Presumption of Guilt

by Rachel Sinclair

  I sat down, and I saw that Brent Atwood, and his second chair, Gina Matthews, were already in their places. The judge was going to go through the usual motions in limine, and any other kind of pretrial motions that we wanted to make. I had several, and I knew that the prosecutor did as well. It was basically just tying up loose ends. Both of us were going to go through our evidence, and the judge was going to decide if there was anything that could not come into the record.

  I knew that my theory of the case was a novel one. To say the very least. Yet, I was encouraged by this judge that he was going to give me a wide berth.

  The only thing that was troubling me, however, was the fact that I could not obviously use the 23 and Me test results against Jacob. Therefore, I had to have creative ways of figuring out how to nail him to the wall. Once I found out the results of this test, it was just a matter of trying to find some kind of corroborating evidence to show what I needed to show.

  Nobody was in the courtroom, because the media was not allowed in just yet. We were going to go through our pretrial motions, and then jury selection, and then the media would be invited in during the trial portion. But I didn’t anticipate that the trial was going to begin for another several days. Because of the intense media scrutiny of this case, we were going to have to choose alternate jurors. It was going be tough enough to choose a jury of 12 who were going to be able to be unbiased about this case. It seemed that everybody had an opinion about Esme Gutierrez, and about whether or not she was guilty. Hardly anybody on the street would say that they hadn’t heard about it. How could you not hear about it? It was one of those cases that permeated just about everybody’s consciousness. It was like the Kardashian family – you just couldn’t get away from it, no matter where you went, no matter what you did. Even if you didn’t want to hear about it at all, you still knew something about it.

  So the process of picking a jury was going to be a painstaking one, to say the least.

  The judge invited both of us to come up, and we both presented our pretrial motions. Brent was very specific about a few pieces of evidence that he did not want to have come in, and I was just as specific about evidence that I did not want to have come in. The judge was going to listen to both of our sides to determine what was allowed in, and what wasn’t.

  In the end, it was a wash. Neither one of us really prevailed on the piece of evidence that we were really worried about. I knew that after the whole situation with the reopening of the autopsy thing, this judge would allow as much evidence in as possible. His philosophy was that if he got appealed, he wanted to be appealed on the basis of letting too much evidence in, as opposed to not enough.

  “Let the jury hear it all,” he said. “And sort it out. I’m all for transparency. Now, I know that Ms. Collins has a unique interpretation of the facts. To say the very least. But I’m willing to go ahead and let her present evidence on what she’s trying to prove, even if it’s unconventional. She has her theory on the case, and I’m going to let her present evidence about it.”

  I was happy to hear that, because I knew that Brent was not so willing to want to give me the benefit of the doubt with what I was trying to prove. To say the very least. He had already called me several times before the trial, trying to get me to take one plea deal after another. And, to tell the truth, I was somewhat inclined to talk to Esme about these pleas. After all, anything short of the death penalty was going to be a win for us. But, at the same time, I knew that I could not browbeat her into accepting a plea deal. Not when I was fairly certain that she didn’t do it.

  There was one witness that I thought was going to be extremely helpful for me - Arnold Garcia. Arnold was a voice coach. There was one thing that always nagged at me about this entire scenario – how could an imposter step into the role of Aria so fluidly? After all, Sophia Delgado was an immigrant from Mexico. Regina found out her background once Julian Rodriguez gave me her name. Even if Sophia spoke perfect English, I wondered how it was that she was able to imitate Aria’s voice well enough to fool people who knew her really well.

  So, I went back to see Julian. I thought that he might be in a better frame of mind. When I saw him, he did confirm to me that Sophia did speak perfect English. She apparently had a knack for languages, like Regina. And then he mentioned this Arnold Garcia person. He explained to me that Arnold was Sophia’s voice coach. Because she was a musician, she had an ear for pitch. In fact, I thought that that probably was the reason why she got the job - that she was a musician with an ear for pitch. That and the fact that she did look enough like Aria that she could pull it off. Apparently, she had the same build as Aria, and the same coloring as her as well. Her features were reasonably close - close enough that it would not be out of the realm of possibility that she could be Aria after Aria had plastic surgery.

  However, the voice would give her away. If her voice was not the same as Aria’s, then there would be no amount of explanation that would convince the people who knew Aria well that this was Aria, and not an imposter.

  That was where the voice coach came in. Apparently, Sophia worked with this voice coach for six months. That explained to me the reason why it was that Jacob wanted to make sure that he drove his wife crazy enough that she went into the hospital for six months. That would give him time to work with this new girl, and train her. Apparently, Julian said that Sophia did speak perfect English, but she had a heavy accent when she came up. She worked with the voice coach so thoroughly that by the time she was able to step into Aria’s shoes, she was able to imitate her voice perfectly.

