The Last Chance Lawyer

by William Bernhardt

  He paused, scanning the gallery, looking each of the jurors in the eyes. “I am confident that by the conclusion of this trial, you will find that they have not met this burden. And you will set my client free.”

  Chapter 30

  Dan spotted Luis González sitting on the third row of the gallery, not far from one of his security men. That was surprising. He wouldn’t think such a busy businessman—and it’s all completely legitimate, really!—would have time to play lookee-loo at a murder trial. Even if Luis did have time, he found it surprising the man would show up. In his experience, no one even tangentially related to a high-profile or high-stakes case appeared voluntarily at the trial. Either you subpoenaed them, or they weren’t there. This was what he liked to call the Perry Mason effect. If they were in the gallery, they worried, they might be called unexpectedly to the witness stand and cross-examined until the lawyer pounded a confession out of them—a result that transpired in every episode of Perry Mason, and never once in real life.

  Gabriella appeared to be holding it together. He knew she was scared to death. How could she not be? But she kept it locked inside. He had advised her to maintain a poker face in the courtroom. Don’t look confident, don’t look scared. Poker face. Don’t react to what the witnesses on the stand say, even if they tell the most outrageous lies. Poker face. The jurors would be watching, and they tended to be put off by defendants making expressions of surprise or contempt, headshaking and similar dramatic reactions.

  He wanted to ask her the questions raised by some of the people he interviewed. Why didn’t she mention that she was trained with a gun? Why didn’t she tell him she’d been at the shootout the first time they met? But he decided against it. He didn’t want to force her to lie. And he especially didn’t want her to tell him anything that would cripple his ability to defend her.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Like I have been stabbed in the heart. And someone is slowly twisting it.” She choked. “Every second it gets worse. And it doesn’t stop.”

  He suspected that was one of the most accurate descriptions he’d ever heard of what it was like to be on trial for murder. “Hang in there. There’s not much time left today. The judge won’t keep the jurors past dinnertime.”

  “Why do they hate me so much?”

  “I don’t think anyone hates you. But they have to convict someone, or soon everyone in town will hate them.”

  “I did not do this thing. I could never hurt someone like that.”

  “I know.”

  “I have tried to be a good parent for Esperanza. Putting myself at risk puts her at risk. I would never do that.”

  “Stay strong. Just a little longer. Then you can rest.”

  She nodded, smiling slightly.

  As usual, the prosecution led with the most boring witnesses. There were many experts who had to be called to fulfill essential elements of the alleged crimes. To tick off the boxes. It didn’t make them interesting. He had wondered briefly if, given the short amount of time before the close of day, the prosecution might advance someone on their list, to give the jurors something exciting to think about when they went home tonight. But that didn’t happen. Jazlyn was too smart to revise her strategy on the fly.

  The first three witnesses were called to establish proof of death. If you’re going to bring a murder charge, you have to prove someone died, even if it isn’t in dispute. The first witness established the death. The second witness, an ER doctor at the hospital, testified that six people had been wounded, and one of them, Mandy Donahue, remained in the hospital in critical condition. He was not sure why they needed the third witness, or why Jazlyn saved the coroner for last, given that he alone could probably have provided the testimony of all three. Perhaps Jazlyn thought it would liven up the boring stuff if it came from three different witnesses.

  Turned out there was more to it than that.

  The coroner, Dr. Zanzibar, established that Sanchez had been killed as a result of two gunshots, one to the head and one to the heart. But he didn’t stop there. Jazlyn continued to question him.

  “Were there any other signs of injury?”

  Zanzibar nodded. “Extensive signs of cutting on the body, some pre-mortem, some postmortem. Because the cutting and the gunshots came relatively close in time, it is difficult to distinguish the two.”

  “I will ask you to describe this cutting for the jury. And I will warn everyone in the courtroom that this testimony might be... disturbing.”

  Great. She was trying to get the jurors agitated, outraged by the horrific nature of the crime.

  Zanzibar continued. “Sanchez’ throat was slashed, although as I said, it was not necessary to inflict death. That was already a certainty from the gunshot wounds. He was stabbed repeatedly. Gutted. Even stabbed in the face.”

  This wasn’t just a murder, she wanted the jurors to know. This was a mutilation. This was a crime committed by someone with a serious hate-on against Sanchez. The other injuries might be collateral damage, but Sanchez was targeted.

  He considered objecting, perhaps on grounds of relevance. But why? It was all true. And none of it directly incriminated Gabriella. Although objections were somewhat exciting, jurors resented it when attorneys prevented them from hearing everything there was to know about the case. He decided to reserve his objections for a later time when they might be of greater importance.

  Jazlyn continued. “How much strength would be required for this mutilation?”

  Gabriella was a petite woman, so the prosecution wanted to make sure the jurors wouldn’t question whether she was strong enough to disfigure the corpse.

  “Not that much physical strength,” the coroner replied. “Just a strong desire to inflict harm.”

  That last bit was outside the scope of the coroner’s expertise, but he let it slide.

