“Did you ever identify the person who left the fingerprint?” A lawyer should rarely ask a question on cross that he doesn’t know the answer to, but now there’s no risk, because I know that it wasn’t Holzner.
“We were never able to identify the fingerprint.”
“Could you tell the gender from the fingerprint analysis?”
He chuckles. “You can’t even do that today, though there are new techniques that claim you can.”
“Was it a woman’s earring? Not the type that a man might wear?”
“Probably so, because it was long and diamond shaped. But it’s not totally clear.”
“In nineteen seventy-five, dangly earrings for males weren’t exactly a fashion trend, were they?”
Lifting only her backside off the chair—a mocking recognition of the rule that a lawyer must stand when making an objection—Reddick says, “This is getting ridiculous, Your Honor. The witness isn’t an expert on fashion or popular culture.”
“That’s not a legally correct objection, Ms. Reddick,” the judge says. “But it’s an accurate one. Get this over with, Mr. Stern.”
“Do you know where the earring is now?” I ask.
“It’s been misplaced over the years. The FBI doesn’t lose things, but sometimes it takes a while to find them.”
“Dr. Yellin, in nineteen seventy-five, did all federal employees have to be fingerprinted?”
“Yes. By an executive order issued by the president in the nineteen fifties.”
“And in the course of your investigation did you check to see if the fingerprint on the earring belonged to any of the employees of the Playa Delta VA?”
“We couldn’t match the fingerprint to anyone who worked at the Veterans Administration.”
“And would you agree that few visitors had business on the second floor of the Playa Delta Veterans Administration in December of nineteen seventy five?”
“That’s correct. The second-floor offices were strictly for government personnel.”
I nod sagely. It’s always nice to put my childhood acting lessons to some use. “I have no further questions.”
Lovely tugs at my sleeve, and again we’re thinking the same thing. I ask to approach the bench, and the judge nods.
“Your Honor, I move for a mistrial under Brady v. Maryland,” I say. “The government withheld exculpatory evidence from us, namely the earring.”
“It’s not exculpatory,” Reddick says. “It could’ve been dropped by anyone, weeks earlier.”
“The explosion took place in the men’s restroom,” I say. “Why would there be a woman’s earring in there?”
“The witness said it wasn’t clear whether it was a woman’s or not.”
“Oh, come on, a long, dangly earring in nineteen seventy-five was worn by a man?”
“It could’ve been dropped by a cleaning person or just a woman who couldn’t wait for the women’s room to become free.”
“Okay, okay,” the judge says. “The motion is denied without prejudice to renewing it at the end of the case.”
I might not have succeeded in getting the case dismissed, but what I do have is a straw man—or straw woman—whom I can use as a springboard to create reasonable doubt. It’s far more than I had before Earl Yellin took the witness stand. Sometimes gifts are bestowed by the most unlikely of benefactors.
But my happiness is short-lived, because Marilee Reddick says, “The United States calls Gladdie Giddens.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Those of us in the courtroom suffer in agonizing silence as a hunched-over Gladdie Giddens shuffles forward to the witness stand, leaning on a walker and sliding her damaged leg as best she can. Her struggle to climb the single riser to the stand is epic, made all the more poignant when she refuses the proffered assistance of her caretaker, a US Marshal, two AUSAs, and Marilee Reddick herself. She’s so small, her head barely clears the wooden bar. She’s put on lipstick, and her threadlike brown hair has been styled, but the attempts at glamor only make her look like a decrepit lawn gnome. If the jurors don’t hate me now, they will when I’m through questioning her: she’s the one eyewitness who can place Ian Holzner at the scene of the crime, and I have to decimate her on cross.
The clerk asks her name.
“Gladys Giddens,” she says in that surprisingly youthful voice. “But all my life I’ve been known as Gladdie.”
“Good morning, Ms. Giddens,” Reddick says.
“Good morning, ma’am.”
