The Second Doublewide on the Right, part 19

I’m Fixin’ To present part 19 of The Second Doublewide on the Right:

“The Honorable Judge Thurston J. Garfield, III, presiding.” That’s how it read on the top of the first page of the Ocmulgee County Superior Criminal Court Calendar.

Even in his waning years on the bench, Judge Garfield never tired of seeing his name in print, but he was tired of dispensing justice to petty criminals. What he yearned for was an appointment to the State Supreme Court, and a civil case he had recently heard and taken under advisement, might just be his ticket to attaining that goal.

“Taken Under Advisement,” was a judicial term meaning that after a judge had heard the evidence from both parties in a civil case, he would render a decision at a later date after studying the evidence and reviewing the testimony. A civil trial was usually when one individual or party was suing another individual or party and were usually conducted as a bench trial as opposed to a jury trial, which meant the judge was both judge and jury, all powerful, the decision maker, and the person both the Plaintiff and the Defendant wanted to be on the good side of.

Another benefit the judge had discovered was that taking an extended length of time before rendering a decision in one of these cases usually resulted in the subject to cease to be of interest to newshound reporters from the Ocmulgee Observer, while they darted off chasing fresh scandals and crimes.

Also, the benefit of taking a case under advisement, instead of rendering a decision at the conclusion of the trial, was that sometimes one or both parties would come sniffing around in the interim seeking favors and bearing gifts.

Judge Garfield had learned this long ago and had profited by it greatly. The first time had been a case of a citizen suing an insurance company for denying the family’s claims after their house had burned to the ground.

Even though the insurance company’s lawyer had presented the evidence that several valuable items had been removed from the house prior to the fire and that the owner had been several months behind on the mortgage payments, the owner had testified that he was indeed removing items in an attempt to sell them in order to raise funds to erase his debt. Beyond that, the owner also claimed that faulty electrical wiring had caused the fire.

Judge Garfield wasn’t convinced by either side and choose to take the case under advisement. A week later while he was dining alone, he had been approached by a well dressed stranger, one whom he at once suspected of being a lawyer. He could smell them.

The stranger had sat down at his table without an introduction and slid an envelope toward him and said, “This is for your consideration of ruling in favor of the defendant in the current case you have under advisement.” Then without another word the stranger had risen and melted away into the crowd.

The judge didn’t touch the envelope, just let it lie there on the table while he finished his lunch. But as he was leaving he scooped it up and slid it into his inside suit coat pocket. When he got back to the privacy of his office he took the envelope out and examined it closely. It was plain with no markings. He slid the tip of the blade of his letter opener underneath the flap and cut down the length of the envelope and pulled out a cashier’s check for $20,000, made out to him. It was almost as good as cash.

The lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiff had been for $200,000 for the house and another $50,000 for the contents. The insurance company would only be out $20,000 instead of $250,000 if the judge ruled in their favor.

Judge Garfield waited four weeks before he issued a ruling via a letter to the Court and a copy to each party advising that he was ruling in favor of the defendant. He waited several more weeks before he cashed the cashier’s check.

This case had been the beginning of his corruption and his accumulation of wealth, while he made a practice of handing out stiff sentences in criminal court to distract attention from the civil cases he quietly and discreetly processed for profit.

Currently, he had taken a case under advisement which made his first corrupt one seem like small potatoes. This one was big, really big, but he wasn’t expecting any monetary compensation for his decision on this one. What he was after was a political appointment.

But today he was scheduled to preside over a session of criminal court, and as he sat in his office on the second floor of the Ocmulgee County Court House, just down the hall from the courtroom, he began to flip through the calendar. A lot of the names on the calendar were familiar to him and it made him bristle with anger to see that they were back in his courtroom. He blamed it on the sentencing guidelines he had to abide by.

Then he heard the outer door of his office open and close. He noticed that it was 7:45 a.m. and he knew that what he heard signaled the arrival of his personal assistant, Mrs. Florence Thurman.

All the anger immediately evaporated into joy, and his pulse quickened to what was fixing to be a dangerous rate.