Mitigating Circumstances

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “No,” the officer said. “I thought he had been in a bar fight or something. It’s the booking officer’s responsibility to see that a suspect gets medical treatment if he needs it. I’m just a jailer.”

  England spun around. “Officer White, did you beat the defendant, cause these injuries?”

  He jumped in his seat. “No. I didn’t lay a hand on him. I simply put him in the cell bunk and left.”

  “Well, that’s very interesting. The arresting officers testified yesterday that he might have incurred, I quote, a few bruises’ when they were placing him under arrest, but nothing more. I guess that means you broke his arm, right? I mean, if they didn’t break his arm, you must have been the one who broke it.”

  The officers face was bright red. He wasn’t about to take the fall. “No way. His arm was broken when he was booked. I certainly didn’t break it.”

  A flurry of commotion rang through the courtroom. The DA was ashen. England attacked. “You mean by the arresting officers? Right? Not during booking but prior to booking?”

  The witness became silent. He dropped his eyes. “I guess so,” he finally said.

  “And you,” England said, pointing a finger at him, “you left this man, this injured and unconscious man, in a cell where he could have died. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you were about to go off duty and you didn’t want to be bothered. You didn’t want to mess with the paperwork, the trip to the infirmary, all that time-consuming stuff. Isn’t that right, Officer White?”

  The officer’s head dropped. He didn’t answer.

  “Objection,” the DA spouted. “He’s badgering the witness.”

  “Sustained,” Lara said.

  “No further questions, Your Honor,” England said, taking his seat, his point clearly scored.

  Lara looked at the DA; the tension in her neck was increasing, and she rolled her head around to relieve it. “Your witness, Mr. Mitchell.”

  The officer was gulping water from a glass placed in the witness stand. The two arresting officers were seated in the back row, their eyes black daggers. White had far more to fear now than Benjamin England, Lara thought. He had rolled over on his own. The future months wouldn’t be easy.

  The DA stood, adjusting his jacket, his voice low and soft. “Officer White, are you absolutely certain that the defendant didn’t fall out of his bunk and break his arm? Your preliminary statements were that you didn’t notice any injuries. Are you now recanting that testimony?”

  This time the witness met the arresting officers’ eyes. He was beyond all that now. He just wanted out, off the stand and out of the courtroom. As a correctional officer he didn’t testify on a regular basis, and for him this was grueling. “Yes. I noticed his arm. His arm was broken when I went into the holding cell.”

  “And you’re absolutely certain of this now? Your earlier statement was false?” Mitchell swiped the hair off his forehead, shaking his head. He knew it was bad. He didn’t know it was this bad.

  “Yes,” he said, blinking rapidly, more perspiration appearing on his forehead, his upper lip, little beads of it rolling down his cheeks.

  “Isn’t it possible, Officer White,” the DA said, going for the last escape hatch, “that he could have fallen off the bench in the holding cell and incurred this injury before you arrived?”

  White thought a moment. He apparently made a decision to come clean, spill his guts, make a feeble attempt to make amends in the eyes of the court and possibly his own conscience. “I guess he could have, but he didn’t. Everyone knew he was roughed up before he was booked.” He cleared his throat and continued. He killed and raped a girl, you know?” With this last statement he looked confidently at the spectators, as if they would all understand, that if they had been given the opportunity, they too would have wanted to make this man suffer, to break some bones, draw a little blood.

  The DA wasn’t touching this one. Actually, he’d gone too far and there was no road back. England didn’t bother to object to the speculation that the defendant was guilty. “No further questions, Your Honor,” the DA said. He didn’t simply take his seat, he fell into it.

  Mitchell turned to the victim’s parents and met their gaze. Lara felt the tightness move from her neck to her chest. The parents hadn’t moved. They were still sitting ramrod straight, their shoulders touching, their hands tightly clasped. They looked like statues, bronze replicas of suffering. They had as yet to realize the magnitude of what had just occurred.

  From the look on the face of the young man next to them, however, he had.

  “Very well,” Lara said, peering down at the witness. “You can step down,” she told him. Then she turned to the courtroom. “We will recess for fifteen minutes before I deliver a ruling. Mr. Mitchell, I’ll see you in chambers.” She tapped the gavel one time lightly and slipped from the bench. As soon as she was through the door, she pressed her fingers down over her face, pulling her skin, wishing she could wipe the stench of this off her face and hands. It was poison—clear and simple.

