Creeps: How I Became “Radicalized” Against the Criminal Justice System (Part 7)

During my third year of law school, one of my courses was a criminal defense clinic, where I represented misdemeanor defendants in Bronx Criminal Court under a student practice order under the supervision of our professor and an incredible organization called the Bronx Defenders. I am sharing some stories about that time. These stories are based on notes, memoranda, and filings that I saved from that time, as well as my own recollection. Names and other identifying information have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved. You can read previous posts here, here, here, here, here, and here.

This week’s installment is a little less heavy than the previous posts. Eric was strange. He was strange in so many ways. We met him in lockup where strange people are abundant and he stuck out even there. He stared at us from behind the plexiglass with wide eyes that wildly darted around constantly. He lived with his mother – “just me, her, and a whole mess of cats” he volunteered within two minutes of meeting him. Of all the clients we represented that year, there were two things that I remember the most: (1) he was the only person who probably should have been arrested; and (2) he was the only person we represented who was white.

Eric lived in a suburban apartment complex about 10 miles north of the Bronx Criminal Courthouse. I visited his home and he did indeed live with his mother and a bunch of cats. He had met and dated Tina, a young black woman, from the Bronx. He began paying for her cell phone service.  After a few months, things turned sour between them and they broke up. They continued to text and call one another. At one point, Eric claimed that Tina had threatened to kill him.

Eric did what any normal person would do and he called the polic- nah, he didn’t do that. Eric was a goddamn creep. He bought a geotracking device and added a function to his cellphone plan that would text him the location of the geotracker at regular intervals (this was 2009). He waited until his ex was away from her car and he planted the device under her bumper.

Tina’s phone however, was on Eric’s cellphone plan. The next time Tina drove her car, she also began getting text messages detailing her exact location. Imagine driving in your car, and you get a message every few minutes telling you your exact location. Creepy, right? She brought her car to a mechanic who found the device after removing the bumper.

Eric claimed that his intent was two-fold: (1) know where she was so he could stay away from her; (2) let her know that he knew where she was at all times so she would stay away from him.

I wish that were the oddest part of the story, but it’s not. Remember Olivia? Her husband accused her of making harassing phone calls and the police just went out and arrested her. No investigation. Remember Kim? Her nephew was suspected of dealing a minor amount of drugs, so the police served a warrant at her apartment at 5AM, breaking down her door and destroying all of her stuff and finding less than half a gram of crack.

A day or so before we met Eric, two detectives knocked on his door. They asked him about Tina and then asked him to accompany them down to the police station. Eric agreed. He was not cuffed. He was not ridden around in a van for several hours while they picked up other suspects. They took him directly to the precinct, put him in an interrogation room and asked him to write down his version of events. After he signed his statement, he was placed into handcuffs for the first time and formally arrested for several counts of aggravated harassment.

Of course, Eric deserved a vigorous defense just like anyone else. His version of events, while implausible, could possibly be true. And the detectives possibly violated several of his constitutional rights. We moved and were granted a Huntley hearing, which is held to determine whether a defendant’s statements to the police were lawfully made under the 5th Amendment and whether there was probable cause for the underlying arrest or detention of the defendant. He hadn’t been properly Mirandized when he gave several of his statements. The police, while polite, lied and told Eric that he wasn’t in any trouble – they just wanted to clear everything up.

This case dragged on until after I graduated and I never found out what happened to him. What really stuck with me on this case was that Eric’s alleged acts were more violent and destructive than any other allegation against our clients, but he was largely treated with kid gloves.