by Paul Levine
She forced herself to focus on the case and turned to Willis Rask's police report. But that only brought Jimmy Buffett into her head, and soon she was humming "Come Monday," which led to thoughts of Steve. What was he doing? Hitting the South Beach nightspots? What songs were playing in his head?
Standing at the kitchen counter in the little house on Kumquat Avenue with Bobby at his side, Steve wondered where Victoria was having dinner. Louie's Backyard? World's most romantic restaurant, waves lapping the shoreline just yards from the table? With Junior Big-Dick Griffin?
Drinking champagne and exchanging tender whispers? Steve briefly considered driving to Key West and crashing their party, again. This time without Lexy and Rexy. They wouldn't fit in the Smart, anyway.
No. Victoria wouldn't be doing that. With her work ethic, she'd be slogging away tonight, preparing for court. He wondered how jury selection was going. He'd taught Victoria a lot about voir dire, but she had one quality that didn't need any instruction. Likeability. Jurors responded to her. More than to him. Still, he felt he could spot a devious juror better than she could.
Dammit, I should be there.
He was Victoria's biggest fan, and part of him wanted her to win the Griffin trial. But another part wanted her to get in trouble and call him for help. Until she did, he would stay in Miami working on his father's case.
Another nagging thought. Their personal relationship.
Where the hell are we? Did she break up with me and I don't even know it?
"What are you thinking about, Uncle Steve?"
"Work."
"Uh-huh." Bobby peeked under the lid of the panini grill, where a grilled-cheese sandwich sizzled. "I miss her, too."
"Who?"
"Victoria. You're thinking about her, aren't you?"
"Sometimes you scare me, kiddo." Steve rotated the sandwich 180 degrees to crosshatch the ciabatta roll. "Finish your homework?"
"Bor-ing."
"C'mon, Bobby. You have to do your math homework."
"I'll bet you don't know the only even prime number."
"Don't mess with me. I'm tired of your teacher calling."
"Two." Bobby opened the grill lid. If the ciabatta burned, even a tiny scorch, he wouldn't eat the sandwich. "What's the largest number divisible by all numbers less than its square root?"
"I see summer school in your future."
"Twenty-four."
"And where are your shoes?" The skinny kid wore a Shaquille O'Neal Miami Heat jersey that hung to his knees. Maybe he had shorts on underneath, maybe not. "Remember the rule? No going barefoot in the kitchen."
"Dumb rule. My feet don't have boogers."
"Lots of rules are dumb, but you still have to follow them."
"You don't." Bobby used a spatula to take his grilled cheese out of the grill. "What's the largest prime number?"
"A hundred bazillion. Are you listening to me? I'm worried about your schoolwork." Steve thought he sounded like his own father, except Herbert never checked a report card in his life.
"It's over six million digits long, so it doesn't really have a name. But I can show you on the computer."
"And all this time I thought you only looked at Paris Hilton's anatomy."
"You know what we're studying in school? Algebra for dummies."
"Do your homework first, then come up with a new theory of relativity."
Bobby grabbed a Jupiña pineapple soda from the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table. "Can I help on Gramps' case?"
"Sure." Steve grabbed a slice of cheese—cheddar with jalapeños, great with tequila. "What do you think Reginald Jones meant when he said your grandfather decided to do something about all the crime?"
"Maybe Gramps was like Bruce Wayne. At night he became Batman."
"More like Bacardi Man."
"I know what you think. You think Gramps cheated."
"It has occurred to me. That's why I need to read the old transcripts."
"I already did, Uncle Steve."
"When?"
"This week. Instead of going to school, I took the bus downtown to the courthouse."
"Aw, jeez. You're a truant, too? We're gonna catch hell."
"I read Mr. Luber's murder trials. Seventeen convictions, no losses. Nothing was amiss."
" 'Nothing was amiss'? Who talks like that?"
"Rumpole of the Bailey. On PBS."
"Okay, so Pinky Luber tried seventeen murder cases and won them all. That's how he made his bones."
