11-Trial

by Parnell Hall

  What would be the point of that, I wasn’t sure. But that could be his strategy—don’t do anything to rock the boat until the grand jury indicts. Then, once the indictment’s in place, start plugging every hole you can.

  Could that be it? Was that the master plan?

  And was there a master plan? Were MacAullif and I, as he had suggested, merely pawns in the game, being pushed out front by opposing counsel as part of some colossal mindfuck?

  Or was this just a simple, straightforward murder case, and everyone was making too much of it?

  I was not to know. I was not to care. I was not to hear anything about it for a while.

  A good long while.

  For the trial, as everyone had said, was months off. And in the meantime, apparently, there was nothing to be done.

  Aside from negligence work. There was a whole mountain of that. Trip-and-falls, hit-and-runs, medical malpractice, and automobile accidents were proceeding at record pace, Richard Rosenberg’s TV ads were steering the victims to Rosenberg and Stone, and crack investigator Stanley Hastings was on the job.

  At twenty bucks an hour and seventy-five cents a mile.

  But, you know...

  There’s nothing quite so disillusioning as getting what you want.

  Doubling my salary had seemed like a dream come true. Suddenly, a forty-hour week isn’t four hundred dollars, it’s eight. I was never hitting forty hours, as usual I was averaging somewhere between thirty and forty. But still, that was somewhere between six and eight hundred bucks. So at least I could count on paying off my debts and getting out from under.

  Only it didn’t happen.

  As the weeks went by, slowly it dawned on me I was no better off than I was before.

  First off, more taxes. The extra money bumped me into a higher bracket, so not only was I paying more tax because I was paying tax on more money, but I was paying a higher percentage of tax right across the board. This was compounded by the fact that I’m self-employed and have to pay quarterly estimated tax. A call to my tax accountant confirmed how much the estimated withholding would go up. I hung up the phone with nerveless fingers.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was still more money. Don’t get me wrong. Even with the tax and the whole schmear. It was a lot more money than I was making before.

  It just disappeared.

  Somehow or other, it vanished into the gaping hole of inflation. Aside from taxes, it went for health insurance, Tommie’s tuition, rent, Con-Ed, telephone, and the rest of the monthly madness. Not to mention a valiant but seemingly futile attempt to reduce the ever-increasing MasterCard bill.

  But that was the bottom line.

  For all my raise, we didn’t have one whit more money.

  And that was just part of it.

  The other part was, for all my raise, I was still doing the same old draggy job.

  All of which added up to just one thing.

  I couldn’t wait for the trial.

  28

  HUGE DISILLUSIONMENT.

  I’m talking about jury selection.

  I had expected to see Richard Rosenberg pull a Perry Mason trick. I expected him to stand up and say, “Your Honor, the defense doesn’t care who the jurors are, as long as they’re willing to be fair. We’re willing to accept, sight unseen, the first twelve jurors called into the box.”

  That would be dramatic, showy, and cause quite a stir. Moreover, it would expedite the selection process, empaneling a jury in a single day. Which might have the added kick of catching Beef Wellington asleep at the switch.

  But Richard didn’t do that. Instead, he seemed content to slog it out, haggling over each and every body. A tactic, which I knew from my stint on jury duty, which could make the selection process drag on for weeks.

  That was a small disillusionment.

  The big one was that even if Richard had pulled a stunt during jury selection, I wouldn’t have seen it.

  Because I wasn’t there.

  I was not, as I had envisioned, sitting next to Richard Rosenberg at the defense table, ready to run out at a moment’s notice and bring back whatever valuable information the defense might require.

  No, instead I was driving around New York City answering my beeper and signing up accident victims.

  I couldn’t quite believe it when Richard first told me, but actually he seemed rather surprised. Why would he need my help with jury selection? It was a simple, straightforward process, and why the hell would he want to pay me two hundred bucks a day to watch him do it?

  So when the Anson Carbinder case went to court, I wasn’t there.

  By the end of the first day, I was disappointed that they hadn’t gotten a jury.

  By the end of the second day, I was somewhat surprised that they hadn’t gotten a jury.

  By the end of the third day, I was beginning to suspect they had gotten a jury, but Richard just wasn’t telling me.

  And so it went, day after day, with me driving around the five boroughs answering my beeper, each time thinking maybe this will be it, and each time getting another accident case.

  Until finally Wendy/Janet beeped me to tell me they’d started the trial.

  29

  NEXT MORNING AT A QUARTER TO TEN I found myself in a crowded courtroom on the fourth floor of the Criminal Court Building at One Hundred Centre Street.

  I was somewhat overwhelmed.

  There was so much to take in at once. It was like everyone else in the courtroom had a two-and-a-half-week jump on me. I was the new kid on the block, who didn’t know the ropes.

  First off, I wasn’t at the defense table. Richard and Anson Carbinder sat there alone. I could go up and confer with them while court was in recess, but during the actual proceedings I had to sit with the spectators.

  And not in the first row, either. That was reserved for the press. They sat there with the tags around their necks, the photo IDs that identified them as members of the media. I sat right behind them, second row, center aisle, so I could slip out quick if Richard needed me during a recess. From there I surveyed the rest of the court.

