Divine Balance

Divine Balance (Chapters 1 - 5) For backgroud, read Lesser Included Offenses. Based on a true story, my son Christian was charged with Murder in the First Degree. His sentencing judge, Joel Castile is the central character in Divine Balance. He has been charged with Murder in the First Degree. Did he do it? Find out.

Isaiah 40:12

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?

Prologue

When the Honorable Joel Castile is indicted on charges of first degree murder, attorney Arden Beckland, whose own relationship heretofore was acrimonious with the judge, initially rejected Castile's pleas to defend him, but when new developments lead to the death of the State’s primary witness, Arden relented.

Chapter 1

The prosecutor’s underling, Caydn and I are well acquainted. Caydn has that boy next door look going on even in his 40’s. Lustrous light brown forelocks hanging over heavy-lidded green eyes. Unassuming. Cool. Hot.

In another lifetime.

In the here and now, we dance on opposing sides of the ring so to speak. Once lovers, we’ve resided ourselves to the facts of life and have moved on with our respective significant others as they case were.

I work in the supporting role defending the “innocent” while he advocates against the guilty. Our positions, as one might guess, area at most times, precarious. Behind the scenes, Caydn and I avoid the sentiment of days gone by. We are now grown up. Both in staid, “solid” relationships. Not the high highs and low lows experienced by us post-divorce, many years prior.

Our memories are bittersweet.

We wonder how our history will play out when the bell rings. The chemistry is still there. I sense as much. Words unspoken. Nuances. A silent seduction. Intellectual titillation. Foreplay.

Caydn’s boss, Kennedy Birkenholz, second in command at the prosecutor’s office is an acerbic prick and my nemesis. A shot caller. A political ladder climber. A man in my mind who would, and pardon the cliché, sell his own mother in order to get a conviction. He’d even settle for a neat little plea bargain. Irrespective of the facts. Innocence or guilt.

When Caydn phoned to console me on a personal matter involving my eldest son Christian, I was guarded. I wondered if he had an agenda of some kind. A reason for resurrecting a sleeping dog. I asked him what the nature of his call was. He politely asked after me and Christian of course. The conversation veered off to a more personal, and hence, unfortunate venue when I was forced to redirect him to the nature of the call—other than Christian’s welfare which I wasn’t quite buying. It had been at least ten years since we had spoken to each other on the telephone. The last call was three months before I married Mike and ultimately one of the reasons why I accepted his marriage proposal.

Caydn said he had a client who needed help. A paying client. A political giant. His friend, he went on, was in a bit of difficulty. I took the bait. Asking what a “bit of difficulty” meant exactly. Since I was simply a fact finder and a non-lawyer, this call was not out of the ordinary. My investigative services were useful to both sides when someone needed a lawyer. I worked for a former assistant county prosecutor Arden Becklan. A winning opponent in the ring. She was one undisputedly of the best. With a perfect record, as far as a criminal defense attorney, she was held in high regard.

Not only was Arden blessed with brains, she was easy on the eyes. Tall, athletic, although not overly, with an easy manner especially with older non-white male judges. An elongated ivory palate for a face and almond shaped brown flecked with gold eyes. Her lips were full enough to beg the question of her ethnicity. It was anyone’s guess. Her beauty beholding.

In college, she was a straight A student, riding the academic scholarship wave to a debt free graduation. Her hard work paid off. Her plan was simple enough. She would work in the prosecuting attorney’s office to put into action her, at the time, very black and white view of the world and in particular criminals. She worked with a vigilante mentality until one day, as she would later recount, she switched sides. That simply.

It seemed, as Caydn continued, that the Honorable Joel Castile, also known as the Wizard, and further known as the judge who, at my son Christian’s stipulated bench trial, presided when he was sentenced to a quarter and five for assault got himself into a predicament. “A predicament,” I sputter more like “divine justice.” It occurred to me that this is the prophet Isaiah’s rendition of divine balance. I think I may have said the words so loudly in my head that Caydn actually them.
No, I am not over it.

