Probable Cause g-2

by Grif Stockley

  I take a deep breath and ask as if I don’t have a care in the world, “You heard Olivia testify yesterday that she had not had sexual relations with you since you were originally charged is that correct?”

  For the first time Andy seems flustered, and I prepare for the worst. I have halfway convinced myself his answer won’t be crucial enough for me to confront him if he lies, when he says, his voice sorrowful, “We continued to be physically intimate until last week.”

  I see no need for the details.

  “Even now, you still love her,” I ask, dropping my voice as much as I dare, “don’t you’ Andy

  With great dignity, my client says, “Yes, sir, I do.”

  When I sit down, the jury, especially the two blacks, are clearly wondering whether they are looking at the first entirely honest man they have ever seen or a consummate con artist.

  Jill makes the mistake of trying to tear into him, but it is like ripping through a souffle: there’s no resistance, no angry denials, only the faintly bemused air of an African-American male who seems at peace with himself. Gradually, Jill realizes her mistake, and her questions, instead of sounding shrill, become heavy with sarcasm.

  “You’re telling this jury you were just so head over heels in love,” she asks mockingly “that you forgot everything you learned about being a psychologist?”

  Andy nods, as if she were a student who is close to the right answer but hasn’t quite got it.

  “It wasn’t that I forgot,” he says, taking the question literally, “it’s that my feelings for Olivia influenced what I did as a psychologist. For those few weeks I saw Pam just as Olivia saw her: without hope, in almost unending pain, in need of someone who was willing to try to save her from the agony she inflicted on herself every time she was allowed to be free.”

  He handles everything Jill throws at him. Marriage? Sure, they talked about it; at one point he and Olivia talked about the possibility of his going back to school to become a physician so he could take care of these children’s medical problems as well. She revisits each part of the case, and, unlike Olivia, he manages to reinterpret a number of Jill’s questions in light of his feelings without seeming argumentative. He tries to place each of his actions in the context of his relation with Olivia.

  Finally, Jill shows him the cattle prod and asks him to examine the handle, apparently so the jury will take to the jury room the image of him holding it. It is only at this moment that Andy seems to lose it. He holds it as if he has been asked to inspect a snake with fangs at either end, grab bing it loosely in the middle and holding it at arm’s length.

  His face becomes as stiff as his beard. Clearly, this is an uncomfortable moment for him, one I hope the jury can understand.

  “Dr. Chapman,” Jill asks, giving the jury plenty of time to freeze this moment on their brains, “would you unwrap the tape from the handle?”

  I think to object, but it will only look as if Andy has something to hide. He looks at me, but I nod, and taking the dirty tape which has begun to curl at the end, peels it away from the handle. There is shockingly little tape on the end.

  No words about how he felt about Olivia will ever explain why he insulated it so poorly. Since I don’t know the answer either (and I have already asked him in private the same question), I decline to redirect.

  As my final witness, I call Charlene Newman, whom Rainey delivered with a smile to the steps of the courthouse precisely at eight o’clock this morning. She has been waiting alone to testify, in a separate witness room guarded by a black deputy I’ve known for years. If he is a member of the Trackers, the organization has changed drastically. Charlene’s straight Indian hair is permed for this occasion, making me wonder if she wanted to show Leon she is taking care of herself or whether it is simply a periodic change. Instead of jeans and a halter top, her costume the day I interviewed her, Charlene is wearing dressy black pants, a white blouse, a vest, and a bolo string tie, the exact outfit worn by the female employees at a Mexican restaurant in town. What the hell. Maybe she can head for the border when she’s through.

  She is as nervous as I feared she would be, her voice almost inaudible, and I have to remind her to speak up during my preliminary questions. Her fear brings out Harriet Tarnower’s maternal instincts and the judge practically reaches over and pats her hand.

  “Do you know Leon Robinson?” I get around to asking when I finally get her voice level up loud enough to reach the Jury.

