State vs Lassiter

by Paul Levine

  “The Chairman of the Board is the governor, and I didn’t vote for him. Plus it’s a long shot, even if I was the governor’s brother-in-law and chief fund raiser.”

  “I want you to consider this, Jake.”

  “I already did. I’m innocent. I won’t plead guilty and seek clemency. I didn’t commit murder or a lesser included offense. Either I walk out of the courtroom door a free man or they can lock me up for life. And either you defend me with your best shot, or you can take a hike.”

  17

  My Worthless Hide

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are all here today because on June ninth of this year, that man sitting right there…”

  Emilia Vazquez pointed at me with a two-toned lacquered index finger that might as well have been a rapier.

  J’accuse!

  At the same time, Emilia, dark hair pulled back, all business in a charcoal Chanel suit – its earlier versions having been slung over the elliptical machine in my bedroom – looked me hard in the eyes. She wanted to stare me down, have the jury see me turn away, a sniveling coward. The subtext of her case would doubtless be that only such a gutter snipe of a man could have committed that crime.

  “…This man, Jacob Lassiter, whose primary job is defending criminals…”

  Ooh, low blow.

  “…With malice and premeditation, this man, the defendant Jacob Lassiter, brutally and viciously strangled Pamela Baylins, his girlfriend, his banker, and the woman who was about to blow the whistle on his unethical and illegal conduct.”

  I was sitting next to the elegant Willow Marsh at the defense table, listening to Emilia, my former bedmate, detail exactly what happened that late night and early morning when Pam was killed and I awoke in a stupor on the beach. We were in a spacious courtroom on the fourth floor of the Justice Building. Behind the judge’s bench, blond wood lattice work climbed to the twenty-foot high ceiling.

  “As the judge instructed you this morning,” Emilia said, “I will now tell you what the evidence will show. When Ms. Marsh stands to speak, she will present a different view. All the state asks is a fair hearing of these charges, the most heinous and serious charges known in the law.”

  “Objection! Argumentative,” Willow sang out, rising out of her chair. Her blonde hair was swept up for the proceedings, revealing tasteful, not-too-large gold hoop earrings.

  “Sustained,” Judge Marjorie Cohen-Wang said, evenly. “Save the editorializing for closing argument.” Her Honor had been on the bench just over a year, having been appointed by the governor, basically by meeting the criteria of gender, campaign contributions, and multiple ethnicities. I had never appeared in front of her. Given my testy relationships with most judges, this was probably a plus.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Emilia said with a slight bow, as if she had won a Chamber of Commerce award, instead of being gently chastised. Part of the lawyer’s art is to show confidence in the face of adversity. The defendant’s job is to show nothing at all, except perhaps a sliver of humanity.

  “In one shattering moment,” Emilia went on, “Pamela Baylins’ life changed.”

  The jury waited to hear just what that moment was, and so did I.

  “In that moment two things occurred almost simultaneously…”

  My curiosity was going crazy. And that, after all, is the trial lawyer’s job. Make the courtroom hang on your every word.

  “Pamela Baylins told the defendant she knew he had stolen his client’s funds and that she would report him to the authorities, and in the same instant, the defendant decided to do whatever it took to keep her quiet. He quarreled viciously with Pamela, as several witnesses will tell you. He threatened her, frightening her so badly that she sent a late-night email to her boss and her employer’s chief of security, expressing her concerns. Still, this brave woman could not be dissuaded by threats from the defendant. So, when all his efforts failed, as the forensic evidence will show, the defendant, Jacob Lassiter brutally killed Pamela. Killed her to keep her quiet. Killed her to suppress the truth. Killed her to save his own hide.”

  She didn’t say “worthless hide,” but that’s what was implied.

  If I had been the defense lawyer instead of the low-life client, I might have objected right about now. Emilia’s opening sounded suspiciously like a closing argument. But Willow Marsh was of a different school. She knew that too many objections piss off the jury at the objector, not the objectee. So Willow stayed seated on her trim bottom and I did my best not to squirm in my seat.