Someday I will put it to rest. It has been two and one-half years and I feel the shame of hearing his words in my ear that my son is a murderer. Christian, then 19, was at an all night party when the long and short of it, a fight broke out. Two Asian’s from an eastside clique were pummeling my younger son Adam with fisticuffs and a club, when Christian intervened. He punched Johnny Chin Chu in the face exactly one time in defense of Adam. The prosecutor was and yes, it would figure none other than Caydn’s illustrious boss Kennedy.
See, I have a little history. And a big problem.

It is next to impossible for me to even begin to do the leg work to help the Wizard. Even so, I sat there mute taking it all in. Willing Caydn to hurry up and spit it out.

I feel as though a lamb led to the slaughter. I know that Arden will relish the defense of the Wizard, if no other reason than to bleed his money from Marin, his wife’s very deep pockets.

Castile, according to Caydn was given a choice. A choice to voluntarily give a statement as a material witness to a homicide or enjoy no special privileges in the county jail. I prefer the ladder and am not anxious to hear more. I savor this for a few moments. I gain some sick pleasure from knowing that he is a material witness to the homicide of twenty-seven-year-old Samila Aginsky, a Russian emigrant, and an assistant county attorney with the district attorney’s office, now deceased of course.
Aginsky, at Castile’s insistence, unearthed a nationwide pedophile and child prostitution ring, police cover up, and collaboration with the county attorney’s office and the member’s of the judiciary.

The judge is the ball in a match of power ping pong between two warring factions. I liked him in this position of vulnerability and I certainly couldn’t think of anything more just than seeing him spend the lion share of his life behind bars whether he did it or not. Even if he didn’t do it. For the sport of it if nothing more. I know that position makes me immature. A judgment I deserve and could care less about.

Chapter 2

I am told that forensic evidence links Aginsky’s murder with material in the trunk of Castile’s 2005 brand spanking new Jaguar XJ. A gift from his very generous wife. Castile as I am further told had both opportunity and motive: Samila had recently ended their affair and swore she would expose his infidelity to his wife. His wife sat on a fortune of old family money. Money he would kill to protect. Money which was funneled to various charitable and political entities.

The judge is not well liked. He is beefy like a Cuban Havana, with tufted skin the color of browned leather. His brows are bushes that rise and fall on his rather pronounced forehead as he carefully enunciates his every syllable for fear of sounding too Hispanic. Try as he may, he cannot perfect the troubling consonants “h” and “j.”

Castile’ eyes darted to and fro like the world poker player, Phil Ivey’s. It gave the observer an unsettling feeling. Women were attracted to his bad manners and brooding moods. And his eyes. He has those hazel green eyes that change color depending on ambient light, the color of his shirt or his mood. On this day, his eyes were black.

The Wizard, in his full regalia was judicious to a fault. So much so, that he looked at a problem from every angle. Conceivably, this crippled his ability to make a determination based on the law. His colleagues perceived that somewhere along the way, he lost his confidence. He pandered to the victim’s families as did the D.A.’s office. Victim Services, another arm of the State, was there too to lap up the froth of emotion left in wake of a perpetrator’s crime.

The Wizard did not have an exemplary record on the bench. His ascension to the bench had largely been because, like most all judges, he knew the governor or at least in house counsel for the governor. His qualifications did not set him apart on their own, but his wife’s money did and her willingness to give gifts and make contributions to dummy offshore accounts. He was well kept and liked it that way.

Even while my mind is clouded with what I know about a judge I obviously dislike, the charges seem like conjecture even slander.
Circumstantial. B.S. The state, in my mind, seems quick to charge.

Arden and I take the matter under advisement. In her office, we volley the substance of the charges back and forth. She is the brain, I am the common sense. She knows the law, I know people. We are a good team.

Arden has ample reason to suspect she could be signing a pact with the devil by agreeing to represent a guilty man, Castile turns his attention to me asking “how much?” Marin is readied, pen in hand. Admirable I think to myself. She is standing my her man. With an unblinking hesitation, she agrees to the usurious retainer of $50,000.00 Arden requested.

