Exquisite Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  “No, Boss,” Saadaq said.

  “Well, let’s at least say hello to our Middle Eastern guest.”

  The house was a large pre-war that from the outside looked to have fallen on hard times. However, the inside was fully remodeled. Except, it was not remodeled for luxury. It was remodeled for efficiency. Especially the large basement.

  Saadaq led the three men downstairs and found five people waiting for them. Two, including the man with the wraparounds, were the jihadi recruiters working America, especially Minneapolis, for fresh meat.

  “As-salamu ʿalaykum,” Damone greeted both of the recruiters.

  In turn, they both replied, “Wa’alaykum as-aslam.”

  The three recruits were sitting against a wall in uncomfortable folding metal chairs. Damone looked at the three young men.

  “Are you truly ready to die for Allah?” he asked.

  All three jumped up and eagerly replied.

  “You are not going to a soft American Boy Scout camp. You will be put through the most difficult training possible. You will be harder than any ten U.S. Marines. Do you understand?”

  All three yelled, “Yes!”

  “You will be shot like a dog if you fail and there will be no place in Paradise for you. Do you agree?”

  Again, “Yes!”

  Damone shook the hand of each of them and wished them luck. He gave his blessing to the two recruiters and turned to leave. It was then he saw the Imam’s servant at the bottom of the stairs.

  Fighting the urge to simply shoot this dog, Damone walked to him and quietly, politely said, “I need to see the Imam himself. Please be so kind as to pass it on to him. Go in peace,” he said in English.

  Fifty-Three

  The second day started with a series of witnesses who had been holding the Black Lives Matter banner. Franklin Washington had tried to interview them, but with no luck. There were six in total listed on Gondeck’s witness list and none of them cooperated.

  The first three took less than an hour to testify. Each of them had the same testimony; not just similar, but exactly the same. It was so obviously memorized that they were almost reading off of the same script.

  The only germane point each of them made was the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Each of them testified that the moment they heard the shots they turned and saw Ferguson on the ground and the white cop standing over him. None of them saw a gun; none of them saw a homeless man running away, but they all saw a hateful, angry look on the defendant’s face.

  Marc barely bothered to cross-examine them. He asked the same two questions.

  “Bearing in mind that I can find out if you’re telling the truth, did you call the police and volunteer to testify today?”

  Each of them reluctantly admitted they did.

  “Have you ever volunteered to be a witness for the police before?”

  Again, all three reluctantly admitted they had not.

  The third one finished and was excused. Judge Tennant called for a short, ten-minute break.

  “I’ll see counsel in chambers.”

  Before the lawyers even had a chance to find chairs, Tennant turned on Steve Gondeck.

  “Mr. Gondeck,” she began, not even trying to hide her annoyance, “how many more of these witnesses do you have?”

  These were Jennifer Moore’s witnesses so Gondeck took the cowardly way out and looked at her.

  “Three, your Honor. They came forward but…”

  “Not in my courtroom,” Tennant said.

  “I prepared them, but we did not see this coming. I know, they looked ridiculous,” Moore said.

  “They made you look ridiculous,” Tennant more calmly replied.

  “Jermaine Fontana is in the hall telling the others we won’t be calling them,” Gondeck said.

  “That’s too bad,” Marc said. “I was looking forward to a few more of them testifying.” Jermaine Fontana was a supervising investigator with the county attorney’s office. She is also the one who will testify and the one allowed to sit at the rail behind the prosecutor. She’s an excellent investigator and it is no coincidence that she is also an African American woman.

  The rest of the day was taken up by two technical witnesses. The first was Sergeant Leo Cohn of the Minneapolis Crime Scene Unit. Sgt. Cohn is one of those rare people who, by luck or chance or alignment of the moon, planets and stars, fell into the job he was made for. In reality, it was none of these things. Leo Cohn had secretly grown up wanting to be a crime scene investigator. Along the way, he had earned a master’s degree in criminology.

  Normally, anyone with that level of interest, education and ability would be with the FBI. Unfortunately, Leo had a flaw. Life had paid a cruel trick on him and left him with a mild stutter that could turn serious on a witness stand, especially under cross-examination. To fight it and overcome it, Leo liked to testify.

  Meticulous as ever, despite the insignificance of it for this trial, Leo had made, to scale, a four by six-foot poster board of the crime scene.

  Leo spent the entire remaining part of the morning session explaining to the jury where everyone was and what happened. He had a re-creation of the Black Lives Matter banner and protestors who held it. To the best of his ability, he had placed images of all the people within fifty yards of Ferguson’s dead body. By the time he finished, everyone in the courtroom had a bird’s eye view of the scene.

  “How did you come up with this?” Jennifer Moore asked.

  “I, I, ah, ah, used, um witness, ah, witness statements and, ah, police reports,” Leo managed. It was the very first time since he sat down that he stuttered even a little bit.

  “I have nothing further,” Moore said.

  Knowing he was about to be riddled with rapid-fire questions from the villainous defense lawyer, Leo noticeably stiffened.

  “May I approach the state’s Exhibit B, your Honor?” Marc asked.

  “Yes, you may.”

