The Lincoln Lawyer

by Michael Connelly

  “Mr. Corliss, did Mr. Roulet offer any of the details of this previous incident in which he said he got away with killing a woman?”

  “He called the girl a snake dancer. She danced in some joint where she was like in a snake pit.”

  I felt Roulet wrap his fingers around my biceps and squeeze. His hot breath came into my ear.

  “What the fuck is this?” he whispered.

  I turned to him.

  “I don’t know. What the hell did you tell this guy?”

  He whispered back through gritted teeth.

  “I didn’t tell him anything. This is a setup. You set me up!”

  “Me? What are you talking about? I told you, I couldn’t get to this guy in lockdown. If you didn’t tell him this shit, then somebody else did. Start thinking. Who?”

  I turned and looked up at Minton standing at the lectern and continuing his questioning of Corliss.

  “Did Mr. Roulet say anything else about the dancer he said he murdered?” he asked.

  “No, that’s all he really told me.”

  Minton checked his notes to see if there was anything else, then nodded to himself.

  “Nothing further, Your Honor.”

  The judge looked at me. I could almost see sympathy on her face.

  “Any recross from the defense with this witness?”

  Before I could answer, there was a noise from the rear of the courtroom and I turned to see Lorna Taylor entering. She hurriedly walked down the aisle toward the gate.

  “Your Honor, can I have a moment to confer with my staff?”

  “Hurry, Mr. Haller.”

  I met Lorna at the gate and took from her a videotape with a single piece of paper wrapped around it with a rubber band. As she had been told to do earlier, she whispered in my ear.

  “This is where I act like I am whispering something very important into your ear,” she said. “How is it going?”

  I nodded as I took the rubber band off the tape and looked at the piece of paper.

  “Perfect timing,” I whispered back. “I’m good to go.”

  “Can I stay and watch?”

  “No, I want you out of here. I don’t want anybody talking to you after this goes down.”

  I nodded and she nodded and then she left. I went back to the lectern.

  “No recross, Your Honor.”

  I sat down and waited. Roulet grabbed my arm.

  “What are you doing?”

  I pushed him away.

  “Stop touching me. We have new information we can’t bring up on cross.”

  I focused on the judge.

  “Any other witnesses, Mr. Minton?” she asked.

  “No, Your Honor. No further rebuttal.”

  The judge nodded.

  “The witness is excused.”

  Meehan started crossing the courtroom to Corliss. The judge looked at me and I started to stand.

  “Mr. Haller, surrebuttal?”

  “Yes, Your Honor, the defense would like to call D.J. Corliss back to the stand as surrebuttal.”

  Meehan stopped in his tracks and all eyes were on me. I held up the tape and the paper Lorna had brought me.

  “I have new information on Mr. Corliss, Your Honor. I could not have brought it up on cross.”

  “Very well. Proceed.”

  “Can I have a moment, Judge?”

  “A short one.”

  I huddled with Roulet again.

  “Look, I don’t know what is going on but it doesn’t matter,” I whispered.

  “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Are you —”

  “Listen to me. It doesn’t matter because I can still destroy him. Doesn’t matter if he says you killed twenty women. If he’s a liar, he’s a liar. If I destroy him, none of it counts. You understand?”

  Roulet nodded and seemed to calm as he considered this.

  “Then destroy him.”

  “I will. But I have to know. Is there anything else he knows that could come out? Is there anything I need to stay away from?”

  Roulet whispered slowly, as if explaining something to a child.

  “I don’t know because I never talked to him. I’m not that stupid as to have a discussion about cigarettes and murder with a total fucking stranger!”

  “Mr. Haller,” the judge prompted.

  I looked up at her.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Carrying the tape and the paper that came with it, I stood up to go back to the lectern. On the way I took a quick glance across the gallery and saw that Kurlen was gone. I had no way of knowing how long he had stayed and what he had heard. Lankford was gone as well. Only Sobel remained and she averted her eyes from mine. I turned my attention to Corliss.

  “Mr. Corliss, can you tell the jury exactly where you were when Mr. Roulet supposedly made these revelations to you about murder and assault?”

  “When we were together.”

  “Together where, Mr. Corliss?”

  “Well, on the bus ride we didn’t talk because we were in different seats. But when we got to the courthouse, we were in the same holding cell with about six other guys and we sat together there and we talked.”

  “And those six other men all witnessed you and Mr. Roulet talking, correct?”

  “They woulda had to. They were there.”

  “So what you are saying is that if I brought them in here one by one and asked them if they observed you and Mr. Roulet talking, they would confirm that?”

  “Well, they should. But . . .”

  “But what, Mr. Corliss?”

  “It’s just that they probably wouldn’t talk, that’s all.”

  “Is it because nobody likes a snitch, Mr. Corliss?”

  Corliss shrugged.

  “I guess so.”

  “Okay, so let’s make sure we have all of this straight. You didn’t talk with Mr. Roulet on the bus but you did talk to him when you were in the holding cell together. Anywhere else?”