We officially, on the record represent the jackal.

***

Prior to the instant case, Castile had the occasion to ferret out evidence of criminal conspiracy and financial fraud among the judiciary. In so doing, he unearthed his own political grave. Someone was working behind the scenes to silence him. Friend or foe he wasn’t saying. For that matter, other than to say he had no alibi for the time in question, he wasn’t saying much at all. With the possible exception that Aginsky and he did not enjoy an illicit relationship. He was a married man. His marriage bed undefiled. “What was he supposed to say?” I thought very hard out loud. His wife was there.

Now he is faced with pleading the Fifth on the charges of murder in the first degree or as the likely scenario would play out, he would be granted immunity to tell what he knew about the crimes of the judiciary. This would do little to absolve him from the charge of first degree murder, but could likely get the state to work out a deal pleading him down to the lesser included offense of voluntary man. Either way, he will be dethroned. He is not ready to lay down.

Castile considers playing the brown card. The ethnic get out of jail free card. Unwilling to give up his rights, he fears the repercussions of a writ of immunity. For starters he values his unalienable constitutional rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Brown card or not, he will still be forced to testify or go down on first degree murder charges.

He is all bravado and talks to us like we work for him and we do. He has paid us enough money for Arden to comfortably keep the doors open on her sweat shop for another two years or so. Give or take. She may even be able to hire an associate and hopefully even another subordinate investigator/paralegal.

Castile is splitting his attention between the two of us now. He wears a mask and we know it. At least I do. The anxiety of losing his liberty is weighing on him. Orange and white stripes do not suit him, nor does general population for a judge seated on the criminal bench for the year. Many of the damned await their respective penitentiary.

Chapter 3

The prosecutor’s office could be likened to a milking maiden sitting at the stool of justice pulling the teats of its machinations. The Wizard was at their mercy. Caydn was no friend to Castile. He knew what I knew and even as he compartmentalized most of his life, justifying the what-fors, he did not like Castile. Castile was a snake. He gave the judiciary a bad name because he couldn’t keep his penis in his pants. He wielded it like a weapon. One by which he made deals.

It is a huge wonder how he unearthed silent scandal in the first place. Perhaps his discovery was the motive for setting him up on a crime of passion with a colleague with whom he had been romantically involved.

Some would argue that Castile’s terminal ambition, his far-reaching tendrils of power were like a cancer in the judiciary. He stepped on, not over, anyone who got into his way.
Arden argued that the state recall the subpoena which was quickly looking like a warrant and asked for full discovery of whatever “evidence” was available. She scheduled an appointment with Caydn to review the state’s case at his office. Meanwhile, Castile was taken into custody much to his disgust. Guilty until proven innocent, at least here in the heartland. Temporarily, he was afforded administrative segregation in the county jail. For now. Fourth floor was where all the nutcases and gang bangers are sent.
Castile’s machismo dissolved. He made every attempt to wear his jail house issue with pride, his efforts falling flat. Under his black robe, he wore his money. Taken into custody in cashmere cuffs and shirtsleeves, his baritone bravado dissolved as the commanding officer at the jail conducted a body cavity search and hosed him down with a de-lousing agent. He is in my mind a bottom feeder, a Plocostamus and even so, I cannot help but feel a pang of sympathy for him. It is a fleeting emotion. My mind cuts back to Christian. His Wizardry on the platform before him. Gesticulating wildly and enunciating his every syllable for effect. I hear his voice. I stop when I remember his glare. Remembering. My eyes are unblinking.

My heart on my cuff.

He faced self-incrimination if he agreed to testify before a grand jury or whatever the state had in store for him. Rank and file members of the judiciary, nearly all foes, would have them an old fashioned lynching. For him to publicly roll over on the offenders of the judicial oversights to put it politely while held in the county jail, would be a death warrant. A convenient “suicide.”

