If you measure by crowds and cameras, the hottest ticket for courtroom drama in town this week is the Robert Wone case. It is the sad and confounding tale of a lawyer found dead from stab wounds in a friend’s apartment near Dupont Circle in 2006.
Three friends in the house at the time all blame an intruder; cops and prosecutors believe they know how Wone died and have charged them with obstruction of justice and such.
Having written about the case, I was eager to attend the opening scene Monday morning. The curious lined up outside Courtroom 310; the court had reserved a seat for me in the packed room. Alas, a bum battery in the wife’s car made me too late to take the seat.
So I wandered the halls of D.C.’s Superior Court. On any given day there are trials on rapes and drug cases, robberies and more drug cases. Outside of Courtroom 320 two U.S. marshals had set up a security checkpoint, to supplement the one we have to clear to get in the building. Must be a murder trial. I wanted in.
“This must be about a bad dude,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” the marshal said. “The whole family.”
I walked inside, took a seat and quickly found that “The Wire” ain’t got nothing on this case.
John “Baby J” Foreman was on trial for murder one.
Sporting thick dreadlocks, white shirt and blue tie, he didn’t look much like a kid, let alone a baby. The government contends that “Baby J” went to the playground of Bruce Monroe School on the night of Oct. 17, 2008, with Arthur “Geezy” Gale and two friends.
“Baby J” plugged Geezy a few times in the head and back, the government says, because “Geezy” allegedly squealed on “Baby J’s” brother, Maurice, who had been jailed for attempted murder in Maryland.
The two who saw “Baby J” do the deed fingered him. One was testifying on the stand — very reluctantly — in the presence of “Baby J,” his family and friends. Dejuan “Chicken” Souder was a slight boy of 16. He wore ankle chains, an orange suit, handcuffs. He was in custody to testify and to be protected.
He talked about watching “Fat Derrick” Black and “Geezy” shooting at a Chrysler that had stopped on Columbia Road the night of the Howard University homecoming in 2008. He talked about being with “Baby J” the night of the shooting.
“Baby J’s” defense attorney ran clips of two homicide detectives giving Dejuan Souder the verbal version of the rubber hose treatment in a bare room in the Violent Crimes Branch two days after “Geezy” was found dead. The real thing is better than anything TV crime shows have to offer.
In the time that I heard details of Geezy Gale’s demise and saw video of two tough cops aggressively interviewing a kid, the Wone trial was barely getting off the ground. The judge ruled on a motion. I missed an opening statement.
.But for gritty drama, I got the better seat.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
