Then she started to cry.
I finished explaining everything she said to Colonel Harkins. He spread his hands and asked, “What does she want us to do?”
“What I want you to do,” she said, “is force the Korean police to let me talk to my husband. I will convince him to plead guilty. Then my children’s lives will be returned to them. We will have our face back. People will respect their father for at least having repented of his crimes. We will be pitied but we will be tolerated. And my brother, he will have a chance to beg for forgiveness for having such a foolish sister and he will have a chance to get his job back.”
What she said made sense. In Korean society, once you plead guilty and ask for forgiveness, no matter how heinous your crime, you will usually receive at least some measure of leniency. When the criminal offers atonement, all is well again under Heaven and the King is secure on his throne. At that point, not to grant the request for forgiveness would mean that the person turning down the request is not a person of true Confucian virtue. As the Koreans would say, he wouldn’t be showing a big heart.
Eighth Army would also be pleased if Ammerman pleaded guilty. Although he wasn’t a soldier, we had sponsored his insurance company and his work visa, and his crime tainted the reputation of every American in Korea. A long, drawn-out criminal trial wouldn’t help anyone.
The provost marshal was new in-country and the intricate dance of Korean justice he still found baffling. But he did know from every conversation he had over drinks at the Officers’ Club that 8th Army wanted this prosecution iced. He turned to me. “What can we do, Sueño?”
I thought about it. “I’ll talk to the KNP Liaison Officer. If you throw your weight behind it, we should be able to force our way in to talk to Ammerman.”
The provost marshal nodded his consent.
Mrs. Mi-hwa Ammerman rose from her chair, her leather handbag clasped tightly in front of her black skirt. Then she bowed gracefully at the waist.
Colonel Harkins didn’t know quite what to do so he just cleared his throat and nodded.
With ramparts of hewn rock and a roof of upturned tile shingles, Suwon Prison looks medieval. Built during the Yi Dyansty, it had later been used by the Japanese Imperial Army when they colonized Korea prior to World War II. After the surrender of Japan, the United States provisional government took over, and now the Republic of Korea runs the place with all the efficiency that a military-dominated government can bring to bear.
A uniformed guard led Mi-hwa Ammerman and me down cold stone steps. At the bottom of three flights, a light was switched on, and down a long corridor another guard waited in front of a thick wooden door. Our footsteps clattered on wet brick.
In front of the door, Mrs. Ammerman tiptoed to peek through the grated opening. I peered in from behind her. The guard clicked another switch and the cell was suffused with light.
Fred Ammerman stood a few feet from us, his beard long, his blue eyes bloodshot and wild.
“What do you want?” His voice rasped like the hinges of ancient doors.
At first his wife just cried. The guards and I stepped back to allow them some privacy. A few minutes went by. They whispered to one another through the rusted bars. I could make out some of what they were saying, but I tried to block it out. I didn’t want to eavesdrop. All this was their personal business. Not mine. As a law enforcement officer, I wasn’t officially involved. The result we wanted, the conviction of Fred Ammerman for rape and murder, was a foregone conclusion. No Korean judge would dare set him free.
A voice began to rise-Fred Ammerman’s, not his wife’s. While he shouted, she stepped back against the stone wall. He kept up the tirade. Soon she knelt down, cowering, and made herself small. One of the guards had heard enough. He marched down the passageway and gruffly told Mrs. Ammerman that it was time to go.
As I walked her up the steps, her husband continued shouting.
“No way am I going to plead guilty,” he said. And then he added a few epithets that, in my opinion, Mi-hwa Ammerman didn’t deserve.
On the day of Fred Ammerman’s trial for the rape and murder of Yi Won-suk, both Ernie and I wore our Class A green uniforms. We sat on polished wooden benches in the Hall of the Ministry of Justice in the heart of downtown Taegu. Mrs. Ammerman sat quietly in the first row directly behind her husband. Neither of her children was present.
The American lawyer Ammerman had hired was named Aaron Murakami. He was from Hawaii and when he spoke, a Korean translator hired for the occasion would interpret whatever he said.
How could Ammerman be so dumb? I had no reason to think that Murakami wasn’t a good attorney, but he was Japanese-American. The Koreans are still chafing over what the Japanese Imperial Army had done to them during the thirty-five years leading up to the end of World War II. A foreign lawyer was bad enough, but a Japanese lawyer would cause the Koreans to dig in their heels. If Ammerman was toast before, he was burnt ashes now. Even Ernie realized the mistake. When Murakami walked into the hall, Ernie smiled smugly and crossed his arms.
“It’s over already,” he said.
In a Korean courtroom there’s no jury. Only a grim-faced judge who, in this case, stared on at us mere mortals through thick-lensed bifocals.
The judge droned on in Korean, something about the initial plea, but I could follow little of what was said. My facility with the Korean language started with the free classes that the Army offers on base, but after that most of it was picked up in barroom conversation. The legalese the judge spouted was beyond me.
Ernie and I didn’t expect to be called to the stand until the trial was well underway. That would probably be late morning or mid-afternoon. Koreans don’t believe in long, drawn-out proceedings. It’s up to the police to capture the guilty party. After that, to spend a lot of time and effort and taxpayers’ money just to find that same person innocent would be a great loss of face. Not only for the police but also for the entire Korean judicial system.
Ammerman would be tried-and almost certainly convicted-today.
Suddenly, I realized that the judge was speaking English. Even Ernie perked up. The language was halting, as if the judge didn’t have too many chances to practice his conversational skills, but the syntax was precise. Not the bargirl talk I was used to.
Fred Ammerman, whose head had been hanging down, sat up and listened. So did his attorney.
“I want to be sure,” the judge said, “that you fully understand what is being offered. You have a chance, before we go to trial, to plead guilty.”
I understood the choice Ammerman had to make, even if he didn’t. The Koreans don’t plea bargain. You either plead guilty and have a chance of being shown mercy, or you plead innocent and face the full wrath of the law. The judge continued to talk, glancing sometimes at Aaron Murakami, sometimes at Fred Ammerman. He continued until he was sure that both men understood the gravity of the decision they were about to make.
When the judge finished, Murakami and Ammerman huddled and whispered fervently to one another.
Mi-hwa Ammerman, sitting in back of her husband, had previously kept her face lowered. No she looked up hopefully, as if she wanted to climb over the railing and insert herself between her husband and his attorney.
Fred Ammerman kept shaking his head.
His wife stared at him in despair. Her hand lifted from her mouth as if she wanted to reach out to him. Only by a plea of guilty would Fred Ammerman’s family be allowed to reenter Korean society-not completely free of stigma but at least free of having to bear the burden of shame of being related to a killer and, even worse, of being related to an unrepentant killer. One who has not only defiled society but then proceeded to spit in society’s eye.