State vs Lassiter

by Paul Levine

  “So maybe she took off your belt and strangled herself,” Granny said.

  “She slipped off my belt a bunch of times, but nobody got hurt afterwards.”

  “You don’t have to speak around corners, Uncle Jake,” Kip said. “I know you’re talking about boning.”

  I took a long, wet sip of the Scotch and peeked over Kip’s shoulder at a file he had just opened. “What’s that?”

  “Inventory of the trash can at the elevator on your floor.”

  I hadn’t seen it. I remember Willow telling me the cops had recovered the contents of every trash can on my floor plus those cans on the path I had taken on the beach where they eventually found me, face-down, snoozing in the sand. The contents of the beach cans – soda and beer bottles, mustard-stained napkins, a left flip-flop, a bikini top – were the usual detritus of resort life. This wasn’t a case where the state was looking for a missing gun or knife, so not a lot of attention was paid to the junk. One item, though, caught my attention now.

  One pair latex gloves. Tag number 127, recovered from the waste can at the elevator on my floor.

  Whose were they? And did they have anything to do with the case?

  “Why would somebody be wearing latex gloves in a hotel room?” I asked.

  “Hotel doctor could have paid a visit,” Granny speculated.

  “Safe sex for germ phobes?” Kip suggested.

  “A killer who didn’t want to leave prints.” Granny again.

  “Not a smart killer,” I added. “Thin gloves sometimes let prints go straight through to the object being touched.”

  “But there are no prints on the belt except yours and Pamela’s,” Kip said, squashing that theory.

  I thumbed through the report. The state, ever so thorough when they want to nail you, also screened the gloves themselves for prints. No usable latents were recovered.

  “There’s one thing they didn’t do,” I said. “Probably because the gloves seem to have no connection to the crime.”

  Both nephew and Granny gave me expectant looks. Doug Macallan just rolled around in the glass in my hand.

  “DNA,” I said. “When you put on tight latex gloves, you leave behind some trace DNA. I’ll tell Willow to spend the money to have the gloves tested. It’s a long shot, but if anyone turns up with a connection to Pamela or just a repeat felon with a penchant for breaking into hotel rooms, we’ll have the strategy to suggest reasonable doubt.”

  Just then I heard the growl of a car engine coming down the street. Had to be a helluva big engine, the sound carrying behind the house. I heard the vehicle pull to a stop. Someone must have gotten out because I heard a door slam. Then another. Two someones. My little coral rock house has no doorbell. You can pound on the front door or you can use a lineman’s shoulder and just shove open the humidity-swollen wood. I heard someone knocking on the door all the way in the backyard. Big fist. I imagined the shoulder wasn’t too shabby, either.

  Instead of going through the house to answer the door, I wended my way around the corner, figuring I’d rather see my visitors before they saw me. For a reason I couldn’t quite explain, I picked up a pair of hedge cutters from a clay pot. Gingerly, I made my way through the dark, staying close to the house, but not close enough to let the jagged coral rocks shred my skin.

  When I turned the corner at the front of the house, I heard a rustling, then “Hey!”

  I turned in the direction of the sound and caught a fist in the gut. A tight little right hook thrown by someone who put enough hip and shoulder into the punch to hit me hard, squarely in the solar plexus. I dropped the hedge clippers and fell to my knees. I retched but didn’t vomit. It took twenty seconds at least to be able to take a full breath.

  “Doing some gardening, amigo?”

  Carlos Castillo, trim and natty in a Panama suit, stood over me. A short, husky man in a dark suit – the right hook artist – was half a step behind, scanning the street.

  Not yet able to form an intelligible phrase, I grunted something.

  “Those bougainvillea need trimming,” Castillo said. “And the red hibiscus…completely wild and undisciplined. Much like you, Jake.”

  I managed to get to one knee, coughed and sputtered. “What do you want, Carlos?”

  “My sources tell me that the state has made you a very attractive offer. One that would avoid the unpleasantness of a trial.”

