16 Mar 2007 |
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My Igbo Lessons for Ronnie the Criminal: A True Story
By WayoGuy
Ronnie ‘the thief’ Williams called my cell phone while I was on vacation in Laguna Beach, Florida, away from my office in Washington. Ronnie was a petit criminal that I had saved, by some legal technicality, from spending what he thought would have been 30 years in prison.
He was the last person I wanted to hear from because of the manner he ended the attorney-client relationship. As soon as I saw his number on my cell phone, I let the phone ring without answering it, until it went into the voice mail.
I was relaxing on the beach, enjoying the sun. I had with me some associates from our
I closed my eyes and dreamt that cash, lots of cash, were raining down on my head on the streets of
Then my cell phone rang again, waking me up. It was Ronnie again. Irritated, I turned the ringer of the phone off and closed my eyes again. This time, instead of dreaming of money, I recalled how I had first met Ronnie ‘the thief’.
Ronnie was one of six criminal suspects each sentenced to 30 years in prison. I read his story in the local newspaper. The gang of six had terrorized the Washington Metropolitan community for several months by breaking into homes while their owners had gone to work and stealing jewelry, rare coins, and just about anything of value, which they sold on the street or took to pawn shops to exchange for small ‘loans’.
There had been no other evidence at the trials except the recorded confessions of all six defendants while they were in police custody; they were convicted and later sentenced to one year in prison for each of the 30 counts of breaking and entry crimes, which summed up to 30 years. Fortunately for me, Ronnie’s family, which actually consisted of his girlfriend and his dog, did not understand what the judge meant when he told them that the sentences would run concurrently - while that meant that they would actually spend a total of one year each in prison, they thought they were in for 30 years each. They were not represented by counsel.
Following the sentencing, Ronnie’s girlfriend had come to my office in tears. She had quickly retained me to file an appeal for Ronnie because, as she put it, ‘I ain’t gonna let nobody take my Ronnie away for 30 years. I don’t wanna be no old maid when he gets out’.
Upon reviewing the court file, while preparing my appellate brief, I discovered that, while in police custody, Ronnie had requested the assistance of an attorney before his alleged confession. Apparently the police refused to allow him to get an attorney but went ahead to get his recorded confession. The court of appeals agreed with me that this violation was irredeemably against the United States Constitutional right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment as well as the case of Miranda v. Arizona requiring that before interrogation, a criminal suspect be informed of his right to counsel and his right against forced self-incrimination. Evidence obtained in violation of these rights should have been suppressed, the appellate court wrote, and should not have been used in court to convict the suspect. Ronnie was a free man and was released. I was hailed to high heavens as a hero by my client, his girlfriend, and by civil libertarians.
Then my lesson began. I would quickly find out that the Igbo elders were right that oke aha a na-etu dibia na akari ihe o na-agbata na afa (the ostentatious praise names with which the native doctor is eulogized are greater than the compensation he receives from his divination).
It was a bitter lesson, unfortunately for me, that neither Ronnie nor his girlfriend paid even one dollar of my Seven Thousand Dollars in legal fees. The appeal took so long that Ronnie had almost served his entire one-year in prison before he was released; and his girlfriend, in the interim, had discovered that the prison time would have been far shorter than 30 years anyway. And so they told me to take a hike when I asked for payment of my fees: what was so difficult about the appeal, anyway, they asked me. Indeed, I thought, my people were correct when they said that nwata nne ya kwo n'azu amaghi na ije n'ara ahu (a child being carried on his mother's back does not know the difficulty of walking). Considering that they were deadbeats anyway, I took their advice and took a hike.
And now here I was in
They say that if you sit by the side of the river and wait long enough, the bodies of your enemies would come floating by. This was indeed true because the Monday following my vacation in
He needed a lawyer, he said, and, of course, he would pay as soon as the case was concluded. I suppressed a laugh welling up my stomach as I muttered under my breath, as we used to do back home, that it was indeed ubochi aga akwa aja ka a na-ama uru nkirika nkata bara (it is on the day of sacrifice to the gods that the usefulness of a tattered basket is remembered). If that was not enough, I knew that o rue oge i nodu ana echeta na ukwu bara uru (when it comes time to sit down is when it is remembered that the bottom is useful).
“Ronnie” I said, calmly, “do you know that egbuo dike na mgba núlo, ubochi aga eje agha, acho ya achowa” (if you kill the great man at a mere wrestling match at home, you will certainly miss him when war breaks out). All he could say was “What language is that?” as I smiled.
I reminded him that there were thousands of lawyers in
As he walked away, he asked me “It’s because I still owe you isn’t it? You think I ain’t gonna pay don’t you? You don’t trust me no more?” I said, “Ronnie, sorry, o bu otu isi ka mmadu na-egbu bido zawa ogbu isi (it is only one head that a person needs to cut off in order to become known as a head cutter). Sorry.” He left, sobbing and wiping his eyes.
That Friday when Ronnie was to be arraigned for the murder of his girlfriend, I went to court out of curiosity. The courtroom was crowded with relatives and news reporters. When I saw that he, apparently unable to find a free lawyer, was representing himself again, I was certain that if left by himself, o fuela ka ogiri furu n’ime ite ofe umu nwanyi (he was lost like ogiri got lost inside the women’s soup pot). Overcome by some inexplicable emotion which, till this day I have been unable to understand, I stood up and approached the podium and introduced myself to the judge as Ronnie’s lawyer. From the corner of my eyes, I watched Ronnie looking at me, tears dripping from his eyes…
In the winter of that year, when the case came up for trial before a jury, Ronnie was acquitted of the murder…
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