DB01 - Presumption of Innocence

by Stephen Penner

  “I am also mindful, Mr. Brunelle,” she paused and looked down at him; Brunelle met her gaze as neutrally as he could muster, “that the State only filed this aggravator after I had dismissed the others. Quite candidly, Mr. Brunelle, it was a move that smacked of desperation, and I am hesitant to deny a criminal defendant bail based on a last minute gambit of a desperate prosecutor.”

  Brunelle recalled his initial conversation with Duncan. He wanted to turn around and mouth ‘told you so’ to his boss, but decided better of it.

  “Therefore,” Quinn turned back to Welles, “I am going to rule that under the unique facts on this case, the court is permitted to grant the defendant bail despite the potential penalty in the case.”

  Welles stood up quickly, his face beaming. “Thank you, Your Honor. We suggest bail in the amount of—”

  “Ten million dollars,” Judge Quinn declared.

  Welles was stunned for a moment. She pressed the advantage. “Just because I rule that he’s entitled to bail doesn’t mean I’m going to set a low bail. He’s charged with aggravated murder, for Heaven’s sake. Ten million dollars. Trial starts in one week. Court is adjourned.”

  The clerk called out “All rise!” and the judge disappeared into her chambers.

  No one was quite sure who had won the hearing. Finally, after exchanging puzzled glances with Yamata, Brunelle shrugged and looked to Welles. “See you next week, counselor.”

  Welles’ smile hardened into a determined grin. “Indeed. I shall look forward to defeating you. Again.”

  Chapter 30

  “Me?!” Yamata gasped. “You want me to give the opening statement? No way.”

  “Sure,” answered Brunelle. “Why not?”

  “I said my briefs were exquisite, but opening?”

  “Oh, come on. We both know behind those exquisite briefs is an even more magnificent opening.”

  Yamata blinked at him for a moment. “Please tell me you didn’t just say that.”

  Brunelle could feel his face flush and he covered his eyes with his hand. “That’s not what I meant. I just, um, that is…”

  Yamata laughed. “I know what you meant. And thanks. But sheesh, watch your words, old man. That’s how you end up getting sued.”

  Brunelle peered over his hand. A weak smile forced its way onto his face. “Heh, yeah.”

  There was an awkward pause while Brunelle composed himself. Then he cleared his throat and straightened his tie. “So, yes, anyway. I think you should give opening.” He felt the blush again. “Opening statement. Make. You should make the opening statement.”

  Yamata chuckled again and shook her head. “And tell me, Mr. Brunelle,” she leaned forward and purred exaggeratedly, “why should I ‘give opening’?”

  Brunelle managed to ignore the suggestion and answer the actual question. “Well, we’re partners. Partners split the work. And I’m damn well going to do the closing argument.”

  Yamata grinned and pushed back in her chair. “Oh yeah? How come?”

  Brunelle grinned back. “Because, partner, that’s where you win the case.”

  ***

  Before opening statements, however, a jury had to be selected—no small task in a death penalty case. Luckily for Brunelle and Yamata, only jurors who promised they at least “could” impose the death penalty were allowed to sit on the jury. Anyone with an absolute moral objection to it—while certainly a defensible, by some a laudable, position in another setting—was excluded from the jury pool on the basis that they would refuse to impose the law duly enacted by the elected legislature. It was one of the few times the cards were stacked in favor of the State. In the end, twelve jurors were seated, plus two alternates—the suckers who had to sit through the entire trial, view all the horrendous evidence, then go home without deliberating, unless one of the regular jurors got sick or otherwise became incapable of proceeding. The fourteen of them more or less resembled the community, eight women and six men, eleven white, two Asians, and an African-American. Mostly retirees or Boeing workers—paid in full for jury duty by their conscientious good corporate citizen employer. A couple of teachers. And that one guy who said he was a consultant for some computer thing that Brunelle didn’t understand. He figured Yamata did, but didn’t want to ask. One, he didn’t want to look stupid. Two, it didn’t matter. The guy had a thirteen-year-old daughter. That was enough for Brunelle.

