Accusations

In front of me sat the judge. He was a fair man by all the accounts that had reached my ears. To my far right along the wall was the jury of my peers. They did not look like anyone I hung out with. They were one and all middle aged. These were the men and women who would decide my fate. A little closer across the aisle was the prosecutor. He reminded me of a weasel or a snake oil salesman, not that I knew the man at all. There was something about the stance of the man that put me off. “I never thought they would take it this far,” I had heard him say as I had entered the courtroom with my father. Neither did we. It was early summer and a beautiful day. I should be out floating on the Madison or riding down the back of Mount Blackmore on South Cottonwood trail on my mountain bike. Instead I was stuck in a drab tan courtroom. How did I find myself in the seat of the accused?

It all began in late October the previous year. Football season was upon the high school. My senior year had started out like every other year. I found myself in the familiar schedule: school, football practice, hang out. There was one particular day. I went and picked up my friend Kyle for school. We went to lunch. School got out and I hurried to practice. After football several of us went rallying in my car. It seemed like a very average day, nothing to concern myself with.

The next morning I was called into the principal's office. Mind you I had no idea what for. I was not an angel, but I hadn't done anything to warrant the attention of the principal. So I was a bit surprised when I entered the office and the school officer was there with another student. We will call him Joe. Now, Joe disliked me. At least that was how it seemed. It might have had something to do with a girlfriend who liked to flirt with me. I did not really care. I wanted to know why he was there.

It turns out someone had stomped the hood of his white truck in. There was quite the dent just in front of the drivers side of the windshield. The damage was wide enough, long enough, and the right shape of someone's feet side by side sunk four inches deep. It didn't take me long during the explanation of what had happened for me to figure out that I was the one they thought had made it happen.

The accusation came about from the fact that my friends and I played this game. We would jump onto the windshields of our friends cars without breaking them. It's a lesson in physics that has significance later. At the time it was just something we did. The bigger the vehicle, the harder it was. My brother broke the windshield of our friend's Dodge Durango doing it. Which happens to be the only time a windshield was ever broken. We had become very proficient at our game. Now, this was something that everyone saw us do. Something I guess you could say we were notorious for.

I say “we” because there were at least a dozen of us who engaged in the activity. There were others, underclassmen who mimicked us. Why was I the one to be singled out? I knew why Joe had fingered me. I did not understand why the principal had gone along with it. What evidence did they have that it was me?

At the time I wore a pair of Adissage sandals every day. A very specific type of sandal. They were adamant that my sandals were the ones used. Now, I wasn't the only person who had a pair of that type of Adidas. Half the soccer team had a pair though I was the only one who wore them around all day. I was curious how they knew without a doubt it was me and my sandals who caused the damamge. I said, “Let's go compare the prints left on the car to the bottom of my sandals.” It was a white truck after all. There was bound to be a residual print. My sandals had a very distinctive tread pattern. The bottom was a collage of national flags. I was denied.

This is the point where upon reflection I think they were getting frustrated that I would not just confess. The principal insinuated that sometimes, sometimes, he would go to the church on the other side of the school parking lot. The church had a big picture window facing the parking lot. That he observed the parking lot with binoculars. He hinted that he had observed me. So I said, “You saw me?”. This was a reaction on my part because it is kind of hard to observe someone doing something they didn't do.

The rest of the meeting was uneventful. Mostly because I stopped talking and stopped paying attention. This is the point where I exercised my right to remain silent. The school officer took down notes. They said they will investigate further and I left the office. I didn't know what to think. I had told them I didn't do it. I even tried to prove it to a point. What could I do? I put it out of my mind and finished the day.

After football practice, I got home and found a very distraught mother. The principal had called. He said I confessed in his office to stomping in Joe's hood that morning. She already had the estimate for the damage. They wanted over fifteen hundred dollars to replace a hood on a ten year old mini truck. I can't remember if it was a Nissan, Datsun, or a Toyota. There was no way I was going to allow my parents to shell out that much money for Joe's truck. I reassured my mom that they were mistaken. I had confessed to nothing. The next day my mom called and had a lengthy talk with the principal. He use to be a man I admired. My supposed confession was changed to a denial in the police report and a criminal case was pursued against me.

It was time to meet the public defender who would represent me in the case. She was very nice and assured us that based on what she could see, they had no case. The only concern was when the court date would be. If it happened during the school year and I lost, I would be expelled. That meant no senior year of track. So she asked the judge to postpone the hearing until after graduation.

That was the beginning of a series of bad events that plagued my senior year. I strained my back in a scuffle. Right before the state track meet I got a sinus infection. The worst was my brother died in early spring. All of these things had managed to shove the case to the back of my mind, at least until I graduated. Just a couple of weeks after I wore my cap and gown I was listening to the opening statements.