  “Would it be time-consuming?”

  “Not necessarily. A few seconds would be enough.”

  “Would it require anatomical knowledge?”

  The coroner shook his head. “No. Anyone could do it. A child could do it.” His voice dropped. “Though I hope to God no child would ever want to.”

  Jazlyn nodded. “Would you say this mutilation was evidence of... a strong desire to inflict pain?”

  She was pushing it now. This was a coroner, not a psychiatrist. That was why she spoke so tentatively. But she had chosen her words carefully.

  The coroner agreed. “This is not something I normally see in gangland shootings. This is more than you would associate with a territorial conflict or rubout. This was personal. Like someone wanted this man dead. For personal reasons.”

  “Like,” Jazlyn suggested, “to protect someone they loved.”

  Before he could make an objection, she added, “I’m sorry, your honor. I’ll withdraw that last bit.”

  The judge nodded. But he knew what she had deliberately planted in the jurors’ minds. The idea that Gabriella wasn’t acting for herself, but to protect or defend someone else. Meaning Esperanza.

  Which explained why Jazlyn wasn’t pursuing the motion to preclude mentioning Esperanza at trial.

  “I have nothing more, your honor.”

  He passed on cross-examination. There was nothing to be gained. He couldn’t deny the fact of death or the cruelty inflicted on Sanchez’ corpse. Battering the witness over trivia would only draw more attention to his testimony. The sooner the coroner was off the witness stand, the better.

  Chapter 31

  ’he next two prosecution witnesses came from the ballistics department. Unsurprisingly, the first testified that the bullet that killed Sanchez came from Prosecution Exhibit 1—the gun. The second testified that the same gun was registered to Gabriella. Another forensic witness added that DNA traces matching Gabriella’s had been found on the gun.

  On cross-examination, he suggested that wasn’t particularly surprising, given that it was her gun. “You would expect to find DNA matching the owner on the gun, wouldn’
t you?”

  “I can’t say that it would be unusual.”

  “Could you please answer the question? You would expect to find the owner’s DNA on their own gun, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “But that does not in any way prove that she fired the gun or killed the man in question, does it?”

  “It’s almost impossible to fire a gun without leaving minute traces of DNA. Skin flecks. Sweat.”

  “What if the shooter wore gloves?”

  He tilted his head. “If the shooter were gloves, they would probably not leave DNA traces.”

  “So in that instance, the only DNA on the gun would be DNA that was there before the shooting occurred. Right?”

  The witness drew in his breath. “In your hypothetical scenario, I suppose.”

  “Let’s get back to my original question, and perhaps this time you could answer it. The fact that Gabriella’s DNA was on the gun does not prove she fired it, does it?”

  “It shows she held it in her hand.”

  “At some time. Let me try again. The fact that her DNA was found on the gun does not prove that she fired it, does it?”

  “I suppose not.” The expert held out as long as possible before acknowledging the truth. He almost admired the man’s perseverance.

  “Did you conduct a paraffin test?”

  “A dermal nitrate test. Yes. We did not find traces of gunshot residue on the defendant. But she was not tested until two days after the incident. She had changed her clothes and washed repeatedly.”

  “What you’re saying is, you found no evidence that she fired a gun.”

  “What I’m saying is, the test did not prove or exclude the possibility that she fired a gun.”

  With the time remaining, Jazlyn called a witness named Brian Hancock. He knew that Hancock was a night watchman at the Trademark’s parking lot checkpoint about a hundred feet from the shooting. One of the security cameras caught footage of Gabriella—and many others—at the scene of the crime. She was carrying something. You couldn’t tell what she carried, but you could definitely tell it was Gabriella, and you could see her walking toward Emilio. About thirty seconds later, they moved out of range.

  He rose to his feet. “Bench conference?”

  The judge waved them forward. She covered the microphone. “Yes?”

  “Your honor, I object to the admission of the security-camera footage. It is not probative. But it may be prejudicial for the jurors to see it.”

  Jazlyn’s eyebrows knitted together. “Do you deny that she was at the scene of the crime?”

  “No. In fact, I’ll stipulate to it, so this evidence adds nothing. But seeing this videotape will create a prejudicial effect in the minds of the jury that vastly outweighs the tape’s probative value, which is zero.”

  The judge almost scoffed. “You don’t think it’s relevant that your client was at the scene of the crime?”

  “We’re not denying that she was at the scene of the crime. This video footage is irrelevant to any point in dispute.”

  “I disagree, your honor,” Jazlyn rejoined. “A stipulation has little impact. Even witness testimony doesn’t have the same impact as a videotape. This removes all doubt that she was present. Plus, on the videotape, she speaks to a known criminal and she is carrying some kind of satchel which we maintain contained the murder weapon.”

  “She has no proof that it contains a weapon. Again, prejudicial, but not probative.”

  The judge shook her head. “I’ll let it in. Mr. Pike, you of course will be free to cross-examine the witness about what the videotape shows and does not show. Although I would like to think that will be obvious to the jury.”

