The Deep Blue Alibi (33 page)

“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 premeditated 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.”

“Objection!” Maybe Steve would let it go, but she’d had enough. “Your Honor, I’d prefer to be the one to discuss our evidence. I probably know a little more about it than Mr. Waddle does.”

A polite way of saying, “Mind your own briefcase.”

“Overruled. Mr. Waddle’s entitled to speculate, and the jury’s entitled to hold it against him if he’s wrong.”

Damn.

“You know what an expert witness is?” Waddle smiled at the jurors. “A hired gun. Now, maybe you can’t buy an expert witness, but you can sure as heck rent one. According to papers filed with the court, the defense has rented a ‘professor of human factors …’ ”

Making it sound like “charlatan with rank and tenure.”

“… from Columbia University in New York City. I don’t know why they had to go all the way to New York City, unless they couldn’t find anyone in Florida to do their bidding.”

Oh, shit.

Victoria knew she should object. She should pound the table and act outraged. But she was gun-shy after losing the first objection.

“In case you don’t know it, a human factors expert is somebody who’ll tell you that a curb is too high or a guardrail too low. I’m not sure what this professor from New York City knows about spearguns, so I’ll have a few questions for him when he gets down here for his little paid vacation.”

Waddle went on, speculating that the professor probably didn’t know Manhattan Island from Green Turtle Key. Griffin drummed his fingers on the defense table and scowled. His look, Victoria thought, combined with his bull neck and broad chest, made Griffin appear belligerent. Victoria scribbled the word “smile” on her legal pad and slid it in front of her client.

The State Attorney was better on his feet than she had expected. And yes, Steve had warned her about that, too.

“Don’t let Dickwad fool you with that aw-shucks routine. He’s smarter and meaner than he looks.”

Buried in the middle of Waddle’s opening was the admission that no usable fingerprints were found on the speargun. Smart, Victoria thought, hanging a lantern on what might be perceived as a weakness in his case. The proliferation of forensics shows on TV has created what lawyers call the “CSI factor,” jurors expecting fiber and hair and blood spatter evidence in every case, all accompanied by techno-hip computer graphics.

“There are no fingerprints,” Waddle explained generously, “because the ridged polymer pistol grip on the speargun is not susceptible to prints.”

As Waddle wound down, one of his assistants walked into the courtroom carrying a dummy, which he placed in an empty chair at the prosecution table. Unlike Tami the Love Doll, this sack of sawdust lacked name and gender. It resembled one of those crash-test dummies that gets knocked ass-over-elbows when broadsided by a weighted sled.

“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you’re going to hear a bunch about this speargun. It’s an old pneumatic model, powered by a blast of air from a carbon dioxide cartridge. You load it like this.” Keeping the barrel pointed at the ceiling, Waddle leaned over and jammed this spear into the barrel until it locked. “Not hard to do. As you can see, it’d be darn near impossible to accidentally shoot yourself. But shooting someone else— well, that’s as easy as …”