  “Yeah, we talked when they moved us on out into the courtroom. They stick you in this glassed-in area and you wait for your case to be called. We talked some in there, too, until his case got called. He went first.”

  “This is in the arraignment court where you had your first appearance before a judge?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you two were talking in the court and this is where Mr. Roulet would have revealed his part in these crimes you described.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you remember specifically what he told you when you were in the courtroom?”

  “No, not really. Not specifics. I think that might have been when he told me about the girl who was a dancer.”

  “Okay, Mr. Corliss.”

  I held the videotape up, described it as video of Louis Roulet’s first appearance, and asked to enter it as a defense exhibit. Minton tried to block it as something I had not produced during discovery, but that was easily and quickly shot down by the judge without my having to argue the point. He then objected again, citing the lack of authentication of the tape.

  “I am just trying to save the court some time,” I said. “If needed I can have the man who took the film here in about an hour to authenticate it. But I think that Your Honor will be able to authenticate it herself with just one look.”

  “I am going to allow it,” the judge said. “Once we see it the prosecution can object again if so inclined.”

  The television and video unit I had used previously was rolled into the courtroom and placed at an angle viewable by Corliss, the jury and the judge. Minton had to move to a chair to the side of the jury box to fully see it. The tape was played. It lasted twenty minutes and showed Roulet from the moment he entered the courtroom custody area until he was led out after the bail hearing. At no time did Roulet talk to anyone but me. When the tape was over I left the television in its place in case it was needed again. I addressed Corliss with a tinge of outrage in my voice.

  “Mr. Corliss, did you see a moment a
nywhere on that tape where you and Mr. Roulet were talking?”

  “Uh, no. I —”

  “Yet, you testified under oath and penalty of perjury that he confessed crimes to you while you were both in the courtroom, didn’t you?”

  “I know I said that but I must have been mistaken. He must have told me everything when we were in the holding cell.”

  “You lied to the jury, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t mean to. That was the way I remembered it but I guess I was wrong. I was coming off a high that morning. Things got confused.”

  “It would seem that way. Let me ask you, were things confused when you testified against Frederic Bentley back in nineteen eighty-nine?”

  Corliss knitted his eyebrows together in concentration but didn’t answer.

  “You remember Frederic Bentley, don’t you?”

  Minton stood.

  “Objection. Nineteen eighty-nine? Where is he going with this?”

  “Your Honor,” I said. “This goes to the veracity of the witness. It is certainly at issue here.”

  “Connect the dots, Mr. Haller,” the judge ordered. “In a hurry.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  I picked up the piece of paper and used it as a prop during my final questions of Corliss.

  “In nineteen eighty-nine Frederic Bentley was convicted, with your help, of raping a sixteen-year-old girl in her bed in Phoenix. Do you remember this?”

  “Barely,” Corliss said. “I’ve done a lot of drugs since then.”

  “You testified at his trial that he confessed the crime to you while you were both together in a police station holding cell. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Like I said, it’s hard for me to remember back then.”

  “The police put you in that holding cell because they knew you were willing to snitch, even if you had to make it up, didn’t they?”

  My voice was rising with each question.

  “I don’t remember that,” Corliss responded. “But I don’t make things up.”

  “Then, eight years later, the man who you testified had told you he did it was exonerated when a DNA test determined that the semen from the girl’s attacker came from another man. Isn’t that correct, sir?”

  “I don’t . . . I mean . . . that was a long time ago.”

  “Do you remember being questioned by a reporter for the Arizona Star newspaper following the release of Frederic Bentley?”

  “Vaguely. I remember somebody calling but I didn’t say anything.”

  “He told you that DNA tests exonerated Bentley and asked you whether you fabricated Bentley’s confession, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I held the paper I was clutching up toward the bench.

  “Your Honor, I have an archival story from the Arizona Star newspaper here. It is dated February ninth, nineteen ninety-seven. A member of my staff came across it when she Googled the name D.J. Corliss on her office computer. I ask that it be marked as a defense exhibit and admitted into evidence as a historical document detailing an admission by silence.”

  My request set off a brutal clash with Minton about authenticity and proper foundation. Ultimately, the judge ruled in my favor. She was showing some of the same outrage I was manufacturing, and Minton didn’t stand much of a chance.

  The bailiff took the computer printout to Corliss, and the judge instructed him to read it.

  “I’m not too good at reading, Judge,” he said.

  “Try, Mr. Corliss.”

  Corliss held the paper up and leaned his face into it as he read.

  “Out loud, please,” Fullbright barked.

  Corliss cleared his throat and read in a halting voice.

  “‘A man wrongly convicted of rape was released Saturday from the Arizona Correctional Institution and vowed to seek justice for other inmates falsely accused. Frederic Bentley, thirty-four, served almost eight years in prison for attacking a sixteen-year-old Tempe girl. The victim of the assault identified Bentley, a neighbor, and blood tests matched his type to semen recovered from the victim after the attack. The case was bolstered at trial by testimony from an informant who said Bentley had confessed the crime to him while they were housed together in a holding cell. Bentley always maintained his innocence during the trial and even after his conviction. Once DNA testing was accepted as valid evidence by courts in the state, Bentley hired attorneys to fight for such testing of semen collected from the victim of the attack. A judge ordered the testing earlier this year, and the resulting analysis proved Bentley was not the attacker.

