“Jimmy,” he says, his hand cuffing the back of Lama’s neck, where the hair bristles. “This is not the place.” Coop winks at me, playing a little matador with this mad bull, giving the two of us an honorable path of retreat. He moves Lama a few inches back toward the sidewalk, where the two talk quietly. This is Coop the peacemaker. One thing you always like about George Cooper is that he never checks his friendship at the courthouse steps.
Lama shrugs Coop’s hand off his shoulder. Then I get the back of Lama’s coat, and he is hoofing it toward the light on the corner.
Coop is back to me now. “You don’t want to mess with that one,” he says. Coop’s eyes are dark and serious. “Jimmy Lama’s big trouble.”
I am shaking with anger. Cooper and I move to Nikki waiting at the top of the steps. She’s looking at Lama in the distance.
“Lovely man,” says Nikki.
“Yeah, a real prince,” says Coop.
I’m burning to the tips of my ears.
Captain Mason Canard had been up and down, in and out, in the flash of an eye during the preliminary hearing, a seeming afterthought sandwiched as he was between the evidence tech and ballistics. With only O’Shaunasy to judge the evidence in the prelim, Nelson’s emphasis and order of presentation were geared to the technical legal eye.
Now, with twelve new scorekeepers in the box, Canard has been put in the lineup in the leadoff position.
He is of medium height, slender, well manicured, and well dressed. His worsted suit hangs nicely on his lean frame. The thinning silver-gray hair is combed back and off to one side, in the style reminiscent of British royalty in the thirties. If personal appearance counts for much, it is easy to see how Mason Canard rose to a position of authority in the department, and why Nelson has juggled his lineup in front of the jury. The cardinal rule: Lead with strength.
Nelson has the witness state his name for the record and launches into his background.
Canard is a thirty-year veteran of the police department, the last twelve heading up homicide’s special section, a group of elite detectives who take the cream of the cases. Given the social weight of the victim, and the early interest of federal authorities in the crime, Canard took charge of the scene in Ben’s office along with Nelson the night they found the body. He has been dubbed the investigating officer in charge, delegating most of the spadework to subordinates.
“You were not the first on the scene, then, Detective Canard?”
“No, when I arrived there were already three patrol cars, and the EMTs, the emergency medical technicians, had arrived. There were also a few other people, employees in the building.”
“But you took charge of the scene.”
“That’s correct. I was the senior law enforcement officer present.”
Nelson then takes the jury on a verbal tour of the procedures used by police to secure the building, to ensure that any evidence was well preserved, pristine.
According to Canard there was a veritable parade of yellow tape and positioned guards, all with an eye toward sealing every entrance and exit of the building.
“Do you know who discovered the body?”
There are no surprises here. Canard identifies Willie Hampton, the young janitor.
“Did you personally question Mr. Hampton and the other officers to determine if anything had been moved or disturbed at the scene before your arrival?”
“I did. I was assured that the victim and his physical surroundings were precisely as they had been discovered by Mr. Hampton.”
“Did you supervise the taking of photographs at the scene?”
“I did.”
Nelson retreats to the counsel table, where Meeks hands him a large manila envelope. He has been heading here with this witness from the start. A little gore for the jury.
He pulls out three sets of photographic prints, each fastened at the top by a large spring clip. He hands one of these to me and another to the bailiff for delivery to Acosta.
Talia is at my shoulder, all eyes. I have seen most of these before, delivered during discovery, but I’ve not given Talia the benefit of a preview. It would not do, before the jury, to have her view these scenes of carnage with seeming insensibility.
The first is a full shot of the office from the door, with a wide-angle lens, a little too far back for any real detail. It shows Ben’s desk, some disarray, papers on the floor, and his chair behind it, canted at an angle away from the camera.
I take off the clip and go on to the next.
This is a grisly eight-by-ten, a glossy color print, a close-up of Ben, from the top of the desk up-muted shades of congealed blood, the color of rust.
Talia sucks some heavy air, her fingers to her mouth, an expression of stark horror. It is all I could have hoped for. I turn on some tender care for my client, an arm on her shoulder, an encouraging word in her ear. While these concerns are real, it is also vital in a death case to humanize the defendant before the jury at every stage, to demonstrate that she has real emotions. It is why so few women suffer the death penalty, not that they are the fairer, more fragile sex, but that they are capable of exhibiting their emotions in open court. Unlike men, they are freed by social convention to flood the court in tears. Juries don’t like to kill real people, only the callous, those who utterly lack any sense of feeling or remorse.
I flip to the next photo. Another close-up, head and shoulder shot. These are what Nelson wants, to enflame the jury. There is no real semblance of Ben in this photo, but the image of a distorted and disfigured head, a picture of what the emergency room docs would call “massive tissue loss”-a vast portion of the top of his head gone, facial features stretched and distorted like some torn rubber mask.
Talia’s getting sick.
“Your Honor, could we have a moment.” She’s up and moving, with the help of one of her female friends, toward the door and the ladies’ room. She has set the stage for me.
“Your Honor, I would request a conference in chambers.”
Acosta goes off the record.
With the defendant gone, the court has little else to do. Acosta, Nelson, and I retire to the back, along with the court reporter, packing her stenograph. I leave Harry at the table to entertain Talia when she returns, to keep her from commiserating with Tod.
The door is closed. Acosta’s looking at me.
“Well, Mr. Madriani, the jury’s off on another coffee break. If we keep meeting like this, this trial’s going to bust their kidneys.”
I tap the copies of the photographs in my hand. “Your Honor, the defense will stipulate that the victim is dead.”
He laughs a little at this.
“Too many photographs?” he says. He’s nodding his head like he agrees with the obvious answer to his own question.
Nelson has done what every good trial lawyer does when dealing with pictures, produce them in abundance, offer thirty and secretly hope to get three.
“It’s not just the number,” I tell him, “but the content of some of these photographs that troubles me. Not terribly probative and highly prejudicial,” I say.
Nelson is the picture of exasperation.
“Your Honor, it’s not a coffee klatch. It’s the crime scene of a brutal murder. If the defendant wants nice pictures, she should go to a wedding.”
In this state judges have broad latitude regarding the admissibility of evidence. Under provisions of the evidence code, cumulative layers of documents all tending to prove the same argument may be distilled down to a single document or a couple, to save time.
More to the point, evidence which may be of marginal value in proving a matter in the case, but which is highly inflammatory, tending to prejudice the jury, may be excluded entirely. On this the judge is God.
“Even the most fair-minded jury,” I tell Acosta, “is not likely to look with kindness on a defendant charged with such brutality.”
I remind him that these photographs fail in all respects to establish any link between my client and the crime in question.