We needed to begin to prepare the defense for an animal that very well may be guilty. Alternatively, he may have been set up. I am charged with the task of milling the halls of justice, speaking the to the court attendants who I have come to know. My job is to coax tidbits of information in the guise of gossip. I work it. I know just who to run into first. I also have a few acquaintances I know from the gym, who sympathize with my cause and are helpful, strictly off the record. I interview witnesses, neighbors…the garbage man.
Kennedy is looking at me with an imperious fixed look. His words are angry. Accusing. He thinks he is divinity and I am supposed to take off my shoes. I am, as his posturing suggests, on hallowed ground. He gives himself too much credit.

There are three desks in the center of one conference room partitioned off for the secretary pool. Disheveled files are everywhere. Stacked on tabletops. An array of piles peeking out from manila legal sized files. Pleadings, working papers and trial notebooks are everywhere.

Kennedy is undoubtedly frustrated that much of the public interest focus was not on the his political acumen but on his salacious personal life that earned him the sobriquet the “Emperor.” In this respect, there are few discernable differences between he and the judge.

He straightens his already perfect tie. His narcissism and appetite for self-indulgence is manifestly on display as is his grandiose style. He is the picture of civility. Ah, a female client. He panders to her sense of vanity. Emoting his maleness. I can smell his manhood emanating out of his every poor. Smiling that snake in the grass smile.
Later at coffee with Caydn, we agilely talk around our personal lives. We are in the lion’s den with such surmisings. Our meeting today is professional. He wants my help. More correctly, he wants our help. On the low down.

The coffee shop has a portable television cutting to the today’s byline. “Joel Castile today was indicted on charges of first degree murder.” I tried to pay attention to Caydn, but all I could think of was my own son being tried in the media long before he had his day in court. My mind kept cutting to the judge’s soliloquy whereby he jangled on and on and on.
The defense of Castile is straightforward. His battle cry simple, he was framed. Set up. The prosecution of Castile is based on non-existent physical evidence and hordes of whisperings, murmurings and innuendo. Still, if convicted—even if he didn’t do it, he was guilty of moral turpitude. The usual course of action was automatic removal from the bench.

Following a little too closely behind Kennedy trailed an army of alter boys—hopeful to touch the hem of his garment. These guys’ heads are going to have to be forcibly removed from his back side if they are not careful.

The judge waives the allegations away. He has a great deal in common with Kennedy. Both are aggressive—crudely so. Pushy. Self-righteous. Almost pious.

Their relationship is acrimonious. Like an uncontested dissolution gone awry.
Their interests are at once conflicted.

Chapter 4

Al is a convicted felon. His charges range from petty theft to grander non-violent property crimes. Because of his criminal proclivities, he is a useful resource to us. Al has a Buda-like gut, which according to him, is the result of all of the white bread he ate on his last six-month bid at county. His nose looks like a grapefruit—a pocked and deeply pitted fruit—the result of too much juice and exhausted liver enzymes. He claims he was poisoned. Sometimes it is difficult to separate fact from fiction with Al. Just the same, is a valuable asset to us.

Al’s brows are knit in a perennial scowl. His body oozes the stench of needing a good ass wiping mingled with funk breath emanating from his every pore. He favors the common place lower middle class white ribbed t-shirt or in the pejorative “wife beater.” From his voluminous pits, sprout tufts of Don King like hair. The hair on his head has gone south. He has no neck and his head seems to burrow in the deep folds of his chin.

Al tells us that there are rumblings on the street. “Word,” according to Al is that whoever killed Aginsky left a calling card, at least presumably so. Members of an eastside Asian clique running heroine, a fact shushed at my son’s trial, were picked up in the vicinity of Aginsky’s house packing unregistered heat but no drugs. Ballistics would do their magic and hopefully come up with a match. The calling card Al referred to was a small magazine “seal” folded into a tiny envelope containing heroine. This in and of itself was circumstantial at best. A long shot. Based on that information, it would be a cold day in hell before anyone could get a judge to sign off on a warrant to search the cliques’ residences and cars.