  “But not the unpleasantness of prison.”

  “I thought I had made clear my interest in this matter and the interest of those who are far less agreeable than I.”

  “Great, have them do my time.”

  I stood up, and the stocky suit took a step toward me, but Castillo waved him back. “The state has listed me on its witness list,” Castillo said. “My testimony is something that cannot happen.”

  “They’re following the money. They need to show that somebody skimmed your dough from my trust account and deposited it with Novak’s investment fund.”

  “My problem, amigo, is when the authorities decide to follow the money farther back than that.”

  “To the coffee plantations, you mean.”

  Castillo laughed. In the greenish glow of the mercury vapor street light, he looked devilish. “Jake, you and I both know the source of my money is not coffee.”

  “Not what you told me when you hired me to do all that real estate work.”

  “Playing stupid doesn’t suit you.”

  I took that as a compliment and waited for what was to come.

  “You are worried about prison, my friend.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “A roof over my head. Three meals a day, though admittedly not prime rib and stone crabs. Still…”

  “Still? Still what?”

  “Must I spell it out for you, Jake? Plead guilty. If the choice is between a cell for a few years or a coffin forever, is there really any choice at all?”

  20

  The So-Called Justice System

  The morning after I had lubricated my trial prep with well-aged Scotch, advice from my kin, and threats from my ex-client, I sat in the gallery of our fourth floor courtroom with my lawyer.

  I had a pounding headache and had cut myself shaving.

  Willow Marsh looked as if she’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion mag. She wore a designer label skirt and jacket, gray with fine burgundy pin-stripes and a silver silk blouse. She gave me a dubious glance, shrugged her gym-toned shoulders, and said, “DNA from latex gloves? Not a sure thing. A killer dumping the gloves in a waste can is another long shot. DNA matching a serial killer or somebody Pamela knew – longest of long shots.”

  “Jeez, Willow, could you be a little more supportive. All life is a long shot.”

  She thought it over a moment, then despite her skepticism, said she’d file a motion to allow DNA testing of the gloves. It would surely be granted. Judges like clean records. If I were to be convicted, the denial of such a motion could be used to reverse the verdict, an embarrassment for Judge Cohen-Wang, and more work, too, as she’d have to hear the case a second time.

  I thanked Willow and pulled out a legal pad to write some notes. I am a lousy client in some respects, but I have an endless supply of suggestions for my counselor.

  We were temporarily grounded, waiting for Judge Cohen-Wang to finish her morning motion calendar so the state could start its parade of witnesses against me. The judge’s long-time female clerk sat at her own desk immediately in front of the bench, her face hidden by cartons of files. The judge was taking a guilty plea in a minor drug case, asking the defendant if he understood he was giving up the joyous benefits of a jury trial.

  A sign hung above the judge’s bench. “We Who Labor Here Seek Only the Truth.”

  Jeez, they ought to arrest the judge for false advertising. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. There ought to be a footnote. Subject to the truth being misstated by lying witnesses, overlooked by lazy jurors, and excluded by incompetent judges.


  Or maybe just replace the sign altogether with Dante’s warning: “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.”

  After several other questions, the judge stated, “I find the defendant is intelligent, alert, and able to understand the consequences of his plea.”

  Three amiable lies in one sentence, but that’s the justice system for you. The system strives for certainty and order. But in truth, the courts are an unruly circus with clowns tumbling out of tiny cars, performers flying on the high trapeze, and pickpockets fleecing the unwary rubes.

  The Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building is named after a former State Attorney, a tall, imposing one-eyed World War II hero, who fought a mostly losing battle against burgeoning crime in what then was simply called Dade County. He had some shady friends and more than one grand jury tried to pin corruption raps on Gerstein, but nothing ever stuck. Except the name on this teeming beehive of a building, buzzing with felonies and misdemeanors, traffic courts and drug courts, where thousands of cases were heard each year and justice occasionally dispensed.

