by Paul Levine
The judge wrapped one meaty hand around his forehead and massaged both his temples. “You gallop into my chambers like a wild mustang pissing all over my carpet. I don’t know if it’s your brain injury or the fact that you’re defending your nephew, or if you’re just naturally defiant in the face of authority, but why do you insist on making this so difficult?”
“Probably all of the above, Your Honor.”
He let out a long, whispery sigh. “You exasperate me, Mr. Lassiter.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor.”
“Your cross yesterday was first-rate. I told my clerks that. Precise and to the point and with a consistent theme. Margie, wasn’t it first-rate?”
“I don’t think I should opine on that,” she replied.
“Of course. Let’s get into the courtroom and ride this pony to the finish line.”
***
Five minutes later, I was at the defense table waiting for Kip. The jurors were in their box. The reporters were in the gallery. Judge Speidel was drumming a pen on the polished wood of the bench. It was 9:29 a.m., and when the minute hand hit thirty, Judge Speidel said, icily, “Either call a witness to the stand or rest your case, Mr. Lassiter.”
“Your Honor, may I request . . .”
The door flew open and Kip hustled in, his suit coat unbuttoned, his tie flapping over his shoulder.
“The defense calls Kip Lassiter,” I announced, with pride in my voice.
Kip never broke stride and hopped onto the witness stand, skipping both steps, and took the oath before sitting down.
“Please state your name for the record,” I instructed.
“Chester Lassiter. I prefer Kip.”
He sat with his back straight and his hands folded in his lap. His white shirt was an inch too big around the neck, at my instructions. It gave him a frail look, a child pretending to be a grown-up. His suit was a friendly brown plaid, the tie picking up the brown with some yellow. No navy blue or charcoal grays, power colors. His blondish hair was neatly trimmed.
“How old are you, Kip?”
“Twenty.”
“Let’s talk a bit about your childhood. Who’s your father?”
He cocked his head and looked at me, puzzled. Last night, when he asked whether we were going to prepare for today, I had said, “Listen carefully to the questions and answer honestly.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me your questions?” he had asked.
“Nope. I want spontaneity. In fact, I might want to surprise you.”
Now, I repeated, “Who’s your father, Kip?”
“I don’t know. Mom didn’t know. So, she gave me her father’s name, Chester, the guy your mom ran off with after your dad was killed in a bar fight down in the Keys.”
Excellent summary of the trailer trash clan known as the Lassiters.
“Who’s your mother?” I asked.
“Your half-sister, Janet.”
“Where is she now?”
He shrugged. “Try a drunk tank or a county jail. I dunno.”
“How’d you end up with me?”
“When I was nine, Mom dropped me at your house. She was going to jail on her seventh or eighth shoplifting charge, and the state was gonna dump me in a foster home.”
Kip’s eyes grew watery. I wouldn’t have gotten that if we’d rehearsed.
“Were you with your mother when she was arrested that seventh or eighth time?”
“I was always there. She’d make me drink hydrogen peroxide, then we’d go into a Target or Wal-Mart, and I’d throw up in an aisle, and while security came running, she’d start stuffing merchandise down her sweatpants.”
I gave the jury a moment to process that, to visualize it, to feel it.
“How old were you when this began?”
“Five or six, I can’t remember exactly.”
“Where were you going to school in those years?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Home schooled, then?”
He shook his head. “Home was a V.W. van. If Mom had money for gas, we kept moving.”
“Your mother was not employed?”
A sad little smile, and he said, “I went with her to the welfare office once. She filled out a form and where it asked for occupation, she wrote, ‘Gypsy.'”
Before I could ask another question, he blurted out, “I don’t like talking about this stuff.”
“I know that, Kip. I’m almost done with this line of questions.”
“No, I’m done! What more do you want? I ate Cheetos for dinner. Okay? One night, Mom cooked raccoon over a campfire. A raccoon we ran over in the van. I vomited that night without any hydrogen peroxide. Is this what you want, Uncle Jake?”
He sniffled and used a knuckle to wipe away a tear.
Yep, that’s what I want. Shameless? Hey, I would bleed for this boy. The least he can do is cry.
I sneaked a look at the prosecution table where Bolden’s assistants were fluttering about like flies on that roadkill raccoon, fingers dancing across keyboards. Probably researching how to stop a defendant from crying.
I signaled one of the courtroom personnel, and she wheeled a poster board into the well of the courtroom. An old-fashioned board with sheets of white paper. These days, lawyers use video screens with digital displays for their demonstrative evidence. So, my courtroom helpers had to dig into a storeroom in the garage to find the poster board. Call me old school. I don’t care.
I angled the board so that it was visible to both the jurors and Kip and used a thick black marking pen to write on the top sheet:
If y = x3 + 2x + 5, and z = x2 + 7x + 1,
what is 2y + z in terms of x?
“What is that?” I asked.
“It looks like a basic math question on the SAT.”
“What’s the answer?”
“You’re supposed to give me four multiple choices and some scratch paper.”
