Kingdom of Fear (9 page)

Juan, age 3 (
HST
)

GP:
What’s the appeal of the “outlaw” writer, such as yourself?

HST: I just usually go with my own taste. If I like something, and it happens to be against the law, well, then I might have a problem. But an outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law, not necessarily against it. It’s pretty ancient. It goes back to Scandinavian history. People were declared outlaws and were cast out of the community and sent to foreign lands—exiled. They operated outside the law in communities all over Greenland and Iceland, wherever they drifted. Outside the law in the countries they came from—I don’t think they were trying to be outlaws . . . I was never trying, necessarily, to be an outlaw. It was just the place in which I found myself. By the time I started
Hell’s Angels
I was riding with them and it was clear that it was no longer possible for me to go back and live within the law. Between Vietnam and weed—a whole generation was criminalized in that time. You realize that you are subject to being busted. A lot of people grew up with that attitude. There were a lot more outlaws than me. I was just a writer. I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn’t have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.

Fall 2000

(Allen Ginsberg)

. . .

In the violent years of the Sixties I found myself sinking deeper & deeper into a dangerously criminal lifestyle, along with most of my friends & associates. I was a hardworking professional journalist, at the time, with a wife & a son & extremely smart friends & a brand-new BSA motorcycle that was widely admired as “the fastest bike ever tested by
Hot Rod
magazine.” My comfortable pad on a hill above Golden Gate Park was alive, day & night, with the babble of artists, musicians, writers, lawyers, wild bikers & rock ’n’ roll stars whose names would soon be famous. . . . San Francisco was the capital of the world, in those years, and we were the new aristocracy. It was like living in the Kingdom of Magic.

But something about it disturbed me. Something was far out of whack. It was impossible not to notice that more & more of my friends were being arrested & locked up in jail. We were doing the same things we had always been doing, but we were suddenly committing more crimes—Felony crimes, in fact, which carried drastic criminal penalties. . . . Like five years in state prison for smoking a joint on a bench in a public park, or ten years for resisting arrest by refusing to be drafted into the Army & sent off to die in Vietnam.

It was the beginning of the Criminalization of a whole generation, and I soon became keenly aware of it. Even Joan Baez went to jail. New laws made possession of LSD a Class I felony and gave all police the right & even the duty to kick down yr. door on a whim. . . . I looked around me one night at a birthday party in Berkeley & saw that we were all committing a felony crime, just by being there. Yesterday’s Fun had been officially transmogrified into tomorrow’s insane nightmare. Fear led me to retaining a prominent Criminal lawyer; he agreed on one condition, he said—that I would never talk to a cop before he came to my rescue.

Indeed, some of my best friends are lawyers. I have other good friends who are law enforcement professionals, but not many. It is not wise, in my business, to count too many cops among your good
friends, no more than it is wise to be constantly in the company of lawyers—unless, of course, you are about to be put on trial in a Criminal Court, and even then you want to be very careful. Your life or your freedom and certainly your sacred fortune will certainly depend on your choice of a criminal lawyer, and if you make the wrong choice, you will suffer. If your attorney is a fool or a slacker, you are doomed. The courts will disdain you, all criminal prosecutors will treat you with contempt, your friends will denounce you, and your enemies will rejoice. You will be taken without mercy into the bowels of the Criminal Justice System.

That is when pleading hopeless insanity begins to look like a pretty good option. The Insane, after all, can be cured, under the law, while the Guilty will be Guilty forever—or until they make enormous money contributions to a friendly second-term President with nothing to lose by tossing a few last-minute Pardons up for grabs. That is when you will need a profoundly expensive Attorney. Justice has never been cheap in America, not even for the innocent.

. . .

O no. Forget that traditional bullshit about “let the client suffer.”
While the lawyer suffers Later, all alone, confronting his own demons in the lavish privacy of his own mansion(s).

No. None of that. I want him to suffer now, just as I do. You bet! We are Brothers, joined at the Soul. We will suffer together, or not at all.

This is our sacred Vow, our highest mixing of Blood, Truth, and Honor. We will fight back-to-back on the crest of the highest hill—because We are The Brotherhood, the highest tribe of Truth & Law & Justice.

We are few, but we speak with the power of many. We are strong like lonely bulls, but we are legion. Our code is gentle, but our justice is Certain—seeming Slow on some days, but slashing Fast on others, eating the necks of the Guilty like a gang of Dwarf Crocodiles in some lonely stretch of the Maputo River in the Transvaal, where the Guilty are free to run, but they can never Hide.

Their souls will never die, and neither will ours. The only difference will be that when the Great Cookouts occur on the very Selective
beaches of the Next Life, it will be their souls that are turning on the long sharp sticks in the fire pit, and ours will be the hands on the spit handles. . . .

. . .

