An olive green prison uniform replaced the suit and tie that Harvard-educated Carlos Watson wore during his eight-week trial for a multi-million dollar fraud while running a buzzy media start-up.
He no longer bore the flashy smile he maintained before he was convicted and immediately incarcerated in the hellish Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) last week.
Instead, he looked absolutely terrified in Brooklyn federal court on Friday as his hope not to spend another day in the notorious Brooklyn facility dwindled before his eyes; Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon said she needed more supporting documents and surety signatures before ruling on his renewed bail application.
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On Watson’s second day at the MDC, a fellow inmate was murdered. It was the second homicide there in six weeks. Watson’s lead attorney said at the start of Friday’s bail hearing that his client had particular reason to fear for his own safety, being locked up for most of each day in a two-man cell.
“He is bunking with a very violent defendant,” his attorney Ronald Sullivan told the court. “He is under constant fear.”
Sullivan added that in 30 years as an attorney he had never seen a white-collar defendant incarcerated between conviction and sentencing. The trial judge had left open the possibility of granting Watson post-conviction bail if he came up with considerable collateral. Sullivan on Thursday submitted a bail package that he said was triple what Watson had posted during the trial.
There was also a new element whose full value cannot be measured in mere dollars. This was family land purchased in Caroline County and Gloucester County, Virginia, by Watson’s great-great-grandfather, David “Grandpa Dave” Thomas.
“A runaway slave,” Sullivan noted.
The family had held onto the land through the years. Seven title holders had agreed to put up this legacy to help secure Watson’s release. A number of them were connected to the courtroom by telephone in case the judge or the prosecutors wanted confirmation.
One of the prosecutors in attendance repeated the argument that had led to Watson being locked up after the conviction last week; he had flouted court rules and committed perjury on the stand and was generally untrustworthy.
But Scanlon indicated she was willing to consider bail if the package was proven to be enhanced in monetary terms.
Two of Watson’s three sisters, Beverly and Carolyn, were in the courtroom and during lunch set to obtain copies of deeds and appraisals for the Virginia land. They both used laptops with the Apple logo, a reminder that their brother’s first big boost in the initially legit media startup Oxy came from Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Watson and Jobs had become friendly when they tutored disadvantaged kids in the same California high school. She is now a billionaire philanthropist who could have easily put up enough cash to bail out Watson. She had not done so, perhaps because he lied to her after he resorted to fraud to keep a sputtering Oxy going.
Now, Watson’s sisters were using the Apple iPhone calculator to total up what they had been able to raise on their family’s own means. They kept working the laptops in a frantic effort to get the paperwork so they could free Watson, at least until sentencing, by putting up the property of a runaway slave.
“It’s the heart,” Beverly Watson said of Grandpa Dave’s land.
But as fast and hard as they worked, the sisters were still not done when the judge ruled that the matter would have to be taken up again on Monday.
It was arranged for Watson to be moved into solitary, away from the difficult cellmate. But the prospect of just a weekend at the MDC filled his face with something his other attorney, Janine Gilbert, immediately recognized.
“Pure fear,” she said.