Al has offered substantial assistance to the State in instant case because he has a charge in the federal courts and is hopeful that his ongoing cooperation will compute to a downward departure from the sentencing guidelines. Even though his crimes are non-violent, he is a career offender.

We anticipate that Al’s cooperation has, or will, lead to other individuals that are the subject of ongoing criminal investigations or prosecutions, entering guilty pleas. His assistance was timely, and it was offered despite substantial risk to his own safety and that of his family, as indicated Al at the time of his debriefings.

It is likely he will go to Leavenworth, and he has so many non-contacts at that camp that he will have to be administratively segregated. That could mean a lengthy stay in a cell smaller than most people’s bathrooms, 23 out of 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

To stave off such accommodations, he has testified twice in grand jury proceedings, and remains willing to testify at trial. Anything to save himself. His voice is smoky and low and he wants to tell me something.

He seemed on the verge of a tic or a twitch. An addict waiting for his next bump. He walked along side of me for a time, keeping the tone light. His eyebrows arched, he folded his arms across his beefy chest striking a defiant pose. The long slants of his eyes are fixed on something or someone out of my perreferie. His milk white hands are marked with smudges of grease. He has gnawed his fingernails to the quick. He is more disheveled than I have ever seen him. He is unshaven, unwashed and is walking about in that ether that both the bereaved and bedridden share.

He bowed his head as he made a thief’s progress away from me, making his way down a narrow passage. I call out after him, but he is gone. Something has spooked him. I let it go for now.

Instinctively, I dropped to the pavement in a crouch, scanning the street, until I was satisfied that no one was watching.

A uniformed man was standing on the sidewalk waiting for me to get up. His dark brown hair was gelled and sprayed into a helmet so that his bald spot on the crown of his head could not easily be seen. The effect of the comb over was very Donald Trumpish. His impish grin belied near perfect rows of yellowed corn. He was jittery. Nervy. He started towards me…clumsily making jangling noises about the weather. After a few more minutes of awkwardness, he looked skyward. He tried again. Finally flicking imaginary lint from his shoulder.

I slid behind the wheel of my Dae Woo Leganza in search of Al wondering what had spooked him.

Chapter 5

As Arden and I pull up to the curb of the state’s star witness’ condominium, the police light bars are ablaze. From the sight of the throng of uniforms, it looks as though there is a party in progress. One to which we were not invited. Yellow tape cordons off the traffic and the curious.

Arden tersely gestures to me to follow her. Cops in and out of uniform are milling about the crime scene. I have a bad feeling.
Arden cozies up to the uniform acting as the custodian of the tape. She is a familiar face and thankfully, he allows her access to the crime scene even though she no longer is affiliated with the AG’s office, due largely to Kennedy’s methods of attrition.

With the stealth of a thief, she grabs me by the coat sleeve, an aggressive gesture I do not appreciate, and threads me through the foot traffic. I follow her lead thinking how much I wish I wasn’t there. I am embarrassed by her affront and the fact that I am obedient.

To a disinterested third party we might appear drunk as we trip towards the carnival. Almost giddy, we approach the condominium and let ourselves in through the unlocked front door taking care not to touch anything and doing our best to stay clear of the blood, bone and gray matter sprayed just about everywhere. This is next to impossible.

Certain of the officers present, “friends” of mine when I was betrothed to Caydn all those many years ago were playing grab ass with each when they caught sight of Arden and me.
Arden probably didn’t ring any bells—but the sight of me did. I was still pissed as hell at ‘Mike,’ a detective who conducted a four-hour interview of my son Christian. Not for the four-hour interrogation, but for the resultant four page synopsis. In depositions he was nonplussed as to why he didn’t videotape the interrogation. Why a seasoned detective would not videotape a defendant’s confession is beyond me. That is one-part mother, one-part para-professional. I found it interesting how small twists and turns along the way convoluted the spirit of the letter. I liken it to being taken out of context because an editor deems the cut room floor worthy.