  Charlene looks down at the little strings resting on her starched blouse.

  “He’s my ex-husband,” she says, raising her eyes to meet mine.

  “How long were you married?” I ask, wanting to build up to this but afraid she will begin to change her mind as she looks around the courtroom. Though Leon is not in the courtroom, his friends are.

  “A total of seven years,” Charlene says, her voice husky with anxiety. I’m afraid she may be having second thoughts.

  What does she really have to gain by testifying? I have no idea what she meant last night about “owing him.” At this moment I would be willing to bet she’s ready to cancel obligations all the way around on the theory that she has scared the piss out of Leon. If this happens, I’ll have more egg than usual on my face, but I won’t have to worry about how long she survived after the trial. There is no federal slush fund for witnesses testifying for defendants. She adds, when I am slow in following up, “I was married when I was just fourteen.”

  I glance at Andy, knowing he will hate me the rest of my life for what I’m about to do. He is looking down at the table as if he knows he has made a pact with the devil. Maybe he has. I ask, “Ms. Newman, during the course of your marriage did your husband ever tell you he was a member of a group called the Trackers?”

  Jill goes through the motion of objecting, but we both know the judge will allow the question. Since she allowed me to ask Leon and he denied it. I can impeach his answer.

  “Go ahead, Ms. Newman,” she instructs when we have settled down.

  Charlene pauses, looks squarely at the jury and says, “Yeah, about six months ago he told me he was a member.

  Leon hates blacks.”

  I let go of the podium I have been squeezing. The only way her answer would have been better is if she had used the word “niggers.” I ask a couple of more questions to lock in her answer and then say to Jill, “Your witness.”

  Obviously stewing, Jill sits in her chair, still frowning at the judge. She has to make a choice. She can ignore Charlene, which will reinforce her closing argument that Leon’s membership in the Trackers is irrelevant, or she can go after her and try to make her out to be a vengeful, lying ex-wife.

  She leans over to whisper into her assistant’s ear. A big smile comes over Kerr’s pretty-boy face, and he stands up proudly as if he had been anointed a Knight of the Round Table. As Kerr starts in on Charlene, I realize Jill can’t resist trying to have it both ways. By sending in the second string, she is hoping to signal to the jury that Charlene’s testimony, if it stands up, isn’t a big deal.. On the other hand if Kerr can score some points, she’ll be happy to use them.

  Kerr looks good; there is no question about it. His blond hair is as glossy and wavy as that of any woman in the courtroom. His expensive suit, a three-piece job that is a little warm for September, does not have a wrinkle in it. And, in fact, he gets Charlene to admit that she has developed some real bad feelings about Leon. As a crossexaminer, he’s proficient, cutting Charlene’s answers off where he wants, controlling her with no difficulty. Yet, as Kerr pushes Charlene around, I notice Jill is squirming because she knows she has made a mistake.

  Unless Charlene recants her testimony completely, and she will not, Jill knows I will be asking the jury why the prosecution made a big deal out of crossexamination if it didn’t think Leon’s statement to Charlene that he was a member of the Trackers was relevant. Kerr comes back to sit down by his boss’s side as bouncy as a puppy bringing his mistress a dead sparrow between his jaws
. On the witness stand Charlene is wiping her eyes. That’s okay.

  She may hate Leon’s guts, but she has stuck to her original statement. Jill glared at Kerr as if he hasn’t done exactly what she told him to do.

  “No questions,” I say.

  Sometimes, less is more.

  24

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I begin my closing argument, “I have never had a client like Andrew Chapman. Nor do I ever expect to have one like him again. Frankly, I’m not sure I ever want to have one like him again.” There is some laughter in the courtroom, and about half of the jurors smile.

  As expected, Jill had painted a sinister picture of Andy and Olivia, telling the jury before launching into her conspiracy theory, that it would have to find Andy has the mind of a retarded child to allow him to escape guilt in this case.

