Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

I stared at the large envelope stuffed with cash on the table.

“That’s for the judge,” he said to me as he slid the envelope forward. I could already see that there were several one-hundred-dollar bills inside. Looking at the size and weight of the envelope, this could easily be $20,000.

“That’s not how it works,” I replied simply, sliding the envelope back.

“It’s how it works in every system,” he replied.

“Not this one,” I replied fervently with a frown. “If you’re going to push me to bribe Judge Connor, you’ll have to tell your son that he’s either on his own, or to find someone else to represent him.”

My client’s fifty-something-year-old father pounded his fist on the table. It was loud enough for my co-workers to stop and take a peek inside my office. I held up a hand to let them know that I got this handled.

Joshua Gelding’s parents called it a mistake: he was just a young college student looking to make some side money, not realizing that selling casino chips to other people was illegal. The District Attorney’s office called it a brilliant scheme: Joshua Gelding allegedly applied to work at the local casino, Green Paradise, for the sake of stealing casino chips, which he would then collect and sell to other buyers. What did Joshua Gelding call it? He did not call it anything, and it’s possible that he doesn’t know what he did: Joshua possesses some form of mild intellectual disability.

“Members of the jury, the evidence will place the defendant in Green Paradise as an employee who has daily access to the casino chips,” David Langham, the assistant district attorney, said during his opening statement to the jury. “In the year the defendant worked there, he took casino chips—but never the chips with the largest values, no.” David raised an index finger as emphasis. “You’ll learn that the defendant is much too smart for that. He goes for the smallest valued chips—the ones that won’t draw the most suspicion if cashed in. And, it’s from that knowledge that the defendant accumulated these chips to sell. That is how and why he stole $50,000.00 worth of chips.”

One of the problems with the State’s case, however, is that they can’t tell anyone, much less the jury, whether my client actually sold the chips. While this isn’t a requirement to prove that Joshua stole them, the State’s case is definitely weakened because they can’t even prove their theory.

“But, this case isn’t about stealing casino chips,” I said during my opening statements to the jury. “It’s about Green Paradise losing $50,000.00 worth of chips and pinning the blame on Joshua, whom you will come to learn is the least favored employee at Green Paradise.”

There was one other hurdle for the prosecution: Joshua’s mental capabilities. Why?

“One of the things that the State has to prove is that Joshua Gelding actually intended to steal the chips,” I continued. I paused for a few seconds before I added, “and this the State must do beyond…a reasonable…doubt.”

If Joshua suffers from a mild intellectual disability, it is highly questionable whether Joshua actually intended to steal the chips.

“My name is Rodrick Brown, and I am a manager at Green Paradise.”

Predictably, the prosecutor called in the hiring manager for the casino to testify against my client. This man’s testimony would serve one purpose: to speculate about how Joshua would get his hands on these casino chips.

“Mister Gelding keeps all of the stations clean, so he’ll pick up trash, wipe off counters, clean up spills, that sort of stuff—at all of the stations,” the witness said.

“Does the defendant have access to any of the casino’s chips?” David asked.

“I would say yes. At any point in time he could walk up behind a dealer and swipe a chip here and there—“

“Objection!” I said, standing. “This is purely speculative.”

“I’ll withdraw that question,” David said with a pleasant nod of his head.

The judge requested the jury to forget about what was testified, but I knew better. How do you unring a bell? David did this purposely so that the jury could hear the question.

“Mister Brown, not every employee can handle the casino’s chips, right?” I asked the witness. I picked up Green Paradise’s employee handbook off of my desk and began to move forward.

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Only managers, dealers, and the cashiers can handle the chips, yes?” I didn’t bother to show the witness the book. He saw that I had it in my hand and that I was ready to correct him if he lied.

“Yes.”

“But, Mister Gelding is not a manager.”

“No.”

“He’s not a dealer?”

“No.”

“And he’s not a cashier, either, right Mister Brown?”

“Correct, he is not.”

“Mister Gelding is simply just…a ‘floor assistant.’”

“Yes.”

I put the book down and looked at the witness square in the eyes.

“The fact is, you don’t like Joshua Gelding, do you?” Like David, I asked the question for the sake of having the jury hear it.

“He wasn’t my favorite employee,” the witness replied.

I decided to do what most attorneys have cautioned not to when cross-examining a hostile witness: I decided to ask an open-ended question.

“Why?”

