The judge was the same judge I had for my murder trial, Judge Gina Grant, Division 47. I liked her, and I got along with her very well. I found her to be a tough but fair judge. She was from the defense bar, as she worked for the public defender’s office when she was a lawyer, which set her apart from a lot of other judges that came up through the ranks from the prosecutor’s office and other places like that. I knew that she was not going to take any kind of bullshit, which was exactly what this hate crime designation was. Bullshit. Always was, and I had the feeling that the prosecutors knew that from the beginning. There was no way that they couldn’t have known that. If they had done their homework, for even two seconds, they would’ve known. Which meant that either they didn’t do their homework, or they were being completely disingenuous when they filed the enhancement on this case.
I got into the courtroom early that morning. I sat at the defense table, waiting for Beck to arrive. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I had no idea how this case was going to go. I had a pretty good idea who really did it, but whether or not I was going to be able to prove it to the jury was something that remained to be seen.
At first, I was excited to find out that Beck and William had a relationship. But then I realized that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing for our case. There was the possibility that the two had a lover’s quarrel that ended up with Adele dead. It didn’t even matter that the two of them broke up once William became Adele. What mattered was that they were, at one time, lovers. However, I didn’t think the prosecutors were going to go down that route, because they were so invested in the whole hate crime angle. Why they were invested in that angle, I didn’t know. I only knew that they were.
Before long, the judge came on the bench, and the prosecutor, Alayna Wilder, and her second chair, Freddy Weinstein, came in the door. “Remain seated,” the judge said to us. “Okay, looks like we’re going to be having a trial today.” She looked at me with a skeptical look. “You again, counselor?” She shook her head. “We have to stop meeting this way. I mean, seriously, haven’t you ever heard of pleading out a client or two?” She smiled, to make sure that I knew that she was only joking. Which I did know. Judge Grant liked to joke around a lot behind the scenes. In front of a jury, of course, she was all business.
I chuckled. “I wish. Trust me, I don’t like trying these cases any more than you like hearing them. I know that all of us would rather be on the golf course, or, in my case, at the casino, but here we are. I just can’t seem to get a guilty client. Sometimes I wish I would get a guilty client a time or two, so that I could plead them and give me a break from having to try these cases. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a good plea bargain right now.”
Alayna laughed. “Not to mention the fact that the last time you were in front of this judge, you were the Defendant. That’s weird, if you think about it.”
I turned around, and I saw Harper rushing through the door. Harper always tended to be a little bit late to court. And when she wasn’t late, she was rushing around trying to figure out where her head was. I often wondered how she managed to do as well as she did in the courtroom, considering how frazzled she always was. I was going to have to talk to her later and see if things were okay with Abby. I knew that she was struggling with her still and that Abby was sucking a lot of her mental energy. I knew how she felt. God, I knew how she felt. When I thought that I was gonna lose Amelia to that bastard Baron Wicker, I thought I was losing my mind.
As it was, Amelia was not my daughter, at least not biologically. But she also knew that she was never going to leave me, and I was never going to leave her, and that brought us closer. I hated that she knew that I didn’t give her her genes, but I couldn’t help that. Once that cat was out of the bag, it was out of the bag. But the important thing was that she knew that I loved her, and she loved me, and we would always be together. Crazy Sarah couldn’t tear us apart, no matter how hard she tried.
I still couldn’t believe how all that shook out. I found out that I had a half-brother, and that Sarah was banging him when I was married to her.
I still didn’t know exactly why Sarah filed that paternity and custody case against me. Yes, I knew that Baron Wicker needed an heir, or else he was going to be cut off from his own inheritance. I just didn’t know why it was that the two of them thought that they would get away with it. As if I was just gonna lay down and take their doctored documents as gospel. They apparently took me for a fool, but I had the last laugh on them. I had no use for people who were so selfish that they would try to tear a child from her father just because an inheritance was on the line. The dude already had enough money. But apparently it wasn’t enough - he wanted more, more, more. He was a rich bastard, and money was all that he cared about. God forbid Amelia would have gone with him. I had to admit that the outcome that happened was the very best that could have happened. For both Amelia and me, but not so much for Sarah and her boyfriend Baron.