  Slowly, I take in each member of the jury. “In all candor, and most, if not all of you, know this to be true of the criminal justice system in America, much of what happens in America’s courtrooms seems like an elaborate game between the prosecution and the defense lawyer. It’s as if the object of the game is for the prosecutor to jump over a high bar, but the rules let the defense lawyer try to trip up the prosecutor during the attempt. The rules, as you know, are there in our judicial system to protect the individual defendant as well as to safeguard certain values we have said are important in this country. Now, that’s all well and good, and defense lawyers like myself at this stage in a criminal trial routinely launch into a speech about how the prosecutor hasn’t made it over the bar, and therefore you, the jury, are required to acquit the defendant.”

  I come around from the podium, and feeling the eyes of the women on the jury, resist an urge to check my fly.

  “You may have observed,” I say dryly, “that Dr. Chapman has not always been happy with me during this trial. At one point, as you saw much to my embarrassment, he asked the judge to allow him to represent himself. While I, as a defense lawyer, have been thinking I would play this game out ac cording to the ordinary strategy that usually prevails in criminal cases, my client has insisted on playing the game differently. He thinks lawyers’ games get in the way of the truth, and whether we have liked it or not, he has insisted on telling us the truth, and quite honestly, many of us don’t like it, because it involves a white woman and a black man. He has insisted on telling you that he continues to love Olivia Le Master, and that the physical expression of this love has persisted through last week. Now, this makes us all uncomfortable, because there is a little moralistic voice in the back of our brains saying to us: for God’s sake, shouldn’t a child’s tragic death in which they were involved put a screeching halt to all of that? Human nature doesn’t work that way.

  Though it can be made to seem sordid examined clinically, we know we comfort each other in our grief through the act of sex just as we make love out of joy.”

  I pause, hoping at least a couple of the jurors will have experienced this need. Though nobody is nodding, a few seem sympathetic. It is not something to dwell on, but I needed to make sure I touched this base. I come up to the railing, putting as much distance as I can between me and Andy.

  “There is no doubt in my mind that Andy Chapman sincerely believes Olivia Le Master is a wonderful human being who has been the victim of one tragedy after another.

  Love has a way of turning worry lines into signs of character: a birthmark becomes a beauty spot in our eyes; and so on. When I first stood in front of you yesterday, I still accepted my client’s picture of Olivia Le Master. But having heard her in this courtroom yesterday and comparing her testimony with my client’s, can’t do that any longer. A person blinded by love can find all kinds of excuses for his beloved’s behavior. As the person’s lawyer, I am not required to do that. Doubtless, if my client had been permitted to represent himself, he would be telling you a different story-one I don’t believe would be accurate, but knowing this man, it would be honest and straight from the heart. The truth is, I now think that Olivia Le Master set my client up and has been sleeping with him ever since to keep him from discovering the truth.” I turn to Andy and see him glowering at me, and I quickly turn back to the jury.p›

  “No man likes to be thought of as a fool, but I’m afraid that is what my client is in this case. I think Olivia from the beginning played him like a violin and suggested a procedure she already knew was dangerous. She was around the Human Development Center enough to have entered Andy’s office and removed much of the insulation tape. She could have worked out some kind of plan with Leon Robinson, and I’ll talk more about him in a moment. But the prosecutor has just told you how much Olivia had to gain….”I want to leave them with the option of accepting my original opening statement, and it will do no good to get so far out on a limb I can’t climb back down. Moments later, as I begin on Leon, I sense some reluctance on the jury’s part to switch gears. This is for the blacks on the jury, I want to interrupt myself and tell them, but of course, I can’t.