“Are you saying you can’t do it in your head?”
“Sure, I can. It’s pretty simple.”
“What’s the answer?”
He stepped down from the witness stand and grabbed the marker. “What’s the point of this?”
“I have my reasons, Kippers.”
“Mr. Lassiter,” the judge called out, and both Kip and I turned to face him. “Not the defendant. Jacob Lassiter. Why are you arguing with your client?”
“It’s the way we communicate, Your Honor. The Lassiter way.”
“Well, let’s do it the Speidel way. You ask a question. He answers. Move on.”
“Will do, Your Honor.”
While we were talking, Kip had scrawled on the paper beneath my equation:
2x3 + x2 + 11x + 11
According to my answer sheet, that was correct, of course. “Well done, Kip,” I said.
“No big deal, Uncle Jake.”
At the prosecution table, Bolden cocked her head and studied me, wondering where I was going with this. Nowhere just now, but I could use it in closing argument as a counterpoint to Melissa’s expert testimony. Basically, Kip was smart in some ways, clueless in others. Book smarts versus street smarts.
“Don’t be modest, Kip. How’d you do that?”
“I substituted polynomials into an expression and then simplified the resulting expression by combining the terms.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, and the jurors smiled. “Kip, when you were applying to colleges, what score did you get on your SAT?”
“Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“A 1600? A perfect score?”
“So they say.”
“Did you take one of those courses to prepare for the test?”
“No.”
“How did you spend your time in eleventh grade when you weren’t at school?”
He shrugged. “I played video games. Left 4 Dead, Red Dead Redemption, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft.”
“How many hours per week?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. A lot. Sometimes I’d start after
dinner and play until bedtime. Then, after you fell asleep, I’d get up and play until time to go to school. When you found out, you made me see a shrink who said I had an addictive personality. I thought he was a dweeb with a very average IQ.”
“But you stopped playing?”
“I stopped to prove to you that I could.”
“Then you tried out for high school football?”
“I stunk. At wide receiver, at cornerback. It’s where coach put the skinny kids.”
“Did you play?”
“Coach cut me. Said to come back when my arms and legs moved in the same direction at the same time.”
“You were a little clumsy?”
“A total spaz.”
“Why’d you try out for the team?”
“Duh! Did you notice when I was little, I wore your old Dolphins jersey everywhere, even to bed? I wanted to be like you.”
Of course, I had noticed that number 58 jersey with permanent grass stains and dried blood. It hung down to his knees, and Granny had to tear it off him to toss it into the washer.
“Funny, Kip,” I said, my eyes tearing up, “I wanted you to be better than me.”
“Mr. Lassiter!” the judge called out. “Please save the family counseling for after hours.”
“Sorry, Your Honor.” I pulled myself together and asked, “Kip, when did you take up video poker?”
“In college, where you couldn’t stop me.”
“Were there similarities between those earlier video games and video poker?”
“Not in the games themselves, but they gave me the same feeling. Juiced me.”
“What’s that mean?”
“A rush. Pleasure. Satisfaction. Probably the way you felt when you made the perfect tackle, drove the runner backward and dropped him on his butt.”
“Seldom happened. What about the money in video poker?”
“I won some money, but that wasn’t much different than being the last one standing in Battle Royale.”
“So, it wasn’t the money that juiced you?”
“No, it was winning the money! My cravings were for the game, not the prize.”
“Let’s talk about the Atlantic City escapade.”
I took him through the whole story, the borrowed credit card, the disaster at the poker table, taking the rap as if he’d stolen the card from Taylor, the rich kid. And being bounced from Penn. If I didn’t do it, Bolden would do it herself on cross. It’s always better to shine a light on your client’s blemishes before the prosecutor can.
Then I moved to the meat and potatoes of the case. “How’d you get started taking those tests?”
“Max Ringle hired me to tutor his daughter Shari. I helped improve her score, but not enough to get into U.S.C. Max got a doctor to say she had ADHD and needed special accommodation, so her test was in a separate room with no time limit. Max bribed the proctor to let me sit in, and I corrected her answers. That became the template for the business.”
“How’d it feel that first time?”
“A rush. Like winning the biggest poker pot or being John Marston, the gunslinger in Red Dead Redemption, blasting bad guys with a sawed-off shotgun.”
“Did you tell Max Ringle that?”
“Yeah, and then he bought professional video consoles for his house, the kind the big-name players use in tournaments at eGame arenas.”
“So, he encouraged you to play?”
“Three hours every other day until a week before a test, then he cut me off.”
“Did he say why?”
“He said he wanted me thirsty.”
“Thirsty,” I repeated. “What do you suppose Ringle meant by ‘thirsty?’”
“Objection. Calls for a conclusion.” Bolden was on her feet.
“Sustained,” the judge called out.
That was fine with me. I had just wanted to say “thirsty” a couple more times so the jury would recall the word when I ran it up the flagpole in closing argument.
“How did you feel between the time Ringle made you stop playing the eGames and when you took someone’s test?”
