Authors: James Grippando
A
sly old trial lawyer from north Florida (the only part of Florida that was truly “the South”) once told Jack, “Catchin’ a gator is the easy part. It’s lettin’ him go that’ll cost you fingers and toes. If it ain’t the snapping jaws, it’s the swoosh of the tail that gets ya.” It was another way of saying to be careful what you wish for; you can wrestle a witness onto the stand, but once his mouth opens, it can be a buss or a bite. That old man’s words echoed in Jack’s mind as he prepared to do battle with Lieutenant Damont Johnson, knowing full well that this was one witness who’d be jamming him at every turn.
Jack had filled the morning session with other witnesses, most importantly an expert who testified that it wasn’t uncommon for a physically or psychologically abused wife to keep her suffering to herself, even deny it to authorities. A subpoena wasn’t slapped on Johnson till midmorning, and he was finally hauled into court as the last witness of the day.
“The defense calls Lieutenant Damont Johnson,” Jack announced.
It was as if the collective pulse of the courtroom had suddenly quickened, the excitement palpable. Spectators stirred in their seats, jurors straightened to attention, and the media reached for pen and paper. The courthouse artist worked furiously at the lieutenant’s likeness, as if utterly confident that this was evening-news material. For an instant, Jack had almost felt that it didn’t matter what Johnson said, that it was worth the dumbfounded expression on the prosecutor’s face
just to bring Johnson into the courtroom. Soon enough, however, that initial excitement wore off.
“Lieutenant, was it you or Captain Pintado who drugged Lindsey Hart the first time you had sex with her?”
Johnson did a double take, but kept his composure. He was an imposing figure in his own right, dressed in the white uniform of an officer, his hat in his lap. It was hard to maintain a sense of dignity, given the nature of the questioning, but he was holding his own. “Excuse me, but neither one of us drugged her.”
“You’re saying she was a willing participant?”
“I’m saying it was her idea.”
The prosecutor smiled, and to say that Jack was headed down the wrong track would have been the trial’s grandest understatement. He knew better than to think that Johnson would admit to having forced Lindsey to have sex. He wasn’t going to break down on the witness stand and tearfully confess that he killed Oscar Pintado. That kind of drama happened on television every week, but rarely in a real courtroom. Jack had to score the sure points in his direct examination, let Torres have a shot on cross, and then hope for a few strategic openings that he might capitalize on through redirect. That was the plan, anyway.
Jack said, “Let’s see what we
can
agree on, shall we, Lieutenant?”
“Sure.”
“You had sex with Lindsey Hart, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“Oscar Pintado saw you have sex with his wife?”
“That’s true.”
“He even took photographs?”
Johnson shifted, as if slightly uncomfortable with that notion. “Yes. He did.”
“Do you also agree that this is something most husbands don’t do?”
“Not the ones I know.”
“Not even for their best friends?”
“Right again.”
“You were Oscar Pintado’s best friend, weren’t you?”
“Best friend on the base. I wouldn’t say I was his best friend in the world.”
“All right. Am I correct in assuming that having sex with Oscar’s wife wasn’t part of your friendship from day one?”
“That’s a fair assumption.”
“That’s something that developed after you two had been friends for a while, correct?”
“Right.”
Jack paused, debating how to proceed. He could launch into a series of questions about how the sex got started, who suggested it, that sort of thing. But that strategy was likely to elicit only lies, or at the very least answers Jack didn’t like. He took a safer approach.
“Oscar Pintado came from a very wealthy family, did he not?”
“That’s my understanding.”
“He’s not the kind of guy who would be tempted by an offer of money from one of his friends.”
“What are you trying to say?” he said, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“You didn’t give him money to have sex with his wife, did you?”
“Of course not. Like I said, it was Lindsey’s idea.”
Jack stepped closer, doing little to mask his skepticism. “Her idea, huh? Let me ask you something, Lieutenant. How many men are on the naval base in Guantánamo at any one time?”
“I don’t know. Several thousand, for sure.”
“Most of them between the age of twenty and thirty?”
“Most of them, yeah.”
“Most of them in pretty darn good shape? Physically, I mean.”
“Sure.”