"He asked for the death penalty in eleven trials, and the jury recommended death every time."
"Helluva batting average."
"Gramps went along with the jury. Eleven death sentences. Six life sentences."
"Maximum Herb. I need to look at the appeals."
"No reversals. Not even one."
Amazing. Bobby had all the numbers. If only he were as thorough with his homework. "So whatever your grandfather was doing, the Third District and the Florida Supreme Court never figured it out."
"You said that Mr. Luber was a good lawyer before he got all twisted. Maybe he just got hot."
Steve poured two fingers of the Chinaco Blanco and grabbed another slice of cheese. A well-balanced dinner. Protein from the cheese. And tequila came from the agave plant, so that counts as a vegetable, right? "Nobody wins seventeen straight capital cases. Twelve jurors in each one. That's . . ."
"Two hundred and four."
"Two hundred and four jurors you have to convince without one dissent. Can't be done."
"Maybe if you figured in the losing streak, it all averages out."
"What losing streak?"
Bobby took a bite of his sandwich, a string of melted cheese sticking to his lip. "In Mr. Luber's last five trials before the winning streak started, he lost three and had one hung jury. He only got one conviction."
"Holy shit." The newspapers never talked about the losses. It was always, Luber's Super Bowl streak. Seventeen wins, no losses. So how'd he turn it around?
"Maybe we're looking at the wrong cases, kiddo. We need the ones Pinky lost. See what he did differently. See what that paper shuffler Reggie Jones did. And most of all, see what your grandfather did."
Thirty-eight
COUNTING FACES
"Do you watch Leno or Letterman?" Richard Waddle asked.
That old one? Leno fans favor the prosecution, Letterman the defense.
The State Attorney needed to update his repertoire along with his wardrobe, Victoria thought, as they started day two of jury selection.
"I don't stay up that late," said Angela Pacheco, temporarily ensconced in slot seven of the jury box. She was a married woman in her early forties who sold time-share condos from an office in Islamorada. "I never miss Desperate Housewives, though."
Victoria processed the information. Did Ms. Pacheco identify with Bree, the uptight Republican housewife, a sure prosecution juror, or Gabrielle, the cheating, conniving—and therefore defense-oriented— hausfrau?
But Waddle must not have watched the show, because he moved on. "Does your car have any bumper stickers, Ms. Pacheco?"
Bumper stickers. Straight out of the prosecutor's cliché bag.
A prosecution juror boasts: "My child is an honor student at Dolphin Elementary." The defense juror: "My kid can beat up your honor student."
"Only one," Mrs. Pacheco said.
"And what's it say, ma'am?"
" 'If It's Called Tourist Season, Why Can't We Shoot Them?' "
Ooh, good. A defense juror, even if she's only joking. In fact, anyone with a sense of humor is a likely candidate for the defense.
"This is a homicide trial," Waddle said. "The charge is second degree murder. If convicted, the defendant faces life in prison."
"This is a homicide trial," Pinky Luber said. "The charge is first degree murder, and the state seeks the death penalty. So I have to ask all of you a very tough question. If we prove beyond every reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of a vicious pr
emeditated murder, with malice aforethought, can you render a verdict that may result in his execution?"
The words in the transcripts were beginning to blur. Steve had been sequestered in a corner of the musty records room of the courthouse for two days. He'd skimmed thousands of pages of transcripts. The words had melted together like the cheese in Bobby's panini. Nothing in the cold, black type to indicate anything different in Luber's losing trials from the winning ones. Nothing remarkable in Herbert Solomon's rulings. The judge seemed evenhanded on objections, and his jury instructions were right out of the book. As for Reggie Jones, the transcripts seldom mentioned him at all, except when he responded to questions concerning an item of evidence.
Just like Bobby said, "Nothing was amiss."
