Harvey spent the remainder of our strategy session quizzing me on my background. He was compiling a comprehensive list of all my positive accomplishments to use as evidence that I was a good boy and didn't deserve to go to jail. And he wanted everything—my Church positions, my Eagle Scout award, my tenure as high-school newspaper editor, my honor-society memberships, my full-tuition scholarship to the University of Utah, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.

The trial was scheduled to start at two. The four of us—me, my dad, my mission president, and my lawyer—arrived at the courtroom about half an hour early. An audience began filtering in not long after that. One of Ezra Taft Benson's granddaughters lived not far from Elder Snow and me; her husband, a law student, showed up to watch. He told me he planned to write a paper about my trial, and he wished me good luck. Nice guy.

Prosecutor Rich arrived—a tall, thin man with a dark black beard who looked like he could have played the part of the supercilious jerk who always gets taken down a few pegs in your generic sort of movie comedy—and Fred Harvey went right over to talk to him. Harvey returned several minutes later with good news. "Rich went for our deal," he said. "He's agreed to drop the hijacking charge, so we'll go ahead and plead guilty to public mischief."

It was a relief—of a sort.

Full entry

The next morning—the day of the insanely expeditious trial—President Tuttle summoned my father and me to the mission home's book-lined study. The first thing he discussed with us—or rather, apprised us of his position on—was the matter of who would be allowed to attend the trial. It would be a public trial, of course—but other missionaries would only be permitted to attend with special permission from the president.

And Tuttle wasn't about to give anyone special permission. He wasn't going to let any of my compatriots anywhere near the trial.

	Headline from Calgary Herald on February 25, 1987. Click image for facsimile of complete article.

"We don't want this thing to turn into a big media circus, with dozens of missionaries all over the place, talking to reporters," President Tuttle told us. "Proselyting will come to a standstill, and who knows what we'll end up looking like in the news."

In other words, loose lips sink ships. Missionaries could be trusted to carry the message of the Restored Gospel from door to door, but not to talk to reporters without looking silly.

Full entry

Fortunately, the president hadn't caught any part of my strip show. He only wanted to discuss some procedural matters with me—and when that was done he had a couple of surprises to spring on me.

"President Harvey has been working hard on getting things expedited, Elder," Tuttle told me. "Your trial is going to start tomorrow."

Well, knock me over with an oxygen molecule. Talk about swift justice!

But that wasn't the half of it. "I've already talked to your parents about the situation," Tuttle went on, "and I'm wondering if it might not be a good idea to have one or both of them here during the trial."

Full entry

Elder Eby drove me back to the mission office in his big tan sedan. He was a thin, white-haired old man in a polyester suit, and he seemed to wear a permanent expression of bemused perplexity. In fact, he resembled nothing so much as a slightly shorter version of Lloyd Bridges. We made small talk during the ride. Eby seemed somewhat unsure of how to treat me—a missionary who had just spent the night in jail.

Back at the deserted office, I was quite happy to let Elder Eby go back to his puttering around—excuse me, I meant his duties—while I retired to the meeting room, where I tried to relax by noodling around on the same piano I'd been playing when Elder Hardy tried to talk me into staying on my mission the previous December.

I was playing an original number of mine called "Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand" (named after the Samuel R. Delany novel) when Elders Fearing and Hardy—the apes—wandered into the meeting room. They were the first ones to return from the leadership conference. They waited until I finished my song—Elder Fearing was a fan of that particular number—and then after assuring themselves that I was all right and clapping me on the back and hugging me and all that guy stuff, they asked me what jail had been like.

"Pretty weird," I said. "Pretty scary. Lots of really scary people."

Full entry

When all the bail determinations were finished, we were taken back to our cells, this time by a more direct route. Then there was another eternity to suffer through before my papers were finally processed and I could leave.

At one point, a guard came to the cell and unlocked the door—but he had come for Hard Guy, not for me.

It seemed like hours went by. Lunch came, which I don't remember very clearly. It seems as if we were served chipped beef on toast—or "shit on a shingle," as some call it—but I may be remembering incorrectly. What I do recall clearly is my cellmates having a serious lunchtime debate over whether the liquid in the styrofoam cups was meant to be coffee or tea. No one could make an authoritative determination.

I was only partway through my abominable meal when another guard came to the door of the cell. "Shunn!" he called. "Let's go!"

Full entry