“Joshua always had his head in the clouds,” Rodrick answered. “I or other people always have to ask Joshua to do things more than once. He’s always scribbling something in a notebook, and he’ll use that to respond when he’s perfectly capable of speaking.”

“This notebook?” I asked as I picked up a small, black, leather notebook bound by an elastic enclosure.

I opened the notebook and flipped through the crisp ivory pages within. All of the pages were filled with writings and scribblings. Some were in orange marker, others in black ink, and some with pencil. There were brilliantly drawn portraits of people’s faces inside; there were also random words littered about the pages, many circled. More than half of the pages contained incomprehensible strings of numbers and letters. I landed on one particular page.

“You wrote ‘moron’ in Mister Gelding’s notebook, didn’t you?” I asked, showing the witness the words on the page, which were written in big, furious letters of red ink.

David immediately stood to object, but the judge shook his head at him.

“It was a joke,” Rodrick said. “We all like to joke and tease Joshua because he likes to point to words in his book as a way to respond, so I wrote ‘moron’ in there. He even thought it was funny.”

I allowed several seconds of silence to fill the room so that these words could sink in with the jury. I set the book back on my table.

“Mister Brown, you never saw Mister Gelding take any chips, right?”

“No, I have not.”

I sat down thinking I was going to have this trial in the bag. Rodrick will prove my theory that the people of Green Paradise pinned the loss of the chips on Joshua because they didn’t like him. That is, until my client demanded that he testify during his case-in-chief. This was a double-edged sword. Joshua is a bit unpredictable. He always carried on an air of preoccupation: something was always on his mind. There is no telling whether he would respond to the questions asked. In fact, he and I never rehearsed his testimony because we planned on him pleading the Fifth. On the other hand, perhaps the jury could see for themselves that Joshua wasn’t the kind to formulate such an elaborate scheme to steal casino chips.

But, Joshua’s direct-examination was surprisingly tolerable. Joshua liked talking about himself and his accomplishments, though his favorite thing to refer to were his notes and drawings in his black book.

“Joshua, have you ever been diagnosed with anything?” I asked him towards the end as he looked at me with a blank look. “Do you know what that means?” I followed up.

“No I have not,” he replied eventually. “I’d like to think of myself as a genius…though my parents say I have a few screws loose.”

The jury chuckled at this response, which was my cue to just finish. I nodded to David, who immediately stood, excited that he got to cross-examine the defendant.

“Mister Gelding, did you steal chips from Green Paradise?” David went straight for the kill. He probably figured that my client would say no, in which case, David would find a way to infer that Joshua was lying. Surprisingly, my client said,

“Yes.”

I stared at my client. This was news to me.

“Really?” David said, as if not expecting this answer either.

“The chips have ascended,” Joshua said.

“What does that mean?” David asked.

Joshua motioned for his black book. David and I exchanged glances as I took the book to my client, who quickly thumbed through the pages within. He stopped on one of the pages that contained the strings of letters and numbers and pointed to it. “Ascended,” Joshua said. He then opened the page that contained the word “moron” on it and pointed to it, laughing loudly. My opposing counsel stared at Joshua, a visible look of frustration slowly surfacing. David would continue the cross-examination to the best of his ability, though seeing that he wasn’t getting anything damning from Joshua, he eventually gave up.

Now, I will say that I gave the best closing argument I could in my career for this case because I fervently believed that the State had nothing on Joshua. I showed the jury the notebook, and I referenced Joshua’s nonsensical “confession” about the stolen chips. I returned to my table feeling triumphant, giving Joshua a pat to let him know that I was confident. As David got up to offer his rebuttal, Joshua slid the book next to me and whispered, “Bitcoin.” I didn’t quite understand until Joshua flipped to the pages with the incoherent letters and numbers.

“Bitcoin,” Joshua whispered to me again with a sort of smile on his face that said he knew he was a genius. He tapped the codes. “The chips ascended.”

I stared in disbelief. What I had initially dismissed as nonsense was in fact code.

Joshua did indeed sell the chips. He traded it for cryptocurrency and kept the private passwords to them written in the black book. He was not only truthful with his confession, he even showed everyone how he did it. And now, the prosecution is ignoring his statements because they sounded like nonsense. It then became clear to me that Joshua knew what he was doing. He knew that it would be difficult to trace the stolen chips to him through his cryptocurrency. He knew that the prosecution would overlook his notebook with the scribbles. But, above all, he knew the prosecution carried the burden to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.