Nailed (10 page)

The fallen customer’s girlfriend told a radio reporter that her boyfriend had heard Marcus Martin’s comments about the lack of justice for blacks and had picked up his gun, told her where he was going and said, “I’m gonna to get me some justice right now.”

At that point, the federal government decided to enter the picture. The U.S. Attorney for Southern California said he would look into filing charges against Ronald Ketchum for violating the civil rights of Qadry Carter. The FBI would be investigating Lieutenant Ketchum, and would report to him on their findings.

The response from the district attorney who was genuinely pissed at this action by the feds, which was a none too subtle slap at his decision on the matter — and who saw the chance to curry favor with the cops — promptly brought charges against Marcus Martin for incitement to riot, and said he would be looking into the lawyer’s culpability in the deaths of Noh Ree Kim and Lester DeChance.

That was the situation for a month. Each investigation proceeded apace. The FBI pored over every aspect of Ron’s life with the implicit presumption of guilt. Cops working with the DA made Marcus Martin’s life equally miserable. Accusations were hurled back and forth. The DA and the U.S. Attorney held daily press conference. Marcus Martin never passed up a single microphone without getting in a barbed sound bite.

Only Ron Ketchum refused to comment. He was concentrating on his retirement plans, and wondering if there was any way to save his marriage, which was not holding up well under all the stress. Things got to the point where Ron thought a divorce would be the least of his worries.

In the end, a deal was struck. In separate press conferences, held at precisely the same time, the DA and the U.S. Attorney announced that all charges were being dropped against each man. Both prosecutors had concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to go forward.

But a tie wasn’t good enough for Marcus Martin. Not this time.

He filed a wrongful death suit against Lieutenant Ronald Ketchum on behalf of Teddy and Mavis Carter. Ron Ketchum, he said, had shot two black men, killing one of them. He was a homicidal, racist cop and he had to pay. Marcus Martin would make him pay.

By the time the trial started, Ron and Leilani Ketchum had decided to call it quits. He’d been after her for years about having kids, and she’d been refusing, pleading the need to maintain her figure for an acting career that had amounted to nothing more than a handful of walk-ons over a period of twenty years. Their dreams, both personally and as a couple, seemed about to expire of natural causes, and once they’d gotten past a final shouting match, they’d decided to be decent to each other in honor of the love they’d once had. They would divorce amicably.

In the meantime, Leilani decided she would bear up under the ordeal of the civil action and would support Ron and escort him to court every day. Make it that much more difficult for that bastard Marcus Martin to say a man with a Polynesian Japanese English Swedish American wife was a racist. She would make a silent, favorable impression upon the jury for Ron, and there would be nothing Marcus Martin could do about it.

Ron and his lawyer, Jack Hobart, knew that Martin was going to paint Ron as the worst bigot since Nathan Bedford Forrest started dressing people in white sheets. They planned their defense accordingly and with more than a little irony. They were going to be pre-emptive. After the O.J. Simpson debacle, L.A. cops knew better than to pretend they were angels, or even boy scouts. So, Ron’s defense was going to be a new twist on a classic theme: He was the victim of his childhood.

When Marcus Martin called Ron to the stand for direct examination, he asked Ron if he had shouted at Sharrod Carter, “Get down, nigger, or I’ll kill you, too.”

“No,” Ron replied simply.

“You neither threatened Sharrod Carter nor referred to him as a nigger?”

Jack Hobart didn’t object to the question that had already been asked and answered.

“I did neither.”

“Did you refer to Sharrod Carter as a nigger at any time?”

“No.”

“Did you refer to Qadry Carder as a nigger before you killed him?”

“Objection! Prejudicial!” Jack Hobart roared. The defense lawyer didn’t want Martin to realize they were laying in wait for him. He would have smelled a rat if Hobart had let that one slide by.

“Your Honor,” Martin boomed, “prejudice is at the very heart of this case. The prejudice of the defendant, who has a history of —”

“That’ll be enough, Mr. Martin,” the judge interrupted. “Objection sustained. Rephrase your question if you wish.”

Martin gathered his dignity with a deep breath. “Did you call Qadry Carter a nigger at any time?”

“No.”

“You called neither of the Carters a nigger at any time?”

Ron knew that a large part of Martin’s game was to say nigger as many times as he could while Ron was on the stand. The plaintiff’s lawyer wanted the jury to see the word written across Ron’s forehead any time they thought of him.

“No, I did not.” Then Ron added, “If I don’t like a suspect, I call him an asshole.”

The jury laughed, and the judge admonished Ron, but only mildly. He was suppressing a grin himself.

The reaction didn’t please Marcus Martin. Bigots weren’t supposed to be funny. It humanized them too much. So he decided it was time to go straight for the jugular.

“Are we to believe then, Lieutenant Ketchum, that at no time in your life have you ever referred to a black person as a nigger?”

That was when Ron’s defensive strategy kicked in.

“No, it would be untrue to say that. As a child, I routinely called black people niggers. It was what I had been taught. In fact, growing up, I didn’t consider black people to
be
people.”

The five African Americans on the jury sat up straight at this brutally candid admission; the expressions on their faces were not particularly sympathetic. Ron seemed to have won no absolution by his extraordinary public confession.

But Marcus Martin was smart enough to know he’d just been thrown a curve. An affirmative response, much less one so bluntly forthcoming, had been the last thing he’d expected his question to elicit. He’d been ready to mock and destroy Ron’s denial. So now he had to proceed with great care.

“Are you admitting to this court, Lieutenant Ketchum,” he asked softly, “that you are the worst kind of racist, one who would deny even the basic humanity of your fellow man simply because the color of his skin is different from your own?”

Ron looked straight at Martin so he would not suggest even the slightest hint of dishonesty.

