The 68th anniversary of that date was just two days ago, and was marked by a fitting, if ironic, remembrance. It began, at least for me, late this summer, when I received an e-mail from a man I'll call Gary (short for Shigeru) Kukuchi. Gary had come across on my music website (www.folklawproductions.com), and had asked if I were related to a Dr. Murray Sprung. As it turned out, Gary was a graduate of the Kyoto College of Foreign Languages, a Japanese institution of higher learning of which my late father was honorary president, and a recipient of an honorary doctorate. My father was an international lawyer who, following a stint as a war crimes prosecutor after World War II, was "grandfathered" into the practice of law in Japan when they adopted the constitution drafted during the MacArthur-led occupation.
Lest I get ahead of myself, this story began in late September of 1964, when Gary, a recent college graduate, was visiting New York City on business with his new employer, a major electronics company. For reasons that remain unclear to this day, Gary was arrested by a member of the New York City Transit Police, and charged with disorderly conduct. Just to put this into context, disorderly conduct (or "dis-con" as it is known by those in law enforcement), is the lowest-rated "Offense," under the New York Criminal Code, classified as a "Violation," and not a crime. While arrests for dis-con are nothing to be proud of, they are hardly events that should ever haunt someone convicted of them. Included among dis-con Violations are, among others, such things as public intoxication, indecent exposure, loitering, unauthorized political protests, etc. When, some years later, I served as an Assistant District Attorney before the very court before which Gary was arraigned, we used to refer to dis-cons as "spitting on the sidewalk" offenses, usually resulting in "Conditional Discharges," which is law-speak for "get out of here and don't darken our doors again," or we'll keep this in mind should there be a "next time."
Gary asked if I had retained copies of my father's files from 1964. I explained to him that my father had died in 1995 and I had disposed of virtually all the files he had meticulously maintained over almost sixty-five years of practicing law. He said he would still like to meet with me along with his immigration lawyer. He believed his case had been dismissed in 1964, but that, since 9/11, he had been stopped by immigration authorities in many of his frequent trips to the U.S. While these questionings would end when he explained that the charges had been dismissed, and he would ultimately admitted past Customs, it was more than an occasional annoyance. For a number of years following 9/11, he was admitted with no problems, but the questionings had unexplainably resumed in 2009, four times so far.
While I was not sure I could be of much assistance, I said I would be happy to meet with him and his lawyer. When I asked him to tell me about his arrest, he began by saying, "It happened in the subway." As soon as he said that, I said, "Gary, I not only remember my father discussing your case with me, but I recall it in great detail--including the exact date." Although my father had hundreds of clients over the years--including many Japanese nationals, the odds of him having discussed a case with me, while not infinitesimal, were small, indeed. And yet, this one was as clear in my mind as if if I'd had a celestial conversation with my father yesterday. Here's why.
When the then young Gary, still struggling with "New York" English, got into trouble in the Big Apple, he called the only lawyer he knew---my dad. My father met with him, and accompanied him into court early in December of 1964. Upon being arraigned, the judge noted in an audible aside to the court reporter, "It's interesting to note that today's date is December 7th." Realizing the injudiciousness (pun intended) of his comment, the judge quickly said to the court reporter, "off the record," meaning "don't take down what I just said." My father, a big and powerful man, rose to his his feet in the righteous indignation he could invoke better than most, and said in a booming voice, "NOT 'off the record.'" Recognizing that his comment would imperil any conviction he might have imposed, the judge (according to my father's story) acquitted Gary, and dismissed the case. My father, proud of his success, celebrated with his young client. In telling me the story shortly thereafter, my father underscored how serious such a matter would have been to Gary who, after all, had been sent over by his company, even then a "household name" in hi-fi and other electronic manufacturing. He said that, at a minimum, the "loss of face," even or even so minor an offense, would have required him to resign his position, and possibly consider taking his own life for the honor of his family. Shocking as this may sound by contemporary American standards, hara-kiri was a far from unusual solution when Japanese people of honor were confronted with behavior deemed to be disgraceful.
(In what may seem like a pointless aside, the night before I was to meet with Gary, my son was busy having his new flat-screen TV Monitor "calibrated," so that the blacks were blacker than black, the colors true, etc. While chatting with the calibrator, I told him that I was thinking of getting a flat-screen myself. He recommended a specific make and model as the "best out there, if you can get it. " Read on.)
When we met for dinner the next night, Gary's lawyer presented me with a copy of the "Certificate of Disposition" he had obtained from a clerk of the Criminal Court of New York City, reflecting that Gary had pleaded guilty to the violation and received a suspended sentence. Furthermore, there was no file available for us to examine. Minor as such an occurrence would be considered, it was, nonetheless, a "conviction" and something that would appear on the official records available to, among others, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Knowing my father to have been a careful lawyer, I was concerned that he might have viewed the suspended sentence as a victory, without realizing that it still was a conviction that would result in Gary's having a "record." That said, I was still confident that we could have a judge review the case and decide there was no reason to keep such a matter "live" after so many years and, ultimately, get it dismissed.
In the course of the evening, Gary (who had admired my music--even ordered a few copies of my CDs), was talking about the many people he had known in the music business, including many of great fame who had sought him out. While far from a braggart, Gary was quite accomplished in his field, and had apparently received a number of "Man of the Year," and similar honors. When I asked him just what kind of work allowed him to mix with the likes of Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, etc., he mentioned that he had been president of the very electronics company that produced the very flat-screen the aforementioned "calibrator" had recommended to me as the model of choice. When I remarked upon this coincidence, Gary was quick to say, "I can get it for you wholesale." Never did those words sound sweeter.
Anyway, after our conversation, I got in touch with a lawyer named Peter Tilem (of the law firm of Tilem & Campbell), who had worked for me a number of years ago and, after eight years at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, knew his way around the esoterica of the criminal courts. After weeks of obtaining affidavits from Gary and me, we tried to set a hearing, when Peter received a call from the criminal clerk's office asking why we were trying to schedule a hearing on a matter that had been dismissed forty-five years ago. When we told him about the certificate of disposition reflecting the guilty pleas and suspended sentence, the clerk said he had the file, which reflected that Gary had, in fact, been acquitted and the case dismissed. He asked us to send him the certificate of disposition Gary's lawyer had received and, upon receiving it, said it had been improperly transcribed, and there was no need for a hearing. And so, last Monday, December 7, 2009 (forty-five years after the case was, in fact, dismissed) we received a corrected certificate of disposition reflecting Gary's acquittal.
In computer-land, there is an expression, "garbage in, garbage out," which means that you'll always get the wrong answer with improper input. Interesting how here, the wrong input can take on a life of its own, and cause a person with an otherwise spotless record to be needlessly harassed over so many years. For Gary, we have an enormous relief, and--for my father-a recognition of a posthumous and well-deserved victory. For me, the opportunity to stand in my late father's shoes and do that which he would have done. For the rest of us, it is an interesting lesson in justice. Sometimes, things are not as they appear, and assumptions of guilt should never be made without the assertive presence of defense counsel. This, as we've learned, can even extend to "official" documents, which are only as good and accurate as the people who fill them out. I can still hear my father's admonition when I first to the oath as an Assistant District Attorney, over thirty-seven years ago: "Johnny, better a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be wrongly convicted." How those words resonate down the corridors of time as a lesson to us all.
