Perceville then countered with his argument, that the sheriff's deputies had permission to search for a person in Matt's residence, but not to go searching through small sealed containers lying around on the furniture, regardless of what those containers resembled.
"Just because Officer Worthington feels that small silver bowls of that type typically are used to store cocaine," Perceville argued, "does not give him carte blanche to start opening them up. Using that logic, it could be argued that when Officer Worthington sees Mr. Tisdale's filing cabinet sitting in the corner of the office, it's okay for him to start digging through it and reading Mr. Tisdale's private files because he's heard that criminals keep records of their wrongdoing in filing cabinets."
Perceville then submitted his own case briefs on the subject, most of which also had to do with the plain view doctrine, although his were cases in which that particular doctrine was found not to apply. He had done his research well (or at least his paralegals had). Two of the cases were almost identical to the situation Matt was facing. In the first, police responding to a domestic dispute call had spied a wooden box with a marijuana leaf on it sitting on a shelf in the living room. Without asking for permission, one of the officers had opened it and found half an ounce of marijuana and a considerable amount of hashish. In the second case, a police officer performing a routine traffic stop spotted a small zippered case in the glove compartment of the suspect's car when he'd reached in to get his registration. The officer demanded that the suspect hand the case over. He opened it and found two grams of cocaine, a mirror, a razor blade, and a gold plated straw.
In both of these cases, the prosecution argued that the plain view doctrine applied since the containers that were opened were of the sort typically associated with drugs. And in both cases, appellate courts had ruled that just because a sealed container looked like something that might contain illicit substances, that did not constitute the illicit substance in question being in plain view. The evidence in both of these cases was disallowed.
Upon being presented with these briefs, Judge Waters had little difficulty making a decision.
"My ruling is that the opening of the silver bowls in Mr. Tisdale's residence by Officer Worthington constitutes an illegal search and seizure," she said from her bench. "Since the finding of the cocaine and the marijuana in these bowls is the sole basis for the search warrant of Mr. Tisdale's house, any evidence gathered from that search is therefore tainted and unusable under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine."
She banged her gavel and just like that, the most damning of the charges against Matt became unsupportable.
"Yes!" Matt said outside the courtroom, slamming Perceville on the back hard enough to drive some of the wind from his lungs. "You're a bad-ass motherfucker, even if you do like to suck hairy ass."
Perceville did not respond to the second part of Matt's comment. By now, he was quite used to such insults. "You're not out of the woods yet, Matt," he told him. "You still have the DUI, the reckless driving charges, the evasion of the police charges, the resisting arrest charges, and the assault on a peace officer charges."
"I ain't worried about that shit," Matt told him. "I have the utmost faith in you, Tinkerbelle."
A new preliminary hearing was held the following day and Matt's bravado was shaken a bit when Judge Waters found there was sufficient probable cause to bring Matt to trial on all of the remaining charges.
"So what happens now?" Matt asked him when it was over.
"Now, I start sending my investigators out to start digging for info that will help muddy the waters a little. If I can get something to cast a little doubt on the validity of some of these charges, the prosecutor might drop them or at least try to get you to plea to a lesser charge."
"I see," Matt said, nodding wisely. "Well, get on the motherfucker then. We're supposed to go out on tour next month."
Perceville's investigators got on the motherfucker. They interviewed anyone who might even remotely be able to cast aspersions on the DA's case. They talked to Kim, to Matt's household staff, to Matt's neighbors. They dug up any information they could on the officers involved in the altercation or in Matt's booking. It wasn't long until they had just enough to muddy the waters.
Kim, two of Matt's household staff, and Matt's next-door neighbor — a real estate developer who often smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine with Matt — had all witnessed the confrontation in front of Matt's house. All were willing to testify that the Orange County sheriff's deputies had been the aggressive ones, that they had yelled out conflicting orders while pointing guns at Matt and Kim, that they had then rushed over and started manhandling both of them. It wasn't exactly the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but it was just enough to conceivably offer a defense to the assaulting a peace officer and resisting arrest charges.
The investigators also discovered that every one of the deputies involved in the fight had been accused multiple times of use of excessive force. This was not unusual, of course. Any cop who has worked the streets more than two months has excessive force complaints in his record. Two of the deputies involved, however, had actually been disciplined in the past for excessive force. Granted, the disciplines were nothing more than simple written reprimands, but it was something that would go a long way toward casting doubt in the mind of your average dumbshit juror.
On December 19, after having the weekend to mull it over, Deputy DA Sparks called Perceville Maywood and offered a plea bargain.
"What are the terms?" Matt asked when he was told about it.
"You plea guilty to the DUI charge, the reckless driving charge, and one count each of assaulting a peace officer and resisting arrest. You'll do ninety days in jail and be on probation for one year. You agree to take an anger management class and an alcohol awareness class."
"Ninety days in jail?" Matt said. "Fuck that shit. I don't want to do no fucking time."
"I've arranged that you be allowed to serve your time in the Gallahad Gardens Correctional Institute," Perceville told him. "It's a private correction facility in Newport Beach. You'd have to pay pretty good money to be incarcerated there, but it's much better than the Orange County Correctional Center, which is where you'd otherwise end up."
"I don't want to go to jail at all," Matt said. "And I don't want this to fuck up our tour plans."
"This is the best I can do, Matt," Perceville told him. "Considering that you were looking at three to four years in state prison initially, I'd think you'd be grateful for this plea."
"What if we go to trial?" Matt asked.
"Then it's a crapshoot," Perceville told him. "I might be able to cast enough reasonable doubt on a jury to get you acquitted of some or all of the charges, but I might not. Juries are made up mostly of morons and they're unpredictable. There's a very good chance you could be found guilty on all charges."
"And what would happen if I was?"
"Your sentencing would then be up to the judge. He would more than likely give you a year in the county jail, which would translate into six actual months if you exhibited good behavior."
Matt frowned. "That don't sound too fucking cool," he said.
"Indeed it does not," Perceville said. "My advice to you is to take this deal. I will ask them to defer sentencing until early May and to allow you to leave the country since your livelihood demands it."
"Will they agree to that?" Matt asked.
He nodded. "They'll agree to it."
"All right," Matt said. "I guess I'll take it."
"Good man," Perceville said. "I'll get in touch with the DA immediately."
By December 23, the last business day before the Christmas holiday period, it was all over but the sentencing. The DA's office agreed to all of the terms of the plea bargain, as did Matt. Judge Waters, who was quite sick of having the scrungy musician and his pompous lawyer in her courtroom, agreed to the plea deal as well, including the out of country provision and the delayed sentencing provision. The California DMV, once they had a guilty plea in the criminal justice system, was then allowed to act on the charges as they related to Matt's driving privileges. Matt's driver's license was suspended for eighteen months.