Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

by Buffa, D. W.

  "Good," I said, with a quick nod of approval.

  I walked back to the counsel table as if I were finished. When I reached my chair, I hesitated—and then stood straight up.

  "But you haven't told us the whole truth, have you, Ms. Maxfield?"

  She blinked. "Yes, I have."

  "You haven't told us that when you delivered an envelope to Travis Quentin you knew what was inside it. You knew you were giving him instructions on how to murder Marshall Goodwin's wife, because you were part of it from the very beginning, weren't you?"

  "No!" she insisted. "I wasn't. I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't even know he had anything to do with it, until... "

  "Until what?" I demanded, as I put both hands down on top of the table and bent forward, glaring at her. "Until what?"

  "Objection!" Jones shouted, as he sprang out of his chair.

  "Until what?" I demanded. "Until he told you he had her killed?"

  Ready to clutch at anything that might yet give her a way out, she cried, "Yes! He told me."

  "Objection, your Honor!" Jones shouted again, beating the table with his open hand.

  Judge Holloway hammered her gavel with such force that the silence when she stopped was a kind of physical shock. Bending forward, the wooden gavel dangling from her hand, she darted a glance first at Jones, then at me. "Mr. Antonelli—"

  Before she could say another word, I held up my hand. "No further questions, your Honor."

  Jones was still on his feet, his mouth trembling. "Your Honor, I ask the court to strike the testimony of this witness. The prosecution was badgering her with questions even after I had made an objection."

  "Denied," Judge Holloway ruled, without hesitation. "Do you want to examine this witness?" she asked, with studied indifference.

  Jones muttered something under his breath.

  "What's that, counselor?" Holloway asked sharply.

  "Yes, I would." He looked at Kristin Maxfield, huddled in the witness chair, and in a calm, steady voice, appeared to take her side.

  "This has been a difficult time for you, Kristin—"

  Judge Holloway interrupted. "A witness is never addressed by his or her first name."

  "Hasn't it, Ms. Maxfield?" he asked, his eyes still on her.

  "Yes, it's been difficult," she agreed.

  "Must be a little frightening to know that your husband has been accused of something as awful as this, and that you yourself are under some kind of suspicion?"

  She lowered her shoulders. "Yes." She sighed. " 'Frightening' " would be a good word for it."

  "You've been under a lot of pressure, not only because of what your husband has been going through but because the prosecution has made it clear to you that if you didn't change your testimony they were going to try to indict you for this crime as well. Isn't that true?"

  "Yes," she acknowledged, her eyes locked on his.

  "As a matter of fact, you've had two meetings with Mr. Antonelli in which all this was discussed, isn't that true?"

  "Yes, but—"

  Jones held up his hand, the smile still on his face. "No, that's enough. No further questions," he added, without so much as a glance toward the bench.

  On redirect, I simply asked, "Was the testimony you gave here today truthful?"

  "Yes," she said, staring down at the floor, "it was."

  "No further questions," I announced wearily, with a brief, dismissive wave of my hand.

  Jones just shook his head when he was asked if he had anything more.

  As she rose from the witness stand, Kristin tried to catch her husband's eye, but he refused to look at her. She let her gaze linger a moment longer, as if she were giving him one last kiss good-bye, and then, turning away, walked out of the courtroom as quickly as she could.

  It was time for closing arguments. The prosecution always goes first and, because it has the burden of proof, is given a second chance, after the defense has finished, to convince the jury that it has proven the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. In less than thirty minutes, I outlined the evidence that had been presented and then sat down, waiting to see how Richard Lee Jones would try to argue that his client had been wrongly accused.

  Among the unexamined propositions that pass thoughtlessly from one generation of lawyers to the next is the advice to argue the law if the facts are against you and to argue the facts if the law is against you. For the better part of three hours, Richard Lee Jones made his closing argument to the jury and seldom mentioned either one. Instead, he talked about trust and insisted upon suspicion. He described every graphic detail of the rape and murder of Nancy Goodwin and then reminded the jurors of what they had seen on the face of the man who had done it.

  "Was there any remorse? Was there any regret? Did Travis Quentin leave you with anything except the certainty that, given half a chance, he'd do it all over again?" Then he reminded them of what they had seen on the face of the man who was accused of hiring the killer. "The prosecution claims that Marshall Goodwin had Travis Quentin brought to his office, that he spent an hour with him, that he knew everything about him, his record of violence, his record of murder, a record that would leave no doubt at all that he was completely indifferent to human life, and that then, knowing all this, he paid him to kill his wife."

