Chapter 7 - The Trial at the Dirksen Center
On the sixteenth of April, the spring thaw had finally cleared the ice from the mouth of the Chicago River, leaving the waters of Lake Michigan running in vast, sparkling sheets of sapphire and liquid silver.
Inside the ceremonial courtroom on the twenty-fifth floor of the Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse on South Dearborn Street, the federal criminal trial of The United States versus Dominic Richard Morgan and Vanessa Hale was entering its final, catastrophic hour.
The room was vast, lined with thirty-foot fluted oak pilasters, two-story casement windows overlooking the Loop, and seventy members of the international business press sitting packed into the tiered wooden pews beneath the Great Seal of the United States.
Sitting at the defense table, wearing a dark navy civilian suit that hung loosely across his sunken, sixty-pound-lighter frame, his hands clasped tightly between his knees to conceal his uncontrollable tremors, was me.
Beside me sat my court-appointed federal public defender, who had spent four weeks reviewing the eighteen thousand pages of digital wiretaps before informing me that my only realistic legal strategy was an open plea to avoid a thirty-year sentence.
Vanessa Hale sat three chairs down, dressed in an oversized beige prison jumpsuit, her wrists cuffed to an iron belly chain, her blonde hair unwashed, her face pale, lined with deep, bitter crevices of total defeat, having already entered an unredacted proffer agreement that guaranteed her seven years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut.
Sitting in the first row of the gallery, dressed in an impeccably tailored ivory silk blazer over an emerald-green linen dress, her dark hair swept back into an imperial chignon secured by the platinum comb, was Claire.
In her arms, resting peacefully against her chest in a white cashmere receiving blanket, was three-month-old Julian.
The baby was awake, his large, intelligent dark eyes wide with curious wonder, looking around the vaulted courtroom with fearless, infant calm, his small fingers curled tightly around a silver teething ring that had belonged to Arthur Vance.
Judge Raymond Campbell tapped his heavy wooden gavel three times onto the oak sound block:
CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.
"The United States versus Dominic Richard Morgan," Judge Campbell announced, his baritone voice echoing through the vaulted room like a church bell.
"Case Number twenty-six, Criminal Docket eight-hundred-twelve."
Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance stood up from the prosecution table, holding an unsealed thirty-page sentencing memorandum bearing the gold seal of the Department of Justice:
"Your Honor," the federal prosecutor began, his voice carrying clearly to every corner of the silent courtroom.
"Pursuant to the comprehensive evidentiary disclosure provided by Managing Trustee Claire Sterling-Vance and corroborated by the master customs manifests from the Port of Newark:
The defendant has entered an unconditional guilty plea to Count One: Conspiracy to Violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act; Count Two: Interstate Wire Fraud Exceeding Forty Million Dollars; and Count Three: Intentional Falsification of Corporate Records under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act."
The prosecutor turned, his sharp, unblinking eyes locking onto my trembling frame:
"The United States recommends a sentence of fourteen years of confinement at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana, followed by five years of supervised release, and an immediate, non-dischargeable civil restitution judgment of sixty-two million dollars payable to the Morgan Consolidated Employee Restitution and Pension Trust."
Judge Campbell looked down from the bench, his eyes carved from cold Appalachian granite:
"The defendant will rise and face the court."
I slowly, painfully climbed to my feet, my knees trembling so violently that my public defender had to place a steadying hand beneath my elbow to keep me from tumbling onto the carpet.
Judge Campbell picked up his pen, looking directly into my hollow, bloodshot eyes:
"Dominic Morgan. You were handed an industrial dynasty that had been built through three generations of honest American labor. You were given wealth, prestige, commercial power, and the love of an extraordinary wife who carried your child with unblemished dignity."
The judge slammed his pen onto the blotter:
"You betrayed that trust not out of operational necessity, not out of commercial panic, but out of the cheapest, most vulgar variety of suburban vanity. You used your father's ships to smuggle foreign military hardware so you could buy forty-eight-thousand-dollar diamond bracelets for an undercover consultant in private dining rooms."
The judge raised his heavy wooden gavel:
"Under the sentencing guidelines of the United States, this court sentences you to a term of one hundred and sixty-eight months at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute. You will serve a mandatory minimum of eighty-five percent of that sentence before being eligible for any transitional administrative release."
CRACK.
The heavy wooden gavel struck the sound block with the concussive finality of an iron tomb closing.
"The prisoner is remanded to the custody of the United States Marshals Service. Court is adjourned."
Two armed federal marshals stepped forward, clicking heavy steel handcuffs around my wrists behind my back.
As they turned me toward the secure holding cells behind the bench, I stopped.
I twisted my head around one last time.
I looked across the well of the court.
My eyes met Claire’s.
She did not smile. She did not gloat.
She stood up from the gallery pew, holding our son against her breast, her posture tall, proud, and completely unarmored beneath the morning light.
Julian let out a soft, sweet, bell-like coo from beneath his blanket, his little hand reaching out toward the air, his bright eyes catching the sun streaming through the two-story windows.
May you like
Claire looked at me for three long, silent seconds—looking through the orange jumpsuit, through the chains, through the thirty years of arrogance, down into the empty, broken shell of the man who had lost his soul in a dining room on Michigan Avenue.
Then, with an almost imperceptible nod of absolute, eternal closure, she turned her back on the defense table, walked down the center aisle of the courtroom, and stepped through the double oak doors into the bright spring sunlight of Chicago, carrying the future of our family into the light forever.