He closed his eyes and bit his lower lip. “It’s hard to explain. Kind of scratchy and I don’t know . . . it’s almost like I had a cold.”
“And then when you took the tests . . .?”
“Just like the first one for Shari. Just like the eGames. A rush.”
“Were you concerned about the legality of what you were doing?”
“Max said he had a legal opinion that it wasn’t criminal. I believed him.”
“And now, looking back, how do you feel?”
“I’m sorry for what I did. Really sorry. I realize now it wasn’t a game. And I promise I’m going to be a better man. My plan is to create SAT and ACT prep courses for underprivileged kids from Appalachia and the inner cities. Pro bono.”
“Why?”
“To seek redemption. To live a life with integrity.”
I paused a moment. I’d gotten what I needed for Melissa, the first couple rungs on a ladder she would build.
“Let’s step back and look at the overall picture, Kip. Did you take all those SAT and ACT exams for Max Ringle’s clients, as alleged in the indictment?”
“Every one. And I changed the answers on the others when working as a proctor, just like the indictment says.”
“And were you paid the sums set out in the indictment?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a lot of money, Kip. Now, be truthful with the jury. Is that why you did it?”
“No way. It was never about the money. I did it for the rush. I did it because it was fun.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
No Victim Except the Law
Judge Speidel called a fifteen-minute recess to give the jury a break before cross-examination, and my nephew expressed a similar notion to one I have heard from clients over the years.
“Do you even know what you’re doing?” he asked.
“I’m laying the groundwork for the medical defense. And you’re doing just fine.”
He looked at me skeptically. I’ve seen that plenty of times, too.
“Did you intend to make me cry?”
“Let’s say I had my hopes. Say, how’d it go at the hospital?”
“They did a brain scan, and it took longer than they expected. Is that a good sign?”
“No idea. What did Melissa say?”
“Nothing. She was talking to a couple specialists when I ran out to get an Uber. The driver wouldn’t go near the federal buildings because he was afraid of being deported. So, I ran all the way from Flagler Street.”
“You did well on the stand.”
“I feel like such a wuss for crying.”
“Nobody thinks that. You seemed honest and regretful. All I hoped for. But now, we’re gonna get our bumps and bruises.”
We were standing at the end of a corridor, a triangular glass-enclosed space that resembled the forecastle on a sailing vessel or maybe a spaceship. The view was to the south and east, over Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, and Biscayne Bay, where about twenty white sails were visible. Sailors racing solo in A-Cat catamarans, moving swiftly on a broad reach. Oh, wouldn’t it be grand to be cruising in one of those with Kip in another? Sails crackling in a stiff easterly, water spraying our faces, one pontoon high out of the water. Nephew and uncle, free as the wind.
My cell phone rang, and the daydream disappeared into the mist. Melissa calling.
“Hey, Mel. Do you have the brain scan results?” I asked.
“I think it’s just what we’re looking for. I’ll know for certain by the time I see you tonight.”
“Great.”
“Something else. I got a call from Bethesda. The N.I.H. just told Congress it won’t do the C.T.E. study if you-know-who is running it.”
“Helmet guy?”
“Right. Which leaves two other candidates and me. And since the program will be based on my grant request and précis, you’d have to figure . . .”
“That you’re the favorite coming down the stretch.”
“Let’s hope. How’s Kip doing?”
“Great on direct. Now come the fireworks.”
“Wish him luck for me.”
We clicked off, and Kip said, “Is the prosecutor going to be really harsh?”
“She won’t come on strong until she gets to a point she wants to emphasize, or she catches you in a lie. Then she’ll carve out your liver.”
“I’ll tell the truth, Uncle Jake.”
“Make sure you do. It’s crucial. Jurors sense evasions, embellishments, and most of all, lies. We round up twelve strangers, all rather ordinary, throw them together, and it’s as if each one’s IQ is added to the next. Individually, they’re dullards. Together, they’re a genius.”
***
Margaret Bolden put on her courtroom smile, said hello to Kip the way a teacher might welcome a new student to her classroom. Then she got down to business.
“Let’s talk a bit about your childhood,” she began.
He winced and said, “Okay.”
“Your life improved quite a bit when you moved in with your uncle, didn’t it?”
“A whole lot.”
“Is your uncle a good father figure?”
“The best.”
“And he provided you with a warm, nurturing environment?”
“Totally.”
“You were well fed, well clothed, and you attended a prestigious private school that he paid for, correct?”
“Yes.” Kip started to say something more, then stopped, probably because I told him to just answer the questions and not add salt to prosecutor’s stew. But then he added, “One of the reasons I feel so bad is that I let Uncle Jake down.”
“Because you know what you did was wrong, correct?”
“Yes, I do now.”
Her voice louder now, the tone disapproving. “Now, Mr. Lassiter, you didn’t just discover that what you did was wrong, did you?”
Kip weighed his words before answering. “I always knew it was shady. But I didn’t know it was a federal crime.”
“Did you ask to see the legal opinion Max Ringle allegedly told you about?”