  The big day came after the jury had been sworn in and admonished not to talk about the case, even with each other, until the evidence—all the evidence, from both sides—had been presented. No, they wouldn’t be sequestered. Yes, there would be coffee every morning. No, they wouldn’t be allowed to ask questions of the witnesses. Yes, they would be allowed to take notes. Thank you very much and we’ll see you in the morning.

  That next morning, Judge Quinn gave the jury some additional instructions, a little information about scheduling, and then said those words every prosecutor knows means it’s time to stand and deliver.

  “Ladies and gentleman, will you please give your attention to Ms. Yamata who will deliver the opening statement on behalf of the State?”

  Yamata stood confidently and thanked the judge. She stepped into the “well”—the area between the jury box, the judge’s bench, and counsel tables. The courtroom was packed again, at least half by other prosecutors who’d come to watch that month’s “big trial.” If Yamata was nervous, she didn’t show it. She smoothed her suit, then raised her gaze and locked eyes with the jury.

  Chapter 31

  “A butcher,” Yamata started. The room was silent save her voice.

  “You hear that phrase sometimes when people talk about someone doing a sloppy job. ‘She butchered that presentation’ or ‘He butchered that recipe.’ And of course, when a surgeon botches an operation, she’s called a butcher.”

  She frowned and raised a finger.

  “But that description does a disservice to butchers. Butchers are as exact in their work as any doctor. As any lawyer, or engineer, or,” she met eyes with the father-juror, “computer consultant.”

  A smile ventured respectfully onto Yamata’s face.

  “Think of the last really good cut of meat you ate. Maybe it was at a barbeque. Maybe at a fancy restaurant. Maybe just cooked up in your oven on a random Thursday night. Think about the skill that went into extracting that perfect piece of food from what had once been a live animal. An animal covered in hair and skin, with organs and bones and all sorts of things you try not to think about when you’re eating a hot dog.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, a butcher is a craftsman, someone who knows exactly what he’s doing. Someone who knows how to kill an animal in a way that doesn’t damage the prize of the meat. Who can skin and cut and dismember a beast until the only thing left are a series of plastic-covered styrofoam trays on a grocery store shelf.”

  Yamata paused. She had the room. Everyone was watching her, and she wore it like a silk blouse, like the lightest sun-dress.

  “No, what makes a butcher isn’t a lack of skill in the cuts, it’s treating the thing you’re cutting like a soulless animal. Like nothing more than the hunk of meat you see it as, existing only to provide sustenance to you and others. Having no value to anyone except the value of the life-force to be stolen and exploited and utterly consumed by the cutter.”

  She turned and pointed at Karpati.

  “Arpad Karpati is a butcher.”

  Brunelle turned to see Karpati’s reaction. The entire courtroom did, even the judge. He stared straight through Yamata, his anger blotching his face. Brunelle figured he couldn’t be angry at the description; it was true. He was angry at being called on it and damned for it in public.

  Welles was the only person who hadn’t looked at Karpati. He was calmly jotting notes on his legal pad, seemingly oblivious to Yamata’s words.

  “Emily Montgomery,” Yamata turned back to the jury. Her voice modulated perfectly from the righteous indignation to heartbroken em
pathy. “Emily Montgomery was thirteen years old.”

  Yamata didn’t meet the father’s eyes this time; that would have been obvious. Her words would reach him just fine.

  “She liked to roller-blade and walk her dog. Her favorite flavor of ice cream was vanilla and her favorite color was purple. And even though she never would have told her friends, she still kind of liked Barbie and kept all her dolls and doll clothes hidden in her closet.”

  Yamata paused again, as the gravity of the impending description began to settle over the room.

  “And she liked to help people.”

  Another pause, this time from an apparent lump in Yamata’s throat.