  “A word of explanation here,” Emilia said, in less dramatic tones. “Lawyers hold funds in trust for their clients. Strict laws prohibit the lawyer from tampering with those funds. A lawyer cannot borrow money from those accounts and later re-pay it. A lawyer cannot use those funds for his or her own purposes. But the evidence will show that the defendant ignored those laws. He siphoned off client funds…”

  Siphoned. A damn good word, I thought. Painting the lawyer as a sewage line.

  A line came to me then, Norman Mailer once saying, “You don’t really know a woman until you’ve met her in court.”

  Just how well do I know Emilia Vazquez?

  Not that well, considering we’d been lovers…or whatever. How well did I know Pamela Baylins? Nada. It turns out I knew nothing.

  Emilia summarized the evidence to come. The overheard arguments. The video cameras. The fact that no room key was used to enter our suite after I left the hotel in a drunken stupor. Likewise, no sign of forced entry.

  It was a compelling story. Some prosecutors begin their opening statements with the accurate but ludicrous statement: “Ladies and gentlemen, what I’m about to tell you is not evidence; it is merely a roadmap of the case to follow.”

  The judge has already said that, so there’s no need to remind the jurors of it. Let them think your words are the most important they’ll ever hear. Grab their attention with a compelling story. Just be sure you have the evidence to back it up. Emilia grabbed tight, and she had the evidence, too.

  A prosecutor, I’ve often said, is a carpenter building a house, methodically aligning the joints, deeply driving the nails. A defense lawyer is a vandal tearing at the support beams with a crowbar and spray-painting graffiti on the pristine walls. There’s a flaw in my analogy. A prosecutor can’t order the lumber and concrete blocks and drywall needed for the job. She is stuck with whatever the contractor provided, whatever evidence the homicide detectives may have gathered. Those are the cards she’s dealt, the evidence she’s given. If anything is lacking, she must make up for it with cleverness and guile, of which Emilia had plenty.

  Jurors are at their most alert during opening statements. They’ve learned a smidgen about the case in voir dire. But now, the juicy facts – or two competing sets of facts – are being unspooled for them. Their curiosity keeps them focused, and the smart prosecutor, the first horse out of the gate, has the advantage.

  As Emilia shoveled more and more dirt on me, I began to feel like the miscreant she made me out to be. I wondered if I looked like a murderer. Surely, the case against me was strong, evidence piled upon evidence, inference upon inference. Without thinking, I leaned down and scratched the itchy skin below my ankle monitor. Yeah, I was out on bail, just like O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, and Phil Spector. Accused murderers, all. I was starting to feel like a celebrity.

  Judge Cohen-Wang had set bail at $1.5 million. I put up my house for part of it and paid a 10 per cent premium for the rest, surrendered my passport, and agreed not to leave the county. No dinner in Key Largo, no fishing off Bimini, not that I had any inclination to cross the Gulf Stream just now. But not being permitted, well that restriction on my freedom seemed like a preview of far greater restrictions to come.

  The ankle monitor was a constant irritation. In those moments when my mind wandered to some desolate beach on a tropical island, the damn thing would smack my ankle bone and remind me that I was on trial with my freedom at stake.

  Convi
ction of first degree murder meant life without parole. A living death.

  “Look at the man sitting there,” Emilia commanded the jury, again pointing at me. “Look at his face…”

  I felt terribly self-conscious. Was I curling my lips like a silent film villain? Did I have cream cheese on my cheek from my morning bagel?

  “That is the last thing Pamela Baylins saw in the early morning hours of June ninth. But not precisely the face you see now. Not the calm demeanor of a man posing for you, sitting at a table with his fingers entwined in front of him. Pamela saw the angry, vicious, terrifying face of the man about to murder her. She saw her death unfold as the defendant slipped a belt around her neck, and with the strength of a former professional football player, squeezed the life out of her with such force as to fracture the bones of her neck. In those final seconds, as the terror and the certainty swept over her, that is what Pamela Baylins saw and felt. And that is the man, the murderer, you see in front of you today.”