  Gripping the railing of the jury box with both hands, he dared them to believe it."You've seen them both: Travis Quentin and Marshall Goodwin. Do you really think a husband could have done that? You've seen them both," he repeated, "Travis Quentin and Marshall Goodwin. Which one of them would you believe on anything that was of serious importance to yourself?"

  Moving away from the jury, he tossed his head back. "But the prosecution claims corroboration. The prosecution wants us to believe that we can take the word of a murderer and a rapist because Marshall Goodwin withdrew ten thousand dollars from his bank account." Pausing just long enough to cast an accusatory glance in my direction, he turned back to the jury.

  "Now, how do we know Travis Quentin was paid ten thousand dollars to murder the defendant's wife? Why, because Travis Quentin told us so. And it must be true, because it matches perfectly, including the hundred-dollar denominations, the money that everybody agrees the defendant had in cash. Travis Quentin couldn't have just made that up, could he?" he asked. "After all, he couldn't possibly have known that the defendant had removed exactly that amount in exactly that denomination unless someone told him, could he? And we certainly wouldn't want to suggest that the police or the prosecution might just have happened to mention that little piece of information to him during one of their lengthy conversations, would we?"

  I considered objecting, but instead I scribbled a note to myself and then sat back and watched the rest of his performance. His words laced with condescension, Jones ridiculed the evidence and insisted that the only reason a case was brought against the defendant was the malice and incompetence of the prosecution. The most savage criticism was reserved for the very end, when he tried to explain away the testimony of the defendant's own wife.

  Even more than the defendant, Kristin Maxfield was the victim of an "overzealous prosecution begun by the police, who were embarrassed because they had failed to catch a killer, and continued by the powerful political enemies of a decent man they knew they could never otherwise defeat." Perspiring, a curling shank of black hair plastered to his forehead, Jones waved his hand in the air.

  "She came into this courtroom and she told the truth and the prosecution did not like it and so they threatened her with prison until she came back in here and told a lie. And the only question left is whether we're going to let them get away with it!" There was a dead silence when he stopped, as if, all emotion spent, everyone was too exhausted to breathe.

  Facing away from the jury, I began to beat the second knuckle of my finger against the hard edge of the table, a tangible reminder that there was something yet to come. Peering down from the bench, Judge Holloway invited me to give the second closi
ng argument. "Mr. Antonelli?"

  Ignoring her, I continued to tap my finger against the hard wood surface, as if I were mesmerized by the sound.

  "Mr. Antonelli?" she repeated, more loudly.

  My head snapped up and I looked at her, a startled expression on my face. "Yes?" I asked.

  Everyone was watching, concentrating now on what was playing out in front of their eyes, Richard Lee Jones's incendiary words already receding from the forefront of their conscious minds.

  "The prosecution gets to make two closing arguments, Mr. Antonelli. Or did you decide to call it quits with one?"

  I was on my feet, walking toward the jury box, before she had finished. Standing in front of the jurors, I started to say something, then closed my mouth, shook my head, and stared at the floor.

  "I was about to summarize again the evidence that has been given in this case," I said, glancing up. "But I've already done that. You heard the evidence, you watched the witnesses, and you can tell for yourselves who told the truth and who did not. No, I'm not going to summarize the evidence again," I went on, looking across at the counsel table. "The truth of it is, I'm almost embarrassed to stand up again after what we've just heard from Mr. Jones. It seems somehow unfair. I shouldn't be able to address the jury twice," I said earnestly. "He should. I'm not the prosecutor in this case, he is. He's not defending a client charged with the murder of his wife, he's accusing everyone else involved in this case with a conspiracy to ' "murder' " his client."

  My eye stayed a moment longer on Richard Lee Jones, and then, turning away, I paced back and forth in front of the jury. Repeating each allegation he had made, I offered the same rebuttal, tedious and infallible: There was not a scintilla of evidence to support anything he had said.

  "But of course," I reminded them, with a sidelong glance at Jones, "that only proves his point, doesn't it? What better demonstration that a conspiracy—those powerful political enemies—is behind everything that's happened than the very fact that there's no evidence that it ever existed?

  "Well, that isn't quite right, is it?" I asked, searching the eyes of the jury. "Mr. Jones did not just accuse unnamed political enemies, he also accused the prosecution. And he did more than just name me, he told you what I had done to further the ends of this conspiracy. He told you I had threatened a witness with prison if she didn't change her testimony, change it in a way that would be helpful to the prosecution and damaging to the defense."