“If you need anything or get tired, you’ll tell me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please tell me what happened on December seventeenth, nineteen seventy-five.”
“I worked at the Playa Delta VA. We helped disabled veterans. Not just from Vietnam, but any veteran, going all the way back to World War One. My title was administrative officer. A fancy name for an office manager. I was really the department den mother, responsible for making sure everything ran smoothly. It was December seventeenth, nineteen seventy-five, Elaine Smith’s thirtieth birthday. Elaine was a vocational counselor. The night before, I baked a carrot cake for her. I was known for my carrot cake, but I haven’t made one since that awful day.”
“What happened that day?” Reddick asks.
“Why, we were going to have the birthday cake after the three-thirty staff meeting. One of my chores was to round up the meeting attendees so we wouldn’t start late. Heavens, that was a tough job. So at about three fifteen, I began herding people into the conference room. I went first to Elaine’s desk. She hugged me and thanked me for arranging her birthday celebration. She picked up some papers and went off to the meeting. I went over to Russell Breen’s desk. Russ was another one of the counselors, a sweet man but always tardy. So I reminded him that our meeting was about to begin. Then I stopped by Lucille Gomez’s desk. She wasn’t there, so she must have already gone into the conference room. Floyd Corwin had to finish some notes for the meeting, but his typewriter had run out of ribbon. Floyd was hopeless with the machine. So I helped him change the ribbon.” Sometimes digressions like this can make an old person seem senescent, and so not credible. Not so with Giddens. One of the female jurors already looks to be on the verge of tears.
“After that, did you ever see Elaine Smith alive again?”
“No ma’am.”
“Did you ever see Russell Breen alive again?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you ever see Floyd Corwin or Lucille Gomez alive again?”
“No, I did not.” She uses her sleeve to wipe her eyes, stiffens her spine, and says, “I will not cry. I swore to myself that I would not do that.”
“What happened next, Ms. Giddens?”
“I finished my rounds and started over to the conference room. Then I realized I forgot Elaine’s cake. So I hurried over to my office and fetched it. Just as I reached for the conference door handle, I felt the explosion. I think my life was spared because someone had already closed that door. I never heard a thing, just felt the blast. Why, we live in California after all, and the shaking reminded me of the Long Beach Quake that happened when I was a little girl, so I thought it was an earthquake. I was knocked to the ground. People were screaming and running. I tried to get up, but couldn’t. I reached down to touch my right leg—I don’t know why, because I wasn’t in pain yet—and it was covered with blood. Then I saw. There were nails like the kind you hammer into wood protruding from the flesh above my knee. My slacks were shredded to bits.” She inhales and sighs, the breath so shallow that it sounds like she’s panting. “That’s when I knew it wasn’t an earthquake. I knew it was a bomb. There was debris everywhere. Reams of paper had flown off the desks. Typewriters were all over the floor, and furniture was in splinters. I must’ve blacked out. I woke up in the in the hospital a day later. They tell me I passed out from loss of blood, that I almost died. My leg got infected. Eight surgeries. It’s a wonder they didn’t amputate.” She folds her arthritic, mottled hands on
the side bar and looks at the ceiling.
Reddick lets the jury absorb the testimony and asks, “Earlier in the day, was there an unusual incident?”
“Yes. Earlier that morning I was walking over to use the ladies’ room. I passed by a young man coming from the opposite direction.” As she did when I met her at her care facility, she describes what the man was wearing—a T-shirt, military camouflage pants, and a pulled-down cap. “At first I told him he was on the wrong floor, that he should be on the third floor because that’s where the veterans go. He looked so familiar, so I thought he was one of the regulars. After, I realized who he really was.”
“And is that man in the courtroom today, Ms. Giddens?”
“Yes ma’am.” She points to Holzner. “That’s him. He’s older of course, but he still looks the same. I’ll never forget that face. Never forget that day. I know him because he was a friend of my son, Mark. They grew up together.”
