Nineteen
It was simply a matter of chance. Any one of a dozen different deputy district attorneys might have been assigned to the case of State v. John Smith. Despite all the publicity, despite the editorials insisting that the district attorney himself should handle the first murder trial in which the victim was a sitting circuit court judge, it was treated like any other homicide. Whether the victim was one of the homeless found butchered behind the garbage cans in an alleyway, or a member of the state judiciary found stabbed to death next to his car, the bureaucratic machinery of the criminal justice system treated everyone with the same rigid equality of death. Cases within the same category were assigned in a strict rotation among the deputies within that division. Without a second thought, an anonymous clerk entered the name Cassandra Loescher and with that simple act made her famous.
When the district attorney announced that Cassandra Loescher would prosecute the killer of Judge Quincy Griswald he lavished such praise on her qualifications that it would have been hard not to believe that she had been his personal choice. With the wide-eyed sincerity that had helped get him elected, he insisted she was one of the most experienced, best-trained prosecutors in his office. Leaning toward the cameras, a confident smile on his suntanned face, he called her “a tough, smart lawyer who knows her way around a courtroom,” as if it might have entered anyone’s mind that she did not. A quick, furtive glance at a three-by-five card was followed by the observation that “there are not more than three or four prosecutors in the whole state who could match her 96 percent conviction rate.” Turning to the somewhat bewildered woman next to him, he shook her hand and, with one last smile and one last wave to the circle of reporters crowding the corridor, vanished into his office.
Blinking into the TV lights, Cassandra Loescher was left alone to listen to herself repeat the same vapid generalities she was too intelligent not to have once ridiculed in the mouth of someone else. It was always interesting, the way the words we mock in others no longer seem insincere when we use them ourselves. She meant it when she said she was determined to bring this killer to justice; she meant it when she said she had the greatest faith in the world that a jury would do the right thing. She was now so convinced of the importance of a guilty verdict in the case against John Smith that she had probably forgotten the day when, while I watched, she had tried to trade insults with Quincy Griswald and then stalked out of his courtroom, wishing him dead.
The look she had given him then was the look she was giving me now. She was annoyed she had in effect to repeat the arraignment with a new attorney, and even more irritated that it had not started on time. It was scheduled for ten o’clock; it was now seven minutes after. She sat at one of the two tables reserved for counsel, tapping her fingers and clicking her teeth, listening to the murmurs of the handful of reporters and spectators scattered over the hard wooden benches that ran across the low-ceilinged room behind us.
The clerk took two steps inside, stopped and stamped her foot.
“All rise,” she announced.
His black robe trailing behind him, Judge Morris Bingham walked briskly into the room where in the course of a long tenure on the bench he had heard nearly every complaint and every excuse suffering could create or duplicity could invent. In his mid-fifties, with blue eyes that were lively and alert, Bingham had only a tinge of gray in his close-cut brown hair. Though he was not in any serious sense a legal scholar, he had a clear mind and the kind of sound judgment that builds on its own experience.
No one-not even the criminal defendants he had sometimes to sentence to long terms of imprisonment-had ever complained that he had treated them unfairly. He was civil, sometimes to a fault, but his impeccable manners, an honest reflection of his ba-sically decent character, also provided him a barrier against any closer contact. Lawyers who practiced before him loved him without knowing him; judges who worked with him did not like him because he had no interest in knowing them.
There was no wasted motion in what he did, and no sense that he worried about time. He sat down, folded his hands together on the bench in front of him, leaned forward, and turned to the deputy district attorney. With nothing more than an expectant look, he let her know what he wanted.
“We’re here in the matter of State v. John Smith, your honor.”
He glanced at the deputy sheriff standing next to the door at the side. The deputy understood. His eyes still on the judge, he opened the door and called the name of the prisoner. When John Smith appeared in the doorway, the deputy put his hand on his arm and led him across the front of the courtroom.
Shackled with chains, the young man-the boy-known only as John Smith shuffled across the floor, his wrists held together in front of his waist, his head bobbing slowly up and down. As he drew closer, he stared at me with a puzzled expression. I had spent an hour with him late Friday afternoon, just three days before, but I was not sure he remembered who I was.
The deputy guided him to a spot next to me and then stepped back to a place in front of the wooden railing a few feet behind.
Bingham looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
“Your honor, for the record my name is Joseph Antonelli. I have agreed to undertake the representation of the defendant known as John Smith. Mr. Smith, as the court is aware, has previously been arraigned on an indictment charging him with the crime of murder in the first degree. At the time of that arraignment, Mr. Smith was represented by the public defender’s office.
A not guilty plea was entered, defense counsel filed a motion for a psychiatric examination to determine if Mr. Smith was in fact competent to stand trial, and the case was assigned to this court for all further proceedings.”
This was one of those routine appearances which, though most lawyers hated them as a waste of their time, were among my favorite things to do. I was like an actor who has only five lines, but knows that they are as important as any lines in the play. I stood with my shoulders straight and my hands held behind my back, bent slightly forward at the waist, my feet spread wide apart.
I spoke each sentence rapidly, snapped off the last word, paused long enough for the word to echo back, and then did it again.
“I have filed with the court a substitution order, signed by both previous counsel and myself. With the approval of the court, I wish to begin my representation of Mr. Smith by asking that the motion for a psychiatric examination be withdrawn. The defendant has no desire to avoid trial of this case on the merits. The defendant, your honor, wishes to establish once and for all that he is innocent and that whoever killed the honorable Judge Quincy Griswald is still at large and-”
Morris Bingham raised his chin, and with that single gesture cut me off. I had begun to play to the reporters and he was not going to allow it. His gaze lingered a moment longer, and I thought I detected something close to a smile. Then he looked over at Cassandra Loescher, who already knew the question and had no doubt about her answer.
“The state has no objection,” she replied as soon as he lifted his eyebrow.