“Most of them don’t have wives or girlfriends with them on the base, do they?”
“Relatively few do.”
“So, what you’re telling us is this,” said Jack as he walked toward his client, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “While living on a Caribbean Island and surrounded by several thousand hard-bodied, twenty-something men—most of whom hadn’t been intimate with a woman in quite some time—my extremely attractive client decided that she needed to have sex with
you
while her husband watched and took pictures. This was her great idea; is that what you’re saying?”
A light chorus of chuckles emerged from the audience. Even one of the jurors smiled. The witness burrowed his tongue into his cheek, a sure sign that Jack was getting to him.
Jack said, “Is that what you’re saying, Lieutenant?”
“Look, all I know is that Oscar told me she—”
“Whoa, objection!” shouted Torres. “What Oscar told him is hearsay, Judge.”
“Sustained.”
Jack said, “But, Judge—”
“I sustained the objection, Mr. Swyteck. Move on.”
Jack could have argued about exceptions to the ruling, but it was clear that the judge had heard enough about sex, and he was in no mood to reconsider. Jack’s point was made, nonetheless. It was time to wrap up.
“Lieutenant, just a couple more questions. Obviously you’re an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard.”
“That’s right.”
“If you wanted to know tomorrow’s patrol routes for Coast Guard vessels in the Florida Straits, you’d know how to get that information, wouldn’t you?”
“They don’t give me that information.”
“I didn’t ask that. I said, you’d know how to get it, wouldn’t you?”
“Just because I know how to get it doesn’t mean—”
“Lieutenant, please. Just answer my question. You’d know how to get that information, right?”
Johnson fell silent, as if trying to figure out a way to deny it. Finally, he said, “Yeah. I’d know how to get it.”
“Thank you. No further questions.”
Jack returned to his seat. He didn’t expect smiles from his client, but she looked positively ashen. It was understandable. They’d flirted with fire. But they’d come out ahead.
Thank God.
Torres approached the witness. “How nice to see you here today, Lieutenant.” His voice had just a hint of sarcasm.
“Nice to see you, too.”
All semblance of familiarity drained from Torres’s face. His voice had a definite edge to it, somewhere between a police interrogator and drill sergeant. “Lieutenant, I want to take you back to the morning of June seventeenth, the day Captain Pintado died.”
“All right.”
“We’ve heard testimony in this case that sometime before six
A.M.
you went to Captain Pintado’s house. Do you admit or deny you were there at that time?”
“I was there.”
“We’ve also heard testimony that you entered the house without knocking. Do you admit or deny that?”
“I admit it.”
“Finally, we heard testimony that you were seen running from the house a few minutes later. Do you admit or deny that?”
“I admit that also.”
Jack looked on, confused. The witness was readily admitting the very things that Jack had thought he would never admit. Something wasn’t right.
Torres said, “Lieutenant, would you please tell the jury
why
you went to Captain Pintado’s house that morning?”
“Lindsey called me on the telephone. She told me to come over.”
“Did she tell you why she wanted you to come over?”
“She told me that Oscar was gone. She said that he’d taken Brian fishing, so it could be just the two of us.”
“What did you take that to mean?”
He shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “That we could have sex without Oscar being around.”
“Were you agreeable to that?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“She said, ‘I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll leave the door unlocked. Come straight to the bedroom. I have a big surprise for you.’ ”
“What did you do?”
“What do you think? Got in my car and drove over.”
“What happened when you got there?”
“I did exactly as she told me. The door was unlocked and I went inside, straight back to the bedroom. That’s when I found Oscar’s body. He was still in bed, soaked in blood.”
Torres was clearly energized, practically tripping over his own questions, so caught up in his own roll. “What did you do?”
“I ran through the house, made sure there weren’t more bodies. That’s when I found Brian in his room.”
“Did you say anything to him?”
“Yes. You know, he’s deaf, but he can read lips to a certain extent. I said, ‘Brian, what happened to your father?’ ”
“Did he respond?”
Johnson said, “Brian started to cry. Then he looked at me and said—”
“Objection, hearsay,” said Jack. There was a knot in Jack’s stomach as he spoke. He wanted to hear the answer—perhaps he wanted to hear it more than anyone else in the courtroom—but the prosecutor’s strategy was crystal clear. He was trying to convince the jury that Lindsey had set up Johnson for the murder she’d committed.