  “‘At a press conference yesterday at the Arizona Biltmore the newly freed Bentley railed against jailhouse informants and called for a state law that would put strict guidelines on police and prosecutors who wish to use them.

  “‘The informant who claimed in sworn testimony that Bentley admitted the rape was identified as D.J. Corliss, a Mesa man who had been arrested on drug charges. When told of Bentley’s exoneration and asked whether he fabricated his testimony against Bentley, Corliss declined comment Saturday. At his press conference, Bentley charged that Corliss was well known to the police as a snitch and was used in several cases to get close to suspects. Bentley claimed that Corliss’s practice was to make up confessions if he could not draw them out of the suspects. The case against Bentley —’”

  “Okay, Mr. Corliss,” I said. “I think that is enough.”

  Corliss put the printout down and looked at me like a child who has opened the door of a crowded closet and sees everything about to fall out on top of him.

  “Were you ever charged with perjury in the Bentley case?” I asked him.

  “No, I wasn’t,” he said forcefully, as if that fact exonerated him of wrongdoing.

  “Was that because the police were complicit with you in setting up Mr. Bentley?”

  Minton objected, saying, “I am sure Mr. Corliss would have no idea what went into the decision of whether or not to charge him with perjury.”

  Fullbright sustained it but I didn’t care. I was so far ahead on this witness that there was no catching up. I just moved on to the next question.

  “Did any prosecutor or police officer ask you to get close to Mr. Roulet and get him to confide in you?”

  “No, it was just luck of the draw, I guess.”

  “You were not told to get a confession from Mr. Roulet?”

  “No, I was not.”

  I stared at him for a long moment with disgust in my eyes.

  “I have nothing further.”

  I carried the pose of anger with me to my seat and dropped the tape box angrily down in front of me before sitting down.

  “Mr. Minton?” the judge asked.

  “I have nothing further,” he responded in a weak voice.

  “Okay,” Fullbright said quickly. “I am going to excuse the jury for an early lunch. I would like you all back here at one o’clock sharp.”

  She put on a strained smile and directed it at the jurors and kept it there until they had filed out of the courtroom. It dropped off her face the moment the door was closed.

  “I want to see counsel in my chambers,” she said. “Immediately.”

  She didn’t wait for any response. She left the bench so fast that her robe flowed up behind her like the black gown of the grim reaper.

  FORTY-ONE

  J udge Fullbright had already lit a cigarette by the time Minton and I got back to her chambers. After one long drag she put it out against a glass paperweight and then put the butt into a Ziploc bag she had taken out of her purse. She closed the bag, folded it and replaced it in the purse. She would leave no evidence of her transgression for the night cleaners or anyone else. She exhaled the smoke toward a ceiling intake vent and then brought her eyes down to Minton’s. Judging by the look in them I was glad I wasn’t him.

  “Mr. Minton, what the fuck have you done to my trial?”

  “Your —”

  “Shut up and sit down. Both of you.”


  We did as we were told. The judge composed herself and leaned forward across her desk. She was still looking at Minton.

  “Who did the due diligence on this witness of yours?” she asked calmly. “Who did the background?”

  “Uh, that would have—actually, we only did a background on him in L.A. County. There were no cautions, no flags. I checked his name on the computer but I didn’t use the initials.”

  “How many times had he been used in this county before today?”

  “Only one previous time in court. But he had given information on three other cases I could find. Nothing about Arizona came up.”

  “Nobody thought to check to see if this guy had been anywhere else or used variations of his name?”

  “I guess not. He was passed on to me by the original prosecutor on the case. I just assumed she had checked him out.”

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  The judge turned her eyes to me. I could have sat back and watched Minton go down but I wasn’t going to let him try to take Maggie McPherson with him.

  “The original prosecutor was Maggie McPherson,” I said. “She had the case all of about three hours. She’s my ex-wife and she knew as soon as she saw me at first apps that she was gone. And you got the case that same day, Minton. Where in there was she supposed to background your witnesses, especially this guy who didn’t come out from under his rock until after first appearance? She passed him on and that was it.”

  Minton opened his mouth to say something but the judge cut him off.

  “It doesn’t matter who should have done it. It wasn’t done properly and, either way, putting that man on the stand in my opinion was gross prosecutorial misconduct.”

  “Your Honor,” Minton barked. “I did —”

  “Save it for your boss. He’s the one you’ll need to convince. What was the last offer the state made to Mr. Roulet?”

  Minton seemed frozen and unable to respond. I answered for him.

  “Simple assault, six months in county.”

  The judge raised her eyebrows and looked at me.

  “And you didn’t take it?”

  I shook my head.

  “My client won’t take a conviction. It will ruin him. He’ll gamble on a verdict.”

  “You want a mistrial?” she asked.

  I laughed and shook my head.