“And in the course of your work on that case, did you ever hear the name Gloria Dayton?”
“No, I did not.”
I paused for a moment and referred to my notes. So far, Marco had been nothing but cordial in his responses and seemed unconcerned by being forced to testify. His denials were what I had expected. My job was to somehow open a crack in the facade and then exploit it.
“Now, you are currently involved in a federal case involving Hector Moya, are you not?”
“I don’t know the details because the lawyers are handling it.”
“Mr. Moya is suing the federal government, alleging that you set him up in that bust eight years ago, is he not?”
“Mr. Moya is in prison and is a desperate man. You can sue anybody for anything, but the fact is, I was not there when he got busted and it wasn’t my case. It came to me afterward and that’s all I know about the whole thing.”
I nodded as though I was pleased with his answer.
“Okay, let’s move on. What about other players in this case? Do you know or have past experience with anyone?”
“Players? I am not sure who you mean?”
“For example, do you know the prosecutor, Mr. Forsythe?”
I turned and gestured toward Forsythe.
“No, I don’t know him,” Marco said.
“How about the lead investigator on the case, Detective Whitten?” I asked. “Any past association with him?”
Forsythe objected, asking where I was going with this meandering examination. I asked for the judge’s indulgence and promised to get to the point quickly. The judge let me carry on.
“No, I don’t know Detective Whitten either,” Marco answered.
“Then how about the DA’s investigator, Mr. Lankford?”
I pointed at Lankford, who was sitting face forward, staring at the back of Forsythe’s head.
“He and I go back about ten years,” Marco said. “I knew him then.”
“How so?” I asked.
“There was a case when he was with the Glendale PD, and we crossed paths.”
“What was the case?”
“There was a double murder, and the victims were drug dealers. Lankford caught the case and he consulted with me a couple, maybe three, times about it.”
“Why you?”
“DEA, I guess. The dead guys were drug dealers. There were drugs found in the house where they got killed.”
“And Detective Lankford wanted to know what? If you knew anything about the victims or who might have killed them?”
“Yes. Things like that.”
“Were you able to help?”
“Not real—”
Forsythe objected again, citing relevancy.
“We are trying a case involving a murder seven months ago,” he said. “Mr. Haller has shown no relevancy to this case ten years ago.”
“Relevancy is coming, Your Honor,” I responded. “And Mr. Forsythe knows it.”
“Soon, Mr. Haller,” the judge responded.
I nodded my thanks.
“Agent Marco, did you just say you were unable to help Detective Lankford?”
“I don’t think I was. As far as I know, they never made a case against anyone.”
“Were you familiar with the victims in that case?”
“I knew who they were. They were on our radar but they weren’t the subjects of an active investigation.”
“What about in this case, Agent Marco? The Gloria Dayton case. Has Investigator Lankford consulted you on it?”
“No, he has not.”
“Have you consulted him on it?”
“No, I have not.”
“So, no communication between you two?”
“None.”
There was the crack. I knew I was in.
“Now this double murder you spoke of from ten years ago, was that the one on Salem Street in Glendale?”
“Uh . . . yes, I believe so.”
“Are you familiar with the name Stratton Sterghos?”
Forsythe objected and asked for a sidebar. The judge signaled us up to the bench, and then, as expected, the prosecutor complained that I was trying an end-run move to bring Sterghos in as a witness when the judge had already struck him from the witness list.
I shook my head.
“Judge, that is not what I am trying to do now, and I will go on record right here and say I will not be calling Dr. Sterghos as a witness. He’s not even in Los Angeles. All I want to do here is establish whether the witness knew that I had put Sterghos on the witness list. He said he’s had no contact with anyone associated with this case, but I will be introducing evidence to the contrary.”
Forsythe shook his head like he was exhausted by my antics.
“There is no evidence, Judge. This is just a sideshow. He’s trying to hijack the case while he chases after rainbows.”
I smiled and shook my head. I looked back at the courtroom and happened to see Lankford walking down the center aisle to the rear door.
“Where’s your investigator going?” I asked Forsythe. “I’m going to put him on the stand in a few minutes.”
The question to Forsythe alerted the judge. She raised her head to look over us.
“Mr. Lankford,” she called.
Lankford stopped five feet from the door and looked back.
“Where are you going?” the judge asked. “You are going to be called soon as a witness.”
Lankford held his hands out like he was not sure of an answer.
“Uh, the men’s room.”
“Be back soon, please. You will be needed shortly and we have already lost enough time this morning. I want no more delays.”
Lankford nodded and continued out of the courtroom.
“Excuse me a moment, gentlemen,” the judge said.
She rolled her chair to her left and leaned over the edge of the bench to converse with her clerk. I heard her ask the clerk to tell one of the courtroom deputies to make sure Lankford came back promptly to the courtroom.