  “Leon Robinson, by virtue of his membership in the Trackers, despises Andy Chapman. He didn’t have the guts to admit it, and I had to bring in his ex-wife to prove to you he has been a member. I think it is significant during this trial that it has become apparent that Olivia Le Master and Leon Robinson have told you lies, and Andy Chapman has not told you a single one. How can you be sure that Leon didn’t let go of Pam deliberately either in a moment of blind racial hatred or perhaps for a promise of cash from Olivia Le Master? Because when all is said and done, Pam would be alive today if he had merely done what he was told to do by my client, and nobody has denied that.”

  Finally, before I sit down I leave the jury with the possibility that it was, as I told them at the beginning, an accident. “The fact is that after this case is over and you return to your everyday lives, you cannot be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that despite all inferences to the contrary, Olivia Le Master is as manipulative as she seems. Granted, it seems clear she has lied to you, but I can’t stand up here and swear to you that she is a cold-blooded murderer or that she isn’t telling you the truth about everything else.” I turn to Andy who is staring down at the table, refusing to even acknowledge my presence. For a moment I wish I had let him make his own closing argument. Truly, he might have convinced them.

  “The one thing I am one hundred percent confident of is that my client has not lied to you. At a cost few, if any of us, would prefer to pay, I am certain he has told you what he believes to be the truth, and this is no small thing to take back with you to the jury room. He is simply not like anybody else I know. It is not that he is an innocent who got in over his head. What happened to Andy Chapman could have happened to any of us, but particulariy to a man who insists that society must become color-blind. It is my hope you will not punish him because he has the courage to live his life in a way that many of us, if we dare to admit, envy….”

  Jill finishes strong. Preaching in her usual manner, she storms up and down in front of the jury.

  “This case is not a love story; it is about responsibility for the death of a child.

  Mr. Page wants to confuse you. And if he can’t do that he wants you to forgive and forget what his client stood to gain;

  he wants you to forgive and forget his client’s total lapse of his professional responsibilities as a psychologist; he wants you to forgive and forget he used a cattle prod when the first rule of any professional is to do no harm. What is easy to forget is that it doesn’t matter how Dr. Chapman says he rationalized his behavior. He can say he did it in the name of love; his lawyer can argue racism to blame someone else;

  it doesn’t matter a hill of beans. It’s your job to fix responsibility, and you’re under no obligation to accept one word either of them says….”

  It is not an easy wait for the verdict. Tunkie, Frank, and Clan drift in and out of the courtroom all afternoon to see if there is any word from the jury. Clan, whose conviction, so the rumor goes, is going to draw him only a reprimand from the
state ethics people, hangs around much of the time.

  As soon as the trial is over and the jury has trooped out to begin its deliberations, Andy drops all pretense of civility and leans over to inform me that my services will no longer be needed for an appeal once the verdict comes back. Since then, he and Morris have been sitting together in a corner of the courthouse chatting off and on with a group of blacks, none of whom I recognize. It is a little late for group support, I think sourly. The case was too messy for the local NAACP to unite around. Morris, true to form, comes over to shake hands and to give me the rest of what I’m owed. I’m grateful I’m getting it before the verdict. I’m intensely curious about how he brought Andy around.

  “How’d you get him to show up this morning?” I ask as we talk in the empty jury box.

  “Guilt,” Morris says, poker-faced and unsmiling. It is obvious he fears the worst.

  “If he spends his life in prison,” Morris says, looking past me at the American flag by the door to the judge’s chambers, “how can he save the world?”

  I think of Morris’s impassioned plea to Andy and realize it worked. Maybe I should have asked if Morris could make the closing.

  Later, Clan, who has brought a bag of popcorn into the courtroom with him, nods at Andy and his group.

  “That’s gratitude for you,” he says loyally as I tell him Andy’s words to me after the trial.

  “Not your average dope dealer from Needle Park,” I say, looking over at the group of rednecks sitting near the middle of the courtroom. If there aren’t some Trackers waiting with us, I’d be real surprised.

  Clan understands just enough about the case to sound like an idiot.

  “Looks like he wants to play both ends against the middle,” he says, nodding at Andy and his all black group.

  His lawyer maybe.