“Hey,” Harper said. Her voice was higher pitched than usual, and she was shaking. “I’m so sorry, Your Honor, I know that I was supposed to be here right at nine, but –”
“I understand counselor,” Judge Grant said. “How’s your daughter these days?”
“I’m so happy that you asked me about her. She’s doing just fine. She’s not the reason why I was running late this morning.” Harper looked down at the floor. “I’ve just been having some personal problems these days. But they had nothing to do with my daughter.”
“Well, counselor, it’s okay, you’re only five minutes late. Now, I understand that the defendant has a motion in limine for me to hear. As I understand it, he not only wants the jury to not hear an instruction about this being a hate crime, but he also wants to have his white supremacist past excluded from evidence.” She looked over at my client, who was dressed in a shirt, that, thankfully, covered almost all of his tattoos. “Counselor, you did a good job of dressing your client today. If he would have had some skin showing, the horse would have left the barn, as far as his white supremacist past.” She was referring, of course, to the fact that my client had all those Aryan Nation tattoos. I did my best to make sure that all of them were covered up.
“You’re right about that, Your Honor. If the jury would’ve been allowed to see his tattoos, it probably wouldn’t have been good for him, to say the very least. But, that’s not the case, so I can plausibly suppress the fact that my client was once involved in the Aryan Brotherhood. I ask the court to instruct the prosecutor, Alayna Wilder, that she not ask any questions related to white supremacy.”
Judge Grant nodded her head. “I read your motion, counselor, and I’ve read the prosecutor’s rebuttal. I’ll tell both of you that I’m inclined to agree with the defendant. I fail to see how this could be a hate crime, considering that the defendant and the victim had a past together. As I understand it, they were homosexual lovers, when your client was known as William Page. You’d be hard-pressed, Ms. Wilder, to prove that the defendant killed Ms. Whittier out of some kind of animosity against transgendered people. But I’ll listen to your arguments anyway.”
Alayna looked nervous. Whatever argument she came up with was going to be ridiculous, and she knew it. But she was going to give it the old college try anyhow. “As I indicated in my response to Mr. Harrington’s motion in limine, we believe that his client’s hateful past is extremely relevant. Our theory is that the reason why he killed Ms. Whittier in the first place was because he was so conflicted about his homosexual tendencies, which obviously clash with the creed that he shared with his Aryan brothers behind bars. We believe that he was a powder keg just waiting to be set off, and that his love for a transgendered female upset his psyche in such a way that he lashed out, and killed her.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s such a creative argument that the prosecutor is coming out with. They could have just dropped the hate crime designation once they found out the true nature of the relationship between my client and Ms. Whittier. But they didn’t drop
it, so they had to come up with some armchair psychologist cockamamie theory about my client’s true nature doing battle with his psyche. However, unless they plan on not only producing an expert witness, but a psychologist who has actually treated my client, then I say, in the most technical terms possible, that this is a load of bull.”
Secretly, however, I thought that their argument was a good one. If I thought that my client actually killed Adele, that would be a good reason why he would’ve committed the crime. I saw firsthand how much my client actually was conflicted about his feelings for her. The fact that my client was gay was something that was eating him alive. However, I was convinced that my client didn’t actually kill Adele, so I thought that the prosecutor’s theory, while creative, didn’t hold water.
