Chasing Justice: A Matt Royal Mystery

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “Did you have any other conversation with her?”

  “No, sir. She made bail very quick, and was out of there.”

  “I have nothing further, Your Honor.”

  I stood and looked at the piece of paper Robin had handed me. Then I leaned down and pretended to speak to her again. She nodded, and I turned back to the witness stand. “Where do you live, Ms. Bramlett?” I asked.

  “Downtown Sarasota.”

  “In the Sarasota County jail?”

  She swallowed hard, hesitated for a moment, and said, “Yes.”

  “You mentioned that you were in the jail on a prostitution charge when you met my client, Abby Lester.”

  “Yes.”

  “That was not the same charge that you’re presently in jail for, is it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So, you finished the sentence you were in jail for at the time you supposedly met Abby Lester.”

  She swallowed again. It was like a tell, a reaction to a question that she found threatening. “Yes. I finished that sentence.”

  “So, tell the jury why you’re in jail now?”

  “I was arrested for prostitution.”

  I took a blind swing, asking a question I didn’t know the answer to, but a question that only had two possible answers. One would help and the other wouldn’t hurt. “And you’ve also been charged with possession of drugs with intent to sell, haven’t you?”

  She swallowed again. “Yes.”

  “You testified that Mr. Swann had not offered you any deals on the charge for which you were in jail on the night that Abby was arrested. What about on this charge, the drug charge? Have you been offered anything in return for your testimony here today?”

  Again, the swallow.

  “Tell us what you’ve been offered.”

  “Mr. Swann told me that he would get the drug charges dropped if I testified.”

  “You were arrested here in Sarasota County?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’re being prosecuted by the state attorney’s office here in Sarasota County?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know whether Mr. Swann is a prosecutor in this county?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Did he tell you that he’s a prosecutor in Jacksonville and he’s here trying this case because the Sarasota state attorney felt that he had a conflict and his office could not prosecute?”

  “No.”

  “Are you aware that Mr. Swann has no jurisdiction here and that he had no power to offer you a deal?”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No. Does that mean that the drug charges aren’t going to be dropped?”

  I didn’t answer her question. I glanced quickly at Swann. He sat stone-faced, not moving a muscle, still as a statue. I thought he must have glimpsed his future and found it dismal. He’d taken a chance, a stupid chance that risked his career, and he’d lost. He had bet his future against one more win and now he’d face the consequences.

  I turned back to the witness. “Do you know how Mr. Swann came up with you as a witness?”

  “No, sir. He came to my cell last night and offered me the deal.”

  “Did he bring you the clothes you’re wearing today?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know what perjury is?”

  “Lying under oath.”

  “Right. Do you know the sentence for that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You never met Abby Lester, did you?”

  “Yes, sir. I did.” She was going to ride it out, hoping that I was lying to her and that Swann would fix things.

  “And she never told you the tale you testified to today, did she?”

  She swallowed. “Yes, she did.”

  “And you remember her exact words?”

  “I do.”

  “You’ve got an exceptional memory, I guess. It’s been two and a half months since that night at the Sarasota County jail.”

  “Objection.” Swann was on his feet. “That’s not a question.”

  That’s what we in the profession call a dumb-ass objection. “I’ll rephrase, Your Honor.”

  “Proceed,” Judge Thomas said.

  “Do you have a phenomenal memory, Ms. Bramlett?”

  “I do. I remember her exact words.”

  “Okay. Can you point out the woman in this courtroom who admitted to you that she killed Mr. Bannister?”

  The witness pointed to Robin Hartill and said, “The woman with you. The one sitting right behind you at counsel table.”

  I smiled at her, taking a second to enjoy the sound of the trap springing closed on her neck. “Your Honor, for the record, would the court take judicial notice that the lady behind me is not my client, that she is a newspaper reporter named Robin Hartill, that Abby Lester has blond hair and is forty years old and that Robin has dark hair and is obviously in her twenties?”