  Marc went to the illustration of the scene and pointed at three figures standing together in the street.

  “These three figures here, where I’m pointing, they appear to be maybe fifteen to twenty feet from Reverend Ferguson and behind him, would you agree?” Marc asked.

  “Yes, that la-looks right,” Leo agreed.

  “Do you have any knowledge or indication of who they might be?”

  “I might, if, um, I could check my notes,” Leo answered.

  “Please do,” Marc said.

  Almost a minute passed while Leo looked through his case notes.

  “Oh, ha-here it is,” he finally said. He looked at the board, then back at his notes and said, “Yes, that ma-must be them.

  “I have them la-listed only as, as three teenage ba-black girls,” Leo said.

  “No names,” Marc asked.

  “No, I di-did not have their, their names.”

  “Do you know how you came to know that there were three black girls standing there?”

  “Um,” Leo said as he checked his notebook, “Detective Dirk Shepherd with the county attorney’s office gave me that.”

  Marc pointed at the area directly behind Ferguson.

  “Sergeant, this area here, directly behind Reverend Ferguson, there are no other people between Reverend Ferguson and the three unidentified teenage girls. Would this be according to what the investigators with the prosecution’s office gave you?”

  “Yes, yes, it is,” Leo answered. “But, ah, there, there wa-was a lot of people in there but they did, didn't include them be-because no names. Didn't ID them.”

  “So, there were people in this area behind Ferguson, but the police didn’t find them to identify so you did not include them, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have nothing further.”

  Before the afternoon session began, Tennant called the lawyers into her chambers.

  “Something’s come up on another case. I need to hear a motion on it today. Who do you have coming up, Steve?”

  Go
ndeck looked at Jennifer Moore who said, “Ballistics report.”

  “Can you be done in an hour?”

  “It’s Emerson,” Moore said mostly to Gondeck.

  “He can be a little too, how shall I put it…?”

  “Enamored with the spotlight is the polite way of putting it,” Marc said.

  “You know him?” Tennant asked.

  “Yes, Judge.”

  “I’ll talk to him. Tell him we need him to cut to the chase. We don’t need a complete history of lands and grooves,” Jennifer said.

  “I’ll call my other case and tell them three-thirty. That will give me time to read over their pleadings. Okay?”

  Apparently, the ballistics expert, Nathan Emerson, got the message. Jennifer Moore spent fifteen to twenty minutes establishing his credentials as a firearms ballistic expert. Emerson took another half-hour explaining how bullets are compared, why they are compared that way and why they are unique to individual firearms. Normally he could stretch this out until everyone in the courtroom was yawning.

  Next, Emerson put up photos on the TV monitors. Each of the three bullets was shown next to one fired by Emerson from Rob’s gun. Despite having been told to cut it short, Emerson took so long making the comparisons Moore had to cut him off.

  “What is your expert conclusion, Detective Emerson?”

  “All three bullets, state’s Exhibits C, D and E, were fired from state’s Exhibit A, Officer Robert Dane’s service gun.”

  “Nothing further,” Moore said.

  Marc had the bullets taken from Ferguson’s body tested by his own expert. Because his guy came to the conclusion they came from Rob’s gun, which was not really in dispute, Marc was not going to bother with a cross exam. Why risk alienating the jury?

  “Mr. Kadella?”

  “No questions, your Honor.”

  To the layman, the testimony may seem tedious and a waste of time. It’s not. The state has to build its case piece by piece and get it all on the record in the event of an appeal. If they failed to connect the bullets by expert testimony with Rob’s gun, they would lose. They would have legally failed to show that the bullets that killed Lionel Ferguson came from Rob’s gun. Reasonable doubt.

  “Why didn’t you ask him any questions?” Rob asked Marc.

  “Like what? There’s no denying you shot the guy. They matched the bullets to your gun. There’s no point in trying to deny it. We’re trying to show the shooting was justified.

  “Look, Rob. They’re going to methodically put on their case that you shot Ferguson and that’s what killed him. The issue here is: why? They’re gonna claim you’re a racist who had enough of the protests and decided to kill the cause of all the trouble. We need to make them believe you’re not a racist. And, with that, your claim that there was a gun makes sense. Don’t worry. This trial starts when we start.”

  Damone was standing offstage in the auditorium of Patrick Henry High School. He was watching a televised debate between mayoral candidates Jalen Bryant and Betsy Carpenter. In Damone’s somewhat biased opinion—Damone was a closet misogynist—Bryant was clearly winning. He was much more knowledgeable about issues as well as solutions. Plus, having been in city government, he was well versed on its workings.

  While he watched, he sourly thought, Carpenter has a huge advantage over him in this city; she is a female.

  Lewis took out his phone and stepped through the crowd to answer the call. Whenever Damone appeared at a public place or event, within minutes, he was surrounded by a small crowd of admirers.

  Less than a minute after taking the call, Lewis was whispering in Damone’s ear. He was about to get a call on today’s burner. By the time Lewis finished warning him, that phone buzzed in Damone’s pocket.

  Followed by Lewis and Monroe, he walked away listening to the caller.

