and ask the translator to explain what was happening. When the translation was made, a murmur went throughout the courtroom and everyone looked straight at the policeman. He was smart; he didn’t try to hide his hand – that would only have made him look guilty. Instead, he frowned innocently and shook his head at me like I was sadly mistaken or crazy.

The judge asked the policeman if the ring was his. He answered that of course it was and that he had bought it in a jewellery store several years before. It was made of gold and had cost him several hundred dollars.

‘He’s lying. It’s mine,’ I jumped in, even before the interpreter made the translation. ‘I can tell you what picture is on it. Ask him!’ I pointed at the policeman and the two guards got ready in case I tried to stand up again. ‘I bet he doesn’t even know.’

The judge asked the policeman to remove the ring and hand it to the clerk of the court, who handed it on to the judge for inspection. This time, the policeman was stupid; in his attempt to appear innocent, he didn’t look at the ring as he took it off. When the judge asked him to describe the ring, he couldn’t.

‘I can’t remember precisely,’ he said confidently, as though it was an unimportant detail and that his forgetfulness didn’t prove a thing.

‘It’s a portrait of the Queen of England,’ I announced triumphantly once everyone had had time to assess the policeman’s answer and it was clear that he had nothing more to add. ‘You can’t buy that ring in Bolivia.’

The spectators in the courtroom stirred when the translator repeated what I had said. The judge handed the ring to his assistant for his confirmation, and the prosecutor stepped forward to examine it also. The spectators remained quiet, waiting for them to decide. None of the three said anything aloud, but it was obvious that they agreed I was right.

‘The defendant will have an opportunity to give evidence later, if he so chooses,’ the judge informed the court, sitting back in his chair and placing the ring in his pocket. He was eager to move on.

‘But that’s my ring. He stole my ring,’ I said weakly, not wanting to let the issue die. However, by then the prosecutor had resumed his position behind his desk and he immediately continued his examination of the police witness.

‘And you say that there was a controlled substance in the defendant’s suitcase?’ he asked in a loud voice that drowned out my protests. I wanted to say more, but my lawyer didn’t agree.

‘Keep quiet, Thomas,’ he advised me in English out of the corner of his mouth, still facing the front. ‘You have more at stake here than a gold ring.’

My team of lawyers remained confident that I would be let off, but I was no longer so sure. After what had happened with my ring, I was worried that the judge was no longer on my side, if he ever had been. On one of the final court dates before the verdict was to be handed down, Fernando was in charge of escorting me back to San Pedro. When there was a slight delay in taking the prisoners down to the transport bus, I saw my opportunity.

‘Just a momentito, please,’ I begged him, slipping away and down the corridor. ‘I just need to see someone.’

‘But …’ he stammered, making to follow me. However, when he saw that the corridor led to a dead end, he let me go ahead.

The judge’s door was slightly ajar and I could see him working away at his desk. On that occasion, my hands were cuffed in front of my body, so I knocked with both hands and went in before he even had time to respond. I closed the door behind me.

‘With your permission,’ I said, facing the judge and bowing in exactly the same way as I had seen everyone else do whenever they entered or left the courtroom.

The judge looked up from the document he was studying and adjusted his glasses. He was surprised to see me, but he didn’t say anything. I bowed again and cautiously approached his desk.

‘Señor juez, I am a foreigner. I am very sorry. I have a family in England with two daughters. Please, pardon me,’ I stammered in my broken Spanish, producing an envelope from my suit coat. The judge put his hand up to stop me, but I slipped it under a book that was on his desk. In the envelope was five thousand dollars that I had taken out of Abregon’s bank account. It was the remainder of my money. The judge looked from me to the book, then back to me, with his hand frozen in the air. Still, he didn’t say anything. I bowed once more and left quietly, leaving the door open exactly the same amount as when I’d entered. Fernando was waiting outside the door, looking nervously up and down the corridor. I had taken too long and he was worried about getting into trouble.

‘Vamos,’ he commanded, taking me by the elbow. ‘The transport is waiting.’

The money I gave the judge didn’t help much. He gave me six years and eight months at the sentencing hearing. My lawyers had told me that I would get off completely, but they were happy with the result.

‘It could have been a lot more,’ they congratulated me, shaking both my hands because they were cuffed. ‘Of course, we will have it reduced on appeal. The judges need to show they are tough at first instance on foreigners. And no one ever serves the full sentence, anyway.’

I was still in shock. I had tried to convince myself to expect the worst in order to prepare for it, but deep down, I wasn’t really prepared. I certainly wasn’t in any mood to listen to any legal explanations; I just wanted to know the facts.

‘So, how long will I be in prison?’

‘I think maybe four years, maximum five. It’s a good result.’