The Last Plea Bargain

by Randy Singer

  The most fascinating clues were the nonverbal signals Rivera gave off. LA called it “duping delight”—the joy a sociopath takes in deception. “Look at that—did you see that sinister little smile flash across his face?”

  He was right. It wasn’t something I had noticed in real time, but I could see it when LA ran the tape in slow motion. “He’s playing us,” LA said. “Caleb Tate may be guilty. But this guy is lying through his teeth.”

  The whole experience created more anxiety for me. I couldn’t prove Rivera was lying, but I knew in my gut that LA was right. And so Jamie Brock, the by-the-book prosecutor, the woman who valued integrity and justice above all else, the same woman who had recently withheld information from Mace James, was getting ready to put a lying witness on the stand in a high-profile murder case.

  But how could we win the case without him?

  69

  Of all the luck. There were nine judges in Milton County Superior Court, and we ended up with the one judge who had a personal stake in the matter. And the way she glared at me from the bench, she acted like the entire case was my fault.

  One bizarre ruling followed another, and I seemed to be the only one in the courtroom who noticed. Tate would object, and the judge would sustain the objection automatically. If I tried to object, she told me to sit down. Masterson, sitting next to me, was too busy jotting notes for his cross-examination of Caleb Tate to pay it any mind.

  And then it dawned on me. I had been so focused on my dad’s results in front of Judge Snowden that I had never checked on Tate’s. What if Tate had wised up after the Antoine Marshall trial? What if he had started paying off Snowden like the other defense lawyers? Or started blackmailing her, or whatever it was my dad had been doing?

  It suddenly made sense—the rulings against me, Tate being allowed to strut around the courtroom and say whatever he wanted. I now knew how Tate must have felt all those years ago trying to defend Antoine Marshall and fighting the judge as well.

  Things turned truly bizarre when Tate took the stand and Masterson said he had no questions. I stood and objected. I had questions myself! But Masterson was pulling on my elbow, and Snowden was yelling at me to sit down, over and over, her shrill voice drowning out my questions.

  Tate started laughing, a truly heinous laugh, taunting me, mocking justice.

  And then, when I had reached the breaking point, the alarm broke through. I sat straight up, my heart pounding. I reached over to the nightstand, found my BlackBerry, and turned it off. I struggled to get my bearings.

  Relief and dread flooded me at once. Relief that it was all a dream. Dread because part of it could still become reality. We wouldn’t know the judge for our case until Monday morning. And we had a one-in-nine chance of drawing Snowden.

  Masterson and I had talked about it at length. If we drew Snowden, we would request a meeting with her and Tate in chambers to tell her about Tate’s anticipated cross-examination of Rivera. Snowden would probably be furious, but we guessed that she would ultimately recuse herself. In the process, Masterson’s investigation of the judge would have lost the element of surprise.

  Sitting in my bed, I forced myself to calm down. Justice, lying on the floor, made a sleep noise, a dog grunt that told me to go back to sleep.

  Not on your life. I was exhausted, but I got up anyway. Going through the day bone-tired was better than facing the nightmares.

  By Thursday night I realized that if I couldn’t stop the anxiety attacks, I would be of no use at trial. As usual, Aaron Gillespie agreed to juggle his schedule so he could see me.

  For nearly an hour, I unloaded all of my concerns. We hadn’t been able to prove any affairs by Tate. Our only witness tying him to the drugs was probably lying. The issues about my dad and Judge Snowden. My own role in the execution of Antoine Marshall. The loneliness I felt. The guilt.

  Gillespie listened patiently and reminded me that I was under a tremendous amount of pressure. He said I had never properly mourned my dad and that it was catching up with me. “But considering the circumstances, I actually think you’re handling things quite well,” he said.

  It helped to hear his calm reassurance. And he had some thoughts about managing the trial pressures as well.

  “Have you ever heard about Advanced Performance Imagery?” Gillespie asked.

