Dachshund Through the Snow
Page 18
Stiller nods and turns to me. “Mr. Carpenter?”
“Your Honor, with respect, Ms. Silverman effectively makes our point. There are a number of potential explanations for Mr. Wainwright’s suicide besides the one that she fears, that he killed himself because he has been revealed as the person who murdered Kristen McNeil. Embarrassment, stress, medical issues … every one of those and more are conceivably correct, and she is free to make the jury aware of all of them. We can take our own position, and then the jury can decide. That is their proper role.
“As of two days ago, Arthur Wainwright was a person that we might well have called to the stand. Now he is the ultimate unavailable witness. We are therefore damaged by his absence; you would further damage us by denying us the ability to explain the reason for that absence.
“Jurors might wonder why we are not calling him. Are we afraid to confront him and hear his effective defense? Absent information, they will draw their uninformed conclusions. Yet we have the power to inform them.
“There is a very significant precedent for our position, and—”
Judge Stiller interrupts, “Case law?”
“In a way. I am talking about this case, and the precedent that you have already set. You have admitted testimony about the deaths of four people, Siroka, Taillon, Holzer, and Arrant, including the circumstances of those deaths. I believe that those people are related to this case, and that you were correct to admit that evidence.
“But Arthur Wainwright is far more clearly a factor in this case. He has arguably been accused of the murder by the victim herself. To admit that other testimony, and then to keep this out, would be totally inconsistent and I believe ill-advised.
“This is a search for the truth. The jury needs to hear the facts, and then we can put our spin on them to try and convince them of our point of view. To deprive them of this key fact is to set up an artificial barrier to arriving at that truth.”
We argue it out a bit more, but the issues have been laid out, both orally and in the briefs. Judge Stiller doesn’t interrupt any more, and when we are finally finished, he simply says, “It comes in.”
We go back into the courtroom, and I give a slight nod to Hike and Noah to let them know we have prevailed. Then I call Sergeant Stan Frazier of the Little Falls Police Department, who I have arranged to have here in case the judge ruled in our favor. If we are going to tell the story to the jury, we need a witness to do so.
I don’t beat around the bush; this will be more effective if I make it short and sweet. I ask Frazier to describe what he found when he was called to the cemetery.
“A deceased male, age sixty-one. Cause of death was an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
“Were you able to identify the deceased?”
Frazier nods. “Yes. It was Arthur Wainwright.”
“Thank you.”
It’s decision time regarding Noah’s possible testimony.
The advantage to his doing so is clear. His words are the only way to explain to the jury why he was at Hinchliffe Stadium that day, and more important, how his skin and blood wound up under Kristen McNeil’s fingernails.
The jury is going to want to know that.
But the other factor is the manner in which I want to end the defense case. Frazier’s testimony, brief as it was, was incredibly dramatic. The apparent importance of it was even inadvertently increased by Judge Stiller’s decision to sequester the jury last night.
By doing so he was saying to them that something important had happened, so important that they had to be protected from knowing it. Now they know it, and I don’t see how they can look past it. The victim made the accusation from the grave, and the accused reacted to it by killing himself. Surely that would have to put a reasonable doubt about Noah’s guilt in the mind of a juror.
The alternative to this dramatic ending would be to have Noah testify. No matter how well he held up, the last thing the jury would see and hear would be Jenna badgering him, pointing out holes in his story, and reminding the jury that he kept quiet for fourteen years.
That would have the effect of ending on the prosecution’s terms, and putting more time and space between their deliberations and the impact of hearing about Wainwright’s death.
My assessment is that to end it here insures us of at least a hung jury, with an outside chance for an acquittal. Noah’s testimony would be a roll of the dice, increasing the odds of either a conviction or outright acquittal, according to how he did and whether the jury believed him.
When a defendant testifies, it takes all the air out of the room. It dominates the trial, positively or negatively. I don’t want Noah Traynor’s words to dominate this trial. I want the trial to be dominated by Arthur Wainwright’s actions.
This is about risk and reward. But even more than that, it’s about instinct and trusting my gut. The problem is that my gut doesn’t seem to have a point of view on this, and it’s deferring to my brain.
At this crucial moment, my gut is gutless.
I lean across to Noah. “I don’t think you should testify.”
He nods. “Okay.”
“But as I’ve told you before, it’s your call.”
He nods. “My call is to trust your judgment.”
“Call your next witness, Mr. Carpenter.”
“Your Honor, the defense rests.”
Laurie has been in the gallery today; we drove here together in the morning. On the way home, she says, “I think you made the right decision in not having Noah testify. The pressure on him would be unbearable, and even though he’d be telling the truth, Jenna could have made him look bad.”
“If you thought I made the wrong decision, would you tell me?”
“No chance.”
I laugh for the first time in a while.
Tonight I’m going to prepare for my closing statement, which will not be hard to do. For one thing, the entire trial is always one long preparation for my closing statement. For another, I never write out a speech like some lawyers do. I list in my mind the bullet points I want to cover, but that’s it. I’ve long ago learned that I am best when I’m spontaneous.