That made me feel better about things.
The judge rolled back and returned her focus to the subject of the sidebar. She warned me that her patience had grown exceedingly thin and that I needed to draw the string on the net she had allowed me to cast.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
I went back to the lectern.
“Agent Marco, did anyone tell you that the name Stratton Sterghos had appeared on the defense’s amended witness list this week?”
Marco showed the first signs of discomfort, shaking his head wearily.
“No. I don’t know that name. I never heard of the man before you just brought him up.”
I nodded and made a notation on my legal pad. It read Got you, motherfucker.
“Can you tell the jury where you were on the night of November eleventh of last year?”
Forsythe stood.
“Your Honor!”
“Be seated, Mr. Forsythe.”
Marco shook his head casually.
“I can’t remember exactly what I was doing that far back.”
“It was a Sunday.”
He shrugged.
“Then I was probably watching Sunday Night Football. I don’t know for sure. Does that make me guilty of something?”
I waited, but nothing more came.
“The way it usually works is that I ask the questions,” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Ask away.”
“What about two nights ago on Monday? Do you remember where you were that night?”
Marco didn’t answer for a long moment. I think he realized that he might be standing in the middle of a minefield. In the silence, I heard the rear door of the courtroom open and turned to see Lankford returning, one of the courtroom deputies behind him.
“I was on a surveillance,” Marco finally said.
I turned back to the witness stand.
“A surveillance of whom?” I asked.
He shook his head.
�
��That’s a case. I’m not going to talk about it in open court.”
“Was that surveillance on Salem Street in Glendale?”
Again he shook his head.
“I’m not going to talk about open investigations in court.”
I stared at him for a long time, wondering how far I should push him.
I finally decided to wait and looked up at the judge.
“Your Honor, I have no further questions at this time but I request that the court hold Agent Marco as a witness so that I can recall him later today.”
The judge frowned.
“Why can’t you finish your direct now, Mr. Haller?”
“I need to take testimony from another witness this morning, and from that testimony I will draw the final questions I’ll have for Agent Marco. I appreciate the court’s ongoing indulgence of the defense’s presentation.”
Leggoe asked Forsythe if he had an issue with my plan.
“Judge, the people have grown very weary of defense counsel’s flights of fancy but once more we are willing to take the ride. I know this will be another crash-and-burn and forgive me but I just can’t look away.”
The judge asked Forsythe if he wanted the opportunity to cross-examine Marco before he stepped down. This would be in addition to the opportunity he would have after I brought the DEA agent back to the stand in the afternoon. Without much thought, he opted to wait to conduct one uninterrupted cross-examination. And as a safety measure, he reserved the right to call Marco back to the stand even if I didn’t.
The judge told Marco he could step down but ordered him to return to the court at one p.m. She then told me to call my next witness.
“The defense calls Lee Lankford.”
I turned to look at Lankford. He was slowly starting to stand.
“And, Your Honor, we’re going to need the audio-visual remote for a video demonstration.”
I made sure I requested it before Marco and his attorney got out of the courtroom. I wanted them thinking about the video I planned to play.
42
Lankford walked with a steady but slow pace to the witness stand, his eyes staring at a fixed point on the wall behind it. I watched him closely. He looked like a man who was running equations internally while running on autopilot externally. I thought this was a good sign, that he was realizing his one way out was through me. I decided I would know pretty quickly into his testimony which path he had chosen.
As the DA’s investigator assigned to the case, Lankford had been granted a standard exception that allowed him to remain in court even though he had been listed as a witness by the defense. This meant that going all the way back to jury selection he had been a familiar presence to the jurors as he sat each day against the railing behind Forsythe. But he had never been introduced before the moment I made him stand and be identified during Hensley’s testimony the day before. So I walked him through who he was and what he did, and I included his background as a former Glendale homicide detective, even though that information had been revealed earlier by Marco.
I then moved into matters intrinsic to the defense case. It seemed to me that all the tendrils of the case had led me to this one witness. It all came down to this moment.
“Okay,” I said. “Now let’s talk about this specific case. How did it work? Were you assigned to this prosecution or did you request it?”
Lankford sat with his eyes cast downward. His posture and demeanor indicated he had not heard the question. He remained motionless and said nothing for several seconds. The silence stretched to the point that I felt the judge was on the verge of prompting him when he finally spoke.
“We normally have a rotation when it comes to murder cases.”
I nodded and was formulating a follow-up when Lankford continued.
“But in this case I personally requested the assignment.”
I paused, waiting for Lankford to say more, but he was silent. Still, I interpreted his full answer as a strong indication that we had come to a tacit agreement earlier.
“Why did you request it?”
