Author Archives: Patricia Wild

March 15, 2010: A word or two about the police

It wasn’t until Day 3 of Nesto’s trial that one huge aspect of this trial became clear: Finding those 5 kilos of coke in Nesto’s house was a big, big deal to the Taunton police. A “once in a career seizure,” as Dennis Ledo, from New Bedford’s crime unit put it.

Oh. (Silly me; I thought such an amount to be, you know, routine.)

So. Besides the usual possibility  that the police might have misinterpreted “the pieces of the puzzle,” as Taunton police officer Troy Medeiros put it, and the usual possibility of  racial profiling, Nesto’s case was also about a BIG Deal Seizure. That must have been pretty exciting!

Oh.

And, unfortunately, this must be said: How could I sit in that shabby courtroom and NOT wonder if, given Bedford County’s rampant drug economy, that police corruption might not be part of The Big (and VERY exciting) Picture, too?

Oh, yeah: This, too: Those drugs were discovered 5 years ago. So when the very first witness, Taunton police officer Deborah Lavoie, admitted she was a bit hazy on what had happened on March 31, 2005, that made perfect sense.

Oh, dear.

To learn more about The War on Drugs and a much-needed perspective from former police officers, I urge you to check out Law Enforcement Against Prohibition’s website: http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php (LEAP can also be found in Links)

March 12, 2010: Who IS Nesto Monell?

[Cut and pasted from www.weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/05/american-hero-needs-your-helpsupport.html, posted May 14, 2008]
“They say the time when an inmate awaits trial is a greater period of fear and uncertainty than the actual prison sentence. It is hard for the mind to settle down because it doesn’t know what it is settling down to. In my case, the future can hold the possibility of merely a few months in jail or several years. How can I make plans? How do I dare to hope?”
—Lennie Spitale

I’ve been in this concentration camp for 3 years, 1 month. I know who I was, I also know who I am going to be, it’s very hard to figure out who I am right now. So when I was asked to write about myself, I found myself frozen with pen in hand.I have come to a determination: who I was, was too long ago, who I will be is still undetermined, and who I am now is a mental volleyball in a championship tournament.It’s very hard to describe who I am without addressing some facts of the case without sort of analyzing the case. Let’s face it though, I’ve been in front of at least 6 judges, 5 lawyers, I’ve represented myself, had 5 bail hearings officially and unofficially, I’ve personally addressed a judge 3 times in open court, personally wrote to two judges, wrote to the prosecutor twice, have had 3 different prosecutors (DA’s), hundreds of pages of testimony collected, hundreds of pages of testimony thrown out, and that’s just the basics.

Analysis: there are two rifles, $110,000.00 worth of drugs, three different fingerprints, a house under renovation that was also for sale, 4 years in the army, weeks after an honorable discharge, 3 years, 28 days and counting, 22 ½ hours a day locked in a cell, and a trial 90 days away (date finally set as of April 08).

Who am I? I’m Nesto Monell, 28 years old, drinks Budweiser, generally watches TV only on Super bowl, I’ve been in trouble as a teen (nothing serious), graduated Bristol Plymouth Tech, took mechanical/architectural drafting, took auto body my last year, have had four car accidents (one my fault), worked since age 15 (had to get work permit because of labor laws), worked through my four years of high school, got my license at age 16 ½.

I’ve had a few long term (over 3 years) relationships with great positive women, I’ve aspired to be an architect, then an auto body technician, and other occupations. I’ve been rude to my parents, stayed out late nights without permission, been to summer school twice in my life, got a skip (skipped a grade) once (then sent back), been to numerous private Christian schools (last one being 8th grade), I’ve been in fights, favorite sport is swimming, attended New England Tech then dropped out, joined the Army, hated jumping out of planes and secretly planned to stop (but turned out to love it after about the tenth time), started smoking cigarettes in 2001 at an Army school (yes, my mother hates it). I’ve attended church while on my own, love my sister and brothers, helped raise them, signed up for the Army with my mother, officially made an oath for active duty on my long term girlfriend’s birthday (then had to announce to her family that I was leaving in 5 weeks for four years—I’m a jerk, I know), got dumped while in Afghanistan, owned a few cars, first car was a 1981, ran a business from my mom’s garage (traveling auto body tech), rented a building for my business but the business failed after a year. I was 19.