North Windsor pulls himself away from his buddies to take me in with his cop eyes. He misses nothing. He lands on his feet like a feline. His task at hand is the preservation of self—namely himself. He believes he did nothing wrong. Perhaps he is right and I am wrong. In either case, police procedure should be changed. Christian, then nineteen was a material witness to a homicide. Once he unwisely gave his statement without the presence of counsel, he was charged with the offense of First Degree Murder. No voluntary man, no aggravated or felonious assault. Windsor went straight to the Kennedy on that one. From my perspective, I find it particularly haunting that Castile was Christian’s sentencing judge.

Windsor is a prick who so it happens is a former city cop and a comer in the AG’s office. He has a habit of looking down his ostensive blue-blooded nose at the underclass—be that for reasons of privilege or station in life. His nose is blue, but not because of bearing. Rather, Windsor is a friend to Johnny. As in Johnnie Walker Black Label, single malt scotch and Dunhill Menthols box. He has a penchant for Cuban Punch Double Coronas and Partagas Lusitanias and Montecristo No. 2's cigars. His tastes are champagne all the way.

He is a fastidious man. Neat to the point of compulsion, wearing a signature pinstriped shirt, dark pants and wide tie. His sidekick has a head the size and shape of a butcher’s block. Big hands. His face is wide and deeply pitted, with penetrating eyes that contain more than a glint of disdain for what he is hearing or maybe what he is seeing. A small tremor of something, fear, adrenaline, something rippled at the base of my neck. This was a scary guy, especially since he was a cop. I self-consciously tried to behave unaffected.

I had a bad feeling about the case. Not just because of the cop. A lot of things weren’t adding up. To begin with, a trusted, heretofore revered member of the judiciary is charged with murdering a young woman with whom he had had improper relation. What could he possibly hope to gain from killing her? Yes, she was a key prosecution witness, but surely Castile was not dirty and therefore, she wasn’t going to blow the whistle on him.

She was shot execution style. This bothered me. Gangland violence and all. As though the killer wanted it to look like the hit that it was. If Castile was the killer, and the crime was motivated by passion, it would have been at the very least staged to make the violence seem less intended. Like suicide or an accident. And at a minimum, he would have had an alibi.
Aginsky was scheduled to testify in a grand jury proceeding concerning the incumbent panel of judges. Castile had unearthed criminal conspiracy and financial fraud among the judiciary, thus making any manner of enemies among his peers.

It is a well known fact that the prosecutor’s office is highly adversarial. They want his blood and refuse to look objectively at the evidence. They say black and we say white. No middle ground. It is what it is. The polarity is blinding.

The prosecutor’s office sits on the milking stool next to the cow of justice pulling the teats of justice. All the while, they are complicit in the judges’ conspiracy and financial fraud. But for their nod in the affirmative, it could not have survived unnoticed for as long as it did. Castile was not on the take. He had no reason to be. He has Marin’s money.

Whether by divine purpose or some Karmatic design, information from an unknown source at the AG’s office was funneled to Aginsky. I am unsure how or to what extent. The AG’s office knows. Kennedy surely knows. Why he has a hard on for Castile is anyone’s guess. To protect himself? In all of this free thinking, a thought comes to me. I need to check Castile’s record he sat on the criminal bench and especially when Kennedy was before him. I’d simplify the research, looking online for jury verdicts. I’d next cull the verdicts for the last arbitrary number of years and define the search further to eliminate Kennedy as a variable. With some luck, I could quickly verify if Kennedy had an axe to grind with Castile. I’d next have to find a way to access stats on plea bargains and bench trials. I would feel comfortable if I could rule Kennedy and/or his cohorts from the AG’s office out.
Castile was known to jump the tracks. In legal speak, not only did he refuse to rubber stamp proceedings, he invariably ruled as he saw fit. He was pro-prosecution and in his court, you were subject to him and his long winded orations. He was not interested in what or how the appellate courts would overturn his ruling. He was about doing it his way as though he had a life-appointment.