Page 51 of The 1 Lawyer

EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER

CHAPTER 39

“THE DEFENSE calls Della Jess Calhoun to the witness stand.”

I turned to my client in circuit court and gave a nod, her signal to rise. As I watched her step away from the counsel table and trudge over to the bench, I thought, Jesus, I should’ve made her wear jailhouse scrubs to trial.

She raised her hand to take the oath, and I contemplated her courtroom attire: a worn navy tank top and baggy pink sweatpants. She made a poor appearance for a woman whose liberty was at stake. She was on trial for two counts of aggravated assault and one charge of resisting arrest. As I listened to her swear to tell the truth, a Johnny Cash song ran through my head, the one with the line about finding his “cleanest dirty shirt.”

I should’ve asked her to describe the clothing she’d be wearing when we’d consulted at the jail the prior evening. Back in the day, I would have nailed down those details before trial. But I had wanted to get out of there and head home, where I could do my trial prep and enjoy a shot of bourbon.

I gave her a moment to settle into her seat before I approached. “Please state your name.”

“Della Jess Calhoun.”

“And what is your age?”

“Forty-seven.”

A woman in the front row of the jury box made a choking sound. I couldn’t fault her for it. In my first interview with Della at the jail—after the public defender had conflicted out and I was appointed as defense counsel—she’d told me how old she was, and I could’ve sworn she was lying. With her leathery skin, missing teeth, and thin hair, she looked to be in her sixties. A lifetime of poverty and years of homelessness had taken a harsh physical toll.

“Della, please tell the jury where you were on the evening of April seventh of last year.”

“I was just outside the city limits of Biloxi, not too far off Brodie Road.”

“And what were you doing?”

“I was sleeping. In my tent.”

“So you were camping out there?”

“Yeah. I set up my tent that day under some trees.”

“Della, what’s your permanent address?”

She grinned, revealing her missing front teeth. “I move around.” She turned to address the jurors sitting in the box. “I don’t bother nobody.”

“Where had you resided prior to pitching the tent off Brodie Road?”

“I’d stayed for about a week or so behind a warehouse in Biloxi. It’s deserted—nobody’s using it for nothing. I was doing just fine until the cops came. They told me to move along, said I was trespassing. They said I needed to get out of town, that Biloxi wouldn’t put up with trespassing or obstructing.”

Prior to 2018, it was illegal to be homeless in Mississippi. People could be put in jail essentially for being poor, because our state code made it a crime to be a “tramp” or a “vagrant.” In 2018, the state did away with those criminal statutes, so instead of the unsheltered being arrested for vagrancy, they were jailed for trespassing, obstruction, or disorderly conduct.

Della said, “So I got out of town. Packed up my gear and my stuff. And my cat.”

I knew she wanted to say more about the cat. She had talked about him at length during our meetings, extolling his virtues. I needed to cut that off. “What happened that night when you were sleeping in the tent?”

“Some boys come up, three of them. Teenagers, not little kids. They tried to knock down my tent, kicked at it, laughing the whole time. Like they thought it was funny.”

The three boys she referred to were named as victims in the criminal case. All of them were students at an exclusive private school outside of Biloxi; two of them were sixteen and one was seventeen. They’d already testified in the State’s case. They cleaned up good, as the saying goes—they took the stand wearing preppy clothes, their hair freshly cut. One wore his letterman jacket and testified that he’d been benched on the basketball team due to the injury my client inflicted that night.

“And what happened next?”

A flush crept up the sun-weathered skin of her neck as she recounted the events. “One of them boys, the tall one with that team jacket, he tried to grab the sleeping bag, but he run into Boots. Boots was my cat, a big old tom. He was a wanderer, like me. We were family.”

She wiped her eye as she continued. “Boots scratched him up good. The boy, he was cussing. I saw him grab Boots by the tail and pull him out of the tent.”

She paused, breathing hard. I prompted her: “And then?”

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