  In other words, she didn’t want him to waste their time with a lengthy cross-examination about what was already obvious.

  He returned to the defense table and tried to comfort Gabriella. “It doesn’t matter.” And to some extent, it didn’t. He’d known all along he was unlikely to succeed. He was tilting at windmills. But he had to try.

  After Jazlyn took Hancock through the lugubrious process of establishing his credentials, describing the function of the security cameras, and establishing the chain of custody of the tape, they showed the video on a monitor. He didn’t watch the screening. He watched the jurors’ faces. If he had learned anything from his years as a trial lawyer, it was that watching those faces was the best indication he would ever get of how effective a case, or witness, or piece of evidence, was.

  The tape was having its intended effect. The jurors realized she was there, carrying something.

  He realized the burden of proof had shifted. The jurors believed, at the very least, that Gabriella might be guilty. If he was going to save her, he would have to prove that she was not.

  As it turned out, his cross-examination of Hancock was brief.

  “Did you ever see my client, Gabriella, with your own eyes?”

  “No. I wasn’t even looking that way. Not until I heard the shots.”

  “So you have no idea what she did there?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You don’t know why she was there.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You don’t know who she spoke to.”

  “True, although in the footage she appears—”

  He cut the witness off. “I’m not asking you to interpret the tape. I’m asking what you know. Witnesses can only testify about what they know.”

  “I don’t know who she spoke to,” he said, properly chastised.

  “And you have no idea what was in that satchel?”

  He could tell what the man wanted to say. But he held it in check. “I can’t say for certain.”

  “Thank you. No more questions.”

  Chapter 32

  Dan knew the second day of trial would be all about the gun. The first witness would be the officer who found the gun. The second would be the fingerprint expert who claimed Gabriella’s prints were on the gun.

  Jazlyn called Officer Treadway to the stand. Medium height. Slightly overweight. Crooked smile. Very white. He was an earnest officer, serious but not presumptuous, matter-of-fact but not arrogant.

  Jazlyn led him through his testimony without undue elaboration. She knew the facts were inherently suspect and didn’t want to draw attention to that fact. Instead, she rushed to the finish line. They found the gun in Gabriella’s backyard.

  “Officer Treadway, after you found the gun, what did you do with it?”

  “I followed our departmental procedures for handling potential evidence,” he explained calmly. “I tagged it and bagged it. Meaning I affixed a label indicating the location and time where and when it was found using a slip-tie that would not alter the condition of the gun in any way. I then put it in an evidence bag.” He turned slightly toward the jurors. “Similar to the Ziploc bags you probably keep in your kitchen, only somewhat more durable. I labeled the bag, then I put it in a lockbox in my patrol car. When I returned to headquarters, I immediately took the box to the officer in charge of the evidence locker who logged it in and stored it for safekeeping.”

  “Has anyone touched that gun since?”

  “I understand that it was sent out to various forensics scientists for examination, then returned to the evidence locker. No police officers have been anywhere near it. I checked the register this morning. It was only logged out twice for evidentiary purposes.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, officer. No more questions.”

  Judge Le turned his way. “Mr. Pike?”

  He rose. “Thank you, your honor.” There was so much to say he barely knew where to begin. “Officer Treadway, how long have you been working in St. Petersburg?”

  “Just over five years.”

  “How long have you been working the Southside?”

  “Almost the entire time.”

  “How do you feel about that? Must be dangerous work.”

  “Being a police officer is dangerous work,” he replied. “But I di
dn’t take this job because I wanted to be safe. If you’re going to be a police officer, I think you ought to go where people need help. And that’s the Southside. As you undoubtedly know, it has the highest crime rates in our city.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather be somewhere else?”

  “No. I probably could have finagled a reassignment to some cushy tourist neighborhood where far less crime takes place. But I’d rather be where I feel I’m doing some good.”

  “You’re saying you chose to work in the neighborhood with the highest crime rates...and the highest Hispanic population.”

  For the first time, Officer Treadway paused. Probably because he could see where this was headed. “I don’t know for a fact that your statement about the population is true. It may be. I just don’t know.”

  “Most of the people you interact with in that neighborhood are Hispanic, right?”

  “That is true.”

  “And many of them may be illegal aliens.”

  “That could be true. I don’t know the statistics. I’m not an immigration agent.” He was playing it cool and close to the vest, not providing any opportunities to suggest that racial prejudice might motivate his actions.

  “When was the first time you encountered my client?”

  “After the shooting,” he explained. “She was spotted there. I personally interviewed her, with my partner, Stacy Yancey.”

  “Did you find the gun at that time?”

  “No. We mostly just talked.”

  “Did you suspect Gabriella at that time?”

  “Only because she had been seen at the shooting. Of course, many people were there and they weren’t all killers. If anything, she struck me as least likely to be involved at that time. She was calm, cooperative, and she was raising a young girl. She seemed to take her parental duties seriously.”