  “And that turned out to be death of her. Her innocence. Her openness. All the things we wish we could be. Good, kind, hopeful, selfless. Noble. The things that we all grew up and learned not to be. Because of people like Arpad Karpati. But Elizabeth was still too young, too pure, too good, to know what fate awaited her when she befriended a troubled girl named Holly Sandholm.”

  Yamata picked up a water cup from the spot she had purposefully selected on the prosecution table and took a sip.

  “Holly was a troubled teenager. A young girl who’d had a rough life, made some bad choices, and hung with the wrong crowd. She ended up in juvenile hall. Theft and drugs mostly. Now, juvenile justice is all about rehabilitation. About attempting to save at least some of these kids. To turn them back onto a good path. Maybe not the straight and narrow, but at least away from the highway to prison so many of them are on.

  “So along the way, one of the judges ordered Holly to do some community service work. She could pick any non-profit agency. She picked a church. Emily’s church.”

  The jurors were all watching Yamata as she stepped again to the well. She wasn’t pacing; that would have been distracting. But she took a single step toward the jury box as she started to bring the story together.

  “Holly met Emily at the Westgate Christian Church one Sunday while she was doing her hours and Emily was staying after to help out. They were doing the same work, but for different reasons. Holly, because she had to. Emily, because she wanted to. Emily reached out to the new girl. They talked. Even across the gulf of their life experiences, they had things in common. They saw each other again over the next few weeks. And eventually they became friends.

  “Or so Emily thought.

  “What Emily Montgomery didn’t know about—who she didn’t know about—was Arpad Karpati. Because when fourteen-year-old Emily Montgomery went home to her pink-painted bedroom in her suburban home, fifteen-year-old Holly Sandholm went home to Arpad Karpati’s bedroom in his downtown apartment.”

  Brunelle smiled. Perfectly delivered. Don’t spell out the child rape allegation, they’ll get it.

  “He controlled Holly. Through promises and drugs, sex and fear. The same fear he tried to illicit in everyone else he met. Holly would do anything for him. Anything. And he needed her help to make sure the others in his life would be just as scared of him as she was.”

  Yamata had avoided looking at Karpati through this description, but she opened her shoulders just a notch in his direction as she continued.

  “Arpad Karpati ran with a gang. A street gang. But not just any gang. Not Crips and Bloods and ‘Gangland’ TV specials on digital cable. He ran with a gang that claimed to be vampires.”

  This was the hard part. The jurors all either cocked a head, or leaned back, or crossed their arms—signs of disbelief. Signs that Yamata would lose them if she didn’t play this just right.

  “Yes, I said vampires. No one would believe that, right? And if no one believes it, no one is scared, right? So there’s one thing to do: make them believe it. Drink the blood of a virgin. Drink the blood of Emily Montgomery.”

  A sob from Mrs. Montgomery punctuated Yamata’s sentence and the crossed arms and cocked heads relaxed. The jury wanted more information. Yamata gave it to them. But not through the eyes of a lawyer, or even a cop. Through the eyes of a parent.

  “When Janet and Roger Montgomery came home from dinner that night, their front door was unlocked. On it was a sticky note. It said, ‘Don’t go inside. Call 911 and wait for the police.’

  “No parent in the world would have waited outside. But when they opened the door, their world shattered. Their daughter Emily had been murdered. Sweet, young, innocent Emily had been bound and trussed upside down—like a carcass in a meat locker—hanging from the stair railing, pale as the ghost she had become. Had become at the hands of Arpad Karpati.”

  She didn’t look at him. She didn’t have to.

  “The only injury was a small slit to her throat, right into the carotid artery. She bled out, the way butchers kill animals. And like those butchers, Karpati the Butcher collected her blood in a bucket, which he took with him to prove he was who, and what, he said he was.”

  Yamata paused again. She sighed a deep, repulsed sigh.

  “Emily Montgomery is dead because of one man. That man.” She pointed but didn’t look. “Arpad Karpati. And at the end of this trial, at the conclusion of the evidence, we are going to stand up again and ask for justice for Emily, ask for the only just verdict in this case: guilty.