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  I had once been an elite kayaker, finishing fourth in the Olympic trials. I knew several of my competitors used API as a sort of “mental steroid” to enhance their performance.

  “It’s the company that’s trained a lot of professional and Olympic athletes,” Gillespie said. “I guess you never worked with them.”

  “No. I had enough self-confidence on my own.”

  I thought groups like API were for athletes with inferior willpower who freaked out during intense competition. The whole idea smacked of Eastern religion and hypnosis to me. I never needed any of that. Or at least I didn’t think I did.

  For the next few minutes, Gillespie talked to me about the idea behind what he called “neurolinguistic programming.”

  “What you practice in your mind, you perfect in reality.” He explained how numerous athletes had trained their minds for success through visualization. Mary Lou Retton had employed a hypnotherapist named Gil Boyne prior to her 1984 gold-medal performance. Mark McGwire used visualization techniques—along with some less benign assistance—to set the home-run record in 1998. Gillespie ticked off a list of other famous athletes and coaches who used similar approaches to find “the zone.” He had worked with several athletes himself.

  “I know you’re going to hate this,” he said, “but I want you to try something.”

  He asked me to lie down on the couch and close my eyes. “You’ve been envisioning every bad thing that’s going to happen next week,” he explained. “I want to teach you a few relaxation techniques and then help you reprocess this trial in your mind.”

  The whole thing felt a little weird, but I was willing to give it a try. He had me concentrate on my breathing and took me through a protocol of relaxing each muscle in my body, one at a time. He had me picture various parts of the trial—my opening statement, the examination of witnesses, handling Caleb Tate’s antics. I imagined the jury handing the verdict slip to the judge. Deep breaths. Slow. Keep the pulse under control. Purposefully focus on each muscle. Relax.

  “Control, Jamie. It’s all about control.”

  I envisioned a guilty verdict, and despite my skepticism, I had to admit that this was the most relaxed I had felt all week. I left Gillespie’s office glad that I had taken the time to meet with him. I had almost talked myself out of it. But now, I at least had some tools for when the anxiety hit the hardest.

  I used them on Friday at 3 p.m. when we found out who the trial judge was. It wasn’t Snowden, but it was nearly as bad.

  “Your old buddy Harold Brown,” Regina Granger told me. The judge who had held me in contempt. One of the clerks had given Regina a heads-up. “Let’s try to keep it civil,” Regina said.

  Deep breaths, I told myself. And think positive.

  70

  Bill Masterson knew how to pick a jury. I watched in awe on Monday and Tuesday as Masterson made friends with the potential jurors for the Caleb Tate murder trial. He was relaxed and self-effacing, even poking fun at himself about his weight.

  He had a manner that allowed the jury to open up and share with him, and he had his own theories about the best potential jurors for our case. He wanted men. “They’ll be a lot more forgiving of Rikki.” He wanted Hispanics because Rafael Rivera was a key witness for us. And of course, he wanted bona fide evangelical Christians. Since he couldn’t use his peremptory challenges solely on the basis of religion, he got at the issue in other ways.

  “Now, the evidence will be that Rikki and Caleb Tate argued about a lot of things, and those things included Rikki’s conversion to Christianity. Have any of you ever argued with your spouse about religious issues? If
so, would that impact the way you looked at this case, or would you be able to put that aside and base your decisions solely on evidence?”

  A few hands went up, and Bill chatted with them about the spats they’d had with their spouses. He discussed how Rikki’s conversion caused her to change in a big way. I watched the body language carefully. There were two nodders, and I circled them on my list. They were keepers. Would anybody be unable to judge this case fairly because of these religious aspects? Of course not.

  Then Bill explained how Rikki’s conversion caused her to file a lawsuit against websites that contained her topless pictures. Caleb Tate opposed the lawsuits. This time I circled the frowners. Bill knew a lot of people struggled with pornography. Would anybody be unable to give Rikki a fair trial because she had once had topless pictures taken? Nope.