  Earlier, we had traipsed down the corridor, sidestepping prosecutors looking impossibly young. More than half these days are women. They burst out of courtrooms, skinny files in hand, plastic ID badges around their necks, shouting out the names of cops scheduled to testify. Never having time to prepare, never meeting their witnesses before the morning of trial.

  Families of defendants slouched in the corridor, too, anxious to catch a word with their kin. Corrections officers led prisoners from the bridge that connected the jail to the Justice Building’s fourth floor. The prisoners, handcuffed and wearing flimsy orange jumpsuits and flip-flops, shuffled across the corridor into waiting holding cells, rank with the sweat of those who came before. The stench of fear permeated the building, which itself was the sclerotic heart of the so-called Justice System.

  Drug crimes and robberies were the meat and potatoes of this building just as various frauds – Medicare scams, identity theft, Ponzi schemes – were the main courses of the much more civilized federal courthouse downtown.

  Here, too, were murders trials, heard in this 50-year-old fortress along the Miami River. For what it’s worth, Florida leads the nation in defendants sentenced to death.

  Take that, Texas!

  There was a time not long ago when crime was so rampant hereabouts that funny guy Dave Barry cracked that, “In Miami, murder is a misdemeanor.” Jokes aside, it is the murder trial that brings the justice system into the sharpest focus. Emotions are hotter, stakes are higher, and if you are the one whose sweaty palms grip the chair at the defense table, then let me tell you that your life is filled with sheer terror.

  Last night, my sleep was interrupted by a storm, the thunderclaps awakening me from a nightmare filled with far worse sounds: steel cell doors clanging shut, one after another, each door sealing me deeper and deeper into the bowels of a dank prison.

  “Before I file the motion to test the gloves,” Willow said now, “there’s one thing I have to ask.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Can you guarantee me there’s no chance your DNA will be found on the gloves.”

  The question hit me hard. My own lawyer thought I might be guilty.

  “I didn’t wear the gloves,” I said, “and I didn’t kill Pamela.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. I was going to tell her about Castillo’s threat, but that would only make her come back at me again with the request to consider a guilty plea. This morning, I had checked under the hood of my old Caddy, looking for a bomb, though I’m not sure what one would look like. I took a circuitous route to the Justice Building, and I looked hard both ways before getting out of my car. I figured no one was following me. I was easy enough to find. And strictly speaking, I hadn’t turned down Castillo’s demand. My last words to him were straight out of a B-picture.

  “I’ll do what I gotta do, Carlos, and you do what you gotta do.”

  He muttered something in Spanish that sounded like comemierda, which I interpreted literally to mean “shit eater,” and that was that for the evening.

  Now, just before court was graveled into session, I changed my mind and told Willow about Castillo’s threat. After all, if I’d been the lawyer, I’d want my client to come clean with me.

  Willow thought about it a moment, then said, “That explains the transactions to bank accounts in Colombia. Pamela wasn’t just skimming for her own profits. She was laundering Castillo’s money. Running it through your trust account, transferring it to Novak’s Global Investments, then transferring the money to shell corporations in Latin America. I’d bet anything those companies are controlled by Castillo.”

  “He’s threatening to whack me, and you make this sound like good news.”

  “It is. At least it’s a red herring that muddies the water.”

  I was about to point out that Willow had just muddied a pair of clichés, but she kept on rolling. “A Colombian drug dealer adds an element of danger to Pamela’s life.”

  “Castillo had no reason to kill her. She was making money for him.”

  “Like I said, Jake, it’s a red herring.”

  “That muddies the water,” I agreed.

  “Anything that complicates the case, any new element of uncertainty adds to reasonable doubt.”

  “So I should be happy then?”

  “Especially if the Colombians make an attempt on your life,” my lawyer counseled.

  21

  Scratching for Justice

  Trial lawyers are advised to start strong and finish strong. Hit the jury with powerful first and last witnesses. Memory is a tricky thing. Some people remember best the first things they hear; others the last. This way, you cover both types.