  At the other table, the prosecutor’s table, ADA Wellington sat with his young trial deputy. It occurred to me the nickname Beef was apt—Wellington was yet another chunky man, with a large belly poking out over his low-slung pants. He was in such sharp contrast to his young, slim trial deputy, who looked as if he were just out of law school, that I couldn’t help wondering why Richard had never commented on his size.

  The answer was simple. I had leapt to the wrong conclusion. The fatter, older man was the trial deputy. Beef Wellington was the kid.

  On the other hand, the judge was a hundred and five. His name was Judge Blank, and he looked as if he had spent his entire life trying to live it down. The man had the most expressive face I’ve ever seen. He had a full head of snow-white hair, bushy white eyebrows, craggy features, piercing eyes, and the deepest frown lines ever seen on the face of the earth. It was as if the man had been born scowling. I was intimidated just sitting there as a spectator. How the lawyers felt, I couldn’t imagine.

  Then there was the jury, the sixteen men and women who had been chosen to hear this case. Twelve regulars and four alternates. I have to tell you, as I sat there looking at them I couldn’t help thinking, two and half weeks for this? They were sixteen of the blandest, most ordinary people you’d ever want to see. Half black, half white, half men, half women, your basic instant jury, just add water and stir.

  There was one more player in the game. You couldn’t miss her. She sat in the second row, behind the defense table. Richard had obviously coached her well and dressed her down, but I doubt if he was fooling anyone. There was no way to make Connie Maynard inconspicuous.

  I had just had time to sort all that out, more or less, when court was called to order and away we went.

  ADA Wellington rose to his feet, strode out in front of the jury box, bowed, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we expect to prove that Anson Carbinder killed
his wife, Barbara Carbinder, by stabbing her with a carving knife.”

  And suddenly, bang, we were under way.

  Wow.

  Pretty impressive.

  ADA Wellington had opened up with the punch line. It was a short, snappy opening, throwing down the gauntlet and promising a knock-down-drag-out fight. On the whole, an excellent beginning.

  It was all downhill from there.

  A hour later ADA Wellington was still droning on about what he expected to prove. And not only was I having trouble focusing on it, but, from their appearance, at least half the jury were either daydreaming or had actually fallen asleep.

  I have to tell you, I was shocked. After the huge buildup from Richard and MacAullif about the young dynamo Beef Wellington, I had expected something better. I had thought this guy was gonna be good.

  But he wasn’t.

  Oh, he was still striding around out there, pointing his finger, shaking his fist, cocky and self-assured.

  But nobody gave a flying fuck.

  Because he’d been at it for over an hour now, and he was going over the same points again and again.

  I couldn’t understand it, how he could be that stupid as to let his case slip away from him. He had the jurors in the palm of his hand, and here he was, turning them off. And the longer he talked, the better I felt, because the surer I was he was gonna blow his case. There was no way this guy could win. Carbinder was going to walk out of here a free man.

  I glanced over at the defense table, where Anson Carbinder sat with Richard Rosenberg, and I couldn’t help thinking, just wait till he gets up to bat.

  Big difference.

  When Richard finally got his turn, he came striding out, eyes flashing, challenging the entire courtroom. He stopped in midstride, spun around facing the jury, stuck his finger in the air.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he declaimed, then turned and, with his other hand, pointed straight at ADA Wellington. “I have been listening to that man for over an hour and a half, and I have yet to hear one scintilla of evidence linking my client to the commission of this crime. The prosecutor has certainly shown that the decedent, Barbara Carbinder, was viciously and brutally murdered. On that matter, there is no dispute. What he has not shown is that her husband, Anson Carbinder, had anything to do with it. Oh, he tried. I think I counted fourteen times in his opening statement that he mentioned the fact that Anson Carbinder was covered with blood when the police arrived. What he glossed over in that statement is, the reason the police arrived is that Anson Carbinder called them and asked them to come.

  “Which is not surprising. Having found his wife brutally murdered, it was the natural thing to do.

  “And what about the blood on his hands? Well, having found his wife brutally murdered, his first reaction was to see if he could help her. To see if she was still alive. It never crossed his mind, No, no, I shouldn’t do that, that might make me a murder suspect. And why should it? It doesn’t occur to an innocent man that the police might suspect him. But, no, this man embraced his wife, took her in his arms, tried to see if there was anything he could do.

  “Of course there was not. The woman was dead.”

  Richard paused, looked around. “Indeed, she had been dead for some time.” He held up one finger. “As we shall demonstrate when we put on our case.

  “And what else does that prosecutor have? Well, the main thing he seemed to harp on is the fact that my client wouldn’t talk. You will notice how obliquely he alluded to that fact. That’s because, under the law, my client is not required to talk. Nor is he, you, the judge, or anyone else on god’s green earth allowed to assume any indication of guilt from the fact that he did not choose to talk.