  Caleb Tate had his turn in front of the jury as well. It frustrated me that he could talk to the jurors under the pretext of voir dire and then hide behind the Fifth Amendment and not take the stand. But there was nothing Judge Brown could do about it. On the plus side, Caleb seemed much stiffer and less at ease than Masterson. A couple of jurors crossed their arms when he asked them questions. When Masterson cracked a joke, everybody smiled. But for Caleb Tate, they were all business.

  After two days of probing and haggling and trying to prejudge people based on limited information, both sides finalized their peremptory challenges, and we had a jury in the box. It was a diverse cross section of the citizens of Milton County, and it made me thankful for the jury system. Unlike a lot of trial lawyers, I trusted jurors. They didn’t know the law as well as the judges, but they had an instinct for justice, and they usually got it right.

  Judge Brown dismissed the jury with the usual instructions about not discussing the case with anyone. He told them we would start openings first thing in the morning. The thought of it made my palms sweat. Normally I settled down during jury selection, and my nerves would be well under control by the time I gave the opening. But in this case, because Bill Masterson had handled all of the chores of jury selection, I just sat at counsel table and made myself more nervous.

  That night, I knew I couldn’t sleep without the help of medication, and I didn’t even try. When I closed my eyes, I thought about my sessions with Gillespie and visualized the jury enraptured by my opening, affirming me with their eyes, drinking in the evidence against Caleb Tate. Deep breaths. Relax every muscle. Remember how they smiled at Bill Masterson.

  I fell asleep dreaming of guilty verdicts.

  For the most important day of my professional life, I wore a charcoal-gray suit, a white silk blouse, black pumps, and a gold chain around my neck. I had bought into the philosophy of my trial advocacy professor—don’t turn off the jury by the way you dress. It was better to keep it conservative so the jury could focus on what you were saying rather than how you looked.

  I arrived ridiculously early and was able to riffle through my notes several times before the courtroom began filling up. During jury selection, the courtroom had been half-full. But this morning there would be standing room only. Judge Brown had allowed one pool camera, which would send a live feed to all of the local television stations. A few of my friends from law school came, as did a good number of Milton County’s prosecutors.

  Bill Masterson had been coaching me and assured me that I was ready. Just before Judge Brown came out to gavel the court into session, Masterson leaned over and put his arm around my shoulders. “Your father was one of the best trial lawyers I’ve ever seen,” he said quietly. And Masterson had seen his share of trial lawyers. “You’re just as good, Jamie. Maybe better.”

  “Thanks. But I feel like I’m going to puke.”

  Masterson chuckled and patted my shoulder. Then he put his left hand on the table in front of me. “Notice anything about the fingernails?” he asked.

  He had gnawed them down so far that they looked painful. I had never noticed that Masterson chewed his nails.

  “They looked pretty good before I started jury selection,” he said. “If you aren’t nervous for a case like this, you’re in the wrong business. We just learn to hide it.”

  The man was a genius. Who knows—maybe he had just chewed his fingernails that morning to put me at ease. But the trick certainly worked. Even the legendary DA of Milton County got nervous before a big murder trial. And look how well he performed.

  By the time Judge Brown took the bench, called in the jury, and finished the preliminaries, I was ready.

  “Does the prosecution wish to present an opening statement?” he asked.

  “Yes, Your Honor. We would love to.”

  71

  My heels clicked as I approached the jury. I left my notes on the counsel table and walked in front of the podium—nothing between me and them except the jury rail.

  “As the court has already told you, my name is Jamie Brock, and it is my privilege in this case to represent the State of Georgia. My job is to seek justice on behalf of Rikki Tate. She cannot speak for herself because she was murdered by the man she loved and trusted more than any other. But I am here to speak on her behalf, and I’m here to help you piece together the story of how and why she was killed.”

  I delivered this part of my opening with hardly any movement. I kept my chin up and tried to appear confident. The jury would never believe my case unless I first believed it myself. I paused, took a deep breath.