I’ve had credit card debt (debt free in 2003), spent my vacations with my family, met some good friends, been a victim of fraud by credit scams, ripped off by my life insurance company, went to college in the Army, worked on cars (my hobby) on the weekends for beer and expenses (Army), worked at a gym (Army), learned my girlfriend was cheating, cried at times, been to Myrtle Beach, Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Germany, New York, South Carolina, drove thousands of miles, bought a ’95 mustang (my dream car) at age 23, been to two weddings, 5 retirement parties, two college graduations, won $2,000.00 on a scratch ticket, and I did drink while underage… I can go on.

What I am not:

A drug dealer, the owner of a hundred grand in drugs, owner of any rifles (they do have serial #s), or the owner of the three fingerprints that were lifted from the drugs. The man I knew for only three weeks was not a close friend, I’m not pleading guilty, and I don’t need help to plead guilty to a sentence of 15 years, 10 years, or 5 years. No deals period.



March 11, 2010: “So what happened, exactly?”

Ahh, but recounting what happened  is never exact, now, is it. Everyone knows this. At this very moment, in courtrooms around the country, juries and judges are listening for The Truth in the  stories told by witnesses, family members, the police, etc.

God bless them.

My account re the night of March 31, 2005 will be just as sloppy, subjective, and just plain wrong in spots as the sworn testimony those juries and judges are listening to:

In February of 2005, having recently been honorably discharged from the army (he’d served in Afghanistan), Nesto Monell came home to discover that, after pipes had burst, his family had moved from their  Taunton, MA home. Indeed, the seriously-damaged house was for sale. A self-starter and “between jobs,” so to speak, the twenty-five year old decided to renovate the house himself.

After some false starts and not much progress, Nesto’s ” friend,” who’d been letting Nesto sleep on his couch, suggested the “help” of 2 well-connected guys (WCGs) who owned a lot of property in the Taunton area so had connections with construction workers.[Quotation marks certainly help my take on this story, don’t they!]

On the evening of March 31, Nesto had been drinking beer and playing pool when he received a phone call from one of the WCGs, asking him if he planned to come by the house. Nesto said no. Later that night, driving past his house, he sees all the lights on and cars in the driveway.

What the hell?

So he goes into his house and tries to talk to one of the WCGs but he’s on his cell. Frustrated, Nesto calls his girlfriend but, as he’s talking to her, suddenly two men (three men? I was never sure) in hoodies burst into the room with guns and handcuffs. Nesto keeps his cell phone on, his girlfriend hears everything, she calls the police. Nesto is handcuffed, forced to the floor, but decides that “if I’m going to be killed, I don’t want to be on the floor,” and, in fact, manages to escape. Still handcuffed, he runs through the neighborhood until, some time later, circles back to see his house surrounded by police cars. Handcuffed, “a black man,” as one policeman described him, Nesto walks up to a policeman, asks what’s happening, says “That’s my house,” and is promptly arrested. You see, when the police responded to the home invasion call from Nesto’s girlfriend, they’d  found 5 kilos of coke and several guns, including an AK 47.

Yikes.

March 10, 2010: What’s the metaphor?

February 16, 2010, Bristol Superior Court, Taunton, MA:

So here we are, in a gloomy, badly water-damaged, second-floor  courtroom: dozens of prospective jurors;  Nesto’s supporters; the African American woman judge; Christopher Tarrant, the prosecutor; Joseph Krowski, Nesto’s attorney; the court recorder; three bailiffs and Nesto Monell, himself.

As the interminable, mysterious, and mostly behind-the-scene jury selection proceeds, there’s plenty of time for those of us not directly engaged to take note of our environment. We stare at the courtroom’s gigantic gas chandelier refitted with energy-efficient bulbs, the intricate green and brown stenciled ceiling, the mosaics on the wall over the judge’s head and wall of law books behind her, the barely-functional window shades, the worn blue-green carpeting, the intricate, beautifully-turned spindles of the courtroom’s railings. We stare and stare again at those bulging, sloppily-repaired water-damaged walls.  We listen to sleet striking the courtroom’s air conditioners and the rackety sounds of a major construction project—a brand new courthouse is being built just feet away.

But we’re here. In the current Bristol Superior Courthouse, a formerly palatial 1895 Greek Revival building, located in the very heart of downtown Taunton—which, BTW, resembles the “It’s a Wonderful Life” ‘s Bedford Falls.

What’s the metaphor?

More importantly (But perhaps the same question): What does the jury make of this setting?

Most importantly: Does what the jury make of this setting work in Nesto’s favor?