  “However, since it has been brought up, and doubtless will be referred to whenever possible during the course of the trial, I would like to dispose of that matter now. The reason Mr. Carbinder would not talk is that immediately after calling the police, and before they arrived, Mr. Carbinder called me. And, as his attorney, I naturally advised him not to say anything until he had talked to me. I say naturally because, not knowing what the facts were, there was no way I could offer him advice. And, until I knew what the facts were, I was certainly not going to allow my client to talk.”

  Richard turned and bowed ironically to the prosecuting table. “The police and the district attorney’s office, in their infinite wisdom, took his silence to be an indication of guilt, and proceeded to build their case from there. Although precisely the type of wrong thinking one would expect from a bureaucracy, it is shocking nonetheless.”

  I smiled. Good for Richard. For my money, everything he just said was right on, and ADA Beef Wellington and the cops had it coming. There was no doubt about it, Richard Rosenberg had won the opening argument hands down.

  Only he didn’t stop there.

  He went on.

  And on.

  And on.

  As I watched with mounting misgivings, Richard Rosenberg went over the same ground ADA Wellington had, seizing on each minor point and arguing it again and again and again. And, as with Wellington, he gradually lost his audience. By the time the judge interrupted him to say we had to break for lunch, the jurors looked positively numb.

  I figured we’d have lunch with Anson Carbinder, that after all this time I’d finally get to talk to the guy, but, no, as soon as court adjourned, Connie Maynard swooped down on him and the two of them, thick as thieves, slipped out of court together, and Richard and I wound up having sandwiches at a small deli near the courthouse.

  “So how do you think it’s going?” Richard said, as we seated ourselves at a table.

  It was not exactly the question I was hoping he would ask.

  “Oh. Okay, I guess.”

  “You guess? Why do you say that?”

  “Well, we ran into the lunch hour.”

  “What about it?”

  “It interrupted your opening argument in the middle.”

  “Yeah, but no big deal,” Richard said. “I suppose I could have delayed, told the judge I didn’t want to start till after lunch, but I’m trying to speed things along.”

  “I see,” I said.

  But my face betrayed me.

  “What’s the matter?” Richard said.

  “Oh. Well, you’re talking about speeding things along.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So, don’t you think your opening argument’s a bit lengthy.”

  “Oh,” Richard said. “Is that what’s bothering you? It isn’t at all. I doubt if I’ll have more than half an hour after lunch.”

  “Another half an hour?”

  Richard looked at me. “Believe me, that’s nothing. I probably won’t even talk as long as Wellington.”

  “I thought Wellington’s opening was pretty long.”

  Richard frowned. “What, are you nuts? His opening was sketchy because he hasn’t got a case. Give the guy some facts to play with and I wouldn’t even be on yet.”

  “But...”

  “What?”

  “It seemed, long to me.”

  “Of course it did. And you know why?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because you’re not a lawyer and you don’t spend any time in court. All your Ideas come straight from TV. That’s the problem. You think it’s like on “L.A. Law.” Where every opening and closing argument you’ve ever heard is one to two minutes, tops. You know why it’s that long? It’s that long because they’re on an hour TV show. And they gotta wrap the case up and sell some soap.” Richard shook his head. “That’s the whole problem with you. You can’t divorce fiction from reality. You read detective books, so you think detective work is like that. Some asshole in the books makes two hundred bucks a day, so you think you gotta make that.” He raised his hand. “But never mind. The point is, your perception of a courtroom is based on courtroom drama. And courtroom drama is distilled and edited down to the few flashy moments that grab your attention and give you the gist of the case. Real l
ife is a little different. In real life, we deal with the case, the whole case, and nothing else but the case. Some of it happens to be boring. Well, unfortunately we can’t just say, well, we’re not going to deal with this part of it because it doesn’t happen to be good theater. You see what I mean?”

  “Yeah, but...”

  “But what?”

  “What you said. Grab your attention and give you the gist of the case. Why isn’t that exactly what you want to do for the jury?”

  Richard looked at me a moment, then smiled ironically. “Because they’re stupid.”

  “What?”

  “The jurors. They’re stupid people. They’re not real bright.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because it’s true. Why do you think the jury selection process took so long? I’m fighting to get intelligent people on the jury, the prosecutor’s fighting to keep them off.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he doesn’t want intelligent people on the jury. He wants a bunch of morons who’ll do exactly what he says. He wants people whose perception of the law is, if the guy wasn’t guilty he wouldn’t have been charged.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “Grow up. Of course it’s true. You know how many people on that jury have a college degree?”

  “None?”

  “Bingo, right on the button. If there were, they’d have been kicked out right on their Phi Beta Kappa.”

  “You’re a cynical son of a bitch.”

  Richard shrugged. “I’m a lawyer. Anyway, the prosecutor packed the jury with sheep, and sheep need to be led. Flashy moments may grab their attention, but it’s not gonna convince them of anything. I gotta spell my theories out. In most cases, many times.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Hey, it’s not the end of the world. Don’t look so glum.”

  “It’s not just that. “

  “Oh? What is it then?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just, you got the grand jury transcript. Then there’s discovery. You’ve got the list of the prosecution’s witnesses. You know everything they intend to do.”

  “So?”

  “So?” I said. “That’s the whole problem. There’s no surprises.”