Representing Brian Collins: Part Two

Continued from 1/27/12

Jonathan and I strategized on next steps every few days. We decided to negotiate with Immigration for his release – after all, there was no immigration violation – if he had a sponsor who would give him an address to which he could be released, despite not having clear identity documents. We thought about people we knew who might be willing to help Brian, but he surprised us by saying that he had a friend of a friend, a woman who lived in Seattle, who had agreed to let him stay with her for a few days. We didn’t know he had been in touch with anyone but us. Immigration did release him when we furnished an address for Brian.

Jonathan and I were elated at our success, and we drove down together to the Kent jail to visit other detainees, and to pick up Brian and bring him back to Seattle. Brian was a fair, slight man with reddish hair, in his mid-30s, and handsome. He sat in the back seat of my car as we drove to Seattle, but didn’t talk much. He didn’t seem to be happy about the release, but I brushed that aside. Of course, everyone is happy to be out of detention. But all the same, I felt a chill coming from him. We dropped him off at a house where a middle-aged, kind-faced woman greeted him, and we added Brian Collins to our list of clients served. That was that.

Except that there’s more. A few years later, when I was back in Seattle for six months between overseas assignments and working on contract for an immigration law firm, I saw Jonathan again at an immigration conference. “Did you hear about Brian Collins?” he said to me, without waiting for opening pleasantries. He looked to be bursting with the news. I instantly remembered the name, of course. The case was one of our success stories, how we got Brian sprung by our negotiation powers. I expected Jonathan to tell me that Brian had fought extradition to the United Kingdom, and won somehow. It had to be big news, by the look of Jonathan.

“Guess where Brian was born,” he said. “Ireland, Australia, Germany, France?” I said. “Maybe Holland or Belgium?” “Nope,” Jonathan said. “He was born in Indiana.” He paused to let that sink in. “But….” I said. “Yes,” Jonathan said, “Indiana. His name is Steve Richland.” I couldn’t get my mind around this news. “But why would he let himself be detained in Immigration detention for months? Why would he make up this elaborate story?” “Exactly,” Jonathan said, “he really enjoyed setting a trap and seeing us fall into it.”

Jonathan said that Brian was arrested for residential burglary in Chicago for the first time when he was 25 after he cleaned out the possessions of a woman with whom he was staying; he served a few days in jail and was released. He did the same thing again in Minnesota, this time robbing another woman who had given him a place to stay. He robbed many more women he had charmed before he was arrested in Seattle on the traffic stop. By that time, he’d stolen enough passports and driver’s licenses to confuse his identity, and he’d managed to scar his fingertips enough to make it hard to take prints.

When he robbed the woman who had given him a place to stay in Seattle, she called the police, who found and arrested him, and he was sentenced and served time in Seattle, and then served prison time in two other states as well. When his public defenders tried to introduce evidence of his lack of mental competence to stand trial, citing the immigration detention story, Brian refused to allow it; he insisted he was not ill, that he always knew what he was doing. And each time, the judge agreed: he seemed perfectly in charge of himself.

So in charge of himself that he spent nearly three months in immigration detention, in service of a story about fleeing from the British government. The pleasure he felt in fooling us must have been worth the stay. So much so that he was angry when he was released from detention. For years afterwards, whenever I saw Jonathan again, he’d greet me with “Hello. Brian Collins speaking,” in Brian's soft accent, and we’d laugh. The accent probably would never have fooled someone from the British Isles, and even his name, we would have known if we had investigated, is not an Irish Catholic name. But we were enthralled by the romance of the story, and our white knight role. Neither of us has ever had a client like Brian again. But sometimes, when my clients’ stories are grim and I’m taking myself very seriously, I remember Brian again, and laugh.