Читать книгу Guilty When Black - Carol Mersch - Страница 16

10

Fleeting freedom

NINE months after Miashah’s arrest, an ugly comedy of errors ensued when Judge Caputo set Miashah’s bond at $60,000. Bail bondsman Dennis Wharton arranged for bail at no charge to the family, and Miashah was, for 24-hours, free. The next evening, however, at the insistence of Assistant DA Steve Kunzweiler, she was ordered back to court for a hearing the next morning at 9:00 a.m.

Her attorney, Sharon Holmes, attempted to reach Chrisandria, Miashah’s mother, that night with no luck, as Chrisandria was working the evening shift at a nursing home with no access to her cell phone. Chrisandria was the prime contact for Miashah, since Miashah did not own a cell phone or a car. Though neither Chrisandria nor Miashah had been informed of the hearing, it began as scheduled at 9:00 a.m. the next morning in Judge Caputo’s courtroom.

It was in this freak-show nightmare that Miashah’s bond began to unravel.

At the hearing, Kunzweiler appeared upset over TV news coverage announcing that Miashah had been released from jail on bond. Judge Caputo, in turn, was upset that Holmes had not advised him of Judge Youll’s earlier no-bond ruling. Caputo became further agitated when Miashah failed to appear. Kunzweiler pushed for a total bond of $1 million, $500,000 for each dead child, but Caputo lowered the bond to $250,000 per child for a total of $500,000, and the hearing was adjourned.

Chrisandria finally received Holmes’s text message 15 minutes before the 9:00 a.m. hearing was to begin. She and Miashah hurriedly dressed and rushed to the courthouse, arriving around 10:15 a.m., where Miashah was promptly handcuffed and taken back to jail.

Meanwhile, seemingly unaware of Miashah’s late arrival, Kunzweiler was standing on the courthouse steps advising news reporters that the defendant’s failure to appear proved she “was a flight risk” and “a danger to the community.”

It didn’t go unnoticed that long-time Tulsa DA Tim Harris was stepping down after 15 years in office and that Kunzweiler was throwing his hat in for the position. His aggressive stance in the case was perceived by some as a move to win public support by projecting himself as a no-holds-barred candidate who was “tough on crime.” For those in the north side of Tulsa, this meant that he was tough on blacks.

District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler (Courtesy: Tulsa World)

Chrisandria remembered the State’s witness, Torrance Williams, stating during a recess at the preliminary hearing on March 13, 2014, that he was pressured by the DA’s office to testify against Miashah in return for leniency on his outstanding drug charge. He said that in the days following the fire, two police officers had repeatedly come to his apartment and threatened to throw him and his family in jail if he didn’t agree to a statement saying Miashah had come to his apartment that day to buy drugs. In truth, he said, Miashah only came to borrow two Newport cigarettes. Tyrone Coleman, Dyanne Coleman, and Timothy Jones were present at the hearing and they said they heard the same thing.53

Williams was homeless, along with his siblings and mother, before moving to London Square, and the family had been living in shelters. His mother worked in a nursing home and was told by the officers her license would be revoked if she were arrested. She pleaded with her son to go along with the proposition. The implications were onerous.

When he refused to implicate Miashah at the preliminary hearing, McAmis threatened to impeach him with the officers' statements at the jury trial.54

At this point, legal trap doors mysteriously began to open out of nowhere.

Court records show that when Williams appeared on the drug charge five days later, his public defender abruptly resigned. The judge then ordered him to reappear in 30 days with a private attorney. When Williams dutifully reappeared on April 15, but without an attorney, the judge ordered him taken into custody, and he was placed in a holding chair in the courtroom to await booking into the county jail. Somewhere between the holding chair and his actual arrest, however, Williams disappeared from the courtroom. On April 24, 2014 DA Tim Harris issued a bench warrant for his arrest.55

But the question of who, if anybody, was responsible for the deaths of Noni and Nylah was more complicated