The Rose Conspiracy

by Craig Parshall

  A small tide of press faces were smiling and nodding.

  “What is your response to the motion?” Judge Templeton said to Henry Hartz.

  “Defense counsel,” Hartz answered, “is seeking total dismissal of this case on the grounds that the government, allegedly, had failed to produce missing evidence—namely, the same drinking glass from the scene of the crime that Your Honor has heard about previously. But this isn’t a proper basis for dismissal. If Mr. Blackstone wants to introduce evidence relating to the drinking glass during the defense case in this trial, he can certainly try to do that. But not a dismissal before trial.”

  “Professor Blackstone,” the judge asked, “why should I entertain this motion at this stage? Why shouldn’t I follow the government’s suggestion?”

  “Because I have a right,” Blackstone shot back, “to make an offer of proof, by witness testimony, that the evidence in possession of the government supports my client’s innocence. And secondly, that it was concealed by the government.”

  “This is really outrageous,” Hartz said, raising his voice and leaning on his cane at his table. “What evidence could you possibly have for these kinds of irresponsible accusations against the prosecution?”

  “The fact that the drinking glass has now been found,” Blackstone said.

  With eyebrows raised, the judge turned to Henry Hartz.

  “Is that true?” the judge asked.

  “Well, yes, Judge,” Hartz replied. “In fact, after a diligent search, we located it and then promptly advised defense counsel of that fact. We are hiding nothing.”

  “Henry, you buried the District of Columbia evidence inventory record in a six-inch pile of paperwork,” Blackstone countered.

  “I don’t want any frivolous bickering,” the judge barked out. “Professor Blackstone, it is true that the government has given you written notice of the fact they located the drinking glass?”

  “Yes, Judge, they did,” Blackstone said.

  “So then, what is it you want here?”

  “A dismissal of these criminal charges.”

  “But on what factual basis?” the judge asked.

  “I have some unimpeachable witnesses,” Blackstone replied, “whom I believe will substantiate my request for dismissal.”

  “Witnesses here, today?” the judge asked.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Blackstone replied.

  “You are prepared to call them?”

  “I am,” Blackstone answered.

  “May I address another procedural point?” Henry Hartz called out to the Court, but the judge waved him back to his seat.

  After considering the matter for a few moments, Templeton turned to J.D. Blackstone. “I will allow you a limited opportunity to make an evidentiary offer of proof in support of your motion.”

  Then the judge asked, “Professor Blackstone, who do you propose to call as your first witness?”

  Blackstone smiled, paused, and then turned to Henry Hartz, who was seated at the government’s counsel table with a scowl on his face.

  “Your Honor,” Blackstone announced calmly. “I call the prosecutor, Henry Hartz, Assistant U.S. Attorney, as my first witness.”

  CHAPTER 60

  The jammed courtroom erupted with simultaneous outbursts from reporters, bystanders, lawyers, and law-enforcement officials.

  In the middle of the tumult, Henry Hartz was objecting wildly.

  “This is ridiculous!” he exclaimed, climbing to his feet again with the aid of his cane. “I object. It is procedurally improper for defense counsel to cross-examine the prosecutor. And I object further because the defense is trying to obstruct this jury trial from taking place. They know we have overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt. They know the jury is going to agree with me. There is a death penalty waiting for the defendant’s cold-blooded cooperation with a conspiracy to murder the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and to steal invaluable historical documents. The defense knows all of that—I’ve seen this all before, Your Honor. The same old defense tricks—obstruction, obfuscation, avoidance, misrepresentation.”

  J.D. Blackstone was in control and quiet in his delivery.

  “I am afraid,” Blackstone countered, “that Mr. Hartz uses much to say little. Boiled down to their essence, his objections are twofold. First, he says that it is, as a point of procedure, wrong for the defense to force a prosecutor to testify in a pending case. But I disagree. If you would like, Your Honor, I would be glad to cite the cases where that very process was permitted. Second, he says we are trying to avoid a jury trial. Well, frankly, that is exactly what I am trying to do. We are attempting to show that a trial against Vinnie Archmont, under these circumstances, would be a miscarriage of justice.”

  “Why call Mr. Hartz as your witness?” the judge snapped.

  “Because his signature appears on the cover sheet of the most recent discovery packet he delivered to my office,” Blackstone explained. “The one that included an inventory record from the DC Police Department. A document that showed that Horace Langley’s drinking glass from the crime scene had been kept, not in the FBI evidence locker, but at the DC Police Department.”

  “An honest mistake,” Hartz said, “in view of the fact that our lead investigator was a detective from the DC Police Department rather than the FBI. The glass was taken to the wrong evidence room in the wrong building, that’s all.”

  “I don’t use the term prosecutorial misconduct lightly,” Blackstone said. “And I would rather not use it at all. In fact, I would wager that the misconduct here in hiding evidence doesn’t belong to the prosecutor, but to someone else.”

  “Those are very disturbing accusations,” Judge Templeton intoned to Blackstone. “Counselor, you had better be very, very sure of whom you are accusing of malfeasance in a grave criminal case like this.”