  “Caleb Tate is a control freak,” I said. “And what he cannot control, he kills.”

  I was hoping the line might draw an objection from Tate, emphasizing my point. I had a ready response—See, he’s even trying to control my opening. But he was too smart to take the bait.

  “I like my hair short,” I said. I took a few steps and began to pace as I talked. “It only takes me a few minutes to get ready that way. I’ve always been an athlete, and I didn’t always have time to fix my hair after I worked out. Once I got used to the convenience, I just liked this layered look. You women on the jury know, our hair is a big part of who we are.”

  They were looking at me like I was crazy. They expected something more dramatic—a confession, DNA, maybe the 911 tape. But hairstyles?

  I had set up a video screen for the jurors. I pushed a button, and Rikki Tate appeared. Computer monitors at the defense table and on the judge’s bench reflected the same PowerPoint slide.

  “This is Rikki Tate a year ago.” I flashed up another picture. “And one year prior to that.” Another one. “This is from five years ago. . . . And this one is from when she and Caleb Tate first met.”

  Now all the pictures appeared, lined up on the screen. “You’ll notice that Rikki Tate had a different philosophy about hairstyles than mine.” The pictures all reflected Rikki’s long, dark hair. In one picture it was pulled into a tight ponytail, but in the others it hung below her shoulders, full and meticulously brushed. She could have done shampoo commercials.

  “Rikki Tate was a performer. And one of her greatest assets had always been her long hair.”

  A different shot of Rikki flashed on the screen. It was a close-up of her face from the night she died. You could see the vomit, and her skin looked pale and rough. There were circles under her eyes; she appeared to have aged ten years compared to the picture taken just a year before. The screen flashed again, bringing the two pictures side by side.

  “Six months before her death, for the first time in her life, Rikki Tate cut off her long hair. Her friends from church will tell you why. Out of the blue, that man, Caleb Tate, started telling her how much he had always loved women with short hair. How sexy it looked. How she should try it. He became obsessed with it. He wanted—he needed—to control her hairstyle.”

  I looked at the jury and twisted my face as if I were trying to figure something out. “In any investigation, there are a hundred seemingly minor pieces of evidence like this. Things that don’t seem quite right. And so I decided to do a little research and look at some of the women Caleb Tate has loved.�
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  I took the jury through slides of Caleb Tate’s first two wives and three of his girlfriends. They all had long, flowing hair. “Maybe the defendant did love short hair. Maybe he was just unlucky, and none of the short-haired women would go out with him. Or maybe . . .” I hesitated, and I could tell the jury was with me. “Maybe he began pumping his wife full of narcotics six months before he intended to give her an overdose and kill her. And maybe he needed to make sure that her hair was just the right length to appear she had been taking these drugs for a very long time. In other words, short enough so we could only test for six months of drug use and have to make assumptions about the time before that.”

  For a few minutes, I explained how hair testing worked. Then I went to an easel and listed the drugs found in Rikki Tate’s blood. I stepped back and looked at my handiwork, repeating the names of the drugs as if to myself. I turned to the jury.

  “It’s like that game—which of these is not like the other. Codeine and oxycodone are narcotics and can be fatal if taken at the right levels. But promethazine—that’s just an antinausea drug. It’s known in medical circles for helping patients keep narcotics in their system so the narcotics can achieve maximum medical effect. Yet Caleb Tate is no doctor. How would he know something like that?”

  I centered myself in front of the jury box so I was looking squarely into their eyes. “Some of you may remember the case of rock star Kendra Van Wyck, accused of poisoning a backup singer because she thought the singer was having an affair with Kendra’s husband. It may interest you to know that this exact same cocktail of drugs, along with a few others, was used in that case. And it may also interest you to know that the Van Wyck opinion and several briefs filed with the court had been downloaded by Caleb Tate seven months before Rikki Tate died. One month before she got her hair cut at the urging of her husband.