The whole thing left a horrible taste in my mouth. For months afterwards, I seriously contemplated giving up the practice of law, anything to get away from a world I have grown to despise. Instead, I keep on with my life, even though that means suffering the frequent nightmares that have me jolting awake, my head filled with visions of those poor suffering creatures.
I should have declined the case, but public defenders in our fair state don’t get a whole lot of leeway on such matters. Anyway, at the time, I figured he’d plead out. But the old coot was stubborn as a kid facing his first haircut. His grip was strong, his hand calloused, and his blue eyes just about as warm and inviting as an iceberg in the North Atlantic. I remember thinking I would not want to have that man following me down a dark alley.
I suggested right off that he consider copping a plea. “Hell, no,” he’d replied, his bushy gray brows nearly meeting at the top of his nose. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”
Silas was a wiry, hardscrabble, back country boy who hadn’t bothered to finish school or learn a trade and yet had found himself having to do something to make a living, considering he had a wife and four kids. He never smoked a corncob pipe, but that’s the way I always picture him. For some odd reason, his claiming to be innocent had me thinking about my ancestors who’d made their living doing something wrong and had been willing to die defending the institution of slavery. It was one reason I’d chosen to be a public defender—a feckless attempt to redress past wrongs, I admit, but . . . was Silas any different from them?
Now, you might not understand it—hell, sometimes I don’t really understand it—but a man’s entitled to a defense, and I, as his attorney, was duty bound to defend him to the best of my ability. Even if I thought—make that knew—he was guilty and should fry in hell.
Silas was caught red-handed, the evidence of his cruelty beyond dispute. Those poor little puppies were all crowded together in tiny metal cages, stacked on top of each other. When the dog on top crapped, the rest got a shit shower. The cages were so small, the poor critters could barely turn around, let alone get any exercise. Some of them couldn’t even walk, they were in such bad shape. And that’s before they were rescued and the vets discovered severe hair loss, skin infections, dehydration, gum disease, and gastrointestinal issues, among other ailments. Sixteen of them died shortly afterwards. One of them was a Labrador bitch who’d just delivered a litter of seven pups.
Of course, I tried to explain to the SOB that pleading guilty might get him a lesser sentence, maybe nine months and a fine instead of two to five at Central. It was a no-brainer, to my way of thinking, but he steadfastly refused. “Hell, I’m just makin’ a livin’. What’s wrong with that? You sayin’ a man cain’t run a business in Nawth Care’lina, put food on the table for his family? No way I’m travelin’ down that guilt road. It ain’t true, and it ain’t right.”
I don’t know what the guy was thinking when he demanded a jury trial. And I often wonder if the jurors also suffered nightmares afterwards. They heard the testimony. They saw the photographs that I had failed to get thrown out of court on the basis of their creating an insurmountable bias against my client. “You’re going to have to do better than that, son,” was the judge’s comment when he ruled in favor of the prosecution.
What sticks in my craw is the conversation I had with Silas about his defense before the trial even started.
“Why are you claiming innocence?” I asked him, leaving the fact of his deeds unspoken between us.
“Because I am innocent. I weren’t doin’ nothin’ a cattleman or a pig farmer wouldn’t a done. Ain’t none a them accused of animal cruelty.”
“Perhaps because you can’t stack cattle in cages?”
That comment got a shrug from Silas. “They’re both livestock, ain’t they? ’Sides, I heard tell they eat ’em in China. So what’s the big fucking difference?”
I scratched my head a moment, thinking, in this country, they’re pets. “You weren’t raising puppies for food, Silas.”
“So?” His thick brows met in the middle again. “Plenty a farm kids around these parts got pet pigs and pet chickens—leastways till there’s a need to eat ’em.”
He had a point, which, it turns out, became my defense.
I didn’t expect to win the case, but I figured I wouldn’t be laughed out of court either. I’d give the jury something to ponder in their deliberations. Maybe one or two of them would be farmers, unsentimental types who were quite used to seeing a pet pig or calf sent off to slaughter, who probably feared that, if they didn’t draw a line somewhere, the animal rights movement might show up on their doorstep one day. They’d get things so messed up in that jury room, there’d be no way to reach a unanimous verdict on the full count.
To my everlasting shame, it worked. The jury found Silas guilty of the lesser charge of animal negligence. The judge gave him a tough lecture, which probably went in one ear and evaporated before it could even reach the other. He was forbidden to own dogs or cats or other animals considered pets, sentenced to sixty days in jail, and assessed a fine that I knew he couldn’t pay unless he managed to sell off some of his so-called “livestock.” The thought sickened me.
I know all that balderdash about vengeance being the Lord’s, but it didn’t stop me from believing that, if the world were truly just, Silas would go to jail for far more than sixty days, that he’d wind up in a very small cage at the bottom of a stack of cages housing other felons whose bodily excretions would naturally obey the laws of gravity, that he’d learn just how it felt to be hungry and thirsty all the time, to get sick and not be treated, maybe even to die. And maybe all of his misery would be accompanied by the cries of helpless puppies in distress.
Of course, that would never happen. The punishment seldom fits the crime in the crazy world we live in. After his release, Silas would head back home, start breeding more puppies, and stack them in cages like he did before. Oh sure, he’d be on the authorities’ watch list. He’d get raided again. But I feared the same defense that I had just employed might work just as well the next time around.
I was shoving my papers back into my briefcase, when the words just slipped out. “How could you do this to such innocent creatures?”
Silas just stood there, those cold blue eyes regarding me like a wolf about to pounce. “You ever heard that sayin’, ‘the sins of the fathers?’ If your great granddaddy was still alive, I might could ask him the same question.”