  “I am sure, Your Honor. Now, please, if you would, let me show you why.”

  The judge turned his gaze to Henry Hartz.

  “Mr. Hartz,” the judge said. “I will permit a very limited questioning of you by defense counsel. But I stress—very limited.” Then the judge turned to Blackstone. “I will not tolerate, Professor Blackstone, some wideranging fishing expedition in your questioning. Do you understand?”

  Blackstone replied that he did.

  Henry Hartz slowly made his way to the front of the courtroom, leaning on his cane. He raised his right hand, was sworn, and sat down in the witness chair. Through that process, Hartz’s ice-cold gaze was fixed on J.D. Blackstone like a hunting dog studying its prey.

  “Mr. Hartz, were you,” Blackstone began, “the member of the prosecution team responsible for assembling the last production of discovery to the defense, comprised of records showing the contents of the FBI’s physical evidence inventory for the six months before, and six months after, the crime in this case?”

  “Of course I was,” Hartz replied with contempt.

  “One of those documents, from the DC Police Department, showed a drinking glass had been stored in the police evidence room there?”

  “It did.”

  “Was it the same drinking glass, if you know, that had been bagged and tagged from the crime scene in Horace Langley’s office—or was it another?”

  “I have reason to believe the glass in question was the one taken from the scene by FBI Special Agent Johnson—so I would have to say that it may be the same glass.”

  “The same glass that later turned up missing?”

  “Please listen carefully,” Hartz lectured. “I said it ‘may’ be the same glass. The bag had the same markings made by Agent Johnson at the crime scene when he bagged and tagged it. That’s all I know.”

  “How did you end up discovering the location of the missing glass?”

  “I was informed by a member of the DC Police Department that they had found, supposedly, the missing glass in their evidence room.”

  “We’ll get back to who in the DC Police Department informed you in a moment,
” Blackstone said. “But let’s go to the question of whether it’s the same glass. If the glass was in the same evidence baggie, with the same markings, why would you doubt that it was the same glass—the missing drinking glass obtained from the crime scene?”

  “Because the glass was different.”

  “Looked different?”

  “Not to the naked eye, not necessarily.”

  Blackstone was standing rigid at the podium. He was eyeing Hartz now. Hartz twisted his neck a bit and rotated his shoulders.

  He is sitting on a bombshell and he knows it, Blackstone thought to himself. And it only took a second for Blackstone to figure out what it was.

  “So,” Blackstone continued, “you mean to say that the glass had one or more fingerprint impressions—is that what you mean?”

  Hartz cocked his head a little, thinking it over, but didn’t answer.

  “Did the glass have fingerprints on it? Yes or no,” the judge asked loudly.

  “The glass was determined to have two latent fingerprints on it, yes,” Hartz answered.

  “And I am sure, as an officer of the court, and as one sworn to uphold the Constitution to convict the guilty and free the innocent,” Blackstone said with a smile, “that you sent that glass to the crime lab to determine that very thing. Right? To conduct what would represent a second forensic examination, right?”

  “We sent the glass to the crime lab, yes, after we discovered it.”

  “And what were the results?”

  “Objection!” the assistant prosecutor at the counsel’s table bellowed out. “Asking for hearsay. Not the best evidence. Failure to authenticate. Assuming facts not in evidence.”

  “There was only one proper objection, Your Honor, in that entire feeding frenzy,” Blackstone said. “And that was the hearsay objection. But I think I can cure it.”

  Then Blackstone turned back to Hartz. He knew that the prosecutor was scrambling in this chess game to save his piece on the board. But it was just a matter of time before his piece was taken. He knew it, and so did Hartz.

  “Do you have the crime lab report with you, Mr. Hartz?”

  Hartz paused again before answering. Then he finally replied.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you wish to have us go through the motions of marking the crime lab report as an exhibit, and introducing it? Or are you willing to simply summarize it for us and waive your hearsay objection?”

  “The findings of the crime lab in that second evaluation,” Hartz said in a defeated tone, “showed two latent prints.”

  “Neither belonging to the defendant Vinnie Archmont?”

  “That’s right,” Hartz said quickly, hoping that Blackstone would fail to ask the next question. But his hopes were dashed.

  “So, whose prints were on the glass—were they Horace Langley’s?”

  “No, they were not.”

  “They were someone else’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose?”

  The courtroom had become frozen in time, like the airless confines of an absolute vacuum. No one moved. No one spoke. Until Henry Hartz spoke. And when he finally did, his voice was almost at a whisper.

  “They belonged to Hammel Dietz.”

  “Who?” the judge bellowed out.

  “Hammel Dietz,” Hartz replied louder. “His prints were on file with the FBI.”

  “Why were they on file?” Blackstone asked.

  “Because Mr. Dietz had been arrested on multiple occasions for theft. Once resulting in a conviction.”

  “What kind of thefts?” Blackstone asked.

  Hartz squirmed in the witness chair.

  Blackstone repeated the question, now in a room-filling staccato. “What—kind—of—thefts?”