I looked at the judge, and I saw that she wasn’t buying it, either. “Ms. Wilder, you’re going to have to do better than that. Mr. Harrington is actually correct – if you’re planning on bringing in such a theory, then you better have your ducks in a row. That means that you’re going to have to bring in a psychologist who treated Mr. Harrison, along with an expert witness who can testify to this sort of self-loathing that you’re talking about. I have your witness lists, and you not only didn’t designate an expert for anything, but you also didn’t bother to have Mr. Harrison evaluated by a psychologist. Therefore, I’m going to have to sustain Mr. Harrington’s motion in limine. You are not to bring in the defendant’s membership in the Aryan Brotherhood, nor may you ask any questions that reference in any way, shape or form, the fact that Mr. Harrison has, what you might call, a troubling past with white supremacy. I agree with Mr. Harrington’s motion, and that to do so would be more prejudicial than probative, therefore the motion in limine is sustained.”
Alayna looked cowed, but she nodded her head and went into another argument. “Your Honor, in light of your ruling on the defendant’s first motion in limine, I wanted to clear this with Your Honor before the trial begins. I do have witnesses who will testify that Mr. Harrison had a strained relationship with Ms. Whittier, because Mr. Harrison struggled with his homosexual feelings for her. That’s another way that we can establish motive for Mr. Harrison killing Miss Whittier, and I would like to pursue that angle.”
“Of course, if you have witnesses who will say something like that, then that’s fine,” Judge Grant said. “Mr. Harrington will have a chance to cross-examine them, same as any other witness. As long as you don’t go into Mr. Harrison’s membership in the AB, you may question, with a limited scope, anybody who had had personal conversations with Mr. Harrison, where Mr. Harrison indicated that he was having trouble with his sexuality and having trouble with how he felt about the victim. Again, however, the questioning of these witnesses must be extremely limited. If you get in over your skis, I will shut you down.”
I knew that I would win that first motion. I thought the same about my next one. “My next motion in limine is pretty straightforward. My client had been in prison, and I made a motion that there can be no reference to his prison stint. I know that’s kind of a ‘goes without saying’ type of motion, however, I want to make sure that I lay the groundwork, in case we lose. I want to preserve my objection to any kind of reference to my client’s prison stint.”
Since I successfully argued that Beck’s position in the Aryan Brotherhood was a no-fly zone, I was also going to be able to make sure that they couldn’t reference his prison stint at all. At least, not to impeach him. That was really the most important thing to me, as far as making sure that his white supremacist leanings did not come into court, because if they did, then the logical conclusion would be that the prosecutor would be able to show that Beck joined the gang in prison. That would have wound up as a one-two punch for them – they not only would’ve been able to show that my client was allegedly a white supremacist, but they also would be able to show he had been in prison. It would’ve been a backdoor way of introducing his felony record. I killed two birds with one stone with my first motion in limine, so this motion in limine was just a chance to button things up.
“Again, I’m inclined to agree with the defendant’s motion in limine on the topic of his prison sentence,” Judge Grant said. “It’s a well-known rule of evidence that you generally cannot bring in evidence of a felony conviction to impeach a witness, so I seen no reason to deny defendants motion in limine. So the defendant’s second motion is sustained as well.” She looked meaningfully at me. “That said, having read the state’s rebuttal to your motion, I understand that bringing in the defendant’s prior felony record will be necessary to establish motive. Therefore, I will allow the state to bring in the defendant’s felony record and prison stint for that reason alone. The state may inquire about the defendant’s felony record, but may not use it to impeach.”
I nodded my head. I thought that was a fair ruling, but it didn’t accomplish much for our side. The prosecutor could still bring in Beck’s record, but not use it to impeach him. However, once the horse had left the barn, that was that. But I had to move on.
“Now, my third motion in limine is to have my client’s confession suppressed,” I said. “I have obtained a videotape of the confession, and it clearly shows that my client asked for an attorney, and the cops ignored him. They pretended that they couldn’t hear him ask for the attorney. They pressed on, and he signed a confession within 1/2 hour after he asked for an attorney and he was rebuffed. Moreover, the reason why he signed a confession was because the cops lied to him and told him that his little brother was going to be in trouble because he was dealing drugs. While I realize that the police are allowed to lie to a suspect in order to obtain a confession, they are not allowed to ignore a suspect’s request for an attorney. Therefore the confession was fruit from the poisonous tree, and needs to be suppressed.”
