by Scott Pratt
“This isn’t going to take long,” I said. “We don’t have any physical evidence to present to you. I wish we did, but we don’t. All we have is a story to tell you, and the story will make your skin crawl.”
I turned slowly and pointed my finger at Trent.
“That man sitting right there, that perverted man, used his supervisory power and authority—power that he held by virtue of being an employer—to satisfy his own selfish sexual needs. He took advantage of his employees’ youth and station in life, and he abused them over a long period of time in the most shameful of ways. When you’ve heard this story, and you’ve heard his pathetic denials and excuses for why he’s being falsely accused, you’ll come to the same conclusion that I have. He’s guilty. He’s guilty as sin.”
I turned and walked over to the podium.
“Are you ready to proceed?” Judge Langley asked.
“I am.”
“Call your first witness.”
“The state calls Alice Dickson.”
Masters looked at me curiously from his seat at the prosecution table and mouthed the words, What are you doing?
My original plan had been to put Masters on the stand first to tell the jury how the investigation came about and then to follow him with Rosalie Harbin and then finish with Alice. It’s the standard in trial work: you start slowly and then build to a climactic finish. But the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that I’d call only one witness in this trial, and that witness was Alice Dickson. I knew Snodgrass would make Cody Masters look like an idiot on cross-examination. He’d referred to him as Barney Fife during his opening statement, just like he did in my office a couple of weeks earlier. I didn’t want to give Snodgrass the opportunity to take the focus of the trial away from the real issue, which was whether his client was a pervert and had been screwing underage girls for years.
I’d also decided not to put Rosalie Harbin on the witness stand. She oozed sexuality, and she was unpredictable and often flippant. I believed she would anger the women and make the men think she probably got what she asked for. She also had a habit of committing crimes of moral turpitude, things like theft and forgery, and it was entirely possible that the jury would dislike her so much that they’d acquit Trent on every count, no matter how convincing Alice might be.
So Alice was it. All or nothing. A multiple-count felony case with only one witness.
I’d never heard of anyone trying anything like it before.
Tuesday, October 14
Alice walked in with her eyes downcast and slowly climbed the steps up to the witness chair. Her hair was shoulder-length, her face smooth and cream-colored. She looked frightened, and as I led her through the routine preliminary questions, her voice was trembling. But when we got to the serious questions, she sat up straight and started talking directly to the jurors. I started at the beginning, asking her about her life, how she’d been abandoned by her mother and had no idea who her father was, and how she’d grown up impoverished, one of five people sharing a bathroom and two bedrooms in an old trailer. I asked her about the sexual abuse at the hands of her uncle, and she told the jury, in a moving moment, that she blamed herself for her aunt losing her husband. After twenty minutes or so, we got around to Trent.
“Do you know the defendant?” I said.
“Yes. His name is William Trent. We called him Bill.”
“And would you point him out, please?”
She looked right at him and held out her hand. It wasn’t shaking. “That’s him, in the blue suit.”
“Let the record show the witness has identified the defendant,” Judge Langley said.
“Miss Dickson,” I said, “would you tell the jury how you came to know Mr. Trent?”
“My girlfriend Rosalie and I went to his restaurant and applied for a job.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Four years ago. I was fifteen.”
“The indictment in this case alleges that William Trent used his supervisory power and authority over you to sexually abuse you. Did that happen?”
“Yes. Many times.”
“Would you please tell the jury in your own words what happened?”
She began to speak, and for the next half hour she recounted the same tale that she’d told Cody Masters two years earlier. She described in explicit detail the mole on the head of William Trent’s penis and the small tattoo of a pitchfork-wielding devil on the left cheek of his ass. She recalled the size of the penis as being “about the same as one of those Oscar Mayer wieners, maybe a little shorter. It wasn’t very big.”
She described the pornography, the lingerie parties, the liquor in the small refrigerator behind the counter. I didn’t ask her about the drugs, because she told me she’d never used them. Rosalie was the one who liked the drugs.
Alice then went into Trent’s sexual habits, his fetishes, his refusal to use a condom, and his insistence that the girls use birth control. She described his preference for having sex in places like the walk-in cooler. Snodgrass tried to object, saying that she couldn’t testify to anything that wasn’t alleged in the indictment, but after a short hearing outside of the jury’s presence, the judge ruled that the testimony could be used to prove a pattern of conduct, and he let it in.
I ended the direct examination by asking her about the exact dates on which both she and Rosalie had had sex with Trent and had her describe the events in detail. She was obviously embarrassed by what she’d done, but she also came across as contrite, apologizing repeatedly to the jury and saying, “I’m so ashamed.”
When she was finished, I glanced at the jury. Three of the women were in tears, and a couple of the men looked like they wanted to jump over the railing and kill Trent. I could hear Snodgrass wheezing. He pushed himself up from the table and lumbered to the podium.
“That’s quite a memory you have there, Miss Dickson,” he said. She didn’t respond. “Since you have such a fine memory, especially when it comes to your sex life, how about recalling for the jury your other sexual experiences?”