  I managed to track this guy down, and, even though he was apprehensive about testifying – after all, he was complicit in this entire thing – he agreed to take the stand in the end. I felt that that was the only way to show that the woman who was killed in that room was not Aria, but, rather, Sophia Delgado. It was important that I established that it was Sophia, and not Aria, because I had a very specific theory of the case, which depended upon my being able to show that the person who was killed was a Hispanic immigrant by the name of Sophia.

  After what I found out about Jacob’s background, the entire murder fit in perfectly.

  Granted, Brent was fighting me the entire way. He was fighting me on every motion that I made to the court about what it was that I wanted to prove. At first, I thought I was going to have to subpoena Arnold. He wasn’t willing to talk to me at first. So, when I went to court to ask for permission to subpoena him, Brent was there objecting the entire way.

  Thank God the judge was willing to be liberal about this entire case, because if he wasn’t, I might’ve been SOL.

  Brent was fighting me about even making evidence about my theory of the case. He knew what questions I was going to be asking Jacob, and he had asked the court that I not go in that direction. But the judge overruled him, so I was going to have free rein to show what it was that I needed to show.

  So, on the day of the trial, I was ready to go. Loaded for bear. I knew just what I wanted to show, and I knew just how to show it.

  The only thing was – would the jury buy it?

  Chapter 34

  The jury selection went somewhat smoothly. I prepared the questions I was going to ask the jury on voir dire. I wanted to see how open-minded they were about the kind of case I was going to present. In particular, I wanted to know who was a buff of true crime. I wanted to know who was the kind of person who would watch documentaries on Netflix on criminals, who would watch Dateline episodes, who liked to read the kind of books that Ann Rule would write. Ann Rule got her start writing the definitive biography of Ted Bundy, and she wrote many nonfiction books about other criminals after that. The reason why I wanted to know about this was because the true-crime buffs were usually people who were desensitized to the mind of a criminal. To them, this entire scenario would be much less outlandish. It was true that truth was often stranger than fiction, and avid readers of true crime nonfiction books, and avid viewers of documentaries on TV and Netflix, knew
that the criminal mind could be extremely devious.

  In this case, I knew that Jacob had something to hide. Something major to hide. Something that was so devastating that he would literally kill to protect it. He would kill to protect it, and then he would cover it up. He would cover up the fact he had killed anybody. It was all part of a very carefully laid out plan. A plan that Sophia Delgado knew about, of course. She had to have known about it because she was a participant in the cover-up. And that was bad enough, for Jacob. It was bad enough knowing that there was one sane person in this world who knew what he did. And that person’s name was Sophia Delgado.

  So why did he kill her now? I discovered that answer over the course of my investigation as well. It wasn’t just that he was freaked out about the fact that Sophia had been pulled over by a cop for suspicion of driving under the influence. She was not, however, arrested for it. The cop who pulled her over made the mistake of allowing her to make a phone call before he put her in the police car. The reason for that was that he recognized her as being the daughter of Jacob Whitmore. Since Jacob was a very important person in the Coronado area, cops gave deference to his family. So, Sophia was allowed to make a phone call to Jacob, and tell him what was going on. Needless to say, Jacob was down at the station before the cop and Sophia even arrived there. The charges were dropped, and Sophia was never fingerprinted.

  That was a close call. It was a close enough call that there was the possibility that Jacob would’ve killed her after the incident. He had to have known that one of those days, Sophia would be arrested for drunk driving, and she would not be allowed to make a phone call to him before being brought into the station. And if she was ever fingerprinted, that would be it. The jig would be up, and questions would be asked.

  So, the near arrest might’ve been a catalyst for doing what he did. Might have been.

  Then again, I found out another fact that was even more devastating than that. Another reason why he would’ve killed Sophia.

  And this particular fact, to me, was dispositive.

  After two days of intense questioning and voir dire, we had our jury.

  I was ready to go.

  Chapter 35

  After we did our opening statements, it was time to party.

  The prosecutor’s opening statement was pretty good. It laid out the facts, such as they were. It was completely ridiculous, as Regina had stated, that they were going to try to show that an immigrant was going to risk being deported by doing something as stupid as stealing from the Whitmores. Not just stealing from them, but stealing a necklace as valuable as the one that she was accused of taking.

  My opening statement, I believe, was better. I had a much more complicated set of facts that I was going to have to show, therefore I had to carefully lay it all out. I had to show my argument, bit by bit. Element by element, I had to lay it out for them. I could see that when I began my opening statement, many of them looked somewhat confused. But, by the end of my statement, I could see that they were with me. I saw their faces change from perplexed to a ha in a blink of an eye.

  After opening statements, Brent was apparently ready to go.

  “Counselor, call your first witness,” Judge Warner said to Brent.

  He called as his first witness the police who were on the scene. I wasn’t too interested in them. I knew that whatever it was they had to say was not going to hurt or help our case. Nevertheless, I did ask one of the officers on the scene about the interrogation.

  “Officer O’Neill,” I started to ask him. “I could see by the interrogation transcripts that you were questioning my client for six hours. Is that right?”