  “Thank you.”

  The room took a moment to relax from Yamata’s grip. The spectators started breathing again and after a moment a few of the jurors shifted in their seats. It even took a moment for Judge Quinn to move to the next order of business.

  “Mr. Welles.” She looked down at him. “Does the defense wish to present its opening statement now, or reserve until the close of the State’s case-in-chief?”

  Welles stood up and smiled at the judge. “The jury will remember what the State promised here, Your Honor, and what they will inevitably fail to deliver by way of actual evidence. The defense will reserve its opening statement.”

  Quinn held her scowl in check in front of the jury, but Brunelle had more trouble. It wasn’t just that Welles had managed to both reserve and give a micro-opening with his comment. It was that, damn him, he was right. Yamata had given a fantastic opening. Now they had better deliver.

  Chapter 32

  “Call your first witness,” Judge Quinn instructed Brunelle.

  The first witness. This was always one of the most important decisions in trial practice. Who do you start with? The lead detective, to explain the investigation? The first cop who arrived, to describe the crime scene? The medical examiner, to explain the cause of death? Yamata had suggested all of those, but Brunelle shook his head each time. Every case is different and the facts of each case tell you who to call first. In this case, with these facts, there was really only one person to call first.

  Mom.

  Janet Montgomery looked up at the judge, raised her right hand, and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  Brunelle had everything ready. He made sure the box of tissues was not on the witness stand, but rather on his table, so he could get them for her in front of the jury. He had all the photos lined up on the counter in front of the court reporter. He started with the “in life” of a smiling Emily, hugging a puppy in the park on a sunny spring day. He left it up on the projector as Janet told the jury about her wonderful daughter.

  Then a photo of the house. Not on a sunny spring day, though. That night. Dark, lit up by red and blue police car lights.

  That’s when he got to give her the tissues.

  Then the photo of the note on the front door. Blown up, nice and big, on the screen. There wasn’t a person in that jury box who wouldn’t have been terrified to come home to that note on their door.

  The only photo left to show was Emily hanging upside down just inside that door. Dead, thanks to Arpad Karpati.

  Everybody knew that was the next photo.

  And Brunelle didn’t show it to her. Because you don’t do that to a mom.

  Mom told the jury who Emily had been. Let the cops tell them who she was now.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Mo
ntgomery.” Brunelle nodded to her, then looked up to the judge. “No further questions.”

  He sat down and got a “Great job” whisper from Yamata. It had gone perfectly. He’d extracted all the information he needed, and done so respectfully. His care and discretion just underlined for the jury how terrible the crime was, how unfathomable the loss. The smallest smile crept into the corner of his mouth furthest from the jury box.

  “Let’s see what Welles does with that,” he whispered back.

  Some defense attorneys start with an apology “for your loss” or something equally transparent. Not Welles. He had one question. One perfect question.

  “You don’t really know whether my client killed your daughter, do you?”

  Her hesitation was its own answer. Before she could blurt out the ‘Yes!’ that she wanted to say, Welles interrupted.

  “I understand, Mrs. Montgomery, that people have told you things, made promises and assurances. The police, the prosecutor. But you yourself, you have no personal knowledge whatsoever that my client is in any way responsible for the death of your daughter, isn’t that true?”

  Mrs. Montgomery shifted in her seat, but kept an icy glare locked on Welles. Finally, through gritted teeth, she admitted, “No.”

  Welles nodded, but knew enough not to smile. “No further questions.”

  ***

  And so it went, all day. Brunelle or Yamata leading the witness through their testimony, admitted photographs, pulling heart-strings. The first cop on scene who found the body, the paramedic who confirmed the death, the forensics guy who dusted for prints. And after every direct examination, one simple question on cross examination:

  “You have uncovered absolutely no evidence that my client was in any way involved in the young lady’s death, isn’t that right?”

  Brunelle got it. Back in his office at the end of the day, it was clear Yamata didn’t.