  “Were you able to watch the trial today?” Damone was asked.

  “No,” Damone replied. “I didn’t have time. Anything interesting?”

  The caller quickly told him about the Black Lives Matter witnesses.

  “Idiots,” Damone hissed. “I thought we made it clear it was a script to follow, not to memorize.”

  “We did,” the caller agreed. “I’m sure the prosecutors prepared them, but it didn’t help.”

  “How much damage did they do?” Damone asked.

  “Minimal. It looked embarrassing for the prosecution, but that’s about all. The judge called it off after the first three.”

  “Okay, good. Keep me informed,” Damone said.

  “Will do.”

  Fifty-Four

  The pathologist with the medical examiner’s office, an elderly, long-time doctor, Clyde Marston, was first up the next morning. As possibly silly as it may seem to a layman, it is not enough that the deceased was shot three times in the chest. The prosecution must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it was those bullets that caused the victim’s death.

  Doctor Clyde Marston did not make a good first impression. He looked like, and had looked like for almost a decade, that he was pushing retirement. He was barely five foot eight and at least forty pounds overweight. Combined with a frumpy attitude toward clothing, Marston did not create a professional image. In fact, he looked and, most of the time, acted like the cranky old man who yelled at kids to get off of his lawn.

  Underneath the veneer was a solid and very capable professional. He always brought his case notes into court but rarely had to refer to them.

  And despite his appearance, he was an excellent witness. More than one case had turned to guilty solely because of his testimony.

  Gondeck turned him loose by starting with his credentials. Legally, it must be established that the witness is qualified to be treated as an expert. The good doctor had this part of his testimony memorized because he had given it so much.

  His credentials established, Marston spent an hour using a drawing of a man Ferguson’s size explaining bullet holes, entry wounds and the height at which they entered the body. With photos of the actual body parts, heart and lungs, he literally explained and showed the jury the damage done by each bullet. Color photos of shot up internal organs should be shown after lunch, not before. Several jurors looked less than thrilled by the sight.

  “May I approach, your Honor?”

  “Yes, you may,” Tennant said.

  Gondeck picked up several photos from his table. He carried them and stopped at the evidence table. There he picked up three small plastic bags.

  “Doctor, I’m showing you three plastic bags marked State’s Exhibits C, D and E. Do you recognize these?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you recognize them and what are they?”

  “I recognize them because they are the bags I placed the bullets in, the bullets I removed from Reverend Ferguson’s body. I then initialed each bag and delivered them to the evidence box.”

  Gondeck took a few minutes to do the same identification process with the photos.

  The photos and bullets were admitted into evidence with objection from the defense that the photos were too prejudicial without probative value. Autopsy photos are always a source of contention. The prosecution wants the most gruesome ones possible given to the jury. The defense would allow, if any, crayon drawings by grade school kids of the same thing.

  “Doctor Marston,” Gondeck asked, getting toward the end, “how was the deceased’s general health from what you could determine?”

  “Well, he was obviously quite a bit overweight. From what I could see of the lungs, I believe he was probably a cigar smoker. The lungs were otherwise healthy––no sign of cancer or any problems from his cigar smoking.

  “The heart was showing signs of fatigue probably caused by his weight, smoking and lack of exercise. On the whole, I would say his health was fair.”

  “Did he die from natural causes brought on by poor health?”

  “No, no heart attack or disease of any kind,” Marston answered.

  “Doctor Marston, in
your professional, expert opinion, what was the cause of death of Reverend Lionel Ferguson?”

  Marston paused, rubbed a hand on his chin, then looked at Gondeck with a puzzled expression before turning to the jury. “Well, I’ll tell you, it’s kind of hard to say.”

  When he said this, Marc turned to Gondeck to see the look on his face. Grim, would be the best way to describe it. This was Marston’s way of pulling Gondeck’s chain a little. Get to the big moment and act like he’s not sure what killed the victim.

  “You see,” Marston continued still addressing the jury, “I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty…”

  He paused and rubbed his chin a couple more times.

  “…exactly what killed him.”

  Marston looked at Gondeck again while Marc and Arturo both put a hand over their mouth to smother laughter and a smile.

  Marston apparently decided to avoid giving Gondeck a heart attack and continued.

  He looked back at the jury and said, “It could have been any one of the three bullets. From the entry wounds, I believe the first bullet hit the deceased in the heart. The second one also went through the heart and the third through his left lung. It’s safe to say the third shot through the lung was not what killed him. It would have eventually, but he died before it had a chance. It was the first one, the first bullet that hit the deceased in the heart, that killed him. If that didn’t do it, the second one certainly did.”

  “So, he died from the gunshots he received in his chest,” an annoyed Gondeck said with finality.

  Marston put his puzzled look back on his face and said, “Well, yeah. He took three bullets in the chest. What do you think killed him?”

  “Nothing further,” Gondeck replied.

  “Mr. Kadella?” Judge Tennant asked.

  “I have no questions, your Honor.”

  “Very well. You may step down, Doctor. We’ll take a fifteen-minute recess.”

  As Marston walked toward the gate, Gondeck looked at him and quietly asked, “Why do you do that?”