Captain Blight

On the day of his 303rd conviction, Charlie Williard walks into Courtroom I in the Kansas City, Missouri, Municipal Court Building, takes a seat in the corner and waits for a lawyer who has forgotten to show up.

The day before, in a law office just two blocks from the courthouse, Sean Pickett had joked about the difficulty in keeping track of his client's prodigious legal entanglements. "He's got court dates all over the place," he'd said. "I can't keep track of them."

Now, on November 19, as jailhouse defendants appear one by one on a television mounted in the courtroom for arraignments on crimes from the mundane (pot possession) to the dazzling (pistol-whipping a man named Littlejohn), Williard waits with the unflappable posture of an old man sitting on a park bench. He has a style in clothes that will one day fit nicely on the racks of a vintage-clothing store -- snap-button dress shirts and poly-blend slacks a few sizes too big. Five grubby, callused fingers emerge from a cast on his arm to limply shake the hand of a bailiff who recently bought a water heater from Williard. The hair on his head is solid white; grayish strands dangle from his ears and nostrils, begging to be yanked by a tactless child.

No one knows how many times Williard has appeared in municipal court, least of all Williard. He estimates somewhere between 200 and 300 times and thousands of dollars in fines for violations of the city's housing codes. What is known is this: Since 1980, Williard has been convicted 302 times. Today marks 303.

Most people do what they can to avoid going to court. They'll pay a parking ticket by mail, however irritating, just to handle the matter and move on. But in Williard's view, court is no more inconvenient than stopping for a red light. He'd rather pass on through, sure, but then again, what's a little wait?

That stubbornness in the face of repeated hassles has turned him into a pain in the ass for everyone aiming to cure the world of his malignance -- neighborhood associations, codes inspectors, prosecutors and judges. In the eyes of the law, he's a criminal, and the government's only recourse is the judicial process. If a man demonstrates no fear of that process or its penalties, what chance does the state have? If he takes a perverse pride in his 300-plus convictions, if he's willing to toss off $500 fines like quarters into a cussing jar, at what point does it all become a joke?

Williard's code-breaking rap sheet dates back 23 years, but his nastiest battle with City Hall reached a ten-year anniversary this October. Back in 1993, the city's municipal housing court judge, fed up with Williard's perpetual offenses, sentenced him to three and a half years in prison and fined him $12,500. Williard fought that ruling and won on appeal. In the end, he paid $5,000 and served twenty hours of community service.

Five years later, the city tried a new strategy, designating him as Kansas City's first "Slumlord of the Month," a ploy that made for decent TV news but did little to disgrace its recipient, who still refers to the title as an award and an honor.

Then, earlier this year, city attorneys tried putting Williard out of business altogether, filing nuisance charges against him and slapping injunctions on the majority of his properties. Unfavorable court rulings forced the city to drop the matter and, after several months, lift the injunctions. For the moment, the city has backed off.

Now, with this morning's hearing just a guilty plea and a $500 fine from being settled, Williard finds himself in the somewhat atypical position of having no pending charges against him. If you think he revels in this fact, that he will savor this legal quietude after so many years of tumult, well, then, you don't know Williard. Not yet.

Like an old boxer playing the ropes, Williard has spent nearly a quarter-century letting the city swing away at him, absorbing some shots, avoiding others, waiting for his opponents' hands to drop from fatigue. Now he's swinging back. On December 3, Williard planned to file a federal lawsuit accusing the city of targeting him unfairly, of violating his constitutional right to equal protection under the law. He accused the city attorney and housing court judge of conspiring to destroy him by molding the judicial process. After years of making a mockery of the system as a defendant, he's turning the tables on the city.

But back on November 19 at 11 a.m., in the courtroom of the Honorable John B. Williams, Charlie Williard stands, pleads guilty to yet another codes violation, number 303, and retreats to the court cashier to pay his fine.

"How much will that be?" he says.

"Five hundred and twenty-nine dollars and fifty cents," says the woman behind the glass.

"What's the 50 cents for?" Williard says, smiling.

"Oh, just because."