Justice, “Rhode Island Style”

On Friday, September 29th, the two owners of “The Station” nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island entered nolo contredre pleas for 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter when sparks from a fifth-rate, has-been ‘80’s big hair band’s “pyrotechnics show” in early 2003 ignited ceiling tiles made of highly flammable material causing a conflagration that resulted in one of the most horrific disasters in American history.

The owners of the nightclub, two local brothers, received respective sentences four years in prison and a suspended sentence.

What?

Four years for one and the other walks? This has to be a joke, right? Who agreed to this deal? The DA's office? Please tell me that you’re not serious, Mr. Attorney General. You are. Oh.

Sometimes the ugliness of political justice hurts so bad that your chest heaves. Sometimes plea bargains are so pernicious that you can feel the bile working its way up your throat and you have to retreat to soap operas or ball games or game shows, because nothing makes sense any longer. This is one such instance that defies logic and mocks all what little that remains sacred in our justice system. How could the defendants walk away with a proverbial "slap on the wrist"? Think about it: The sentence to one brother amounts to about two months in the pen for each life lost. And he'll probably get an early release from some "Club Fed" facility.

As an attorney (not licensed in the State of Rhode Island), I consider the Court’s acceptance of these pleas to be one of the vilest miscarriages of justice in the annals of American jurisprudence.

Imagine the thought of going out for a casual night of music and libation. I was a young man once, I know how it goes. Imagine laughing and relaxing in a bar crammed with patrons and, within moments, due to (an entirely preventable) accident, the tinderbox goes up in flames. The horror that ensued was unspeakable. 100 men and women lost their lives on what was supposed to be a night of fun. Scores were injured badly, and families who lost a mother, father, brother, sister, son and daughter suffered irreplaceable losses--forever.

The victims were young men and women whose lives offered such promise, gone in a flash. Naturally, the victims’ families and the public demanded to know what caused the fire and why it accelerated. Immediately after the fire, there were the usual finger pointing games, blue ribbon panels and crocodile tears, but the authorities investigated the matter and determined that a crime was committed and that certain individuals bore criminal responsibility.

Once probable cause has been determined to exist for a crime, the Attorney General has the ultimate duty on behalf of the citizens of the state and the victims to seek “Justice”. On the other side, the attorneys representing the accused have a duty to their clients to assure that the State has proven each every element of the crime for which the defendants have been charged beyond a reasonable doubt. At least, that’s how it works in textbooks.

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of cases are disposed of prior to trial. If every civil or criminal matter before the courts mandated a trial by jury it would take 25 years (at least) to go from indictment to verdict. Jury duty would become a cottage industry. Our courts simply do not have the capacities to handle the demands or completely addressing all the civil and criminal complaints that are entered therein.
So the State may either build a whole lotta courthouses (which is not going to happen) or compromises will have to be made. It's that simple.

In courthouses all across America, it often occurs that plaintiffs’ lawyers, defense lawyers and District Attorneys need only threaten taking a complaint to a jury to induce financial settlements or guilty pleas to lesser charges. Accordingly, if the usual and customary practice of courts is to encourage resolution without the benefit of trial in the case of an anonymous party, what should the public expect in a criminal matter that so overwhelms the sentiments of an entire nation? How can anyone “win” a case where the ratio of victims to perpetrators is so overwhelming?

The public should expect that justice is done. I'm not speaking of your everyday garden variety "hallroom justice." Nosuh, I'm talkin' about the formal by-the-book kind, as is the case when the public is actually watching. So, the issue before you, ladies and gentlemen in the jury box of public opinion, is you whether you believe justice was done in this matter.

The calculus used by The People is whether they could obtain a guilty verdict, and there are very few cases, let alone one of this magnitude that are of the “open and shut” variety. Then there are the practical considerations of cost to the taxpayer. Bringing this case to trial would cost untold millions, the recitation of facts in open court would undeniably be heartbreaking to the victims’ families and the media coverage surrounding the event would be a daily feeding frenzy. And there’s always the possibility that the defendants could demonstrate through a skilled cross examination that the prosecution failed to prove their case. From a practical standpoint, there is substantial justification for reaching a plea deal and moving on.