“No, Mr. Martin, I am not. What I’m saying is, that was the kind of man I was raised to be.”

Marcus Martin took a sip of water, and glanced at the jury out of the corner of his eye. All twelve jurors were paying rapt attention now. Worse for him, the black members of the panel seemed visibly less hostile than only a moment ago.

But Ron Ketchum had just given him a denial. It wasn’t as sweeping as the one for which he’d originally hoped, but it was still something to attack. It was still an opportunity to destroy the prick’s credibility. Brand him a liar as well as a racist.

Martin had disliked Ron from the very first moment the lawyer had stepped onto the basketball court at Agnus Dei High School for pre-game warm-ups and saw Ron’s face among the members of the opposing team. Ketchum had been a short, skinny kid in those days. But as absurd as he looked compared to his bigger, far more physically mature black teammates, Ketchum had this look on his face like he was tough. Bad. And when Marcus Martin, six inches taller and forty pounds heavier than Ketchum then, had stared at him, Ketchum stared right back.

It was ridiculous. Ketchum trying to stare down Marcus Martin. He was so small. So skinny. So
white.
It still made Martin burn with shame every time he admitted to himself that he’d looked away first.

The thing was, the little shit had been cat quick, and put up an outside shot that those skinny wrists never should have been able to launch, much less hit with such frightening regularity. So, one time when Ketchum faked that jump shot, the guy defending him left his feet. Ketchum then thought he had a clear lane to the basket, and Marcus Martin let him have it. But as Ketchum was up in the air making his lay-up, Martin cut his legs out from under him, and the white boy landed on the floor head first.

Now, after all the intervening years, they were still going at it. Martin asked, “Are you saying, then, that your parents failed to raise you in the way they considered right? Or should I say white?”

Ron didn’t take the bait.

“What I’m saying is that my father is a bigot who comes from a long line of bigots, and he expected me to carry on in the family tradition. But I’m a disappointment to him.”

“So now you
love
black people, when you aren’t shooting them, is that it?”

“Objection, Your Honor!” Jack Hobart shouted. “Prejudicial. Counsel is attacking the witness.”

“Sustained,” the judge ruled emphatically. “The jury will disregard, Mr. Martin’s last remark. Mr. Martin, you may represent your client’s case vigorously, but if you make another such blatantly inflammatory remark, I will declare a mistrial and hold you in contempt of court.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Martin said with false humility. He knew he’d walked right to the edge on that one, but he was worried now. He’d had to make the point that this unflappable bastard was still a lying racist who’d shot two black men.

“Lieutenant Ketchum,” Martin resumed, “you testified that you used the word nigger routinely as a child. Did you
ever
use it in the course of your duties as a police officer?”

“No.”

Martin let the sneering look of disbelief linger on his face for the jury to see. He asked his next question only when he sensed the judge was becoming restive.

“You must have undergone quite a change of heart then. Can you tell us what it was?”

This was it, Martin knew. Ron Ketchum would have to come across with a story right now that was so persuasive and substantive that Martin couldn’t destroy it with either ridicule or logic. And Martin didn’t believe Ron had such a story.

Ron began, “I made a friend when I was twelve years old. His name was DeWayne Michaels. He was a little guy like me, so when he came up to me one day when I was shooting baskets in the park and asked if I wanted to play some one on one, I agreed. I still regarded black people as niggers at that time, but I didn’t think of DeWayne as black. He didn’t look any darker than I was when I had a tan, and he had green eyes. So, by the values my father taught me, I didn’t see anything wrong in playing ball with him. And we had great games. We were very evenly matched, and we both played our hearts out.

“After a couple weeks of playing every day, DeWayne asked me if I wanted to come over to his house. I said sure, but on the way I started getting nervous because we were going a long way and heading toward a neighborhood where my father, who was a police officer, had told me never to go. I asked DeWayne if he lived around there, and he said yes. I asked why, and he said that’s where black folks like him lived. I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d told me he was from Mars.”

“Can we skip ahead to the good part, Lieutenant?” Martin asked sarcastically.

The judge castigated Martin without prompting from the defense. “You asked the question, Counselor. The witness is answering it. Remain silent until he finishes.”

Martin nodded mutely. He was pissed. The judge had lectured him as if he were some little snot nosed law student who didn’t know how to behave in a courtroom. He only hoped that the jury took into account that the judge was white, too.

Ron continued, “DeWayne introduced me to his mother and father and sister. His dad was plainly black; anyone could see that. But his mother looked as white as my mom. When I asked DeWayne, in the softest whisper I could manage, if she was white he said no. She was from New Orleans, the kind of person they called an octoroon down there. In the South, he told me, one drop of black blood made a person black. That was very hard for me to comprehend. I also had difficulty understanding the fact that both of DeWayne’s parents had jobs and their house was as neat and clean as my own. I’d been told that black people were either thieves or welfare bums and lived in rat-infested tenements. When it came time to leave, DeWayne’s dad insisted on driving me home. He said the neighborhood got a little dangerous at night.

“I was glad to have the ride, but I was very anxious about my father seeing that it was a black man and his son bringing me home. What was really bad was that I could tell DeWayne wanted to see my house after he’d shown me his. But there was no way I could bring him in. I mean, maybe I could have tried to fool my dad into thinking DeWayne was white, but what was I supposed to tell him, ‘Sorry, DeWayne, but your father has to wait outside in the car.’ Luckily for me, Mr. Michaels seemed to understand my problem, and didn’t let on to DeWayne. He just said he was sorry they couldn’t stop in and say hello to my family, but they had to get right home.

“I was still terribly embarrassed. I was also angry and confused that my father had lied to me. Most of all, I was fearful that DeWayne’s father had told him what was what after I got out of the car, and he’d never be my friend again.”