“I had been assigned previously to a murder case in which the prosecutor was Bill Forsythe and we had worked well together. At least, that was the reason I gave.”
Lankford looked directly at me when he added the last sentence. I believed there was some kind of message in it. There was almost a pleading look in his eyes.
“Are you saying you had an ulterior motive for requesting the case?”
“Yes. I did.”
I could almost feel Forsythe tightening up as he sat at the table next to the lectern.
“What was that motive?”
“I wanted to be on the case so I could monitor it from the inside.”
“Why?”
“Because I was told to.”
“You mean by a supervisor?”
“No, I don’t mean a supervisor.”
“Then by who?”
“James Marco.”
I don’t think in all the thousands of hours I have spent in courtrooms that I had ever had such a moment of clarity. But I knew the moment that Lankford said the name James Marco that my client, if he was to survive his injuries, would be set free. I looked down at the top sheet of my yellow legal pad and composed myself for a moment before continuing.
And in that moment, Forsythe rose in slow motion, as if knowing by reflex that he had to stop this but being unsure of how to do it. He asked for a sidebar and the judge told us to come forward. As we assembled in front of the judge, I actually felt sorry for Forsythe because of the predicament the prosecutor was in.
“Judge,” he said, “I would like to request a fifteen-minute recess so I can confer with my investigator.”
“That’s not going to happen, Mr. Forsythe,” Leggoe responded. “He’s a witness now. Anything else?”
“I’m being sandbagged here, Judge. This—”
“By Mr. Haller or your own investigator?”
Forsythe stood frozen.
“Go back, gentlemen. And Mr. Haller, continue with the witness.”
I went back to the lectern. Forsythe sat down and stared straight ahead, bracing for what was coming.
“You said that Agent Marco told you to monitor this case?” I asked Lankford.
“Yes,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“Because he wanted to know whatever we could find out about Gloria Dayton’s murder investigation.”
“He knew her?”
“He told me she was his informant a long time ago.”
I made a mark on my legal pad, checking off one of the points I had wanted to make through Lankford’s testimony. I glanced over at the jury box. Twelve for twelve, plus two alternates, they were riveted. And so was I. I had chosen Lankford over Marco as the weaker part of the conspiracy. He saw the Sterghos house video and, of course, knew he was the man in the hat. He knew that his only way out was to carefully attempt to pick his way through his testimony without snagging himself on perjury or self-incrimination. It was going to be hard to do.
“Let’s back up for a minute,” I said. “You’re familiar with the video taken through security cameras at the Beverly Wilshire hotel that showed Gloria Dayton on the evening she was murdered, are you not?”
Lankford closed his eyes for a long moment and then opened them.
“Yes, I am.”
“I am talking about the video first shown to the jury yesterday.”
“Yes, I know.”
“When did you first see that video?”
“About two months ago. I don’t remember the date.”
“Now yesterday during testimony, Victor Hensley, a security supervisor at the hotel, said he believed that the video showed Gloria Dayton being followed when she left the hotel. Do you have an opinion on that?”
Forsythe objected, saying the question was leading and beyond the scope of Lankford’s knowledge and expertise. The judge overruled it and I asked Lankford the question again.
“Do yo
u think Gloria Dayton was being followed the night of her death?”
“Yes, I do,” Lankford said.
“Why is that?”
“Because I was following her.”
What followed that answer may have been the loudest silence I had ever heard in a courtroom.
“Are you saying that is you on the video—the man in the hat?”
“Yes. I’m the man in the hat.”
That got another check mark on my pad and another roaring silence. I realized that Lankford might be exorcizing his demons by confessing, but he so far had not admitted to anything that was actually a crime. He continued to give me that same pleading look. I came to believe in those moments that he and I were making an unspoken agreement. It was the video, I realized. He didn’t want it played. He wanted to tell the story as a cooperating witness, not have the Sterghos video shoved down his throat while on the stand.
I was willing to take that deal.
“Why were you following Gloria Dayton?”
“I had been asked to find her and to find out where she lived.”
“By Agent Marco?”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“No. Not at that time.”
“What did he tell you?”
Forsythe objected again, saying I was asking for hearsay testimony. The judge said she was going to allow it, and I thought about what Legal Siegel had said the night before about judicial discretion being a big fucking tent. No doubt I was living in the tent now.
I told Lankford to answer the question.
“He just said he needed to find her. He said she was a snitch who had left town many years ago and now she was back but he couldn’t find her, so he thought she was using a new name.”
“So he left it up to you to find her.”
“Yes.”
“When was this?”
“Last November, the week before she was murdered.”
“How did you find her?”
“Rico gave me a picture he had of her.”
“Who is Rico?”
“Rico is Marco. That was his nickname because he worked racketeering cases.”
The Gods of Guilt Page 34
