The angry shouts from 5 – 3 could be heard all the way down the courthouse’s fifth-floor hallway. Mel Levenson was a tall, lumbering man with two chins and an imposing voice even in a library. Now Mel was in a courtroom, he was mad and he wasn’t holding back, either on the volume or the accusations.
‘This was nothing but an ambush, Your Honor!’ Mel complained on decibel ten to an already irritable Judge Irving Katz and a courtroom full of cameras. ‘Rather than call my office and arrange for my client’s surrender – which could have and should have been done,’ he said, shaking an angry, swollen finger in the direction of Rick Bellido, John Latar-rino and a sullen-looking Steve Brill, ‘the Miami-Dade and Coral Gables Police Departments – with the blessing, I’m sure, of the prosecutor – set up a trap outside Jackson to nail my client as he helplessly rolls by in his wheelchair, an oxygen tank and critical-care nurse at his side. Not to mention the man’s elderly parents. And without any concern for the devastating emotional trauma this man has already been through, losing his whole family, or the life-threatening injuries he’s just had surgery for,’ Mel continued, picking up a copy of Friday’s Herald and holding it up for the judge. DOCTOR DAD ARRESTED FOR MURDER WHILE ATTEMPTING TO FLEE blared the headline across the front page. ‘ These detectives call the press to get their own fifteen minutes of fame in – all the while prejudicing everyone in the tri-county area against Dr Marquette with their damn lies. Then they arrest him and ship him off to jail, when he belongs in a hospital.’ Mel wiped his long jowls with his big balloon hands and moved back from the podium, almost stepping on a cameraman and Stan Grossbach, his co-counsel.
Lat felt the rush of anger flush his face and he looked over at Rick Bellido, waiting for him to say something about that fame comment, but he never did. Meanwhile, to his right, he could actually hear the knuckles in Steve Brill’s hand crackas he clenched and unclenched his fists behind his back. He was apparently waiting for the same thing.
Due to the sheer volume of people who tended to do even more stupid things over the weekend than they normally did during the week, bond hearings on Monday mornings in Judge Irving Katz’s courtroom were always busy, but never like this. Except for the judge, bailiff, an ASA and a PD, usually the claustrophobically small courtroom was empty. Today it was standing room only. Conducted via closed-circuit TV at DCJ, even the defendants didn’t show up for court. At least not physically. Nothing more than a thirty-second pro-forma hearing that allowed the judge to review the arrest form, determine if probable cause existed and set a bond, a First Appearance was usually done and over with before the defendant had even figured out where in the room the damn camera was.
The judge shook his head. ‘Great speech, Mr Levenson, and it’s duly noted for the record, but your client is charged with murder. Four of them to be exact. This is just the First Appearance and you know murder’s non-bondable at this stage.’ He nodded at the TV screen before him, where a pale-faced David Marquette, dressed in an orange Department of Corrections jumpsuit, stood motionless at the metal podium, a wheelchair at his side. ‘All I get to decide now is if there was probable cause to arrest him, and,’ the judge continued, waving his copy of the pink arrest form from the bench, ‘based on the facts cited in here, I have no choice. So there’s not a lot I can do about your complaints except listen to them, and, frankly, I’m not Dear Abby. Besides which, if I’m reading this A-form correctly, Dr Marquette was wheeled off to Ward D, Mr Levenson. He got his medical care. It’s not like the detectives threw him in a cement cell with the rats.’
‘We all know Ward D is not like the rest of Jackson, Judge. Look at him,’ Levenson said, pointing to the screen. ‘Just look at him!’
The doctor had not moved. He hadn’t even acknowledged that the judge was talking about him. In fact, Lat wasn’t sure if the man had even blinked the five minutes or so he’d been standing up there, clutching the sides of the podium with bone-white knuckles, eyes vacant and expressionless. Behind him, a long line of bored-looking, tattoo-riddled defendants in various states of undress snaked its way through the middle of the crowded, peeling pea-green room to the back doors, where two correction officers stood watch against a wall. Another two kept the line moving at the podium and the noise down. Because a First Appearance was supposed to be held within twenty-four hours of arrest, more than a few defendants were still dressed as they were when the cuffs were slapped on the night before – bare-chested and in their boxers. Some even worse. The restless line began to talk again and the courtroom filled with the echo of incoherent chatter and noise.
‘Keep them quiet over there!’ yelled Katz to the correction officer at the podium, placing one hand over his ear. ‘I can’t hear. If they don’t want to be quiet, then take whoever’s yapping out and bring ’em back tomorrow.’
The guard nodded at the camera. Then he turned and yelled, ‘Shut up!’ to the crowd behind him.
‘I could’ve done that,’ mumbled Katz in disgust.
‘He should be in a hospital bed right now,’ Levenson continued. ‘He never should have been released back to the general population this morning. He’s still a very sickman.’
‘HMOs do it all the time,’ Katz said flatly. ‘He had the weekend off as it was.’
‘Mr Levenson’s client was apparently feeling well enough last week to try and flee the jurisdiction before he was wheeled over to Ward D, Your Honor,’ Rick interjected.
‘He was being transported to another hospital,’ protested Levenson, glaring across the courtroom.
‘In Chicago,’ added Rick.
‘I made those arrangements,’ said the man who rose like a tall shadow from the front row of seats. ‘That is my hospital and my son needs acute medical care. He was not trying to flee.’
‘Your hospital?’ asked the judge.
‘This is Dr Alain Marquette, Your Honor,’ said Levenson. ‘He is the Chief of Neurology at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital.’
‘Ah, three sides to every story,’ said Katz. ‘Dr Marquette, you have good counsel here, and as I’m sure that good counsel has told you, there’s nothing more that can be done for your son at this point in the proceedings. Mr Levenson will have another opportunity to seekbond at what’s known as an Arthur Hearing or before the trial judge when one’s appointed, but there’s nothing I can do for him today.’
‘This was unprofessional. It should have been handled differently,’ Levenson grumbled.
‘If I had a nickel for each time I wished for something I didn’t get, I’d be a rich man, Mr Levenson. Instead, I’m just really old and really disappointed.’ Katz looked into the jail camera. ‘No bond,’ he yelled, as if David Marquette were deaf. ‘Now unless there’s some other high-profile case that someone forgot to tell me was on my calendar this morning,’ he said, pausing for a moment to throw an icy stare in the direction of his bailiff, ‘you all can take this outside in the hallway so I can clear my courtroom. I imagine they’re all with you, Mr Bellido,’ the judge finished, frowning over his glasses at the reporters who had already started to gather their cameras and microphones and hightail it for the door. Then he turned his attention and his frown back to the correction officer on the TV screen. ‘Bring the next one up, Sergeant!’ he barked. ‘And keep the rest of them quiet over there!’