J'ACCUSE - Part IX

On the day my indictment was unsealed - St. Patrick's Day 2003 - I was arrested at my home and taken first to the U.S. Attorney's Office.  I was then moved to a holding cell beneath the courthouse.  This was a big day for me since I had never been handcuffed before and had never been in jail.  With the exception of a few speeding tickets, I had never had any interaction with law enforcement on a personal basis. 

Before being put in the cell, I was fingerprinted and photographed.  "Wow, this is my mug shot," I thought to myself.  I arrived in that holding cell at about 9 AM.  I had spoken to Jerry Shargel, my attorney, from my house before I left.  I expected him to meet me and get me out of that cell as quickly as possible.  But that was not to be.  Jerry had been waiting for days for the jury in Peter Gotti's case to return with a verdict.  Although I did not know this while in the cell, the jury had announced they had reached a verdict that morning and Jerry was at Federal Court in Brooklyn (Interestingly, Gotti and I would later be in the same unit in prison).  I sat in that cell and grew increasingly pissed and nervous.  Why wasn't he coming?  Why was this taking so long?  What did it mean?  I was a total neophyte to all this and every tea leaf I interpreted as bad news.  Around noon one of Jerry's associates came to tell me what was going on and why he hadn't shown up.  Although I wasn't happy, at least now I knew why.  

When I was first brought down to the holdings cells I was put in a cell by myself.  I was grateful for this.  As time went by other men were brought in with me.  I was conspicuous by being the only white person not to mention the only one in a suit.  Although very nervous at first, in time I was glad for the company.  None of these guys was particularly scary.  I remember one young hispanic guy in particular.

You know how you read about suspects/defendants who are placed in cells with government informants and in short order the defendant is giving up all sorts of information about his crimes to a total stranger?  I always had a hard time believing that.  Who is stupid enough to tell a total stranger something you didn't want your prosecutor to know?  But sure enough this hispanic fellow is telling me about his drug crimes and where all the money is hidden that the government is looking for.  Was he being truthful?  Who knows.  But I thought it incredibly odd he was telling me this.

At some point the guards brought lunch which consisted of turkey sandwiches from a deli.  I looked at the sandwiches and turned up my nose.  I did not eat them.  I mention this only because when I returned to this same cell two years later, I would have a much different reaction to that turkey sandwich.

At around 3 or 4 PM Jerry finally arrived and I was taken to a holding cell right outside the courtroom.  At this point I had no idea who the judge assigned to my case would be.  As you may know, in the Federal system it is done by lottery.  Jerry and I had discussed beforehand who we would want as a judge and who we definitely did not want.  The spectrum ranged from Judge Sheindlin - positive - to Judge Casey who is known by everyone as 'the blind judge,' because he's apparently legally blind - negative. 

I was taken into the courtroom and the rest you pretty much know from watching TV court dramas.  There was however a lot of press there.  The one thing that struck me as very odd, then and in the future, was that Judge Lewis Kaplan never asked me to plead to the charges.  He never spoke to me at all.  The prosecution asked for half a million dollars and a whole host of conditions for my bail.  I turned to Jerry at one point and told him to object to them.  He refused.  He told me if we contested anything, the Government would read the chats that were supposedly found on my computer.  I said, "Let them," and he replied, "you don't want that."  I had no way of knowing at that point pre-discovery that these additional chats were mainly fabrications as well.  I knew what I had chatted about on the computer.  And however embarrassing, they were all perfectly legal and constitutionally protected speech.  One of the conditions requested by the Government was so broad and vague that even the judge couldn't approve it.  The Government wanted language inserted in the conditions that prohibited me from going anywhere where children might be present.  Kaplan rightly pointed out that this would prevent me from shopping at Bloomingdales.  He said he would not approve that one and told them to come back with better language.  They never did.  As we walked out I asked Jerry how Kaplan rated (meaning 1-10 as a good judge).  He paused and said without much conviction, "He's a five."  Jerry's poor judgement would prove to be never worse than in that assessment.

I learned a lot from that exchange between Kaplan and Deborah Landis, my prosecutor.  Debbie had somehow gotten into her head that I was the embodiment of evil.  I was simply the worst person on earth.  As such, she would behave in every instance in a completely over the top manner.  She would lie, exaggerate and use the worst kind of hyperbole.  What I started to realize that day was if you pushed back hard she would cave. 