The first witness was Joe. He testified that my sandals were the ones that did the damage. He pointed to them. The same sandals my mom took the day the principal called and sealed in a bag for evidence. My beloved comfy sandals. He stated that though he didn't see me do it, but I was known to jump on cars.

Now it was thought that the next witness would be the principal. The prosecutor had pointed out that the principal had taken my, “You saw me?” as an admission of guilt in his opening argument. My lawyer had refuted that it was a question and not a confession. The prosecutor chose instead to go straight for my mom.

Not only had my mom bagged my sandals she had also taken pictures of the prints. The school police officer told my mom that they had taken pictures at the time of the incident. She thought it would be prudent to have a set of our own. It took a while but my mom had found the car in the school parking lot. A few days had passed and we were worried the prints had been washed off. Miraculously they were still there. So she put a twelve inch ruler next to the prints for scale and took several photographs. I wasn't there but my mom noticed some things right away. The prints were longer than the ruler, much longer. We had measured the length of my ten and a half size sandals to be around eleven inches. Also the dent was very impressive. I weighed around one-fifty at the time. One hundred and fifty pounds of strong safety/running back for me to throw around. My mom was no expert but she thought there was no way I could have caused so much damage the way they said I did. She said as much to the prosecutor. He wasn't concerned with that. He made an effort to discredit my mother, asking her why the official police photos weren't good enough for her. It was then that we found out that the police photos were dated weeks after the incident. The photos showed very little, if any evidence of the prints. He asked her, “You mean to tell me you've never seen these photos before? We released them to you on May fifteenth. Why didn't you inform us that they didn't match your pictures?”. My mom politely informed the prosecutor that was the week my brother had died and started to cry. It was like he sprouted horns and turned into the devil in front of the jury.

What about the prints? The national flags from my sandals were not pasted on Joe's truck. Remarkably the prints looked like tire tread marks. Not your standard tread pattern. These were not the prints of shoes made by any of the major manufacturers. I did not see Adidas advertising tire tread like grip. Truth is we had no clue what caused the prints. Whether they were boots or sandals was irrelevant. They didn't match my precious sandals. I think the jury could see that when my lawyer presented them side by side to each of the peers in turn.

It was now apparent to the prosecutor that he was losing the battle. In a last ditch effort he called on me as the last witness. The prosecutor asked if they were my sandals. Then he concentrated on the game. How is it that I could jump up on cars without breaking the windshield? Why should the jury believe I did not do it? He really tried to put the screws to me. I had taken physics my junior year. I recalled about momentum, force, and some guy named Newton. So I explained it.

We come back to the game of jumping on cars. The argument that when I jumped up from the ground to land on Joe's windshield I miscalculated and smashed the hood was physically impossible. Whenever something is propelled in an arc it has no downward momentum at the peak of the arc. This was the physics behind why we could land on a windshield without it shattering under us. Granted the ability of the windshield to support our weight was also a factor. You first had to be light enough to jump high enough to land on the windshield safely. To land on a windshield you have to also jump forwards. This decreases how high you can jump. You can tuck your legs up to regain those inches. That is in fact what we did. We ended up looking like Spider-man splayed across the glass. So even if I did miss the windshield in a theoretical jump I would not have generated enough force. Who ever caused the damage started on top of the hood to begin with. Judging by the prints of the shoes they also were of a larger stature than myself. He said he still did not buy it. He would not let me test my theory on his car. So I said, “I can show you on my own car. It's in the parking lot.”

It was time for the jury to make their decision. In less than five minutes they came back with the verdict. Read out loud it sounded like “not guilty.” I was innocent. I felt great for about two seconds. I now knew the true process of law and order. They say you are innocent until proven guilty. I have found that once you are accused it is like attaching a label. You are guilty until proven otherwise. Memories of how people reacted in school came flooding back.

There were three main reactions: He did it, who cares?, he didn't do it. It can be broken down even further. Of course there were Joe and a few of his closest friends who thought I did it. Many people believed I did it, yet still wanted me to get away with it (I would thank them for their misguided support). A lot of the guys in school didn't care who did it. From their perspective, Joe should have called me out. Everything should have been decided by the crush of bone on tissue, akin to the days when the victor was presumed to be the righteous party. Those who knew me best knew I didn't do it. A Michalson's word stood for a lot. I learned from my brother that my honor depended on being trustworthy.

After the case we had a small celebration. I could start the rest of my adult life without a black mark on my record. They never found out who really did it. I don't think an effort was ever made to find the truth. Once they had a scapegoat that was good enough for the system. Whoever did do it knew enough that since the heat was on me all he had to do was keep his mouth shut. Shortly after the case had passed I received an anonymous gift. Two rubber slabs in the shape of shoe soles. They were made from tires.