“Counselor, is this true?” Judge Grant asked Alayna. “Did the cops in this case ignore the defendant’s request for an attorney?” She appeared to be somewhat perturbed by this entire exchange. Of all the rookie mistakes that a cop is going to make, ignoring a request for attorney was right up there.
“Well,” Alayna said with a clear of her throat. “The request for an attorney was ambiguous. I saw the videotape, and Mr. Harrison simply said he wanted to speak with Fred Moore. He didn’t say that Fred Moore was his attorney.”
“With all due respect, Your Honor, that’s a ridiculous argument,” I said, secretly thinking it was a decent argument. “No, my client did not say the words ‘my attorney, ‘ but he did give a name. The cops should have asked him if he was referring to his attorney. Fred Moore is a well-known member of the defense bar, and I think that the cops know this. Or they should know this.”
“And why is it that your client didn’t ask to hire Fred Moore for his counsel?” Judge Grant wanted to know.
That was a complicated thing to make the judge understand. I didn’t quite know how to explain to her that the only reason why he hired me was because I agreed to work for free because of Heather’s situation. If he hired Fred Moore, he would have had to pay his full fee, and there was no way in hell that he would’ve been able to afford that.
“ My client didn’t hire Mr. Moore because he couldn’t afford his fee.”
“And yet, he can afford your fee?” Judge Grant asked in wonder. “What am I missing here?”
“Your Honor, I’m taking his case on a pro bono basis. So, yes, he can afford my fee.”
Judge Grant looked like she wasn’t quite understanding what was going on, but she shook her head. “I’m not going to ask you why you would take a murder case on a pro bono basis. That’s not my business.” She looked over my motion in limine and appeared to contemplate it. “So, let’s see. Now, tell me why your client just didn’t tell the interrogating officers that he wanted an attorney? Why would he just throw out a name, instead of saying the words ‘I want to speak with counsel?’” She peered at me from behind her glasses. “It seems to me that your client was deliberately trying to throw some ambi
guity into the proceedings, because he wanted to sign a confession to get his little brother out of trouble, and he knew that if he would’ve come right out and said that he wanted to speak with an attorney, the questioning would have to cease. He was trying to play things both ways. I must say that his whole plan was too clever by half.”
The judge figured out Beck’s game. I knew that she would. It was very easy to see what he was doing when he asked for Fred Moore, instead of saying the words “I want my attorney.” Nevertheless, I thought that I had at least a 50-50 chance of getting the confession thrown out.
The judge sighed. She looked over at Beck, who was standing next to me. She wagged her finger at him. “You think that you’re so smart, Mr. Harrison. I know what you were doing with the policeman who were interrogating you. I’m inclined to overrule your motion in limine on the confession, just because your little game pisses me off. However, because you did throw out a name, and that name was of a well-known member of the defense bar, combined with the fact that the police who interrogated you lied to you, I will go ahead and sustain your motion to have your confession suppressed. I don’t want to reward bad behavior, which this definitely was, but, in the end, the police who interrogated you didn’t have clean hands, either. In fact, of all the parties involved, their hands were the most unclean. And, as it turns out, your little brother was not even in trouble, so you didn’t gain anything by confessing. So I guess it’s a wash, in a way.” She banged her gavel. “Defense counsel’s motion in limine to have his confession suppressed is sustained.”
I nodded my head, knowing that we were winning the first battles already. That was important to me, to win these early battles, because I wanted to put the prosecutor on her heels. And she deserved it. Once she found out the nature of my client’s relationship with the victim, she should’ve dropped the hate crime designation right then and there. But she didn’t. So now she was being made a fool of. And I couldn’t have been more happy about that.
The Hate Crime Page 16