Judge Langley looked at me, waiting for an objection, but I kept my mouth shut. The question was improper, but I already knew the answer, and I knew Snodgrass wouldn’t like it.
“I haven’t had any other sexual experiences,” Alice said softly.
“I beg your pardon? Are you telling this jury that you’ve never had sex?”
“No, I’m not saying that,” she said. “I’ve had sex with your client, and my uncle raped me. That’s all.”
“Come on, Miss Dickson,” Snodgrass said sarcastically. “Surely you don’t expect this jury to believe that you would engage in what you’ve described as kinky, consensual sex with a man more than twice your age on a regular basis and not be sexually active otherwise. Are you saving yourself for marriage?”
Alice dropped her head and closed her eyes for a moment. I saw her shoulders rise as she took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, a tear was running down her left cheek.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be married,” she said. “No one would want me after what he did to me, after what I did with him. I feel … I feel … dirty.”
She covered her face with her hands and began to sob quietly, and I felt a lump in my throat. After a half minute had passed, Judge Langley reached down and offered her a tissue.
Snodgrass had stepped in it. I looked over at the jurors, and could tell that even the men were moved by the testimony. Alice was coming across as sincere, and I didn’t think there was anything Snodgrass could do. He stood mute at the podium, waiting for Alice to regain her composure. When she stopped crying and looked at him, he went on the attack.
“I’m not even going to get into the specifics of these allegations with you, because, frankly, I find them utterly preposterous,” Snodgrass said. “So let’s talk about the truth. The truth is that you don’t have anything to prove that you ever had sex with my client besides your and your friend’s word, do you, Miss Dickson?” he barke
d.
“I guess not,” she said.
“The truth is that you don’t have any of Mr. Trent’s DNA to back up your claims, do you?”
“No. I don’t.”
“No pictures?”
“No.”
“No video- or audiotape?”
“No.”
“No sex toys with Mr. Trent’s fingerprints on them?”
“No.”
“No witnesses other than your friend Miss Harbin?”
“No.”
“How many people would you estimate worked for Mr. Trent during the two years that you were there?”
“I don’t know. People came and went some. Twelve, thirteen, maybe a few more,” Alice said.
“And none of those people ever witnessed any of the things you’re claiming, did they?”
“Yes, they did. They just don’t want to get involved.”
“Don’t want to get involved? They don’t want to help put what you claim is a sex maniac who takes advantage of young girls behind bars? I find that hard to believe, Miss Dickson.”
“I think they’re ashamed. Like me.”
“The truth is, you didn’t report this conduct until after Mr. Trent fired you, isn’t that correct?”
“I needed the job. I needed the money.”
“Are you saying that you couldn’t have found a job where your employer didn’t require you to have sex?”
“He paid us twice what anyone else would have paid. I couldn’t have found a job making ten dollars an hour.”
“So for two years, you allowed yourself to be sexually abused and you never told a soul. Did you tell your aunt?”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
“You say you were raped by your uncle. Did you tell anyone about that?”
“I told my aunt. She kicked him out and divorced him.”
“Did you tell her immediately?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t wait two years?”
“No.”
“So you tell your aunt immediately that your uncle raped you, but then you allow yourself to be sexually abused for two years and don’t say a word, is that what you want us to believe?”
“Objection,” I said. “Asked and answered.”
“Sustained,” Judge Langley said. “Move along to something else, Mr. Snodgrass.”
“Let’s get back to the truth, Miss Dickson,” Snodgrass said. “The truth is that you worked for two years for a man who paid you well and treated you with respect, isn’t that right?”
“He paid me well,” Alice said.
“The truth is that after you turned seventeen, you started using drugs with your friend Rosalie and your behavior became erratic, isn’t that right?”
I stood again. “I object, Judge. There’s absolutely no evidence that she ever used drugs. There’s no foundation for the question.”
“Sustained.”
“The truth is that you started showing up late for work, when you bothered to show up at all, isn’t it, Miss Dickson?”
“No, that isn’t true.”
“The truth is that Mr. Trent gave you several chances to alter your behavior, but he finally was forced to terminate your employment, isn’t that right?”
“No. That isn’t true.”
“And the truth is that when Mr. Trent terminated you and Miss Harbin, the two of you concocted this story in order to exact revenge on Mr. Trent, isn’t it? And if your little scheme works, you plan to file a civil suit against Mr. Trent, don’t you?”
“I don’t even know what that means,” she said.
Snodgrass banged his fist down on the podium and bellowed at her, “The truth is that you’re a liar! And so is your friend. Isn’t that right?”
Alice looked down at her hands and shook her head slowly.
“Isn’t that right, Miss Dickson?”
“No,” she said quietly.
“That’s all I have for this … for this … tart,” Snodgrass said dramatically as he turned his back on the witness stand and plodded to the defense table.
