In my legal career, I represented a couple of Bank Robbers. One, my first Federal case, resulted in a dismissal. My investigator, Sharon Duckman, believe it or not, and I timed the trip from the bank to where the alleged thief, my knuckle headed client, was arrested, and, argued, along with some other evidence, that he could not have covered the distance at rush hour. In another case, one which I acted as standby counsel didn’t end up the same way. My client, a man with a prior for the same charge, received a pack that blew up, covering him with orange sludge. Captured on video, the FBI agent who had previously arrested him, recognized his face and proceeded directly to his home. My client let him in, made a full confession and then either allowed the agent to search his house or they got a search warrant, I cannot remember which, leading to the discovery of the clothes, bank bag and some other detritus connecting him to the crime. Oh, did I mention a handwriting expert tied him to the demand note? I did the opening and the closing statements and cross-examined the agent. He represented himself, doing the rest. A jury convicted him. Sentenced to 20 or 30 years, he brought an ineffective assistance of counsel motion against me, arguing I didn’t ask the agent the questions he wanted asked.
I spoke with a few other bank robbers and may have represented one or two. They struck me as being different. Bold. Defiant. Fearless. One told me the drug of choice for bank robbers was coke, because you needed courage, even if falsely provided by drugs, to walk into a bank and demand money. Armed or not armed, the robber has to have a plan. The guys with the loot stand behind counters. People with guns guard them. Cameras record everything. Silent alarms notify the cops. Slick, direct and quick. Come in unobtrusively, make a demand, take the money and run. The robber has to have an entrance plan and an exit plan.
Read today that Dave Parker robbed a bank. Don’t care if he did it or didn’t do it. No one hurt physically. Sure some traumatic effects on the bank people. People who rob banks don’t think about such things. I wonder what they do think about? Can’t be that they will enjoy the money and live happily ever after. Maybe they do, who knows?
I got one idea. Getting cold out there. When you don’t have a place to live and you have drug and alcohol problems, in addition to a TBI, going to jail rather than a more serious and tragic alternative, could be an easy way out. Who knows? He deserves a fair trial and a just sentence. But it’s a drastic solution to a solvable problem.
