Star Witness

by D. W. Buffa

  Slowly tapping his fingers, Roth waited until I was finished. He bent his head to one side and looked at me with genuine interest.

  “You said there hadn’t been a movie made that really got to the heart of what a murder trial is all about.”

  It was astonishing. I should have realized when I said it that it would be all he could think about.

  “What would it take?—I mean if someone wanted to make, not just a good movie, but a great movie ... The kind Orson Welles might have made—about a murder trial?”

  I suddenly remembered.

  “He made one—Compulsion—about the Leopold and Loeb case. The murder of the boy in Chicago in 1920s. Two older boys, college students, did it. They wanted to see if they could do it—kill someone; do it for no reason at all—to prove they were superior to the dictates of morality. They thought that’s what you did if you were one of Nietzsche’s supermen.”

  Roth was disappointed. He had worked for years on the script for Blue Zephyr, trying to outdo Orson Welles. For a brief moment, he must have thought there was something else he could do, something that Welles had not already done. His mood brightened when I suggested that Compulsion was not what I had had in mind.

  “Welles played Clarence Darrow. There was no trial. Darrow pled them both guilty. The great scene is the speech Darrow gives in open court persuading the judge to sentence them to life in prison instead of death. It isn’t what I was talking about: a picture that captures what it is like to be the defense attorney in a murder case; that sees things through his eyes; that shows what he does and how he does it. All the ones that have been made, including Compulsion, including Witness for the Prosecution—they’re all concerned with the crime, or with the accused. You want to know how to make a great movie? Write a script in which the defendant may or may not be innocent, but everyone thinks he’s guilty and all the evidence says he’s guilty. Make it a case no one thinks the defense attorney can win. Make it a case where the defense attorney takes the facts proven by the prosecution and shows in his argument that they don’t prove what the prosecution said they would. Do that, do it better than it’s been done before—then you’ll have a great movie.”

  A knowing smile edged across Stanley Roth’s mouth as he sat back in his chair.

  “The defendant may or may not be innocent; everyone thinks he’s guilty; all the evidence is against him. You’re talking about my trial. What a great idea! A movie about my case.”

  From behind my shoulder I felt the first cool stirring of the evening breeze, the wind, the western wind, the zephyr that Stanley Roth used to feel on his face when he stared out at the Pacific every night, dreaming about the movies he wanted one day to make. He still had not made them, and perhaps he never would; but it was still the thing he kept dreaming about, the thing that made him go on: the idea that he could do one thing well, as well as anyone ever had, and do it in a way no one would ever forget. Mary Margaret Flanders used to sit, mesmerized, watching herself on the screen; but Stanley Roth had watched right with her, watching not just her, but everything else he had created.

  Roth’s head was bent over the desk, his hand moving below him across a white sheet of paper, writing a note to himself. He wrote with a fountain pen, a gaudy gold and silver production, too large to be used with any facility for anything more than an elaborate signature or an occasional four-word flourish. With a slow, awkward stroke, wielding the pen more like a sculptor handling a chisel, Roth pushed on, determined to memorialize everything he wanted to remember. At the end, he paused, the pen suspended just above the paper, while he read over what he had written. He screwed the cap back over the nib and, holding it in both hands, appeared to study the barrel.

  “That thing you did when we were picking the jury,” he said very deliberately. He placed the pen on top of the sheet of paper and looked up. “Voir dire. Besides all that business about reasonable doubt, you always asked them—all of them—things about where they lived, where they went to school, how many kids they had. You were trying to make a connection with them, weren’t you? Trying to make them comfortable with you. That way, they’re more likely to think they can trust you. That’s why you do that, isn’t it? So they’ll like you more than the D.A. She didn’t do any of that. She didn’t ask any of those kinds of personal questions. And you’re still going to sit there and tell me you’re not an actor, that it’s all about the argument?”

  He could not help himself. There was one thing more he had to say, one thing more he had to ask.