  I couldn’t breathe and realized I was holding my breath, likely turning red. Did I look guilty? Stricken with fear? Why wasn’t I ready for this? I was a pro, goddamit!

  But this was different. Willow had been right. I’m acting like a client. A defendant. A man whose future is out of his own hands.

  I sucked in a breath, all the jurors watching me. On, the looks on their faces. Contempt? Disgust? Hatred? Maybe all three.

  What did they already feel in their hearts? Surely not compassion for this hulk of a man, subjected to the prosecutor’s rage. That was the word. They likely already felt rage with a lust for vengeance rising within them like a poisonous red tide.

  Great prosecutors construct their cases like crescendos in music, building in volume, becoming more powerful in tone as the trial progresses. So if this was the starting point, I wondered, just how intense would closing argument be? What names would I be called? What cries for blood would be sounded like a clarion’s horn?

  18

  Three Elements of the Crime

  “At least they’re not seeking the death penalty,” my lawyer Willow Marsh said.

  “‘Course not. I’m white. And educated. And reasonably wealthy. I’m also accused of killing a cheating girlfriend, which in some quarters is excusable homicide.”

  “Are you really that cynical?”

  I shrugged, something I seldom do, because of a torn rotator cuff from the old days. “Everybody knows the system is biased on grounds of race and class with a whiff of gender bias thrown in.”

  We were having lunch at a Spanish joint on northwest 12th Avenue, now called Ronald Reagan Avenue, because the former President once ate a Cuban sandwich there. I was also doing a post-mortem on Willow’s opening statement.

  She had been cool in demeanor, calm in delivery and textbook in style. She reminded the jurors that the state had the burden of proof, that the defense did not have to present a case – though we would – and jurors should not begin to deliberate, much less make up their minds, until all evidence has been heard.

  That’s important because the state goes first. A defendant doesn’t want a dozen know-it-alls turning off their hearing aids once the state rests. There was an alarming study a few years back showing that many jurors don’t even wait that long. Many make up their minds at the end of opening statements!

  Willow had then moved to the magical phrase “reasonable doubt,” the last refuge of the innocent man, or at least one who is “not guilty” in the eyes of the law. She stressed that the state’s evidence cannot merely suggest that her saintly client was guilty. It must prove every element of the crime of murder beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt.

  “And the state will fail,” Willow predicted, “because the evidence will show that Jake Lassiter, a hard-working and honest lawyer, entrusted his clients’ funds to the management and care of Pamela Baylins. It was Ms. Baylins, not Mr. Lassiter, who skimmed those funds in hundreds of unauthorized transactions. It was Mr. Lassiter, not Ms. Baylins, who was going to the state attorney. And it was a third party, not Mr. Lassiter, who killed Ms. Baylins.”

  Willow explained the “locked door” conundrum. No key card was used to enter the hotel room once I left. Obviously, Pamela opened the door from the inside for a visitor. It could have been a hotel employee or an intruder masquerading as one. It could have been someone she knew. But certainly, the lack of forced entry or key entry did not necessarily point to murder by good old, presumed innocent Jake Lassiter.

  Willow then read the jury instruction on murder. That is something more likely to be done in closing argument, after the evidence is in, and just before the jury hears the judge’s charges. But just as Emilia had ventured into argument, Willow tiptoed into the law.

  “Her Honor will instruct you as follows: ‘Before you can find the Defendant guilty of first degree premeditated murder, the state must prove three elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. First, that Pamela Baylins is dead. Second, the death was caused by the criminal act of the defendant. Third, that the killing was premeditated.’”

  Willow had paused a moment to let that sink in.