The jury pool: Most are in their twenties and thirties, all are white, it seems, most are working-class, I’m guessing; lots of scarves, jeans, jeans with heels; very few suits or dressed-up outfits; only one gum chewer that I can see.

Are they bored? Sleepy? Dismayed to be in this gloomy room ? Impossible to know: their faces give nothing away.

Once selected and seated, the jury hears the judge use words like  “rule of law” and “presumption of innocence.” Staring at the mosaic of a disembodied, muscled arm wielding a hammer, the metaphor comes to me (OK, it’s not strictly a metaphor):

All of us in this creepy courtroom are exquisitely suspended in A Moment, a particularly Present Moment. Taunton’s “Silver City” past is well-represented by the craftsmanship and lofty ceilings of this courthouse—surely the jury appreciates those spindles, that mosaic arm, those stencils. The future can be seen, literally, right out the window.

What are these spindles, that mosaic, those stencils teaching us? (Hint: It’s something about Nesto’s character.)

What do those construction sounds tell us? (Hint: It’s something about possibility)

What will guide us, moment by moment, in this Present Moment? Answer: The timeless rule of law. And a wondrous, far-sighted (get it?) concept: that a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

March 8, 2010: “Is it fair to say. . . ?”*

[How Prosecutor Christopher Tarrant would begin many sentences at Nesto Monell’s trial, February 16 – February 19, 2010, Taunton, MA ]

Is it fair to say that after the factories and mills of Bristol County shut down, drug-dealing became the next best way to make a living in  Brockton, New Bedford and Taunton?

Is it fair to say that Nesto Monell’s skin color is part of this story?

Is it fair to say that juries notice when white people support a defendant of color?

Is it fair to say, as (Quaker; brilliant) Susan Louks noted during the trial, that although the criminal justice system is deeply flawed, it’s the best thing humanity’s come up with; let’s celebrate its desire to do the right thing?

Is it fair to say that this account is highly subjective? And written by a writer, not a reporter? [Answer: Absolutely!]

So let’s begin, as Quakers so often begin, with another question:

Why were half-a-dozen Quakers from Friends Meeting at Cambridge sitting in a once elegant courtroom in Taunton, MA at 9 am on February 16th, 2010?

The short answer: Because of who Nesto is. (Which is, in part, about his mother.)

A longer answer: In support of  Nesto Monell, age 30, who was on trial for drug-dealing and possession of a firearm.

Who is Nesto Monell? What happened the night of March 31, 2005, the night he was arrested? Who’s his mother? What happened at the trial?

Keep reading.

March 5, 2010: On The Green Line:

I’m sitting across from a curly-haired, older woman, completely dressed in black, who receives a phone call just as the train leaves Boylston. She says something in rapid-fire Spanish then, closing her cell phone, begins to weep. She pulls a Kleenex out out her bag, blows her nose, wipes her face, carefully dabbing under her eyes where her mascara has run.

She’s Chilean and has just heard terrible news, I decide.

Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself, shopping in Copley Square. It could have been anything that made her cry. Anything.

I wanted that woman to cry about Chile’s earthquake, I realize later, walking through the Common. God help me: I needed a connection to that tragedy. She’s it.

February 15, 2010: NYC # 4

February 13th: Watching the news re Haiti with my son-in-law in his living room:

The NYC-based television announcer begins many of her sentences with: “You can imagine. . . ”

Well, no, I can’t. Warm, safe, well-fed and American, no, sorry, I cannot imagine how this earthquake impacts the people of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

I simply can’t.

February 8, 2010: New York City Story # 3

  1. [Note: These stories happened while I was staying in Brooklyn for much of January. As with much of this blog, these stories deal with race.]

January 9, 2010, Brooklyn Museum:

My dear friend Lynne has taken the train from Boston early this morning so that she and I can go to the Brooklyn Museum—she especially wants to see Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” part of the museum’s permanent exhibit since 2007.

It’s a Saturday; the place is packed. As so often happens in NYC, I am again struck by how many more people of color are here (the same thing happens on the subway, in the supermarket, etc, etc.) . That we’re in a museum begs me to consider how often I see anyone except white people in Boston’s cultural institutions. Answer: very, very few.

After Lynne and I sate ourselves on Chicago’s sumptuous banquet (Overhead: a little girl, wisely held in her mother’s arms, asks: “Can I sit there?” “We can all sit here,” her mother tells her.), we wander through other exhibits, opting out of the “Who Shot Rock and Roll” show because it’s so packed.