“I have no further questions,” Reddick says.
I need to be gentle—otherwise I’ll lose the jury forever. I need to be firm—otherwise I’ll lose the case. I stand behind the lectern and try to seem composed, though I’m fighting off the queasiness and flop sweats that come with stage fright. Thank God my mother forced me to act in live theater when I was a kid.
“Ms. Giddens—”
“It’s Mrs. Giddens,” she says. She didn’t have the same response when Marilee Reddick called her Ms.
“Pardon me. Mrs. Giddens. You testified that you walked by a man you believed to be my client and stopped to talk to him?”
“That’s right. To tell him that he was on the wrong floor.”
“You were within what, five, six feet of him?”
“That’s about right.”
“You didn’t say, ‘Hello, Ian, how are you?’”
“No, because even if he looked familiar at that time, I couldn’t quite place the face. Like I said before, I thought he was one of the vets. He had his hat pulled down. And it was a long time after the boys had been in high school together, you know.”
“You only identified Ian Holzner after you awoke in the hospital after the bombing, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir. But as I said, he looked familiar that morning.”
“And in the hospital you were suffering from serious injuries, including a severe concussion?”
“Yes, Holzner’s bomb almost killed me.”
“And while you were in the hospital you learned that four of your friends had died and many more had been injured?”
“Yes. Horrible, horrible. The worst time of my life. And to think it was almost Christmas.”
“And you were angry?”
“Of course, sir. Angry, but not hateful.”
“You wanted justice to be done?”
“The law’s and the Lord’s, yes sir.”
“You wanted the police to catch the person responsible for all that terror, didn’t you?”
“Yes. What person in their right mind wouldn’t?”
“And then the police showed you a photograph of Ian Holzner, and it was only then that you identified him as the person you saw on the second floor of the Veterans Administration?”
“Oh no, sir. As I recall it, I told the police it was Holzner, and they brought me a picture to confirm it.”
Now I get it—this old woman is an audacious liar. My problem is that she’s a liar the jury loves. I’ll have to do what lawyers hate to do on cross—ask questions I don’t know the answer to. And Giddens’s answers can do a lot of harm.
“You testified in the trial of a woman named Rachel O’Brien, didn’t you?”
“Yes sir. That was your client’s partner in crime.”
“In that trial, didn’t you testify that you only recognized Holzner after you were shown his photograph?” I read that in a newspaper story. I wish I had the actual transcripts.
“I don’t recall it that way,” she says. “But I do remember that I was the one who remembered Holzner and asked the police for a picture, because I was ninety-nine percent sure it was him, and I wanted to be one hundred percent sure. Which I am.”
“You said Ian Holzner and your son Mark were friends. But wasn’t it Jerry Holzner, Ian’s older brother, who was Mark’s friend?”
“Yes, Mark and Jerry were the same age, but Jerry was always bringing his little brother, Ian, around, I knew exactly who he was.” Again, this isn’t what she told me when I met with her. Age hasn’t affected this woman’s powers of prevarication.
Fortunately, we’re prepared for this lie—with the help of Ian’s childhood friend, Carol Diaz. On cue, Lovely hands me a photograph. What I’m about to do could rescue our case or doom it, just like those assistant district attorneys doomed their case when they had OJ Simpson try on the ill-fitting glove.
Lovely projects the photo onto the courtroom monitors so the judge and jury can see. The clerk marks the hard copy and hands it to Giddens, who holds it in a withered hand and squints at it. It’s a picture of a twelve-year-old boy with short brown hair, cut straight and parted on the side. For the first time today, Giddens looks befuddled. There’s a perceptible rustling as those in the gallery who were reading their iPads and iPhones refocus their attention on the witness. Several jurors sit straighter in their seats.
Giddens looks up at me in anticipation of my next question. I’m certain Marilee Reddick showed her pictures of the adult Jerry and Ian and made sure she could tell them apart. But the boy in this picture looks like neither of those adult men.
