“What were you looking for?”
“Any evidence that had been overlooked.”
“You said that before.”
“You asked me; I tried to tell you.”
“And what evidence did you think might have been overlooked?”
“I wanted to see if anyone had taken the trouble to cross that muddy ditch and look in the alfalfa field on the other side.”
“Did you find any footprints indicating anyone had crossed the ditch?”
“I did not.”
“Therefore, you felt that no one had crossed that drainage ditch since the water had left a deposit of in the bottom?”
“That’s right.”
“And what caused you to cross that ditch?”
“The fact that nobody else had.”
“If the murderer had not crossed the ditch, what you to believe that there was evidence which might have been found on the other side?”
“A man who throws a baseball doesn’t necessarily walk to home plate,” I said.
Someone in the audience snickered.
Roberts cleared his throat, authoritatively. “You’d need to be facetious, Mr. Lam.”
“I wasn’t being facetious. I was pointing out a physical fact.”
“In any event, you decided to cross that ditch?”
“I not only decided to, I did.”
“And what did you do when you crossed the ditch? By the way, how did you cross that ditch?”
“I walked.”
“No, no. I mean, what did you do about your shoes and socks?”
“I took them off and carried them.”
“And you crossed the ditch and climbed barefoot the bank on the other side?”
“That’s right.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I walked up and down the bank.”
“And what did you find, if anything?”
“When I had arrived at a certain place which I will to indicate on the map, I saw something metallic gleaming in the field. I moved over far enough to find that was a revolver.”
“And what did you do?”
“I told a young boy, who had followed me across, call the police.”
“Was that the first time you had seen this gun?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, let’s not have any misunderstanding about this” Roberts said. “I am showing you a thirty-eight-caliber revolver with a one-and-seven-eights-inch barrel being numbered one-thirty-three-three-four-seven, and having five shots, or the places for five cartridges in the cylinder. Will you look at this gun, please, referring, if the Court please for the sake of the record, to People’s Exhibit B?”
I looked at the gun and said, “This looks very much like the gun. I never did pick it up. I simply asked the young man to notify the police and to ask them to come at once. That is, I actually asked him to go to his parents and ask his parents to notify the police.”
“Now, this young man, would you know him if you saw him again?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stand up, please, Lorenzo.”
The ten-year-old kid, looking very bug-eyed, stood up in court.
“Is that the person?” Roberts asked.
“That’s the person.”
“You may sit down,” Roberts said to Lorenzo.
Roberts looked at me long and hard, “Mr. Lam,” he said, “I suggest that you had that murder weapon in your possession when you went out to the place which has been indicated on the map.”
“I did not!”
“I further suggest that you looked around to find where would be a good place to conceal the weapon. That when you saw no one had crossed the muddy bottom of that ditch, you decided that it would be a good plan to drop that weapon in the alfalfa field.”
“I did not!”
“I suggest that you, therefore, went out into the alfalfa field; that you dropped the weapon; that you then intended to return to the bank on the other side and say nothing about what you had done, but that the presence of young man, Lorenzo Gonzales, forced you to change your plan; that the keen eyes of this young man detected you had something you were trying to conceal, and asked you what it was, or words to that effect.”
“That is not so.”
“That because this young man was standing where could, within a short time, and would undoubtedly have discovered this gun and, under the circumstances, the fact that you had planted the gun would have been immediately apparent, you changed your plans and pretended have discovered the gun yourself and asked young Lorenzo to run to his parents and get them to notify police.”
“That is not true.”
“I further suggest that you did this in order to protect your client, Milton Carling Calhoun.”
“That is definitely not true.”
“But you did very fortuitously discover this gun?”
“Yes.”
“And by some stroke of reasoning, or perhaps I should say some stroke of genius, you were able to walk directly to the place where this gun had been dropped.”
“That is not true.”
“Why did you go there?”
“I was making a general survey of the terrain.”
“And that survey caused you to take off your shoes and socks and wade across a very mushy, muddy ditch bottom in order to go to an alfalfa field where your keen mind suggested to you that the murderer might have been able to have thrown the gun without leaving any tracks in the bottom of the ditch?”
“I wanted to survey the territory. I crossed the ditch. I found the gun.”
“And you have never in your life seen this gun before?”
“Oh, Your Honor,” Newberry said, “I should have objected a long time ago, but I have let this farce go on because I thought perhaps counsel had some definite objective in view.
“I object to this entire line of questioning on the ground that counsel is attempting to cross-examine his own witness.”
“The objection is sustained,” Judge Polk said.
“And I now move to strike out the entire testimony of this witness on the ground that the testimony was improperly elicited and as the result of improper questions which were the result of an attempt to cross-examine the prosecution’s own witness.”
“The motion is denied,” Judge Polk ruled.
Roberts said, “You wish to cross-examine this witness before I dismiss him from the stand and recall Sergeant Frank Sellers?”
“Certainly not,” Newberry said. “I have no questions of this witness. Here is a man who came out to the scene of the crime and made an investigation which should have been made by the Sheriff’s Office of this county and the police of the city of Calexico, to say nothing of the really great expert imported from Los Angeles.”
And Newberry made a sarcastic bow in the direction of Sergeant Sellers.
Sergeant Sellers angrily half arose from his chair, but thought better of it.
“There’s no need for any grandstand oratory at this time” Judge Polk pronounced. “You may stand down, Mr. Lam. And Sergeant Sellers will return to the stand.”
“Now that we have the background of this murder weapon clarified somewhat,” Roberts said, “will you please tell what happened as far as you know — of your own knowledge?”
“I was at the Calexico Police Station, talking with the Chief,” Sellers said. “There was a phone call and I was advised by the Chief...”
“Just a minute, just a minute,” Newberry said. “I object on the ground that any conversation that you had with the chief of police which was not in the hearing this defendant is hearsay and incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.”
“Sustained,” Polk said somewhat wearily.
“Just tell us what you did following this conversation,” Roberts said.
Sellers said, “I called to one of the police officers asked him to drive me out to the scene of the crime.”
“Was a deputy sheriff there at the time?”
“There were several deputy sheriffs at police headquarters, but they were working on developing latent fingerprints and doing other things. As a matter of fact, I didn’t think much of this hurried tip...”