We find ourselves in a large exhibit hall adjoining a glass and steel storage area containing shelves and shelves of beautiful stuff. Already reeling from taking in so much—”museumitis”—although I’m curious to see what’s in this sort-of-displayed-but-not-really gallery, I don’t walk in.

But I reflect, as I did re the treasures I’d once found on Lynchburg’s Legacy Museum of African American History shelves: What gets displayed in any museum? And who decides?

February 2, 2010: New York City Story # 2

January 8, 2010, Greenwood Park, Brooklyn:

My grandson Dmitri arranges clumps of icy snow  in the dead-middle of the paved, spacious, open area of the park: “You’re building an igloo,” I say. He looks at me quizzically. So I realize he doesn’t know what an igloo is.

When we return to his family’s apartment, he sits on my lap and, together, we watch a 7-minute segment of “Nanook of the North” in which Nanook and his family build an igloo from scratch.

Which reminds me of a time maybe 40 years ago in the Central Park zoo when a peacock had unfurled his magnificent tail and the grandmother standing next to me had commented to her grandson: “Look! Just like TV!” ( A word of explanation for those too young to remember the early days of color TV. The NBC logo had been a stylized peacock opening his segmented tail, one color/segment.)

How I’d sneered at that grandmother! For right in front of us, in all his glory, had been a real peacock. Yet she’d referenced something fake, cartoonish, as seen on TV.

40 years later, I show my grandson a UTube video to illustrate the world “igloo.” And, I realize as we watch together, many of his references will be understood by his staring at a computer screen. And, indeed, as my time in Brooklyn progresses, he and I will watch many videos illustrating something that he and I had talked about. “Gram,” I realize, means the person who loves to google videos.

But  one thing Dmitri does experience in living color: He knows, hangs out with, plays with a “rainbow” of people—as he would say. Very unlike my lily-white childhood.

Praise be!

I understand something else: “Nanook of the North” was the first documentary I’d ever seen (Yes, I know there’s controversy re its staging; I’m not denying that), i.e. my first experience of watching people whose lives were utterly different from my own.

January 29, 2010: New York City Story #1

[I’ve been in Brooklyn for the part 3 1/2 weeks tending grandchildren. Here’s the first of 11 stories, most of them having to do with race, from my NYC experience.]

January 7th, Park Slope, Brooklyn, about 9am:

It’s really, really cold, I’m staying in a wonderful apartment with iffy lighting and I’ve lost my gloves. So while buying light bulbs at the CVS on 9th Street, I think: “CVS sells everything. I’ll bet they have cheap, warm gloves.” But where?

I see a young man of color in his early twenties, maybe, stocking shelves. One glance at his rounded, doughy, vacant face and I decide: “Don’t ask him.”

“Hey,” I scold myself. “Don’t be so quick to judge. Give the kid a chance.”

So I ask him where to find gloves.

“Follow me,” he says authoritatively. But where does he lead me? To the large, open area at the front of the store in front of the cash registers where five or six people wait to be served. Standing a good ten feet from the cash register counter, behind the waiting people, he yells over their heads, “Where  the gloves at?”

“What kind?” shouts one of the cashiers. Also young. Hispanic, perhaps. (Whether or not Spanish is her first language has nothing to do with this story, BTW; but since, in these stories, I’m talking about race and my own interactions around this charged subject, feel as though I am obligated to identify everyone’s ethnicity.)

At first I wonder why the hell she’s asking what kind. Later I wonder if she had been thinking I might need rubber gloves.

“Warm,” I shout, feeling very, very silly. Exposed. “Cheap.”

“Naw,” she shouts. “We ain’t got none.”

All the waiting customers turn to look at me. One older white woman says, “There’s a discount store at the end of this block. You’ll find just what you need.”

And she was right.

Wearing my new warm, cheap gloves, I walk back up 9th Street passing the CVS on my way. An older white man calls to me: “Dja get your gloves?”

I beam back at him, wiggle my snuggly-warm fingers.

Lessons:

1. New Yorkers sometimes do act like friendly villagers and, I suspect, yearn for little, pleasant interactions with other people—just like the rest of us.

2. I also suspect that young CVS shelf stocker is developmentally delayed. But I, so very, very yearning for, ya know, Truth, Beauty, World Peace, Racial Justice et al, was not able to act upon what my first instinct was telling me. Oh, no. “We thought she was just another guilty white woman,” Reverend Owen Cardwell once said of me. Sometimes I still am.