  She walked rapidly to her chambers. The DA was right behind her. She began speaking without looking back at him, and she entered her outer office with only a nod at her secretary. “Are you going to file on Madriano and Curtis?” she said, referring to the arresting officers. Not only had they beaten the defendant within an inch of his life, they had obviously perjured themselves the day before.

  The DA answered, “I assume. I haven’t given it much thought.” He appeared more concerned about his case, or what was left of it, than pressing charges against the officers.

  They were in chambers now and Lara stepped behind her desk, taking her seat and tossing her glasses, swiveling her chair to face the young DA. “These officers should be prosecuted, relieved of their positions on the force, and frankly, taken out and shot. I’ve never seen such a fucked-up case in my life.” She was so angry that her hands were trembling as she fingered a piece of paper on her desk.

  The DA’s chin jerked up in response, but he didn’t speak. It was obvious that he’d like to do the honors himself as far as the officers went. Crestfallen, he finally said, “He’s guilty, you know?”

  Lara didn’t respond to this statement. Her hands were tied. Even if she was to blatantly deny the defense’s motion to exclude the confession, any conviction would be overturned in appeal. “A layman would have no trouble figuring this one out. You simply cannot beat a person and then garner a confession.” She watched as the DA slid farther down in his seat.

  “You rule to suppress this, we’re dead meat,” Mitchell said. “He knows it,” he continued accusingly, referring to the defense attorney. “Our primary witness died last week. Without the confession…well, we’re looking at dismissal.”

  None of this was news to Lara. They’d been agonizing over this for three weeks. In a slurred voice on tape, the defendant had admitted the crime. The tape had suddenly ended. Lara was certain the defendant had collapsed from the injuries inflicted by the arresting officers. They had worked the case all along, speaking daily with the family. They both were mature investigators with teenage daughters of their own.

  They had simply lost it.

  Without the eyewitness, and the absolutely vital confession, the prosecution had nothing. Lara had called Mitchell into chambers only to allow both of them a few minutes to accept the inevitable, present a unified front. The DA would withdraw the charges and regroup. If they took a case as weak as this to trial and ended up in acquittal, it was finished. They were better off withdrawing now and praying for more evidence to construct a more concrete case. The biggest problem was the public outrage sure to follow and the fact that a dangerous killer would be walking the streets while they built a better case. Instead of the public venting its anger on the real culprits in this case, the police officers, it would all fly in Lara’s face.

  “Are you going to withdraw today?” She hoped not. That would be the worst: for her to suppress the evidence and the defendant to walk out of jail a few hour
s later a free man.

  “I don’t know. England’s going to press for dismissal.” He leaned forward in his seat. Then he slapped back, throwing his hands in the air. “We have no case. We have shit…nothing but dog shit.”

  Lara stood to return to the courtroom. Mitchell took her cue and stood as well. A few seconds later, he was following her down the corridor.

  Once back in session, Lara addressed the court. “After careful consideration,” she said, the weight of the words she was uttering causing her to compress in her seat so that only her head could be seen from below, “the defendants motion to suppress is granted.” She braced herself for the onslaught and continued, looking out over the courtroom, “From the evidence presented in this courtroom, the defendant was severely battered, the confession was issued under extreme duress and is therefore determined to be inadmissible.”

  England sprang to his feet. “We move for dismissal, Your Honor. Without this evidence the case against my client is nonexistent.”

  The defendant looked up, a blank look in his eyes. Lara had read in the files that he was on psychotropic medication. The noise in the courtroom was getting louder with every second. The DA had turned around in his seat and was speaking with the victim’s family. The woman was crying, the father holding her head against his shoulder. He was whispering to her, stroking her hair, making a feeble attempt to comfort her. The victim’s boyfriend’s mouth fell open in shock and he jumped up. The DA yanked his jacket and he sat back down.

  Mitchell stood. “The people withdraw the charges, Your Honor.”

  Now the courtroom was in an uproar, and the defendant’s eyes were darting wildly around the room. Who would he rape or, God forbid, murder while the DA scrambled for more evidence? Lara thought. Was he thinking about it right now? Was his sick and tortured mind right this very minute hungering for another kill, his eyes searching the courtroom for another victim? Lara tapped the gavel loudly again and again, standing and leaning over the railing. The bailiffs started moving toward the victim’s family, eyeing them and then the defendant. Finally the noise died down and Lara took her seat. “Let the record read that the charges have been dismissed at the people’s motion,” she said, sighing deeply, keeping her eyes on the file in front of her. “The defendant is remanded into custody; however, the sheriff will be notified to release the defendant posthaste. Monies posted as bail shall be released in the appropriate fashion through the court clerk’s office. This court is adjourned.” She didn’t bother with the gavel. No one would have heard it anyway.