There was one oddity in the records, but it didn't seem to have any relevance. One of the defendants was tried twice. His name was Willie Mays, his parents doubtless hoping he'd become a baseball star instead of a drug dealer with a homicidal streak. Mays was the last murder defendant to walk out of Judge Solomon's courtroom a free man, the last person acquitted before Luber's famous hot streak. A year later, Luber had a second shot at him. Charged in a new case—killing his ex-girlfriend and her infant child—Mays was convicted and sentenced to death. And no wonder, Steve thought, studying the man's hefty rap sheet. Willie Mays had been arrested exactly twenty-four times, equaling his namesake's uniform number. The Florida Supreme Court unanimously affirmed both the conviction and Judge Solomon's sentence.
The second Mays trial had been televised back when that was still a rarity. The local public station had broadcast the trial with expert commentary from various lawyers eager for TV exposure. In the era before Court TV and twenty-four-hour cable stations, this was pretty hot stuff, at least in the legal world.
Now Steve riffled through the appeals papers. One of the public defender's appellate arguments was that the cameras deprived his client of a fair trial. Jurors are intimidated; there's more pressure to convict; the courtroom is turned into a theater. All routine arguments in the 1980's and all routinely denied by Florida's courts.
Steve looked through the exhibits attached to the PD's appellate brief. A bunch of courtroom photos. Several showed TV technicians setting up their equipment. In others, the lawyers were smiling, either for the jury or the cameras. One photo taken just before the trial began caught Steve's attention. The entire jury panel, ninety strong, sitting in the gallery, waiting to be called to answer questions. It struck him then.
Where are the black faces?
He counted five apparent African-Americans. Way underrepresented.
In a capital case in which a black defendant was accused of killing his white ex-girlfriend and their infant daughter, the defense lawyer would crave black jurors.
Steve found a photo of the panel actually seated. Twelve jurors plus two alternates. Two of the African-Americans made it onto the panel, and a third was an alternate. Okay, that seemed to cure the problem, evening out the statistics somewhat.
A nice trick, getting three of five black jurors on the panel, Steve thought. He turned back to the transcript of voir dire. Hank Adornowitz, the defense lawyer, was a veteran of the PD's office. He'd long since retired, but at the time, Adornowitz was considered the top capital crimes defense lawyer on the public payroll.
Steve dug deeper into the transcript and matched up jurors' names with faces in the photos from their position in the jury box. Juror Two, an African-American man wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a tie, without a jacket, turned out to be Leonard Jackson. He owned his own home, worked security at a downtown department store, and served in the military as an MP.
Holy shit. Sure, he's black. But you couldn't ask for a more pro-prosecution juror.
Unless you had an immediate family member killed by violence. Juror Seven, Martha Patterson, an African-American cook in a North Miami restaurant, lost a teenage sister to a drive-by shooting. And the alternate, Charlene Morris, worked as a paramedic and dated a cop.
Other than their skin color, these three could give prosecutors wet dreams.
So, what gives? Why did Adornowitz leave them on? Steve could think of only one answer. With the sea of white faces he had to work with, the PD must have been happy to get any blacks seated.
Still, there was something haunting about that first picture. Steve wished he could study the racial composition of all seventeen trials in Luber's winning streak. But the photos were in the Mays file only to bolster the argument about the prejudicial effect of cameras in the courtroom. Lacking the same appellate issue, the later cases would have no photographs. And there's no way to determine each juror's race from the bare transcripts.
But the transcript of voir dire would reveal something. Home addresses.
Miami was among the most segregated of cities. Twenty years ago, if you lived in Liberty City or Over-town or the Grand Avenue section of Coconut Grove, there was a high probability you were African-American. Bobby, the little statistician, could easily put the numbers together for him.
And there was one more thing to examine. The videotape of the second Mays trial. Gavel to gavel on the public TV station. An eerie look into the past. A chance to stare through the knothole at his father two decades earlier. That gave Steve a moment of pause.
Just why am I doing this?
Sure, he wanted to get his father's Bar license back. Partly to rehabilitate the old man's reputation. Let people call him "Judge" again without irony or footnotes.
And partly just to prove to his father that he could. It didn't take a shrink to figure out what a son will do to seek his father's approval. But there was something else, too.