  He nodded his head. “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “And during a period of time, this period of six hours, did you allow my client to have a bathroom break?”

  He got closer to the microphone. “No. We did not.”

  “You didn’t? But I don’t understand. According to the transcript, you and Officer French took several breaks during this period of time. In fact, one of those breaks was for lunch. Now isn’t it true that you did bring lunch into my client, including a large pop?”

  “Yes. That is true.”

  “And the pop was actually a Diet Coke, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. That is correct.”

  “And was that pop a 32 ouncer?” I asked him.

  “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “And you still kept her for another four hours after you gave her that pop, isn’t that right? In fact, you not only gave her that pop, but you also gave her three other bottled waters, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. That is correct.”

  “Now, isn’t it true that you told her that if she just told you what it is that you wanted to hear, that she murdered Aria Whitmore in cold blood, she would be free to go?”

  “I did tell her that she had to tell the truth about what had happened that night. If she did tell the truth, then, yes, she would have been free to go.”

  “That was a lie, wasn’t it? If she would have admitted to having murdered Aria Whitmore, she would have been under arrest, not free to go, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “So, you’re admitting that you lied to her,” I said.

  “Yes. We did lie to her about that.”

  “And she asked to go to the bathroom several times, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. But we were not going to allow her to do that until after the interrogation was through. We made that perfectly clear. It’s a security risk. We did not have a female officer at that time who would have been able to escort her into the restroom. So we had no choice but to make her stay there until we were through with questioning her.”

  I nodded my head. “You didn’t have a female officer available to escort her? Is that what you just said?”

  “Yes. That’s what I just said.”

  I knew that was a lie. “Oh. So Officer Monroe, a female officer with 20 years experience, was not available that evening?”

  “No. She was busy with paperwork. Her shift was over.”

  “She was in the building, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes. But she was busy.”

  I went through a list of the other female officers who were around, and every time I mentioned it, Officer O’Neill said that particular female officer was busy during this time.

  “And isn’t it true that during this interrogation that my client was wearing a short sleeve shirt and a pair of shorts?”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  “And you and Officer French were in fact wearing long sleeves and pants?”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  “And isn’t it true that you deliberately put the temperature of the room down to 66° while my client was in there?”

  “Ma’am, the point of an interrogation is not to make sure that the suspect is comfortable.”

  “No, as a matter fact, the point of the interrogation is to make sure that the suspect is very uncomfortable, isn’t that true?”

  “No. That is not true. However, we adjust the temperature of the room according to the comfort level of the officers, not the suspect. Officer French and I were comfortable with the room’s temperature. That was the only thing that was important during this time. Not that Ms. Gutierrez was comfortable.”

  “And didn’t you tell Ms. Gutierrez, my client, that if she just cooperated with the two of you, you would talk to the prosecutor about going easy on her?”

  “Yes. I did tell her that.”

  “And what, exactly, would going easy on her entail in this case?”

  “Just that I would talk to the prosecutor and tell whoever it was who was chosen for this case that Ms. Gutierrez cooperated. The final decision, of course, is up to the prosecutor. But I would put in a good word.”

  “Now isn’t it true that even after you and Officer French went out of your way to make sure that my client was as uncomfortable as humanly possible, assuming that my client was not wearin
g an adult diaper, which she was not, my client still did not confess to killing Aria Whitmore. Isn’t that right?”

  He got closer to the microphone. “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “I have nothing further.”

  The state then called in the medical examiner. I had a few questions for her as well. She testified that her preliminary examination showed that the victim had shown signs of blunt trauma, and had been strangled. She concluded that the victim died because of strangulation, not because of the blunt force trauma.

  I thought about what Lauren had told me about how the real Aria was killed, and how she was killed by a large rock. The fake Aria was killed by blunt force trauma, as well.

  Because the medical examiner was not able to establish that the victim in this case was not Aria, simply because the original autopsy was not focused on identification matters, and then the body was cremated, I was going to have to cross-examine her about other matters. Specifically, I asked her about the entire situation about the reopened autopsy. That was important, because I wanted the jury to understand why it was that I was not able to definitively prove that the person who died in Aria’s place was not her.

  “Now, Dr. Jackson,” I said to her. “Isn’t it true that I made a motion to the court to have the autopsy reopened, because I found out new information about the victim, but I found that out some six weeks after the original autopsy was performed?”

  “Yes. That is true.”

  “Were you able to establish that the victim in this case was not Aria Whitmore?”

  “No. I was not.”

  “And why were you not able to establish that fact?”

  “Because, Mr. Whitmore apparently had elected to have the body of the victim cremated.”

  “And the body was cremated after it was buried, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. That is correct.”

  “So, as you understand it, Jacob Whitmore had his daughter buried in a coffin. And then, two days before the body could be exhumed for the new autopsy, before anybody in this case could be notified, Mr. Whitmore had his daughter’s body exhumed and cremated. Isn’t that right?”