That will give me plenty of time to think about Arthur Wainwright, who reacted solely to what Andy Carpenter said and did just days before by going to a cemetery and swallowing his gun. It seems amazing to me that the testimony I brought out before revealing Kristen’s letter could have been enough to push him over the edge. I’m starting to believe he must have found out about the letter well before Karen McNeil’s testimony about it in court.
In any event, Arthur’s suicide is an image I am not going to be able to remove from my imagination anytime soon, if ever.
The media is all over the story; a prominent citizen such as Arthur Wainwright committing suicide would be big news even if there was not a trial. With the circumstances as they are, everyone is opining on exactly what happened. Most believe that his killing himself was a direct result of my trial efforts.
My retirement is going well.
At eight o’clock I am completely ready for court tomorrow and need to take my mind off things, so I head down to Charlie’s. Vince and Pete are at our regular table, which is not exactly a news event. If they weren’t here, it would be grounds to put out an all-points bulletin.
“Well, look who’s here,” Pete says. “And in the middle of a trial?”
I nod as I take my seat. “I’ve been dealing with so many important things, I need to take a break and hear some mindless drivel. Obviously I thought of the two of you.”
“Why must you hurt us?” asks Vince, not once taking his eyes off the nearest television. It’s a football game between Jacksonville and Tampa Bay, and if Vince cares about it, it means he has a bet on it.
“I am never testifying for you again,” Pete says. “It’s embarrassing; nobody at the precinct will even talk to me.”
“Arthur Wainwright found a way to avoid it,” I say.
“Were you going to call him?”
Pete asks.
“No, but he had no way of knowing that. Did he leave a note?”
“You pumping me for information?”
“Obviously. Did he leave a note?”
“No.”
“But you’re sure it was a suicide?”
“No, he put the gun in his mouth, but he was just trying to wound himself.”
“You know what I mean.”
He nods. “Fingerprints on the gun; no indication anyone else was present. Nothing is ever definite, but the coroner didn’t agonize over how to categorize it.”
I realize that no matter where I go or what I do, I can’t escape thinking about this case. “Let me ask you a question,” I say to Pete. “What the hell was Charles Arrant, international criminal wanted by Interpol … what the hell was he doing in Paterson?”
“I have been asking myself that same question. I wish I had an answer.”
I nod. “Next question. Whatever he was doing here … with him gone, you think someone took his place?”
Pete answers with a question of his own. “Are you thinking that same someone killed Arthur Wainwright and made it look like a suicide?”
“Not really, but part of me hopes it’s true.”
“Why?”
“Because if someone else didn’t kill Wainwright, then I did.”
“Here’s what we know beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Jenna says.
She has spent most of the trial asking questions from a podium set up between the defense and prosecution tables, but now she is pacing around as she begins her closing argument.
“Noah Traynor was with Kristen McNeil outside of Hinchliffe Stadium, the place where she was brutally murdered. We know this because his DNA was on a piece of discarded gum and a beer can.
“We don’t know how much he had to drink that day, or how much alcohol might have affected his actions. Of course, the police couldn’t measure his blood-alcohol level because he hid from them for fourteen years.
“We also know that Kristen and Noah Traynor had a violent confrontation; she scratched him so hard that she had his skin and blood under her fingernails. That could not have been done casually; that had to have been done in desperation.
“That would be less important if Kristen McNeil was shot from a distance, but she wasn’t. She was murdered in as personal a way as one can be murdered. Her killer wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed so violently that in addition to depriving her of the air she needed to survive, he broke her neck and crushed her larynx in the process.
“We don’t have to have been there to imagine that while it was happening, she was clawing and scratching at her killer’s arms, trying to get him off of her.” Jenna pauses for effect. “Clawing and scratching … digging her nails into him.
“It’s also important to remember another incontrovertible fact. Noah Traynor hid from the police for fourteen years. He could have said, ‘I was there. I want to help find the real killer. Ask me any questions you have.’ But he did not. Do you think that is the way an innocent man would react?
“Mr. Carpenter responded to this evidence by basically leaving it unchallenged. That was wise on his part because it would have been futile to try and attack it. So instead he paraded a veritable hit parade of unsavory characters in front of you, none of whom had anything to do with this case. I half expected him to bring up Al Capone and Osama bin Laden. But all he was trying to do was distract you, plain and simple.
“That brings me to Arthur Wainwright. Kristen McNeil wrote a letter to her parents about him. You read it. It says that she had an affair with him and that she was running away because she was frightened of him.
“Let’s assume she was telling the truth; I have no reason to doubt her sincerity. Is it not possible she was afraid of him because he was wealthy and successful, a man capable of exercising tremendous influence in the community? Could she not have feared that he could hurt her and her parents, not physically, but financially, or reputationally?
“But maybe not. Maybe she thought he might physically attack her. That is a huge leap from his actually doing it. It was not his skin under her fingernails, and there is absolutely no evidence, not a shred of it, that places him at Hinchliffe Stadium that day.
