Late last year around Christmastime, Joey entered Shannon’s apartment with the key she’d given him on the fifth of December, their one-year anniversary. He found her drunk, completely smashed, he says, crying hysterically on the living room rug. He asked her what was wrong, what was troubling her, but she shooed him away, covering her face as if he were some sort of stranger. He kept asking, kept touching, kept trying to comfort to no avail. The more he spoke, the angrier she grew. The more he touched, the more she pushed away. The more he tried to comfort her, the more hysterical she became.
Finally she faced him, but with a face he had never before seen. She spat in his eyes, her rage raining down on him like a level-three tropical storm. She screeched at him, you bastard, son of a bitch, no-good low-life whore. He didn’t know what it meant and doesn’t to this day. He was neither a son of a bitch nor a bastard and has never, he assures me, whored.
Her rant, he says, turned quickly to violence, a fearsome attack on him for which he was ill prepared. She came at him with glasses, bottles, and plates. He ducked a few, batted a few more. They hit windows and walls and furniture, smashing all around him, before crashing to the floor.
Amid the bedlam and wreckage, he grabbed his leather coat and headed for the exit. She charged at him with a vase, a large, clear piece of crystal he had brought for her that night. He dodged her out of fear and watched her trip on the edge of the Oriental rug she so loved. She fell like a tree, smashing her head on the shelf of the cherry Pottery Barn bookcase they had selected together a month before.
She was bleeding, but not enough to stop her screaming. She cursed him, threatened him, threw things at him from her spot on the floor. She was alive and kicking, literally kicking, so he ran like the dickens out the door.
A nosy neighbor dialed 911 and brought the cops to Shannon’s apartment. Joey was long gone by the time police arrived, and his side of the story had left with him, leaving hers, only hers, and nothing more. Still drunker than drunk, Shannon told police Joey had attacked her, beat her, left her bloodied on the floor.
A detective called Joey’s home and invited him down to the station the next morning. Joey obliged, but sung nothing except the magic lyrics: I want a lawyer. He was booked on a domestic violence charge and spent a grueling night in the Tombs. He was released on $500 bail the following day.
Joey didn’t see Shannon while the case was pending. An order of protection was issued by the court, such that Joey couldn’t even go to school. Had he come within one hundred yards of Shannon, he would have been rearrested and charged with contempt for violating the court’s order of protection.
Joey had no choice but to take a leave from law school. He called it a leave, though he knew even then he would never go back. He became depressed and started drinking, but sometimes drinking just isn’t enough. So he experimented with drugs like a mad scientist. He snorted coke for a couple weeks until his nose bled and he could snort no more. He smoked pot for a month, but his lungs weren’t built for smoke, so he put the pipe aside and tried pills. Pills were just the thing. Narcotic painkillers by day, tranquilizers by night. He didn’t know, he says, until then that Shannon came in pill form.
Still, when the real thing finally telephoned, he took the call. Shannon told him that she tried, oh so desperately she tried, to rescind her story from that night. But the assistant district attorney assigned to the case was a hard-ass who threatened her with a charge for filing a false report. The assistant DA assured her that if she didn’t cooperate in the domestic violence case, Shannon and Joey would end up with criminal records, both of them. The DA’s office already had enough to prosecute Joey, what with the original police report and Shannon’s hospital records, which revealed that she needed nine stitches to close the wound on her pretty little head.
Joey told Shannon not to risk it. She wanted to work someday for the FBI, so she needed a spotless record. He cared about nothing but her, so for him it was no choice at all. He took a plea to a misdemeanor with a promise of probation and community service. But most important for Joey, the order of protection was lifted, and Shannon had agreed to see him once again.
Joey misreads the look on my face; he thinks it’s of disbelief, when it’s really of disgust and disdain. I believe every word Joey just told me. But only because I’ve represented clients charged with domestic violence in New York before. I know the zeal of the district attorney’s office in prosecuting such cases, the fervor with which convictions are pursued. I have known them to intimidate complaining witnesses who refuse to cooperate, threatening them with charges of perjury and filing a false report. I call their bluff and my clients walk. But Legal Aid lawyers, always looking to lighten their load, often advise their clients to plea, to throw up their hands in surrender to the state. Yes, I believe every word Joey just told me. But I know, too, that a jury here in Honolulu would not.
The interview is taking its toll on Joey. Hell, it’s taking its toll on me, too. I’ll want to see Joey regularly while he adjusts to life behind bars, so I tell him I have no more questions for today. I ask him if he has any of his own.
“Will you be able to get my bail reduced, so I can get out of jail until trial?”
Joey is a Grade A flight risk if ever I saw one. Charged with a crime that could keep him behind bars for the rest of his life, seven thousand miles from home. Without some changed circumstances since the time bail was initially set—some new evidence that weakens the state’s case or makes Joey a much lower flight risk—bail reduction is a practical impossibility. I tell him this and he takes it less than well.
I don’t carry a hankie, though right now I wish I did. Joey is breaking down before my eyes, streams of tears flowing down his cheeks, snot dripping steadily from his nose.
I’m losing my breath, suddenly dizzy, shaking like a leaf in fall. The shoe box we share is growing smaller, tightening around us like a vise. It’s suddenly hotter in here, his smell more pungent, like a public toilet that’s overflowed. My cheeks feel flush and my stomach wants to put my breakfast back on the table.
I focus on Joey, trying to soothe myself by soothing him. “Joey, look at me. You’re a long way from home, confined to a terrible place. But you are not alone. I’m here to help you. I’m here to learn everything I can about what happened that night. Regardless of what happened, my job is the same. To slice and dice the state’s case and see you walk. I’ll overturn every stone. I’ll try to tear apart every witness they put on the stand. I’ll give the prosecutor a fight like he’s never fought before. But in order for me to be effective, I’m telling you now, I need from you the truth no matter what that truth is. I need to know everything you know right down to the type of toothpaste Shannon used. If you don’t trust me enough to tell me everything, then tell me now. Because later will be too late.”
“Mr. Corvelli—”
“Kevin. Call me Kevin.”
“Kevin, I didn’t kill Shannon.”
“Then, Joey, I have to find out who did, or at the very least, who could have.”
Tears, tears, more tears. God, I hate to see a grown man cry.
“What do I do in the meantime, Kevin? What am I supposed to do?”
“You keep your mouth shut while you’re inside. You don’t discuss anything about your case or your relationship with Shannon with anyone. Not the guards, not your cellmates, not even your parents. The only person you speak to is me.”
I stand from my metal folding chair. My ass hurts. It hurts real bad.
“Mr. Cor—I mean, Kevin, I have one last question.”
“Make it quick, Joey. My ass hurts. It hurts real bad.”
“Do you think we’ll win the preliminary hearing? Do you think maybe the judge will just toss the case, and I’ll be sent home?”
A preliminary hearing was scheduled at Joey’s initial arraignment. In theory, preliminary hearings are meant to determine whether there was probable cause for arrest, so that the defendant doesn’t sit needlessly in jail for an extended period while the prosecution tries to build its case. Prosecuting attorneys have the option of taking felony cases to the grand jury or to a preliminary hearing before a judge. They take most cases to the grand jury, where defendants lack the right to confront state witnesses. The right to confrontation is guaranteed in preliminary hearings. Thus, if the prosecutor drags his ass and a preliminary hearing must be held, the accused has a better shot at avoiding trial. Evidently, however, the Honolulu prosecutor’s office doesn’t run on aloha time.
“There’s not going to be a preliminary hearing, Joey. The Oahu grand jury handed down an indictment this morning.”
Another downpour of tears from his side of the table.
Poor son of a bitch. The accused is always the last to know.