Dead end. Tuchio still searching.
Now with a more sociable style, he goes back to the point he wanted to make earlier. “You were gone for how long on vacation, around the time of the murder?”
“Three weeks.”
“So during that three-week period, you really couldn’t know whether that hammer was still in the stairwell where you left it, could you?”
“No.”
“You couldn’t be sure, for example, whether perhaps one of your colleagues might have picked it up and used it and perhaps put it back in one of the maintenance closets, could you?”
“How could I? I wasn’t there,” says Hettinger.
“Exactly,” says Tuchio. “So for all you know, as you sit here today, that hammer could have been anywhere on the morning of the murder, or for that matter during the week before the murder, because you don’t know where it was during the time that you were on vacation?”
“That’s true.”
“For all you know, the murderer could have found that hammer the day after you left for vacation and had it in his possession for days before the murder was committed?”
“Objection, leading, calls for speculation.”
“Sustained,” says Quinn.
“But since you couldn’t see that hammer from all the way up there in Idaho, there are a lot of possibilities as to where that hammer might have been, right?”
“I suppose anything’s possible,” says the witness.
This looks like the best Tuchio can do. Then he pauses for a moment and tries to reach further.
“I think you testified that the lock, the one that didn’t work on the maintenance closet upstairs, was on a list for repairs. Isn’t that what you said?”
“That’s right.”
“Isn’t it possible that the lock on that maintenance closet might have been repaired while you were gone on vacation, so that on the day that the victim was murdered, if that hammer was in that closet, it would have been locked behind closed doors. Is that not a possibility?”
Tuchio is leaning forward, waiting for the words “Anything’s possible,” but instead the witness says, “I doubt it.”
“That’s all I have for this witness, Your Honor.” Tuchio tries to turn and get away.
“’Cuz the lock was still broken when I got back from vacation.”
Why you never want to ask a question unless you already know the answer.
26
Quinn calls the lunch break, and Harry and I meet with Jennifer Sanchez, our paralegal, at a small bistro two blocks from the dwindling army of demonstrators in front of the courthouse.
Jennifer is decked out in her best going-to-court suit, slacks and a jacket with a white blouse and ruffled collar. She’s nervous, and you can see it. I tell her that I’ll be with her the entire time, that if Tuchio tries to get rough, I’ll be all over him.
She nods and smiles, but in her eyes I can see the anxiety.
“Just think before you answer any questions. If you don’t know the answer, say you don’t know.”
Harry says, “Listen, you won’t have any problems on direct. Paul will lay it all out for you. But when Tuchio gets up on cross-examination,” he says, “he is going to try and pick up speed, get a quick rhythm going so that you can’t think between questions. Don’t let him do it,” says Harry.
“Pause between answers. He can’t ask another question till you’ve answered the one before it, and if he tries, we’ll object. All you have to do is stay calm. Just tell the jury what you saw, what happened.”
Jennifer doesn’t want any lunch. She’s afraid she may not be able to keep it down. Harry and I go light, and less than an hour later we’re back in the courtroom.
Jennifer is on the stand, sworn and seated, her back straight as a board, hands in her lap. She takes a deep breath, and I take her carefully through the preliminaries-the fact that she has spent her whole life in San Diego and attended local schools, her training as a paralegal, her employment with our office, the fact that she loves her work, any piece of information that might endear her to the jury. Our entire case now hinges on whether they believe her.
“I think it was exactly a week ago, Thursday morning, can you tell the jury what time you arrived at work?”
“It was about seven A.M.,” she says. “I had a lot of work to do, and I wanted to get an early start.”
“And when you arrived, was there anyone else in the office?”
“No. I was the first one there.”
“Please tell the jury what you found when you opened the door to the office that morning?” I try to make this sound as matter-of-fact as I can.
“When I unlocked the door and opened it, there were a couple of items on the floor. There was an envelope and a flyer, I think an advertisement, and the flyer was from a new restaurant that was opening down the street.”
“And the envelope, did you know who that was from?”
“No.”
“Did it have a return address on it?”
“No.”
“Did it have any postage on it? Stamps or a tape from a postage machine?”
“No. Just a label addressed to you and a typed notation under the office address saying ‘Personal and Confidential.’”
“Was it unusual to find letters or other pieces of literature slipped under the door in the morning when you arrived at work?”
“No. Happens all the time,” she says. “Clients sometimes slip envelopes with checks for payment of bills, advertisements, sometimes even reports from expert witnesses if they’re small enough.”
“So finding this envelope on the floor didn’t surprise you?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Can you tell the jury what you did with this envelope after you found it?”
“I picked it up, and I put it on your desk.”
“In my office?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t open it?”
“No.”
“Can you tell the jury why you didn’t open it?”
“It’s firm policy,” she says, “that items coming in marked personal or confidential are to be delivered unopened to the person they’re addressed to in the office.”
“What about other mail, not marked personal or confidential? Can you tell the jury what happens with that?”
“It’s opened by one of the secretaries. If it’s business or legal, the correspondence is normally removed from the envelope, and then the envelope is stapled to the letter or whatever it is, so that if there’s a postmark or a cancellation on the envelope, we have it.”
“But this didn’t happen with the envelope you found on the floor?”
“No.”
“Because it was sent to me, and marked personal and confidential?”
“That’s correct.”
We talk about the size of the envelope, large enough to hold letter-size paper laid flat, unfolded. I ask her if she touched the envelope again at any time after she set it on my desk, and she says no.
I ask her if anyone else touched it, and she says she doesn’t think so.
I ask her if she knows when the envelope was finally opened, and she tells the jury that this happened the following Monday morning when I returned to the office.
“And were you present when this was done?”
“I was in your office,” she says.
“So between Thursday morning when you discovered the envelope on the floor inside the door to our office and Monday morning when I returned to the office, as far as you know the envelope in question remained on my desk, unopened?”
“That’s correct.”
Now I have her tell the jury where Harry and I were during all this time, from the moment she discovered the letter on the floor until I returned on Monday morning to open it.
“You were out of the country on business,” she says.
“And how do you know that?”
“Because I helped make the travel arrangements, one of the secretaries and myself,” she says, “and because in preparation for my appearance here today, both you and Mr. Hinds showed me your passports with both entry and exit stamps for the dates in question from the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean.”