If his father was dirty, Steve wanted to know.
If there was to be a wedge between them, he'd prefer it deep enough and wide enough that there'd be no way to bridge the distance.
Thirty-nine
DEAD DUMMY
Richard Waddle propped an elbow on the rail of the jury box. "This is a story about greed and corruption, bribery and murder."
A strong start, Victoria thought, sitting with perfect posture at the defense table, taking notes. Using the rule of primacy. Jurors remember best what they've heard first.
"Greed and corruption. Bribery and murder."
The four horsemen of a murder trial. Waddle would drill the jury with the phrase every chance he got. Some lawyers believed in the rule of recency. What you hear last stays with you longest. Steve taught Victoria to use both theories because the best lawyers opened strong and finished strong.
"What I'm about to tell you is not evidence," Richard Waddle said. "It's a preview of what the evidence will be. It's a shorthand version of the story you are about to hear."
Opening statement. What lawyers like to call the "curtain raiser." They had their twelve jurors plus two alternates, all of whom had just raised their hands and promised to follow the law and the evidence and render a verdict just and true.
"And what's that story about?" Waddle asked rhetorically.
Victoria thought she knew the answer.
"Greed and corruption, bribery and murder," he answered himself.
Yep. Thought so.
"It's a story about a wealthy man with no links to the Keys and no respect for our beautiful string of islands, this emerald necklace reaching into the sea. You folks who live here know we've got to protect the beaches and the mangroves, the turquoise waters and the fragile life beneath the sea. But this defendant came here for another purpose. He's a big man with big plans and he doesn't let anything get in his way. Environmental laws? He'll find a way around them. Bribery laws? He'll violate them with impunity. It's the way he's always done business."
Victoria had never heard an opening statement quite like it. Waddle hadn't even gotten to the alleged murder and he'd already crossed way over the line into character assassination. She could object, but Steve's advice rang in her ears.
"You piss off the jurors when you object in opening. They want to hear each
side's story. Sit quietly. Smile sweetly. You'll get your chance."
Waddle approached the defense table and pointed at her client. "That's him, Harold Griffin, sitting with his Miami lawyer." Mia-muh loy-yuh.
Ordering up some home cooking from a dozen local chefs.
"The defendant roared into town like a wave of napalm hitting a row of shotgun shacks. Shock and awe.
That's Harold Griffin. He blasted into the Keys with his private planes and his fancy boats and all that money and he says, 'The rules don't apply to me. I'm Harold Griffin. I do what I want. I bribe public employees, seduce them with greenbacks, and when they don't do exactly what I want, I kill them!' "
The jurors were transfixed. Next to her, Griffin squirmed in his chair. Victoria placed a calming hand on his arm.
Waddle walked to the clerk's table, picked up the speargun with one hand and the spear with the other. Gesturing with both weapon and projectile, he looked dangerous. That was the idea, Victoria supposed.
"With this deadly weapon, Harold Griffin impaled a living human being. Under our laws, you're not even allowed to spear a lobster. But Harold Griffin used this to puncture another man's vital organs. A man named Benjamin Stubbs, a loyal civil servant who was first corrupted and then callously dispatched by the defendant for refusing to do his dirty work."
Waddle droned on, painting a portrait of the deceased man, humanizing him. He was trying to create sympathy, Victoria knew, as soon as he said: "I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm looking for justice."
While Waddle prattled on, Victoria scanned the courtroom. Sheriff Rask was in his usual position in the front row. Junior had taken the day off. He needed to practice free dives in the Tortugas, saying he'd been letting himself get out of shape. The Queen played hooky, too. She needed a shopping fix, but with no Nieman-Marcus for 150 miles, Victoria knew she'd be back at the hotel spa by noon.
"Now, the defense is going to say that Mr. Stubbs might have accidentally shot himself with that speargun. They're going to bring in an expert witness with charts and diagrams to tell you about the angle of entry and velocity and a lot of other mumbo-jumbo they'll say creates reasonable doubt."