  So, I knew Emilia Vazquez wasn’t going to start with a forensic accountant, who would put the jury to sleep with spread-sheets of my trust account ledgers. No, she started the case, just as I would have done, with proof of the first element of the crime: Pamela Baylins was dead.

  The proof consisted of photographs of Pamela, strangled, lying on the Fontainebleau suite floor, her swollen tongue sticking out of her mouth at an obscene angle, the testimony of the medical examiner who performed the autopsy, and a few more photographs taken in the morgue of neck dissections. All in all, a pretty unpleasant morning.

  “There are four manners of death,” said Medical Examiner Henry Kornish for perhaps the thousandth time in his career. He’d been trained by my old pal Doc Charlie Riggs to be fair and impartial, which not all M.E.’s are. “Accident, suicide, natural, and homicide.”

  “And in this case, Dr. Kornish?” asked Emilia Vazquez.

  “Homicide by throttling. What is commonly called strangulation. Here, strangulation by ligature.”

  Emilia handed the M.E. state’s exhibit 17, a man’s black dress belt. My belt. Size 38. The murder weapon, the doctor agreed. Dr. Kornish was in his sixties, nearly bald with white tufts of hair above his ears. As he told the jury when being qualified as an expert, he had degrees from Yale and Harvard Medical School, and a variety of residencies and fellowships at places like Mass General and Jackson Memorial in Miami. Over the years, he’d performed thousands of autopsies. He really couldn’t keep count.

  Emilia got down to the case of State vs. Lassiter, and the doctor droned on for a while about hemorrhages in the subcutaneous tissues and fractures to both the thyroid cartilage and hyoid bones, indicating quite a forceful strangulation. Implying a big and strong assailant. Three of the jurors looked at me, and I tried to seem smaller than my hulking self. There was some talk about pinpoint hemorrhages called Tardieu’s spots on Pamela’s eyelids, and unfortunately, the judge let into evidence even more photos to demonstrate that gruesome phenomenon of strangulation.

  More damaging, though not surprising, was the testimony about my DNA being found under Pamela’s fingernails, which matched up nicely with those scratch marks on my cheeks, gotten into evidence by way of police photographs.

  Then there was the puz
zling matter of intact sperm cells being found in Pamela’s vagina. DNA testing of the sperm and seminal fluid ruled me out as the sex partner. And the DNA didn’t pop up in CODIS, the national database of extremely bad guys.

  “The acid phosphatase test determined the time of coitus to be 24 to 36 hours prior to death,” Dr. Kornish said.

  So who the hell had sex with Pam the day before we checked into the Fontainebleau? Chances are, it had nothing to do with her murder, but unless she was banging a third guy, all indicators pointed to Eddie Novak, investment guru and dickwad.

  The M.E. was a professional witness and he got everything right. Still, there were questions that weren’t asked by Emilia Vazquez, and that became Willow’s job on cross. With a lousy expert and a savvy lawyer, cross exam can lead the witness to the slaughterhouse where his or her reputation will be eviscerated. But when you’re faced with an old pro like Dr. Kornish, you take a little, give a little, and hope for a few concessions along the way.

  “Dr. Kornish, what was the victim’s blood alcohol reading?”

  He referred to the toxicology report. “Zero-point-three-one.”

  “Many times in excess of that permitted to drive a motor vehicle?”

  “Nearly four times, yes.”

  “What are the characteristics of someone with a blood alcohol level in the area of zero-point-three-one?”

  “Likely she’d have been in a drunken stupor with severely impaired sensations.”

  “Conscious or unconscious?”

  “Certainly there was the possibility of falling unconscious.”

  “So it’s possible, she was strangled while unconscious?”

  “Possible, yes.”

  “Making the scratches on my client’s face totally irrelevant to the strangulation?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose? Now on direct, you stated that some of my client’s DNA was found under the victim’s fingernails, correct?”

  “Yes.”