Liarakos’ associates had spent the last two days going over this pile and placing small squares of yellow sticky paper at every passage that they thought might be of interest. The difficulty, of course, was that at this stage of trial preparation the prosecutor still had not decided on a list of witnesses. So a lot of the material being read by the defense attorneys would be superfluous, unless Liarakos wanted to try to subpoena a witness himself and introduce testimony he hoped would be exculpatory.
Exculpatory, a nifty little word that meant confuse the hell out of the jurors.
Confusion and deceit were at the very heart of the trial process. The theory that comfortable law professors and appellate judges liked to cite stated that in the thrust and parry of adversarial combat — somehow, for reasons only a psychiatrist would find of interest, these legal thinkers still believed in medieval trial by combat — the truth would be revealed. Revealed to whom was a question never addressed. Perhaps it was best for everyone that the philosophical questions were left to mystics and the tactics and ethics to the trial lawyers. “The American legal system isn’t going to be reformed anytime soon, so we’re stuck with it”—Thanos Liarakos had made this remark on several occasions to young associates appalled at their first journey into the morass.
The meat of the defense lawyer’s job was to ensure that the truth revealed in the courtroom melodrama was in the best interests of his client. Thanos Liarakos was very good at that.
He had already come to the conclusion that the point of his attack had to be on the jury’s perception of Chano Aldana. He had assumed all along that the prosecution had sufficient evidence to convince any twelve men and women that Chano Aldana was imbedded to his eyes in the drug-smuggling business. Yet there was more to it than that. The whole thrust of the government’s case was that Aldana was the kingpin of the entire Medellín cartel, some Latin American ogre who bought men’s souls and terrorized and murdered those he couldn’t buy. Liarakos wanted the jury to believe that the prosecutor, William C. Bader, had to prove that Aldana was the devil incarnate or they could not convict.
Everything Liarakos did or said at trial would be designed to force the jury to the question, Is Chano Aldana the personification of evil? Is this man sitting here with us today Adolf Hitler’s insane bastard? Is this slightly overweight gentleman in the sports coat from Sears the spiritual heir of Ivan the Terrible? If Liarakos could induce the jury to raise the bar high enough, the prosecutor’s evidence would fall short.
Liarakos’ primary asset was Aldana himself. He looked so average, so normal. He would be dressed appropriately. He would smile in the right places and look sad in the right places. And regardless of the testimony of the prosecution’s witnesses, Chano Aldana would continue to look like an underdog. Even the sheer weight and number of the prosecution’s witnesses would be turned against the government — Liarakos would ask, After all these years, after all the money spent and hundreds — nay, thousands — of people questioned, is this all the government has? Is this all?
The difficulty was going to be controlling Aldana. He appeared to be pathologically adverse to taking direction from anyone and he had all the charm of a rabid dog. Yet there must be a way….
He was musing along these lines when Judith Lewis, his chief assistant, brought in another stack of transcripts festooned with yellow stickies.
She put the pile on his credenza, then sat down. When Liarakos looked up, she said, “I don’t think they’ve got it.”
“Explain.”
“If this sample of transcripts is representative of the government’s evidence, they don’t have enough to get a conviction. Most of this stuff is inadmissible hearsay. They might get it into evidence if we were stupid enough to make Aldana’s character an issue, but not otherwise. In this whole pile there is not one possible witness who had direct contact with Aldana.”
“They must have better stuff. They just haven’t given it to us yet.”
“No, sir. I’ll bet you any sum I can raise they don’t have it.” She swallowed hard. “Chano Aldana is going to walk.”
Liarakos examined her face carefully. “That’s our job, Judith. We’re trying to get him acquitted.”
“But he’s guilty!”
“Who says?”
“Oh, don’t give me that crap. He’s guilty as Cain.” She crossed her legs and turned her head toward the window.
“He isn’t guilty until the jury says he is.”
“You can believe that if it makes you feel any better, but I don’t. He’s taken credit for arranging the murders of at least three Colombian presidential candidates. I spent thirty minutes with the man yesterday.” She sat silently for a moment recalling the meeting, then shuddered. “He did it,” she said. “He had them killed, like they were cockroaches.”
“Colombia didn’t choose to try him for murder, Judith. Colombia extradited him to the United States. We’re not defending him from a murder charge.”
“Colombia couldn’t try him. Get serious! In 1985 forty-five leftist guerrillas drove an armored car into the basement of the Colombian Palace of Justice. They held the place for a day and executed all the justices. Aldana hired them. Over a hundred people died — were murdered — that day. Try Aldana in Colombia? My God, wake up! Listen to yourself!”
“Judith, you don’t know he did that! We’re lawyers. Even if he committed a thousand crimes, he isn’t guilty until a jury convicts him.”
“Semantics,” Judith Lewis muttered contemptuously. “I spent my childhood learning the difference between good and bad, and now, all grown up and wearing two-hundred-dollar dresses, with an expensive education, I sit here listening to you argue that evil is all in the label. Bullshit! Fucking bullshit! I know Chano Aldana is guilty as charged on every count in the American indictment, and on probably another two thousand counts that haven’t been charged. He is a dope smuggler, a terrorist, an extortionist, a man killer, a murderer of women and unborn babies. He deserves to roast in the hottest fire in hell.”
“Only if the government can prove it,” Thanos Liarakos pleaded. “Only if the jury says the government proved it.”
“The government hasn’t got it.”
“Then they shouldn’t have indicted him.”
“I quit,” she said simply.
She walked for the door, opened it, and passed through. She left the door standing open.
Liarakos sat for a moment thinking about what she had just said. Then he went after her. She was in her office putting on her coat. “Ms. Lewis, would you come back to my office, please, and discuss this matter further?”
Wearing her coat, she followed him past the secretary’s workstation and, when he stood aside, preceded him into his office. He closed the door and faced her.
“What do you mean you quit?”
“I quit. That’s plain English. It’s exactly what I mean.”
“Do you mean you wish to work on some other case or perhaps for another partner?”
“No. I mean I quit this firm. I quit the legal profession. I quit! I am through trying to be a lawyer. I don’t have the stomach for it.”
She brushed past him. She paused at the door. “You can mail my last check to the Salvation Army. There’s nothing in my office I want to come back for.”