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Governor J. Fife Symington III is a piece of sleaze, a man without any discernible values, an inveterate
liar and con artist who swindled his own mother. The list of his crimes is like an avalanche--reading it
exhausts and finally overwhelms you. So, as he sits in court accused of 22 felonies, how can he still
hold office?
The answer to that question becomes clear if you just watch him for a few minutes. Some people have
style and some don't. Some animals have it and some don't. Dogs don't. Joe Arpaio doesn't. Cats do.
And Symington has more style than you ever expect to see outside of a Parisian fashion show. He's
bankrupt. He's facing decades in jail. But when you look at him sitting there with his attorney John
Dowd, you'd think Dowd was the accused criminal and Symington the hotshot lawyer from a John
Grisham novel. He lounges in his thousand-dollar suit, perfectly coifed hair gleaming gold under the
lights.
Both of his women are present--his wife, Ann, looking tired and distraught, and the woman rumored
to be his mistress, Annette Alvarez, looking sullenly sexy. Far from seeming trapped or awkward,
Symington deports himself as though he's at a gathering in his honor. I can't say whether he's brave or
just sociopathic, but if style was admissible as an extenuating factor in criminal trials, the governor
would walk out of the courtroom without a conviction to his name.
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asked whether media coverage of Symington's exploits has prejudiced her opinion of him, she says no,
and that she considers him to be a very honest man.
Even the narcoleptic-looking judge seems fazed. He asks her what leads her to believe in Symington's
honesty.
And he might get his wish. It seems only a formality that, when the prosecution asks that the woman
be barred from serving on the jury, the judge will agree. You're supposed to have no preformed
opinion of the accused, good or bad. The possibility of such a devoted fan of Symington's being
entrusted to decide whether he's guilty is ludicrous enough to be surreal. But when the prosecution
makes its request, the judge denies it. There's no chance that the woman will be allowed to serve--
before the trial really gets going, either side can demand that six jurors be barred, and the prosecution
will definitely insist on getting rid of her--but it's obvious where Hizzoner's sympathies lie.
Will Symington get a fair trial? No. And he doesn't mind a bit.
I decide to head upstairs and see how George Leckie's making out. Annette Alvarez has had the same
idea--she's there when I arrive. It's the end of the trial, and both sides are making their final spiels to
the jury. Leckie's boy goes first. Leckie, it seems, is the greatest man who ever lived, and never did a
bad thing in his entire life. Same as Fife, I guess. Maybe that's why they're chums. The lawyer argues
that the evidence against Leckie is purely circumstantial, and that one of the witnesses has admitted to
perjury. It's a theatrical display--I half expect the guy to wipe his eyes before he finishes up and sits
down. He declaims with such force that, even when you know that it's a performance and that he
knows what a scumbag Leckie is, it still gets to you on a certain level.
The prosecution, by contrast, does poorly. Their guy's attitude is snide, and he doesn't really present
any evidence against Leckie. He doesn't even dispute that the evidence is circumstantial. Instead, he
tells the jury that it doesn't have to be 100 percent sure of Leckie's guilt to convict him. The
prosecution's case is weak, and it looks pretty good for Leckie, but his demeanor is the opposite of
Symington's.
It almost feels good to see Leckie here today, to see him like this. This man is an arrogant criminal,
who once smirked and swaggered as he and his friend Symington cut state programs and laid off
workers. This is a man who, when driving drunk, ran down a cyclist--and then, when a witness barred
his way to prevent his escape, he ran her down as well. This is a man used to committing crime and
getting away with it--in the DUI case, the police didn't look for him, and it was left to the woman he'd
nearly killed to track him down. The police never submitted the case to the County Attorney's Office.
Leckie is a man whose experience has led him to feel free to break the law, knowing that his money
and his position will ensure that the police cover up for him.
This is as repulsive a human being as you could hope to see getting his deserts in a court of law. So it
almost feels good to see him here. Almost, but not quite. As I look at him, I can't help but hope he'll be
acquitted. I can't guess whether it's from the cancer that ravaged him or from the shame of a criminal
trial, but he has an air of pathos as shocking as his customary arrogance. He seems smaller than he is
as he sits quiet and unmoving beside his lawyer. I imagine that he'd flinch if you went up to him and
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It's late in the day, so the jury decides to start its deliberations the following morning. The judge
admonishes its members not to read or listen to the news meantime. Some journalists get up to leave,
wanting to get back to Symington. The judge doesn't let us. He orders us to sit down and wait until he
says we can leave. After a while, he decides to release us, and we make our way back downstairs.
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