  “I suggest to you that the proof will show only that Pamela Baylins is dead. The state will be unable to show beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt that Jake Lassiter killed Pamela Baylins, and there will be no necessity to determine premeditation. The reason why the state will fall short is simple. Jake did not kill Pamela. He is not merely not guilty. He is innocent of these charges.”

  With that, Willow thanked the jury and sat down. The judge opined that this was a good time for a lunch recess, and that’s what brought us to the Cuban joint where I was having a shoe-leather thin palomilla steak covered with onions and a sprinkling of lime. My stomach had settled since the morning session, maybe because I was keeping busy scribbling notes and listening intently to every word the lawyers had uttered in front of the jury.

  “You should have told the jury they’d be hearing from me on the witness stand,” I said, between bites.

  Willow gave me a tolerant smile. She was drinking iced tea and munching a green salad without dressing. Having a green salad at a Cuban joint is like telling Penelope Cruz good-night at the front door, even though she asked you to come upstairs. “We don’t promise the jury anything in opening that we can’t deliver. You know that, Jake.”

  “But I want to testify.”

  “When you hired me, you promised to let me be the lawyer, remember?”

  “I’ve got to testify.”

  “Jake…”

  “Jurors always want to hear from the defendant. If they don’t, they’re suspicious.”

  “The judge will instruct–“

  ”That they can’t consider a defendant’s failure to testify. Bullshit! Of course they consider it. Juror number three, the lineman for FP&L. He’d be thinking, ‘If I was accused of a crime I didn’t commit, I’d sure as hell stand up and deny it.’”

  “Jake, we’ll make the decision on the necessity of your testifying at the conclusion of the state’s case. Same as always.”

  Willow speared a shred of lettuce that might possibly contain five calories. I stuffed my face with an oily fried plantain.

  “You must have had confidence in my judgment or you wouldn’t have hired me,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  “So, will you listen to me, as you promised?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “No more making faces at the prosecutor.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “During opening, you scowled whenever Emilia Vazquez said something nasty about you. You look mean when you scowl.”

  “You want me to smile when I’m called a cold-blooded killer. I’ll look like Ted Bundy.”

  “I want you poker faced. Not angry and not amused.”

  “Okay. Got it.”

  “And stop making eye contact with juror number five.”

  “The cute claims adjuster? She likes me.” />
  “You’re gonna creep her out. No eye contact except a quick nod to the panel when they come in. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, the state’s going to start putting in its evidence. Just remember which chair you’re sitting in. No squirming. No gestures. No jumping up to yell objections.”

  “I got it. I got it.”

  “Good. Anything you want to tell me.”

  I used my knife to cut a sliver of the steak. “Just this. If you don’t let me testify, I’ll fire you.”

  19

  A Nephew, a Granny, and a Bottle

  I was having a trial prep conference. The participants were nephew Kip, age 14, Granny Lassiter, age 79 or so – no one really knows – and Douglas Macallan, age 20, according to the label on its bottle.

  Granny took the position that I probably killed Pamela and wondered whether that was excusable homicide. Kip was reading aloud the inventory of state’s exhibits. And Douglas Macallan just rolled down my throat like molten lava flavored with a hint of the highlands.

  We were sitting in plastic lawn chairs in the scrubby backyard of my house on Kumquat Avenue. Mosquitoes buzzed, and in the distance, the neighborhood peacocks squawked, an eerie sound that mimicked a woman’s screams.

  “That bottle blonde provoked you,” Granny suggested. “Stole from you and tried to pin the rap on you. You done what any man would have.”

  “Thanks for giving the state’s closing argument, Granny,” I said.

  “Just saying what you did is excusable. Saw a case like that on Law & Order SUV.”

  “SVU,” Kip corrected.

  “Self-defense is excusable. Revenge is not,” I explained.

  “Your fingerprints are all over the murder weapon,” Kip added, in case I’d forgotten.

  “It was my belt. Of course my prints are on it.”

  Kip thumbed through a file. “Pamela’s prints are there, too. That’s what the report says.”