  “High-end art, historical artifacts, those kinds of things.”

  “Historical artifacts, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he considered to be a sophisticated, skilled thief?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “You have no opinion whatsoever?”

  Hartz wouldn’t answer.

  The judge leaned over to Hartz and broke the logjam.

  “Did law-enforcement agents,” the judge asked, “have an opinion on that, which you were privy to, and which you received in the ordinary course of your work in the federal prosecutor’s office?”

  “The District of Columbia Police Department apparently considered him a very skilled, sophisticated criminal.”

  “Where is he now?” Blackstone asked.

  “Dead.”

  “That’s convenient,” Blackstone muttered.

  “No more of that,” the judge said, reprimanding the law professor.

  “My apologies, Your Honor,” Blackstone replied. Then he resumed his questioning.

  “How did he die?”

  “Dietz was on probation from his prior theft. He encountered customs agents at the southern border of the United States while trying to enter Mexico. There was a warrant out against him for another offense. When border agents learned of this, they tried to stop him. There was a shootout. Mr. Dietz was killed.”

  “And when was that?”

  “About a week after the Smithsonian crimes.”

  “By the way, when did the drinking glass show up missing at the FBI evidence room?”

  Hartz paused. “Let’s see—” he started to say.

  “Let me guess,” Blackstone answered for him, “the same time that Dietz was killed—about a week after the Smithsonian crimes?”

  Hartz managed a twisted smile.

  “Looks like it, yes.”

  “And did you find any evidence whatsoever, Mr. Hartz, of any connection in any way, between Hammel Dietz, whose fingerprints were on a glass that appears to have been from the crime scene, and my client, Vinnie Archmont?”

  Hartz stared at Blackstone while he struggled to avoid admitting the obvious. Finally he relented.

  “No connection.”

  “None?”

  “That’s what I said, Mr. Blackstone.”

  A sea of whispers rippled through the courtroom.

  “Last question,” Blackstone announced. “Who was the Good Samaritan who told you they had discovered the missing glass?”

  “Detective Victor Cheski.”

  Blackstone said he had no further questions, and sat down at counsel’s table.

  Julia bent forward and whispered over to Blackstone.

  “Looks like Detective Cheski is our hero,” Julia said in a hushed tone.

  Vinnie was smiling. She had been transfixed by what had just unfolded.

  But Blackstone was not smiling. He didn’t reply to Julia’s observation. Instead, he simply pursed his lips and leaned back in his chair, considering some thought that was very private and, for the time being, belonged only to him.

  CHAPTER 61

  Blackstone’s next witness was the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division in the Department of Justice.

  There had been some initial wrangling about the motion that had been filed by the Department of Justice to quash the subpoena served on him.

  But after hearing Henry Hartz’s testimony, the DOJ attorney decided to withdraw his objection and agreed to testify specifically about the fact that the federal detention center, which housed Vinnie Archmont after her initial arrest, had ceased recording prisoners’ phone calls on that same day.

  Blackstone took the witness directly to the bottom line.

  “You are aware, sir, that a Shelly Hollsaker, a prisoner who was in the same cell with Vinnie Archmont, has come forward and told the government that she overheard my client make several incriminating statements while my client was on the telephone? And that, obviously, any recording of Ms. Archmont’s conversations would be of vital importance in either supporting, or destroying, Shelly Hollsaker’s story?”

  “Yes, I am aware of all of that.”

  “Prior to the day that Vinnie Archmont made several outgoing calls from a phone
in the holding cell, sir, did the federal facility have a policy of recording the phone calls of prisoners?”

  “It did, unless they were deemed to be attorney–client telephone contacts, and then they were not recorded.”

  “Why were the prisoner calls recorded previously?”

  “For jail security reasons. There were occasional threats against the safety of our jailers. Some terrorist threats by some inmates. So our internal security people would record the prisoner calls and review them to detect possible threats. The records would be unavailable for any other purpose, unless compelled to be produced by court order.”

  “Did that policy change, suddenly, on the day that Vinnie Archmont was brought into the facility after her arrest for the Smithsonian crimes?”

  “It did.”

  “Why?”

  “We were informed by a DC Police official that a District of Columbia judge had ruled that the recording of such prisoner phone calls was illegal and must be discontinued.”

  “So as a result, DOJ ordered that the recording be stopped?”

  “Yes, we halted it immediately, that same day, pending verification of that court order—it all happened to be on the same day that Vinnie Archmont was brought in.”

  “Who was the officer with the DC Police Department who called you and informed you that the recording must stop because of a court order?”

  “Detective Victor Cheski.”

  “And have you, ever since, gone back to the old policy of recording calls again?”

  “We have.”

  “Why?”

  “We discovered that Detective Cheski was mistaken. Apparently there was no court order.”

  “ ‘Mistaken,’ you said?”

  “Detective Cheski called it a ‘mistake.’ However, we were very disturbed by the incident, to say the least.”

  When Blackstone returned to the counsel’s table to grab his notepad after dismissing the Assistant Attorney General, Julia leaned forward to catch Blackstone’s attention.