“And speaking of no evidence, there is no evidence that Arthur Wainwright, who was forty-seven years old at the time of Kristen’s death, had ever committed a violent act in his life.
“But three nights ago, he did commit a violent act, the ultimate violent act, against himself. I am certain that Mr. Carpenter will tell you that he did so out of guilt, or shame, all as the result of his being exposed as a murderer. But maybe he was ashamed at being revealed as someone who had an affair with a teenager. Or maybe he had a serious illness, or crisis in his life, and this was just the last straw?
“We can’t get inside the mind of a tormented man. We have to focus on what we know. And we know, through evidence that simply cannot be refuted, that Noah Traynor killed Kristen McNeil.
“Thank you for listening, and thank you very much for your service.”
My turn.
I also pace the room as I talk, just as I do when questioning witnesses. I begin with “Freddie Siroka. George Taillon. Mitch Holzer. Charles Arrant. These were all people that had violent criminal histories. You heard that from none other than the man in charge of the Homicide Division of the Paterson Police Department, Captain Pete Stanton.
“They were all connected to this case. You also heard that from Captain Stanton, and in one case you even heard it from Freddie Siroka, on audiotape. And they were all murdered, except for Mr. Arrant, who was killed while trying to murder yours truly.
“Noah Traynor is not a suspect in any of these murders. He has the perfect alibi; he was sitting in jail after being wrongly arrested for the death of Kristen McNeil.
“And then there is Arthur Wainwright. He was having a sexual relationship with a girl who was of an age where she could have been his daughter. In fact, she was the girlfriend of his son. You didn’t have to hear this from me, you read it from Kristen McNeil’s own hand.
“She feared him; she was petrified at what he might do. So much so that she quit the job that she loved, and she was running away, leaving friends and family behind. Again, those are not my words, they are hers.
“I want to talk for a moment about reasonable doubt. The judge will tell you that if you have a reasonable doubt as to whether or not Noah Traynor is guilty, then you must vote not guilty. That’s clear and it is the foundation on which this system is based.
“If you think it is possible that someone else other than Noah Traynor committed this crime, then by definition you have reasonable doubt. So let me present you with a hypothetical situation:
“Supposing you heard from someone, maybe two or three people, that you completely trust … and they were to tell you that Arthur Wainwright killed Kristen McNeil. Maybe they even saw it happen, maybe not. But they were positive that they were right.
“What would your reaction be? Would you say, ‘That’s crazy … absolutely impossible?’ Would you tell them that they’re nuts, that Wainwright could not have done it?
“I don’t think you would. I think that after hearing the evidence, and especially the letter that Kristen McNeil wrote, that it would make sense to you. You might not fully believe it, you might not be certain of it, but you’d certainly think it was possible.
“I believe what Kristen McNeil wrote, and I believe Arthur Wainwright killed himself because the truth was revealed. And if you think there is a chance that I am right, then you must have a reasonable doubt as to Noah Traynor’s guilt.
“And if you have that reasonable doubt, you must vote to acquit. That is your responsibility.
“Thank you.”
I think the likely outcome will be a hung jury.
I would never say that out loud to Laurie or Hike or Noah; it would violate one of my superstitions, which is to never verbalize a prediction of any kind about a verdict.
/>
My reason for thinking so is pretty simple. I cannot imagine every single juror hearing the evidence about Arthur Wainwright, and knowing about his suicide, thinking there is not reasonable doubt as to Noah’s guilt.
On the other hand, I also cannot imagine every single juror saying that it is a coincidence that Noah’s skin was under the victim’s fingers, but someone else killed her.
The great majority of trials end in convictions, more than 70 percent, so usually the defense is pleased with a hung jury. It keeps them alive to fight another day, and the prosecution might not choose to retry it.
That’s not how I view this case. We caught every break; the letter from Kristen was found at a perfect time for us: just in time for us to present it, but too late for the prosecution to prepare for it.
As tragic as it was, Wainwright’s suicide was also perfectly placed in the chronology of the trial, especially for dramatic effect. If we have a second trial, we would lose that advantage. In the interim, it could also turn out that he had other things going on in his life that contributed to his final, fatal decision.
So it’s time for me to go into my weird zone, where I obey a hundred different superstitions, all of them stupid. For example, I only get out of bed during a verdict watch when the digital clock’s time ends with an odd number. I won’t make left turns while I’m driving, no matter what.
I also won’t use the treadmill or exercise bike. Okay, I tell Laurie that those are superstitions, but I’m lying. I don’t use the treadmill and exercise bike because I hate the treadmill and exercise bike.
During a verdict wait, I become surly, obnoxious, and a torture to be around. Even Tara has little patience for me; she hangs around with Laurie far more than normal.
One thing I never do is look at any of the trial documents, and I try to think about the facts of the case as little as possible. To do otherwise would be to cause me to second-guess my decisions; there will be plenty of time to do that after the verdict, if it goes against us.