  Reporters were running from the courtroom, pushing and shoving one another to reach their editors. Lara was rooted to her seat, her eyes locking on the victim’s parents, her chest swelling with compassion. The DA was conferring with them, sitting next to them in the bench. The woman was holding a tissue to her eyes, then blowing her nose. People were leaving the courtroom; the court reporter was folding up her machine. All the police officers had vanished before the ruling. They weren’t stupid, Lara thought. They knew how it would fall. By tomorrow the DA would file charges against the two arresting officers. The bailiff was chatting with one of the clerks. England was packing his briefcase, his job over.

  Suddenly the victim’s boyfriend stood, his face a twisted mask of rage. “How could you do this?” he screamed at Lara. “He killed her. He raped her and killed her. He deserved to be beaten. He deserves to die.” He was panting, his face flushed crimson, leaning over the back of the seat in front of him. His eyes were enormous and blazing with hatred. A bailiff was rushing toward him, the DA trying to pull him back in his seat. “You’re letting him get away with this. Someone should kill you…rape you, strangle you. You fucking bitch…”

  The bailiff put his hands on the boy, and the two other bailiffs were moving in that direction. They were watching both his hands for a weapon. “Someone should kill your whole family…slaughter them…then you’d know about justice and your stupid laws. What do I have to do, kill the mother fucker myself? You’re not a judge. You’re no better than he is.…”

  Lara just sat there, consumed with his sense of injustice. He had looked to the courts to avenge the death of the girl he loved and had met a brick wall of law. Those that should have upheld it had destroyed it. The bailiffs looked at her, waiting for direction. One nod and they would cuff him. They had him in tow and he was twisting, saliva dripping down one corner of his mouth, trying to wrench his arms away, ready to cross the floor and rip her apart with his bare hands. She shook her head at the bailiffs and left the bench. He had every right to vent his hostility. She hit the door and once through it, she leaned against the wall in the corridor, her eyes glazed and fixed, her chest rising and falling with the hatred that had been directed at her, so intense that she could feel the heat of it even now. She glanced up and down the hall, but all she could see was a misty fog of red. Images of the victim’s decomposed body appeared in her mind, and she tried to suppress them.

  Pushing herself off the wall, she straightened her robe and shuffled down the hall. Twenty-five homicides had occurred the past weekend in Los Angeles. One weekend, she thought in despair. One lousy weekend and twenty-five deaths. The city was being buried in an avalanche of violence, and she had just set a murderer free in the community. “Great,” she said bitterly. “Just what you wanted to do all your life, Lara—set killers free, give them their walking papers.” Heading toward the door to her chambers, she stopped in front of her secretary’s desk.

  “Did you say something?” Phillip asked, spinning around from his word processor. He was a slender, well-groomed man in his late twenties with sandy blond hair and dove gray eyes.

  “What are you doing tonight, Phillip?”

  “Tonight? I-I have plans. Why?” he said self-consciously.

  Lara studied his face. She didn’t think she could handle eating alone tonight, going home to an empty house. All she needed was a little companionship, some light conversation, something to purge the day’s events from her mind. Before she could ask him to join her for dinner, he continued.

  “I’m seeing someone later, ah, about nine. But if you need something typed, I can stay late.”

  His face flushed. Lara wondered if he had a new girlfriend, or any girlfriend, for that matter. She’d never heard him mention anyone. “No,” she said, changing her mind, thinking she would try someone else, feeling foolish for even thinking of asking Phillip to have dinner with her. “Forget it. Go on home. It’s nothing.”

  “What happened in there? How did you rule?”

  “I suppressed the confession. The DA dismissed, so Henderson will walk.”

  “God,” he said, arching his eyebrows and resting his chin on his hands. “Because the officers beat him up, right? They really punished that guy, didn’t they?

  I guess they got carried away. The crime was heinous. You almost can’t blame them for what they did.”

  “Well, I hope they enjoyed punishing him,” Lara said flatly. “It might be the only punishment Thomas Henderson ever receives in this case.”

  With that, she entered her chambers and closed the door behind her.

  About the Author

  NANCY TAYLOR ROSENBERG worked for the Dallas Police Department, the New Mexico State Police, the Ventura Police Department, and as Investigative Probation Officer in Court Services in Ventura County, where she handled scores of sex crimes and murders. Now at work on her next book, she lives in Laguna Niguel, California.