Unfortunately for me, Jerry pushed back maybe once or twice during the entirety of my case.  In almost every instance he refused to challenge her.  One of the reasons I had hired Jerry was the incorrect notion on my part that because he was personal friends with Debbie that would benefit me.  Just the opposite turned out to be true.  In every instance he would excuse her behavior as normal and routine. By the end it was only Jerry who believed that. 

We left the courtroom and I waited for an elevator.  Jerry and Henry Mazurek, his associate, called me over to an open elevator.  It was full of reporters.  More than that, Tom Robbins who had started this all by co-creating and printing a series of fabricated chats attributed to me was in the cab as well.  As we exited, Robbins said mockingly, "Good luck, Russell."  I was furious at Jerry and Henry for putting me in that position. 

We went down to a room where defendants arrange bail.  Unbeknownst to me, Jerry and Ray had arranged my bail previously.  We were there to sign papers.  This was also the first time I had ever come face to face with my prosecutor, Debbie Landis.  Since I'm my father's son and was taught to always behave in a civil manner, I walked over to her, put out my hand and said, "Debbie, Russell Harding."  She looked at me with utter horror.  Like Pol Pot was casually introducing himself to her.  At first she wouldn't shake my hand but then reluctantly gave me a fish handshake.

As we exited the building there was a huge mob of reporters and cameras.  Jerry turned to me and whispered, "Gotti didn't have this many (meaning John, not Peter)."  It was a long walk to the garage where Jerrry had parked his car and the cameras followed and the reporters shouted questions. I didn't rate the waiting Town Car that you usually see when high profile defendants exit that building (Bernie Maddoff, Martha Stewart, etc.).

Jerry and I drove a few blocks and met Ray who was waiting in his car.  I drove back to my house with Ray.  He told me during that trip that he had met Debbie a few weeks prior when he went down there to arrange bail.  "What did you think of her," I asked him.  "Total cunt," he said.  Ray told me that during the entire time she was asking him questions she kept referring to Liz Harding as, "Russell's mother"  Finally at some point Ray said, "you mean my wife."  Debbie said no, not your wife, his mother.  She would not be convinced that Liz Harding was not only my mother but Ray's wife.  And that Ray had only been married once.  This was typical of Debbie. Her research somehow told her Ray had remarried and I was the product of his first marriage, and even Ray couldn't convince her otherwise.  That's Debbie in a nutshell -  bad, lazy research that she then defends to the death. 

As luck would have it George Bush announced a deadline for the start of the Iraq war that night.  I was relieved because I knew my story would be moved further back inside the papers the next day.

As the weeks went by Jerry received huge binders of discovery from the Government.  It was mostly receipts from trips I took or meals I had that were billed to HDC. Amusingly, at least half a dozen binders were e-mails from my deputy Luke Cusack's office account.  I say amusing because Luke had this strange habit of refusing to ever delete an e-mail.  The head of IT at HDC had complained to me about this because his e-mails were taking up a lot of space on the server and he asked me to talk to Luke. 

I did but Luke didn't want to delete anything so I didn't push it.  It was odd because in most cases like mine where a conspiracy is alleged you would expect to find some, any, e-mails between the parties confirming the conspiracy: a hint, a mention, an allusion - something.  But there wasn't a single e-mail or Blackberry post that could in any way have backed-up the charge of a conspiracy.  I mean really nothing.

That wasn't surprising to me since I wasn't engaged in any conspiracy, but I thought how disappointed the staff at the U.S. Attorney's Office must have been after going through all those documents and finding nothing.  Especially since I am sure they thought they had a gold mine in having Luke's entire e-mail correspondence with me intact.  The only e-mail worth mentioning was one from Luke to me that mentions Richard Roberts' expenses (he was Chairman of HDC and NYC's Housing Commissioner).

Through this period I was continuing to see my psychiatrist, Dr. Allan Collins.  Judge Kaplan had made a condition of my bail that I continue to see Collins; at my expense of course.  Collins, as Chair of Psychiatry at Lenox Hill, wasn't cheap.  He was costing me $250/hr.  I found our sessions increasingly less useful but was now compelled to see him regardless.  In addition, I was speaking and occasionally seeing Mark Mills the forensic shrink my first lawyer had hired and Jerry had kept on.  Mills was continuing his practice of shaking me down for large amounts of cash while never, ever presenting me with an invoice. 

