Due Process (Joe Dillard #9)(66)
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17
In the parking lot, Leon Bates heard from one of the bailiffs posted inside that the hearing was over and what had happened. It was, to say the least, tense in the parking lot surrounding the Justice Center in Jonesborough. Leon instructed the bailiff to keep everyone inside until he gave the all clear.
Leon’s men had been able to scoop up two pick-up trucks with four men each in them at the power station based about five miles from the courthouse based on information provided by Sarah Dillard’s friend, Greg Murray, early that morning. The men were all armed with fully-automatic assault rifles, but Leon’s deputies had been waiting for them, surprised them, and arrested them without a shot being fired. Still, the arrests confirmed Leon’s worst fears. Some kind of attack was planned that day.
At the courthouse, however, the kind of security Leon needed to provide was a nightmare. The courthouse faced a busy four-lane highway between Johnson City and Greeneville. If one walked out the front door, Tavern Hill Road was just to the left. Leon had blocked that road off three miles away at Hairetown Road, but he couldn’t just shut down Highway 11E, which was the four-lane that ran parallel to the courthouse in the front.
Across the highway, there were three feeder streets—N. Cherokee St., N. 2nd Ave. and Washington Ave.—that could be used as a means of approach by someone with hostile intentions. Leon had checkpoints on both sides of 11E, on the old Jonesborough Highway, on Main Street, on Old State Route 34, and on Highway 81, but his officers couldn’t force people to get out and allow their vehicles to be searched without some reasonable suspicion that they had committed or were about to commit a crime. Three or four men in a pick-up—white or black—did not provide that suspicion. And even so, with a fairly simple plan—like being in a home or a hotel or one of the restaurants or diners close to the courthouse and mobilizing quickly—Leon knew small groups could get to the courthouse parking lot, and if they did, all hell could break loose.
He had snipers on the roof of the courthouse and on the roofs of two businesses across the street. He had his men and vehicles placed tactically so that it would be very, very difficult for anyone to get to the courthouse itself. But if they came from opposite directions, got into the parking lot, and wanted to start shooting at each other or at Leon’s men, there would be little he could do but shoot back.
Less than five minutes after Leon was notified the hearing was over, he saw a red SUV, followed by a blue pick-up truck, pull slowly into the courthouse driveway. They’d come from the west, his right, and they stopped fifty feet short of Leon’s SWAT team, who were set up behind concrete barricades that had been hauled into the site.
A minute later, two more pick-ups, both silver, pulled in from the east and parked at the edge of the lot stopping short of a Tennessee Highway Patrol SWAT team. The men in the vehicles that had come from the west were black. The men who had come from the east were white. Leon counted what he thought to be eight whites and eight blacks. He saw weapons in the vehicles. Men were starting to get out of the vehicles and take cover on the sides, behind the doors, behind the trucks, in the truck beds. Leon pushed a button on his communications microphone and said, “Hold your fire, gents. Go easy.”
Leon quickly reached into the SUV he’d driven to the courthouse that morning and grabbed a bullhorn. He set the Colt M4A1 carbine he was carrying in the back seat and climbed on top of the SUV. He was wearing full tactical gear, but he was exposed. A head shot could kill him. There were also certain types of armor piercing bullets available. He hoped none of these people were quite that sophisticated. Still, Leon stood atop the SUV and faced them. He had to try to settle this peacefully.
“The hearing is over!” Leon said through the bullhorn. “The right thing happened in there. The boys who were falsely charged have been exonerated and will be released. A police officer has been taken to jail and the district attorney will end up being disbarred. There is no need for any bloodshed, no need for any more hatred. The system has finally worked.
“Now if you men turn around and drive on out of here right now, we won’t even follow you. We’ll let you go. No harm has been done. It’s over! Do you hear me? There is nothing you can do here but spread more hatred and fear and blood, and there’s just no sense in it. No sense at all. So please, I’m asking you. Hell, I’m begging you. Load up your weapons, get back in your vehicles, and drive away.”
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17
The attorneys, boys and I all gathered in the jury room off a hallway outside the courtroom. The boys looked stunned.
“What in the world happened back there in chambers?” Jim Beaumont asked me.
I winked at him and said, “I’ll never tell.”
Kevin thanked me and Charlie and Jack over and over. He had questions: “Does this mean I get my life back? Will they let me finish school? Do you think we’ll get to play the last few games of the season? What do we do now?”
A bailiff came to the door and told us to stay in the jury room until he gave the all clear. His name was Hobie Beales, and I’d known him for more than twenty years. I walked up to him and said quietly, “What’s going on out there, Hobie?”
“Might be trouble brewing,” he said.
I nodded at him, and told him I’d be coming out in a minute.
“I don’t think that’d be a good idea, counselor,” he said. “We picked up a couple of truckloads of boys earlier. Sheriff thinks there’s gonna be bad trouble.”