I served on a jury in a criminal case last week. It was so interesting, so Perry Masonesque, I’m going to try to share the gist of it with you. The bailiff told me ours was only the 2nd or 3rd criminal case since March, due to the pandemic. The rest were all summarily dismissed. But due to the circumstances of this guy’s case, they kept this one on the books.
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In early March of this year, the accused walked into a Home Depot not far from my house. Picture in your mind’s eye the Michelin Tire man come to life. This guy is 6’1” tall, 315 pounds. His neck looked like a sequoia. Butterbean, minus the amiable personality. He grabs a shopping cart, puts his empty backpack in the upper part of the cart (where you’d put a child), hangs a right just inside the door and heads for the power tools department. ALL of this was caught on security cameras, though he was out of view for a couple of critical moments.
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He loads his cart with a DeWalt power drill and a two-pack of DeWalt rechargeable batteries. Retail price for both items, around $450.00. So the items are IN THE CART, not in his backpack... yet. Then he pushes his cart all the way across the store to the bathroom. There’s a sign on the bathroom door that reads (in so many words) “Any unpaid for items must be paid for BEFORE entering. If you enter without paying first, Home Depot reserves the right to prosecute.” But he goes in anyway, WITH the items.
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Enter our heroes, Mutt & Jeff, the two loss prevention officers on duty that day. They had been following him both on video and surreptitiously on the floor since the moment he entered the store with an empty backpack. The two of them TOGETHER probably weighed less than the perp. I’d be surprised if either of them was over 145 pounds. Mutt pushes the bathroom door open just as the Michelin Tire man is exiting. He asks to look inside the backpack. Immediately, things begin to unravel. He plows through the two security men like a 315 pound bowling ball picking off a split, and heads for the exit. But our intrepid security men stayed with him, trying to reason with him; “If you just give back the merchandise, we won’t call the police. If you don’t, we’ll have no choice.”
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Michelin Tire man made his way to the parking lot with the two diminutive agents at his heels. He got to his truck; an old beater Dodge Ram that he’d just recently acquired, when Jeff lunged at the backpack. The zipper opened, and there was the DeWalt drill. The perp repeatedly told them “I’m going to kill you both!” He fumbled for his keys, got inside the truck, tried to close the door, when out of clear blue, came the flailing fists of Mutt the Magnificent. The perp punched Mutt a couple of times, but Mutt connected with the perp’s nose, giving him a nice gash.
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Then the perp reached down under the seat, and came up with a mat-black, long-barreled revolver. Just like Marshall Dillion’s. Both agents backed off: “He's got a gun! He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!” The perp jammed it in reverse, exited the parking lot, punched it, and disappeared up Johnson Creek Boulevard.
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The abandoned truck was found a month later. No sign of the alleged gun or the stolen merchandise. But Mutt & Jeff wrote down his license plates as he was exiting the parking lot that day, so the Sheriff’s Office tracked him down and an arrest warrant was issued—he was picked up and taken directly to the hoosegow for processing.
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Fast-forward to the trial. The perp’s lawyer was... was... how can I put this? He was BAD. Mind you, his client didn’t give him much to work with, but his defense was absurd. Gun? What gun? When the truck was finally located, there was no gun! The so-called gun was probably just a chisel that was found in the cab. If the gun allegation doesn’t fit, you must acquit!
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So the State called in an ex-FBI agent/turned digital forensics expert. They subpoenaed the perp’s iPhone (which apparently the perp thought he’d erased), extracted all its data, and lordy, lordy... what a treasure trove of inculpating evidence poured forth.
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Not long after the crime, he’d stopped at a Taco Bell and bought a hamburger (Who buys hamburgers at Taco Bell)? The burger wasn’t to his liking, being too small with too little cheese, so he pulled the two halves apart and took a picture of it, looking directly down towards the floor. And there on the floor, just in front of his left foot, clad in the same exact shoes seen in the Home Depot footage... was a mat-black, long barreled Revolver. Exactly as Mutt & Jeff described in their police report.
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Some additional information was extracted from Michelin Tire man’s iPhone. Turns out he had accounts on Offer Up, Craigslist, and some similar buy & sell marketplace websites. And guess what he sells? DeWalt power tools and battery packs. Page after page after page of them. He has no job. He’s literally been making his LIVING by selling new, in the box, never before used, DeWalt power tools and battery packs. Making maybe $500-$600 per day. Oh, and paying no taxes. But his council insisted that was purely coincidental. And the gun seen in the shitty Taco Bell hamburger picture? Not his. Doesn’t know whose it is. And the unusual shoes that matched the shoes seen in the security camera video? No comment. 😶
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We listened to the 911 call, scoured pages and pages of reports and watched the security videos over and over. It took us 90 minutes to come back with two guilty counts: Theft 2 and Robbery 2 (because he threatened to kill them with a gun). I don’t know what his sentence will be, but Mr. Michelin Tire Man is going away for a while. It’s up to the judge, based on both this case and his prior record...which ain't good.
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At the end of the day, the judge came into our deliberating chamber with a stack of pizzas and sat down with us just to chat. It was a GREAT reminder that sometimes the system works, unfair though it often is. But I am beyond pleased that this nasty bastard has been taken out of commission for a while.
•Here’s what Butterbean looks like
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