Torres said, “Your Honor, it’s an excited utterance by a ten-year-old boy whose father has just been shot in their own home.”
The judge considered it, then said, “I’ll allow it. The witness may answer.”
The lieutenant leaned closer to the microphone, and Jack suddenly felt the pain of Lindsey’s fingernails digging into his forearm. It was as if they both knew exactly what Johnson was going to say, knew that the killer would be revealed and that Lindsey’s fate was sealed.
Johnson’s mouth opened, and the words oozed like hot lava. “Brian looked at me and said, ‘I shot him. I shot my dad.’ ”
Lindsey sprang to her feet. “That’s a lie!”
A collective gasp swept across the courtroom. “Order!” the judge shouted, the crack of his gavel rising above the outburst.
“That’s a total lie!” said Lindsey, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Mr. Swyteck, get your client under control, or I’ll have her removed.”
“It’s a lie, Jack,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s a total lie!”
Jack eased her back into her chair. She was shaking uncontrollably, and Jack was drawing every ounce of strength from within himself to stay composed. Sofia, too, was keeping it low key, but the surprise was evident in her eyes. As tough as it was, Jack was quite certain that the defense didn’t look half as stunned as the prosecutor did.
Torres stared at the witness, a gladiator’s stance. “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” he said firmly. “Perhaps I didn’t hear you right. Did you mean to say that the boy’s words were something to the effect that his mother had shot his father?”
“No. You heard me right. Brian told me that
he
had shot his father.”
Lindsey’s head was in her hands. Jack’s gaze shifted back and forth from her to Johnson, still not quite believing.
The prosecutor did his best to seem indignant, strutted across the
courtroom, his voice rising in anger. He was about to do what no lawyer ever wanted to do: impeach his own witness.
“Lieutenant Johnson,” he said, his voice booming, “you and I had numerous conversations about this case, did we not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We even did some mock examinations, practice sessions, during which I asked you questions and you gave me answers. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Not once in any of those conversations did you tell me about Brian’s confession to you. Did you, Lieutenant?”
“No. I did not. But that’s because—”
“That’s enough,” said Torres, cutting him off.
Johnson appealed to the judge, a look of anger and panic coming over him. “Your Honor, I have to explain this.”
“There’s no question pending,” said Torres.
The judge scratched his chin, as if he himself was overwhelmed. “The witness always has a right to explain his answer. Lieutenant Johnson said no, he never told you that before. Let’s hear why.”
Torres retreated to his seat, clearly uneasy.
Johnson looked at Lindsey and said, “The reason I never said anything about Brian is that Lindsey made me promise not to. After Brian confessed to me and I ran out of the house, I tracked down Lindsey and had a few words with her. I accused Lindsey of calling me over there to set me up for a murder I didn’t commit. She said she was sorry, that she was just trying to protect Brian. And then she asked me—she begged me—whatever I do, please don’t tell anyone that Brian shot his father.”
The courtroom was stone silent.
The judge leaned back in his chair, eyes raised toward the ceiling. “Any further questions, Mr. Torres?”
The prosecutor rose. Had this been a prize fight, he would have been staggering. “Nothing further, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Swyteck, any redirect?”
Jack could have put a finer point on it, but that was the beauty of reasonable doubt. No fine points were required. “Nothing, Your Honor.”
“The witness is excused.”
Jack watched, along with everyone else in the courtroom, as Lieutenant
Johnson stepped down. He made eye contact with no one, his eyes forward in soldierlike fashion as he walked out.
The judge broke the silence. “Call your next witness, Mr. Swyteck.”
The words hardly had meaning to him. Jack was still trying to absorb what had just happened. It did make logical sense, but the emotional impact on the judge, the jury, or anyone else in the courtroom was nothing compared to the kick between the eyes that it was for Jack. Certain things finally and suddenly began to explain themselves. Lindsey’s refusal to let Jack talk with Brian. The grandparents seeking a court order to keep Jack away from Brian. From the very beginning, it was all about keeping anyone and everyone away from Brian.