I was anxious to get up and start the redirect. Snodgrass’s attack had been passionate, and I didn’t want to give the jurors much time to let it sink in. Finally, after a couple of minutes, Judge Langley looked up from the notes he’d been taking.
“Redirect, Mr. Dillard?” he said.
“Absolutely,” I said as I stood and walked back up to the podium. It was time to spring the trap.
“Miss Dickson,” I said, “Mr. Snodgrass mentioned that you seem to have a very clear memory of the things that happened between you and Mr. Trent. Is there any particular reason why your memories are so vivid?”
“Yes,” she said, “there’s a good reason.”
“And what is it?”
“I wrote it all down.”
“Do you mean you kept a diary?”
“Yes,” she said.
Snodgrass got to his feet as quickly as his mass would allow.
“Your Honor, I absolutely object to any mention of a diary. A diary is hearsay; it’s an out-of-court statement, and it doesn’t fall under any of the hearsay exceptions.”
“Mr. Dillard?” the judge said.
“That would be true if I’d tried to use the diary during my direct examination,” I said, “but Mr. Snodgrass opened the door to the diary when he saw fit to accuse Miss Dickson of concocting a story and called her a liar. The diary becomes admissible as a prior consistent statement, and I can use it to rehabilitate my witness.”
“We had no notice of any diary!” Snodgrass yelled.
“That’s because I wasn’t planning to use it unless he attacked her credibility, and that’s exactly what he did.”
“He’s withheld evidence from us, Judge! He has an obligation to allow us to inspect any evidence in his possession, and he knows it. This case should be dismissed, Mr. Dillard should be held in contempt, and the court should immediately file a complaint against him with the Board of Professional Responsibility.”
“Judge,” I said, “I knew of the diary’s existence, but it wasn’t in my possession because I knew it was inadmissible. I asked Miss Dickson to bring it along with her today in case Mr. Snodgrass challenged her credibility. She has a written record of everything that happened to her, and it will corroborate perfectly everything she said here today.”
Judge Langley leaned forward and glared down at Snodgrass. “He’s right, Mr. Snodgrass, and unless you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last several years, you should know it. The relevant parts of the diary are admissible. I’ll take it back into chambers and determine which parts are relevant and which parts aren’t. Court’s in recess.”
As soon as the jury filed out, Snodgrass and Trent disappeared into an anteroom. Because I’d practiced criminal defense for so long, I had a good idea of what the conversation would be like. Snodgrass was undoubtedly telling his client that his goose was about to be cooked, and that he’d better start living in the real world and accept some kind of deal. Otherwise, it was entirely possible that he’d spend the rest of his life in jail.
Ten minutes after Judge Langley recessed court, a bailiff came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Judge wants to see you and the defense lawyer in chambers,” he said.
I walked back to the judge’s office. Langley was sitting behind the desk with the diary open in front of him. He looked up as I walked in.
“Where’s Mr. Snodgrass?” he said.
“Counseling with his client, I think.”
“That was a dirty trick you pulled, Mr. Dillard,” he said.
“I know.”
He smiled and looked back down at the diary. I heard the door open, and Snodgrass walked in. The wheezing was a little louder than it had been earlier.
“You can’t let this in, Judge,” he said. “It’s reversible error. It’ll wind up right back in your lap.”
“Spare me the melodramatics, Mr. Snodgrass,” the judge said. “Listen to this.”
<
br /> Judge Langley picked the diary up off the table and began to read: “ ‘I got my first paycheck today. Bill made me suck his thing in the bathroom before he would give it to me. He shot his stuff all over my face. He is really sick. I wish I could quit but we need the money so bad so I just try to imagine that I am floating on a cloud until it is over. I made over four hundred dollars. I gave half of it to Jeanine to help with food and rent and stuff like that and I am keeping the rest. I need to get a car as soon as I can so Jeanine will not have to pick me up every day. I should have enough by the time I am old enough to get my license.’ ”
He set the diary back down on the table and looked at Snodgrass.
“Are you sure you want to continue this?” he said. “If the jury convicts him, and I have no doubt they will, he’ll be looking at a minimum of thirty years. Even if they don’t convict on the counts involving the second girl, I’ll max him out. That child was the same age as my granddaughter when he got hold of her. This is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen.”
Snodgrass seemed to deflate. His giant head turned slowly towards me.
“If you’d told me about the goddamned diary in the first place, we could have made a deal and finished this,” he growled. “How much fucking time do you think he deserves for dipping his wick in a willing teenager?”
“Ten years if he serves it flat,” I said. “Fifteen if he wants to take his chances with the parole board.”
He turned and started shuffling slowly towards the door, his huge, rounded shoulders slumping forward, the soles of his shoes making a swooshing sound as he dragged them across the carpet. When he got to the door, he paused.
“I’ll sell it to him,” he began slowly. Then he lifted his chin and turned on his now-familiar glare. “But don’t you think for one second that I’m going to forget what you did to me today. Somewhere down the road, I’ll find a way to even the score.”