“Is this picture one of the Holzner brothers?” I thought of simply asking which brother it is, but that would give her a fifty-percent chance of guessing right. By asking this question, she has two chances to be wrong. Of course, if she truly recognizes who’s in the photo or guesses right, this case is lost.
“Objection,” Reddick says. “There’s no foundation for what this picture is.”
“This is impeachment on a critical point,” I say. “A man’s freedom is at stake. We could interrupt Mrs. Giddens’s testimony and sequester her out in the hall, and I could call a witness to authenticate the photo. It seems like a waste of time to interrupt Mrs. Giddens’s testimony to do that, though, when we can do it later.”
“I agree,” the judge says. “You can prove it up later, Mr. Stern. The objection is overruled.” One advantage in having Gibson as the judge is that he’s not much younger than Gladdie Giddens and so is perhaps less likely to see her as grandmotherly—as I did, until she started telling the brazen lies.
“I’ll repeat the question,” I say. “Is this one of the Holzner brothers?”
“Yes, I believe it is,” Giddens says without hesitation. The odds of shaking her testimony have just gone way down.
“Is it Ian or Jerry?”
Her forehead knitted in thought, she stares at the photo a long time and tries to guess the right answer—not the truthful answer, but the one that will help condemn Ian Holzner.
“I don’t know from this picture,” she says. “Those brothers looked so much alike. Back then I knew Jerry was younger—”
“Did you say Jerry was the younger one, Mrs. Giddens?”
Her eyes glaze over with a kind of geriatric indignation. “Excuse me sir. I meant to say Ian was the younger one. Jerry was my son Mark’s friend, Ian the little brother.”
“You just told us the brothers looked very much alike,” I say, abandoning my deferential tone and replacing it with incredulity. “If that’s true, how do you know it wasn’t Jerry you saw at the Playa Delta VA on the day of the bombing?”
Behind me I hear the tinkling of Holzner’s shackles, a sign of unease, because I’m implying his brother Jerry planted the bomb, and he doesn’t want that. Who cares? My only job—my sworn ethical obligation—is to defend Ian any way I can, even if he won’t do the same for himself.
Giddens crosses her arms. “No sir. I know who I saw that morning. It was Ian Holzner.”
“Even though the brothers lo
oked so much alike?”
“Even though.”
I nod to Lovely, who hands me the second photograph that Carol Diaz gave her. It’s a picture taken the same year, but of a ruddy faced, stocky, round-shouldered kid of sixteen with a blond flattop haircut. His smile is sad and innocent. The clerk hands the photo to Giddens, and Lovely projects it on the monitors.
When Giddens sees the photograph, her hand starts trembling.
“You recognize this photograph, don’t you, Mrs. Giddens,” I say.
She nods.
“You’ll have to answer audibly,” I say.
“Yes. I recognize it.”
“This is Jerry Holzner, your son Mark’s friend, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she replies in a raspy whisper.
“He doesn’t look anything like the young Ian Holzner, does he?”
“No sir. Not so much as I remember.”
“And you remember now that Ian was adopted into the Holzner family?”
“I do remember that now.”
“You didn’t remember the picture of the younger brother, Ian?”
Her failure to reply is the best answer I can get.
“You were a bit confused about the Holzner brothers, weren’t you?”
She tries to speak but only lets out a phlegmy wheeze. I let that stand as her last answer and pass the witness.
On redirect, Reddick gets Giddens to testify that because the brothers looked so different it must have been Ian whom she saw at the crime scene. The testimony falls flat. A factual misstatement during testimony is like a dropped stitch that causes the entire fabric of a story to unravel.
Judge Gibson calls the lunch recess, and the jurors file out. Before the marshals take Holzner back to the holding area, he whispers to me, “Don’t lay this on Jerry.” No paternal pat on the back for a job well done in discrediting a witness who threatened to put him on death row.
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