Amphetamines, cocaine, extortion, fraud, and murder are all par for the course in my line of work. Being a criminal defence lawyer since the 1970s, I’ve seen and experienced walks of life that most people could not begin to imagine. I’ve been threatened, seen clients assault their attorneys, been offered ‘favours’ by alleged prostitutes, and dealt with clients on speed, heroin, cocaine and meth. After a while, you grow accustomed to the insanity and it becomes harder to be shocked by anyone’s behaviour.
But, there was one moment in my career that I will never forget because I was dealing with the type of man they only write about in fiction.
I was in my early thirties, fresh out of law school, and had just started my own law practice. My days were filled with running from court to court, taking care of different clients, meeting with prosecutors and massaging juries to rule in my favour. On one of these days, I was in the cells of Toronto’s Old City Hall going to visit a client to discuss our defence strategy and then head to court. One of the jailed inmates, a large heavy-set man, shackled from head to toe, called out to me. “Hey! Hey, you! You look like my cousin from Brooklyn. Come see me. Would ya?!” Being the young, inexperienced, and slightly naive lawyer I was at the time, I said I would.
Court ends and being a man of my word, I go back into the cells buried beneath City Hall to pay a visit to this man. I find him, still shackled from head to toe, locked behind bars with two guards in front of his cell. I speak to the guards and eventually convince them to give us a few minutes so that we can chat. We start talking and I find out his name is Don and he’s been charged with first-degree murder – the highest and most serious form of murder. He asks if I’m a defence lawyer and if I will help him. “A lawyer who looks like my cousin has to be a good omen.” I was young, hungry and just started my own practice, so I was willing to take any case.
As we get to talking, he tells me that he is a Vietnam War vet from New York who moved to Canada after he and his wife got married. They’d been married for a few years and had a great relationship, but he tells me that she passed away not too long ago. I gave him my condolences and, not thinking anything of it, asked him what happened. The moment I asked him that, his whole demeanour changed and his tone began to shift.
He told me that they had a puppy together and his wife loved that dog more than life itself. The dog was like her child. It made her happy, and if she was happy then he was happy. But the dog passed away, and his wife sunk into a deep depression. She would mope around the house saying that she didn’t want to live anymore. Life wasn’t worth living to her if she didn’t have her dog. So, to make her feel better, he took her up to a cabin where she could get away and stop thinking about it for a while.
But, it didn’t matter. She was still depressed. He said he hated seeing her like that and wanted her to stop hurting. When they were in their cabin at night, Don took out a hunting rifle and, as she was sleeping, shot her straight in the face. He made sure to tell me: “It was the right thing to do.”
After shooting her, he went back to sleep in the bed he killed his wife in, assuring me that he needed his rest before he took her deep into the forest to bury her. Don went home, thinking nothing of it, but his wife’s parents started to call. He came up with reasons why she couldn’t talk or would say that she was out with friends. The parents eventually got suspicious and the police were called where they asked him what happened.
He told the cops that he killed her and went into detail about how he did it, leading the cops to believe one version of the story. He would then go on to tell a completely different version of events where he had no role in her death, leaving everyone – myself included – completely unsure of what actually occurred. Regardless, Don was charged with first-degree murder.
Another senior lawyer and myself were tasked with preparing his defence. We would spend hours together going over the details of the case. However, the more time I spent with him, I started to realize that Don was a paranoid schizophrenic with psychopathic tendencies. It became clear to me that he should plead not guilty by reason of insanity. The other lawyer disagreed and felt that there wasn’t enough evidence against him and that he should plead not guilty. In an effort to try and get the more senior lawyer to go with my defence strategy, I ordered a psychological evaluation on Don. The analysis concluded that he was “quite disturbed.” Despite this, the senior lawyer refused to go along with my strategy and decided on pleading not guilty. The strategy backfired and Don was eventually convicted of first-degree murder.
A few months pass and I go see him in jail to tie up a few administrative ends. I sit down at the table and find Don cuffed to a metal table and shackled from his neck down to his ankles – just as I found him the first time. We settled all of the leftover administrative work but I still couldn’t shake the feeling and still wondered what the hell actually happened? He gave multiple stories that both incriminated him and absolved him of any responsibility in the matter, so I decided to ask him – flat out – what happened.
“Between me and you, Don, you gave inculpatory statements and you gave exculpatory statements. What’s the truth here?” He looked at me and took off his glasses, starting to nonchalantly clean them. He looked back up at me straight in the eyes and said, “Why sir, I am nothing but a simple choir boy.” To this day – after nearly 50 years in the legal profession – Don’s words are still one of the most psychotic and terrifying things that I have ever heard come out of someone’s mouth.