  “Objection, Mr. Swann?” the judge asked.

  Swann shook his head.

  “Anything else in rebuttal?”

  “No, Your Honor. The state rests.”

  Robin left her seat and went to the door of the courtroom, and in a moment Abby came back to the counsel table. “What was that all about?”

  “Just a little sleight of hand. I’ll tell you about it when we break, but you don’t have to worry about that last witness.”

  I could tell by Swann’s hangdog look that he was totally defeated. He’d tried a hail-Mary pass with this witness, and it had been batted down. The witness had been completely discredited, but so had Swann. It was not lost on the jury that he had gotten a witness to lie under oath, suborned perjury, which is a criminal offense. There would be consequences for him, probably a criminal charge and disbarment, his license to practice law revoked by the Florida Supreme Court. His career was over, and I thought the legal profession would be better off as a result.

  “Okay then,” Judge Thomas said and turned to the jury. He explained to the jury that they could discount Ms. Bramlett’s identification of the witness. He told them that this concluded the evidentiary portion of the trial, and that he and the lawyers had some matters to confer upon. He told them the court would be in recess until one o’clock at which time the lawyers would give their closing arguments.

  We stood as the jury filed out of the courtroom. The lawyers and the court reporter gathered in the judge’s chambers for the charge conference. Ten minutes later I was walking into one of the small conference rooms to meet Abby and Bill Lester. Abby hugged me, and to my surprise, so did Bill.

  “What can I say, Matt?” Abby asked. “You were magnificent.”

  “Let’s hope the jury thinks so,” I said. “We’re not home free, yet.”

  “Matt,” Bill said, “Win, lose, or draw, we’ll be forever grateful to you. There’s not a lawyer in the state who’s competent to carry your briefcase.”

  I was a little embarrassed by such an accolade, but my ego seemed fine with it. Beach bums don’t often get compliments on their abilities to do much of anything. I was probably glowing a bit as I tried to bring my client and her husband down from their highs. The jury hadn’t spoken yet, and until they did, Abby was still at risk of spending the rest of her life in prison, or worse.

  “Thanks, guys. I appreciate your thoughts, but let’s wait for the verdict before we celebrate. Y’all go on to lunch. I’ll grab a sandwich and work on my closing argument.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Swann’s closing argument was disjointed and devoid of passion. He hit the high points of his case, but never mentioned the lows. He ignored the testimony brought forth in my case, never mentioning the testimony of Lucas and Favereaux. He droned on, almost in a monotone, for the better part of an hour. I thought he’d lost heart, that he had resigned himself to the probability that his record of wins was about to be compromised. I wasn’t so sure. There’s an old saw that says it’s not over until the fat lady sings
. In this case, the jury was the fat lady and her repertoire contained only two songs; “guilty” and “not guilty.”

  I had tried too many cases to try to outguess the jury. It’s a losing battle. You do your best and hope for a win. More often than not, I’d won, but I’d also lost cases that I thought I should have won. And sometimes, I won cases I thought I should have lost. The trial lawyer’s thoughts often drift to his relief valve, the notion that there’s always an appellate court. In the end, the mental machinations mostly result only in ulcers for the lawyer.

  When Swann finished, I rose and walked empty handed to the center of the courtroom. I stood there for a moment, looking at each of the jurors individually, my eyes moving from one to the other, sometimes making contact. Judith Whitacre looked straight at me. No smile, no facial expression. Had I lost her? No telling. Maybe I never had her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Abby Lester is not guilty of this terrible crime. Simple as that. She didn’t kill Nate Banister.

  “Let’s look at the evidence. The only witness who really tied Abby to Nate Bannister was Tori Madison. She lied. You remember her. The one who saw the scar on Abby’s hip. The scar that wasn’t there. Did Ms. Madison see some other woman that night in Mr. Bannister’s bedroom? Possibly, but she testified that she was certain it was Abby.