As I've told you before, Mills' MO was to have his assistant call me say on a Thursday and tell me I had to Fedex to him that day $5,000 for them to have on Friday.  The calls were always urgent, frantic and out of the blue.  Since I had come to rely on Mills as a last resort for my panic attacks I was afraid not to send the money.  I came to believe - and Shargel later agreed - that Mills' millionaire lifestyle (home on Foxhall Road in DC, week long trips with his family first class at Claridge's in London, new 7 series BMW, St. Albans for his kids, etc.) was not being met by his consultant fees.  I came to believe that the frantic calls were associated with his Amex bills being due.  But that was just a guess. 

Around this time Jerry hired a jury consultant who did a few hours of work and billed me $10,000.  I met her once for a few minutes and she threw some questions at me to see what kind of witness I'd make, since it was always my intention to appear as a witness on my own behalf.  She gave me all sorts of accolades after my grilling, but who knows if that was the truth.

My days at this point were spent almost entirely alone and I was in a perpetual state of fear, panic and dread.  With the exception of the MCC, no time in prison ever rivaled the horrors of this period.  Those commentators and yahoos who tell you that defendants out on bail living in a nice apartment are carefree enjoying their freedom have never been through this experience.  It's beyond hellish.  Your life comes to a complete standstill and even the ability to move about freely only serves as a constant reminder that others are moving forward with their lives while yours is stuck in limbo.

Early every morning I would take Seabe for a walk to Central Park.  I would be in shorts or sweats and stare at all the men in suits along Fifth Avenue starting their day.  I imagined they had not a care in the world as they went off to work.  I, on the other hand, was trapped in this time vortex - never moving forward or backward, just standing still and slowly losing my mind.

Jerry seeminlgly kept to his promise to check with me before speaking to Ray or answering any questions from him.  I say this because Ray had become increasingly more direct in wanting to know what was going on in my case.  I blamed him slightly for having messed things up with my prior lawyer and their joint strategy so I wanted him kept away from the case going forward.  I placated him unsuccessfully by saying, "everything's fine."  He didn't believe it but I would offer him no more.

It became ever more difficult for me to visit Shargel in his office.  Every time I would go there I would get physically ill.  That's not helpful when you're under federal indictment.  Around this time Jerry informed me that Debbie had subpoenaed my medical records from every doctor she had found in my Rolodex.  As a Harding, I have an abiding belief in quality doctors and I had many of them: GP, internist, podiatrist, orthopedic surgeon, dentist, diet doctor, five different psychiatrists going back 20+ years, dermatologist, opthamologist and on and on.  Debbie subpoenaed my medical records from every single one of them.  Let no lawyer or TV cop drama lead you to believe that in the face of a federal prosecutor your medical records are confidential - especially your psychiatric records/notes. 

I exploded and insisted Jerry contest these subpoenas.  He flatly refused.  He argued that we needed to pick our battles carefully and in any event, what would they find.  As I knew and was borne out, whatever it was Debbie was looking for turned up nothing, but that was never my issue.  This was about never giving an inch.  Jerry's philosophy turned out to be give in on everything.  Especially when it meant accepting the idea that his personal friend Debbie was out of control.  According to Jerry, everything she did was routine and matter of course.  This was all just following the pattern of any criminal matter.  I never could accept that, although he convinced himself of it fully.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Loop Pool]

I hope you are getting over this as well as u can. You should find someone to fall in love with and devote yourself to them. I have been through similar issues, the legal system is staffed with sociopaths and nothing good comes from what they do. They are evil.

[RA Harding]

I don't know your case, but I'm very sorry for all the troubles you apparently have endured. regards,

RAH

[tom baden]

I have been through several ordeals since I last read your blog, all lies completely made up by police and prosecutors. Now I feel my only hope is to put my faith in lie detector tests, to take them and publically challenge the liars to take them. The problem is that these tests are expensive. The Association of PolyGraph specialists does offer free tests to defendants who maintain their innocents and if they pass will give them free legal council, I wish I had known this a long time ago.

I am trying to figure out a way to get some news agency of tv producer to produce a show that will let me take lie detector tests for every crime I have been accuseed of and on all the lies these cops have made up. And challenge them to take the test, they wont take them because they are liars and would fail. And I win.

I have never been accused of a crime by any civilians only state employees who work with the cops and the cops themselves!

Our legal system is such a farce!