So, why is there such a bitter outcry from the victims' families? To paraphrase one man who lost two family members in the fire, he said (if he were allowed to testify fully during the victim witness impact statements before being silenced by the Judge), “I wanted to say that I hate the State of Rhode Island. They promised us justice but instead treated the victims as though they were trading cards to be sold at a flea market.” This fella pretty much said it all.

Could a consensus approach (such as meeting with the vctims' families)? provide a "sense of closure" (to use that disgusting phrase) Probably not. Anyone who was remotely connected to any of the loved ones lost could only find emptiness instead of validation, for in this particular action before the court, nobody could ever have won. There are some folks who would not have been happy even if the heads of the defendants were stuck on telephone poles. Others remain so scarred by their losses that they silently accept the fact that no amount of retribution could ever return their loved ones.

Everyone remains incarcerated in their grief.

The short answer is, in such instances where there can be no just or ideal resolution, the Attorney General’s Office has a responsibility to do its job and insist that the case be brought to trial, political expedience, length and/or cost considerations be damned. Require the matter to be adjudicated by the book and let the chips fall where they may. Then, the Attorney General could look in everyone straight in the eye and truthfully state that no stones were left unturned.

At a moment when the eyes of the world are watching, the State must demand that their Constitution and Laws mean what they say. If the State instead elects to employ dispositive means, such a course suggests that justice may not be a primary jurisprudential consideration in Rhode Island. If justice loses, everyone loses. And make no mistake about it; justice took a major hit on this one. Come Monday morning, it will be business as usual at the courthouse.

The defendants’ counsel did exactly what any competent criminal attorney would do under the circumstances, to represent her clients zealously and to obtain the most favorable resolution for her clients. She was just doing her job, folks. To have acted with such integrity without buckling under tremendous public pressure is a remarkable accomplishment.

Ultimately, the judiciary is responsible for the resolution of the matter. The trial judge’s decision to accept the plea deal (despite overwhelming public opposition) however benevolent served to thwart the ends of justice. The court ruled that accepting a plea would “spare” the victims and their families from the gruesome details that would have been brought out at trial. How very thoughtful of His Honor to be so considerate. It seems to me that Jack Ruby purportedly had the same mindset as justification for offing Oswald back in ‘63. And that hardly had the effect of putting things to rest.

Among the parties who were “spared” the details were the defendants themselves, who would have been required to spend countless days listening to the testimony of medical examiners and other professionals whose job it was to clean up the horror. They would have learned that the people whose misfortune it was to have entered the defendants' property were regular folks, who were loved by many, not simply statistics or names on a death certificate, They were people, just like you and me. If the defendants profited from their patronage, by God, they were responsible for their safety. Perhaps that would have been punishment enough. As it was, the victims’ impact statements were crammed into one day of the court’s calendar. And this is justice?

Part of being American is the idea you can have your “day in Court” for the redress of your grievances. Win, lose or draw most people feel that they've been allowed their say, the matter has been adequately considered and move on. And the dispositive method does work well in the overwhelming majority of criminal cases on many levels; it works to maintain an orderly processing of the traffic that overwhelms the Court, the state exacts a price for a defendant’s illegal conduct and the defendant generally accepts less criminal responsibility than could be possibility be assessed through a guilty verdict.

However, this case should never have been about getting a pound of flesh from the defendants. No amount of prison time could adequately compensate the victims and the public for the accidental deaths of 100 human beings. Rather, it should’ve been about obtaining justice for the victims, their families and the citizens of the State. By accepting less than a full trial of the allegations against the defendants, regardless of length, expense or discomfort, the State swept justice under the rug. And in Rhode Island, that's where it stays.

And Justice weeps.