  “Ms. Madison also testified that she’d met Abby on several occasions, but Abby said they’d only met once. Okay, I can’t prove to you that Ms. Madison was lying about that, or that Abby was telling the truth, but when you look at the totality of the evidence you can see that the truth most likely lies with Abby Lester. Not Tori Madison.

  “We know who killed Nate Bannister. Agent Wes Lucas of the FDLE was a rogue agent. He killed Mr. Bannister. Linda Favereaux saw him standing over the corpse holding a revolver. Lucas killed her later that night. Now, I grant you that we don’t have direct testimony about the murder of Mr. Bannister, but we can put it together. Jim Favereaux saw the man who killed Linda, the woman he identified as his daughter, and testified here that the murderer was Wes Lucas. Linda told Jim Favereaux that a man named Wes had killed Mr. Bannister.

  “Why did Lucas ask his boss to assign him to this case before, I repeat, before Mr. Bannister’s body was found? There’s only one explanation. Lucas knew about the murder. How did he know about it if he hadn’t been part of it? And why did he insist that he head up the investigation if he wasn’t trying to cover something up? How better to disrupt a murder investigation than to have the murderer in charge of investigating it?

  “Let’s look at the evidence that points to Abby Lester as the killer. First, the emails. They’re obviously fraudulent. They didn’t come from her computer. The only thing that ties them to Abby is the typed name on the bottom of the emails. Anybody could have typed those words, but it would take a person who is highly skilled in Internet technology to be able to post them through foreign servers, as was the case here. Abby didn’t do that.

  “We have to ask ourselves why she would have, even if she had the skills to do so. And if Abby and Mr. Bannister were having an affair, why would she have to sign the emails? It doesn’t stack up. I think we can strike that bit of evidence off the board.

  “Mr. Swann’s theory was that Abby and Mr. Bannister were having an affair and she was angered by the fact that he wanted to break it off. On the other hand, Mr. Swann would have you believe that Abby had sex with Mr. Bannister the night he was killed. Abby was painted as a black widow of sorts; have sex and then kill your partner. That theory exploded when the DNA from the sheets told us that shortly before he was killed, Mr. Bannister had sex with Linda Favereaux, not Abby Lester.

  “The wine glass in the bedroom. Now that presents a dilemma. How did it get there? Abby says she was never in that condo. The only person who placed her there was Tori Madison. The glass of wine with Abby’s fingerprints would buttress the claim that she was in the bedroom, drinking wine, and presumably having sex. But it turns out that the wine glass was not from Mr. Bannister’s set. His glasses were monogrammed. And if Mr. Bannister was drinking wine that night, and he surely was because the autopsy showed the remains in his stomach, what happened to his glass?

  “There were two of his monogramed glasses found in the dishwasher, washed clean of fingerprints. Were those the glasses used by Linda Favereaux and Mr. Bannister? If so, who put them in the dishwasher? Does it make sense that if Mr. Bannister was going for more wine, as was testified to in this courtroom, that he would put his glass, and not Abby’s, in the dishwasher? Where did the other extra monogrammed glass in the dishwasher come from? Who used it?

  “The glass in the bedroom was plain, like the ones used in most restaurants and bars, like the one that Abby probably drank out of on the day of Mr. Bannister’s murder, when she met Tori Madison for a drink in downtown Sarasota. How easy would it have been for Tori to slip that glass into her purse and then place it on Mr. Bannister’s bedside table? And there was a smudged fingerprint on the stem of the glass. One that was not clear enough to be identified. One that may have belonged to someone other than Abby Lester, someone who placed the glass on the bedside table.

  “I submit to you that the killer put the two glasses in the dishwasher, the ones used by Mr. Bannister and Linda Favereaux, and placed the glass with Abby’s fingerprints on the bedside table. Was this the same glass that Abby had drunk from at the restaurant where she met Tori Madison the day before the murder? How did that glass get on that bedside table?