  Pausing, I pivoted a half step back and faced Richard Lee Jones. "Let me say this just once. Kristin Maxfield was not threatened with anything, and the only thing I ever asked her to do was to tell the truth." I turned back to the jury. "What does it all come down to? The defense insists she was lying when she told you that she delivered the sealed envelope to Travis Quentin; lying when she told you that she first had sex with Marshall Goodwin the night his wife was being murdered and then again the day his wife was buried; lying when she said he confessed to the hired murder of Nancy Goodwin. And what is the best reason they can give you to explain why she decided to lie? Because I threatened her with prison. For what? If none of it happened, what could she have been sent to prison for?"

  I began to walk away and then stopped and turned around. "Mr. Jones told you in his closing argument that all you really have to decide in this case is whether you should believe someone like Travis Quentin or someone like Marshall Goodwin."

  One at a time I looked at them, twelve ordinary people summoned to decide if someone else should live or die.

  "There really isn't that much difference between them, is there? They were both willing to kill to get what they wanted. Travis Quentin got his freedom and ten thousand dollars. Marshall Goodwin got Kristin Maxfield and a million dollars. I'll bet not even Richard Lee Jones would try to tell you it was worth it."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Late the next morning, the case went to the jury. With nothing left to do but wait, I took the elevator two floors down and, as quietly as I could, slipped into the back row of Horace Woolner's courtroom, the only observer of what appeared to be a routine request for attorney's fees.

  "The contract plainly states that, should a dispute arise between the parties, the losing side must pay the reasonable attorney's fees of the other side, your Honor," a young sallow-faced lawyer explained.

  Horace rolled his head toward the other lawyer and waited. A paunchy, round-shouldered man, the shiny elbows on the sleeves of his tight-fitting dark-blue suit coat betrayed the dismal career of a sole practitioner forced to take whatever case he could get.

  "That's just the point, your Honor," he replied. "It says reasonable attorney's fees."

  Horace moved his eyes from one side to the other.

  "These are reasonable attorney's fees," the younger, expensively dressed lawyer insisted. "A complete account of the time records kept in this case has been supplied to the court."

  His eyes still hooded, Horace rested his elbows on the bench and scowled. "This case was settled out of court, wasn't it?"

  "Yes, your Honor," he answered proudly.

  Horace ran his left thumb up along the rough-edged side of the voluminous court file. "There's enough in here to write a textbook on civil procedure."

  "I tried to be thorough, your Honor," he said.

  Lifting up the file cover, Horace withdrew a two-page document that was on top. "Yet the whole thing started with this, a simple page-and-a-half complaint in which Mr. Barkley there"—he gave a quick nod toward the older attorney—"filed an action for breach of contract on behalf of his client." Folding the first page over the second, Horace went on, "Now, I'd like to point out that right at the very end the plaintiff asks for damages in the amount of seven thousand two hundred and fifty dollars."

  "Yes, but—"

  "And the first thing you do," Horace continued, extracting another document from the folder, "is file a counterclaim in which your client alleges damages in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars. And then you proceed to file motion after motion, until finally the plaintiff can't afford to pursue it. Instead of his day in court, what he gets is a chance to buy himself out of any more expenses. And now you come in here and submit a bill for attorney's fees for thirty-six thousand four hundred and fifty dollars!" Horace was as angry as I had ever seen him.

  "Well, you'll get your attorney's fees. One hundred dollars. That's the amount I consider reasonable. And let me tell you one other thing. You want to practice law like some game where the side with the most money wins? Try it again, and I'll see you're brought up on charges. Now, get out of my courtroom!" And Horace lurched to his feet and stalked out of court.

  I went around the other way and entered his chambers unannounced. He was standing next to the coat rack, tugging at the clasp that held his robe together. It would not come undone, and he clamped his thick fingers around it and pulled down as hard as he could, ripping it off. Grabbing the first book on the shelf nearest him, he sent it sailing across the room. Glancing off the top of his desk, the book hit the wall and fell, face down, pages bent, on the floor.

  "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

  "Horace, what the hell is wrong with you?" I asked, alarmed.

  "Goddamn lawyers." The stacks of files and documents, usually organized in the rigorous arrangement required by his insistence on perfect order, had been scattered all over the desk and onto the floor. He did not seem to notice, or, if he did, he did not care. He started to sit down, changed his mind, and laid his right hand heavily on the near corner of the chair. "You think you can just walk in here whenever you feel like it?" he snapped.

  "My mistake. It won't happen again." I turned on my heel and headed for the door.

  "Don't go. I didn't mean it," he called after me. I let go of the handle and swung around. Horace had sunk into the chair. "It hasn't been a good day," he said, by way of apology.