I instructed my attorney to scroll up my personal FBI file the other day, but he laughed and called me a fool. “You will never get your files from those swine,” he said. “We can ask, we can beg, we can demand and file civil suits—but they will
never
tell you what they have on you—and in your case, Doc, that shit will be so huge and so frightening that we don’t want to see it. The cost would be astronomical.”

“Of course,” I said quickly. “Thank you for warning me. I must have been out of my mind to mention it.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “figure at least a million dollars—about what you’d pay for a nice house in New Orleans or two rounds of golf with Tiger Woods.”

“Shit on it,” I said. “Never mind the FBI. Who else is after me?”

“Nobody,” he said. “I can’t understand it. This is a dangerous time to get busted. You should knock on wood and enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Yes,” I replied. “That’s why we’re going to Africa next month. It is time to get out of this country while we still can!”

“We?” said the lawyer. “Just exactly who is ‘we,’ Doc? As your attorney, I know not
we.”

“You evil bastard,” I said. “Don’t worry, I understand the attorney-client relationship. Nobody will ever accuse
you
of Terrorism, will they? I think it’s about time some of you bastards got locked up, counselor. That’s what
we
means.”

He fell silent. It is always wise to have yr. lawyer under control—lest he flee & leave you to sink all alone.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me—
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

—Pastor Niemoeller (victim of the Nazis)

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION AT HEART OF AUMAN CASE
B
Y
K
AREN
A
BBOTT
,
N
EWS
S
TAFF
W
RITER
R
OCKY
M
OUNTAIN
N
EWS
,
A
PRIL
29, 2002

Colorado’s Lisl Auman has one thing in common with the man federal agents say was the 20th hijacker on Sept. 11. They were in custody when others committed the spectacular crimes that got them in the worst trouble of their lives.

Auman was handcuffed in the back of a police car when a man she had known less than a day shot Denver police officer Bruce VanderJagt dead in 1997, but she was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was in jail last year on immigration violations when others committed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks for which federal prosecutors want Moussaoui executed.

He’s still in jail, awaiting a federal trial in Virginia on charges of conspiring to bring about the attacks that killed thousands.

Auman, 26, is behind bars in a state prison while she appeals her conviction in a case that also has attracted nationwide attention. The Colorado Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in her case Tuesday.

Moussaoui is not a sympathetic figure in most American minds, but Auman may be.

“The instinctive reaction to the Lisl Auman case is, ‘That’s not fair,’” said Denver attorney David Lane.

Defense lawyers say both Auman and Moussaoui have been unfairly targeted by authorities eager to punish someone for heinous crimes committed by others who put themselves beyond the reach of the law by dying.

The 19 known hijackers died when the four planes they commandeered hit the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon and crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

VanderJagt’s murderer, Matthaeus Jaehnig, immediately killed himself with the officer’s gun.

Both Auman and Moussaoui exemplify a long-standing principle of American law: You don’t have to pull the trigger, hijack the plane, be nearby, or even intend to kill someone to face the toughest penalties.

“The theory is that even though you’re not a hands-on operative, you’re still as culpable as the perpetrator,” said Denver defense attorney Phil Cherner, president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar.

A Denver jury convicted Auman of “felony murder”—a murder committed during another serious crime or the immediate flight afterward—on the legal theory that she was responsible for VanderJagt’s death because she earlier had arranged a burglary.

Auman enlisted Jaehnig’s help in burglarizing her ex-boyfriend’s apartment in Pine. When the police showed up, the two fled by car. The police chased them to Denver, where they took Auman into custody. But Jaehnig escaped on foot and shot VanderJagt while Auman sat handcuffed in a police cruiser.

Defense lawyers nationwide see Auman’s case as their chance to challenge the felony murder statutes under which people who didn’t expect anyone to be killed, and weren’t present when they were, have been condemned to death.

“The felony murder doctrine is extremely harsh and frequently unjust,” Lane said.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has filed a brief on Auman’s side. The Colorado District Attorneys Council has filed one supporting the government.

“What we are concerned with is the integrity of the felony murder statute statewide,” said Peter Weir, the council’s executive director.

He said the established public policy in Colorado is that “it’s appropriate for an individual to be fully accountable for the consequences of all acts that they engage in.”

“Once the acts are set in motion, you’re responsible for what happens,” Weir said.

An unusual assortment of supporters has gathered in Auman’s cause, from “gonzo” journalist Hunter Thompson to conservative U.S. Senate candidate Rick Stanley to one of the jurors who convicted her.

. . .

Peacocks don’t move around much at night. They like a high place to roost, and they will usually find one before sundown. They know how many nocturnal beasts are down there looking for food—foxes, coyotes, wildcats, bloodthirsty dogs on the prowl—and the only animal that can get them when they’re perched up high is one of those huge meat-eating owls with night vision that can swoop down & pounce on anything that moves, from a water rat to a healthy young sheep.