  “Let’s talk about Robert Shorter for a minute. You remember he was the man who assaulted Mr. Bannister a couple of years ago and actually served jail time for doing so. His fingerprints were in Mr. Bannister’s condo. Why didn’t the investigators follow up and at least talk to Mr. Shorter? He would have been the logical suspect, certainly a better choice than Abby Lester.

  “Mr. Shorter was lured to the Bannister condo by Tori Madison, and an appointment was made for him to return on Sunday evening at, as it turns out, the same time that Mr. Bannister was killed. Mr. Shorter called Ms. Madison on Sunday and canceled because he had another meeting he had to attend, a meeting with thirty or so alibi witnesses. But the FDLE wouldn’t have known about the alibi because its agents never interviewed Mr. Shorter.

  “Who would be a better patsy for murder than Mr. Shorter? Was that the plan all along and when it fell through, somebody, perhaps Tori Madison, went to plan B? The framing of Abby Lester? It is clear that Abby has been framed. I don’t have a plausible reason as to why, but somebody, most probably Tori Madison, tried to make it look like Abby killed Mr. Bannister. The evidence is strong, even overwhelming, that Agent Wesley Lucas murdered Nate Bannister. And there is no credible evidence that Abby Lester had anything to do with it.

  “That last witness? Ms. Bramlett? She’s a liar. She lied on the witness stand to get a reduction in her sentence for dealing in drugs; a deal that only the state attorney for this judicial circuit could make; not a deal that a prosecutor from another circuit has the authority to make. And Jack Dobbyn, the state attorney for this circuit, did not grant Ms. Bramlett any kind of immunity. I submit that the last witness was an act of desperation by a desperate man.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you do not have to find that Abby is innocent of this crime, although I think you will. It is not my burden to prove her innocence. It is Mr. Swann’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Abby Lester committed this crime, that she did, in fact, kill Nate Bannister, and that she did so with malice aforethought; that she had thought about the murder, planned it, went to his condo, shared a bottle of wine with him, had sex with him, and then shot him dead with a gun that has disappeared. The state attorney wants to send Abby to the death chamber, to execute her, to use drugs to suck the life out of a high school history teacher on evidence so flimsy that it ought to embarrass the prosecutor to bring it into a court of law.

  “If you find that you have a reasonable doubt as to Abby’s guilt, it is your duty to acquit. You d
on’t have to believe in her innocence, only in the fact that the state did not prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

  “Our society, our system of justice, puts a heavy burden on juries. Most of us will never have to weigh the life of a fellow citizen, to decide whether that citizen goes from this courtroom to death row or walks out into the sunshine a free person. It is a heavy burden, one that you did not seek, but one that you have accepted. I know you will do your duty as you see it, and I implore you to find Abby Lester not guilty. Thank you.”

  Swann waived rebuttal. Judge Thomas charged the jury with the law that they should apply to this case and sent them out to deliberate. It has been said that courts treat jurors like kindergartners when they dribble out only the evidence the judges think they should hear, and then charge them with legal principles that would boggle the minds of third-year law students. But the juries, day in and day out, in courtrooms all across the country, get it right. That fact alone boggles the minds of most trial lawyers.

  We stood as the jury exited the courtroom. This is the time when opposing counsel usually shake hands and congratulate each other on having tried a good case. Not this time. Swann abruptly left the courtroom, leaving his entourage to pack up his documents and other detritus left at the end of a trial. I wasn’t surprised.

  I was packing up my brief case when the young woman lawyer and the intern from Stetson Law School came to my table. We shook hands. The lawyer said, “Mr. Royal, I think you just ruined old George’s perfect record.”

  I smiled. “I hope so. He could still walk away with this one.”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “Maybe a loss will take some of the arrogance out of him.”

  “He might be harder to work for,” I said.

  “This is my last case,” she said. “My last day working for the state attorney. I start at a private firm in Jacksonville on Monday. I’ll probably face George in court someday. I’m looking forward to it. And I’m not sure he has a career after that stunt he pulled with the last witness. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t get disbarred. I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with that.”