  “Then, in the opening, after she goes through what the prosecution is going to prove—how I murdered Mary Margaret Flanders—you made it sound as if that was the single most outrageous suggestion you had ever heard in your life. If you’re not an actor, then you must have believed it.”

  He sat there, looking at me, a mocking smile on his lips.

  “But you don’t believe it, do you? You don’t believe I’m innocent. You don’t believe I didn’t kill her, do you?”

  His eyes stayed on me. He tapped with his finger the page on which he had just a moment earlier finished writing a note to himself.

  “How would you like to play the defense attorney in the movie I’m going to do when this is all over? You’d be terrific.”

  Chapter Twelve

  IT WAS HARD NOT TO stare. Short and overweight, with a small mouth pinched into meanness and tiny, thick lidded truculent eyes, the court clerk was as full of resentment as anyone I had ever seen. There were numerous specific functions she was required to perform, but she greeted each request with immediate suspicion, never quite certain she was not being asked to do something beyond the responsibilities, and beneath the dignity, of her position.

  “Would you please bring in the jury?” Judge Honigman asked her with a tolerant smile.

  Her pudgy hand on her hip, the clerk seemed to deliberate with herself about whether she would or would not. Then, muttering under her breath, she crossed in front of the counsel table on her way to the jury room. She stood in front of the door, drawing herself up to something close to an erect posture. With a harsh rap of her knuckles, she knocked once and then put her head inside and announced that it was time to start.

  On the way back to the small desk she occupied below the bench on the side farthest from the jury box, she rapped her knuckles once more, this time on the edge of the table where I sat with Stanley Roth. In a voice freighted with all the burdens of martyrdom, she reported succinctly: “The jury, Your Honor.”

  Twelve jurors and two alternates, chosen in case a regular member of the jury had for some reason to be replaced, filed slowly into the courtroom. No matter how hard they tried, no matter how patiently each one waited for the juror in front, they could not help bump into each other as they crowded into the jury box. A single row of seven chairs would have been a tight enough fit; but fourteen people trying to squeeze themselves into the two rows into which that jury box had been divided was almost too painful to watch. There was no room to relax, no room to move around. One of the jurors in the back row, a tall, heavyset, middle-aged man with the thick arms and neck of someone who worked with his hands, had to sit straight up each time he crossed his legs. Each time he did it, a shudder passed through the elderly stiff necked woman in front of him as his knee pushed hard against the back of her chair, forcing it forward.

  The jury box was a crime, but so was everything else about this courtroom. There was nothing grand, nothing inspiring about this place with its acoustical tile ceiling and gray linoleum floor. The cheap wooden tables and the cheap wooden chairs; the army-green-colored metal wastebasket next to the armless chair where the sad-eyed court reporter worked; the sullen clerk with her permanent resentments; the broad-nosed female deputy sheriff standing off to the side, her stomach oozing over her holster belt, her dull eyes moving slowly from side to side on a blank patrol: all of it spoke of budgets and accountants, narrow-minded politicians who promised lowered taxes, and a public interested only in their own, private
affairs.

  When the jury finally squeezed themselves into their seats, Judge Honigman felt compelled to remark on their close quarters and offer what solace he could.

  “I’m sorry there isn’t more room. We’ll try to take a short break from time to time so you can at least stretch your legs.”

  Honigman pressed his hands together and rested his cheek against them. He peered at the members of the jury, cramped together in the jury box less than three steps away.

  “Yesterday, the two attorneys—Ms. Van Roten for the prosecution, and Mr. Antonelli for the defense—made their opening statements. I advised you then that those were statements made by the prosecution and the defense of what they expect the evidence to show, or not to show; I advised you then that those statements are not themselves evidence of anything. Evidence—admissible evidence—is that which tends to establish the existence, or the nonexistence, of a fact.”

  Honigman waited while the members of the jury thought about what that might mean. Without that pause they might not have thought anything about it at all. Honigman was better than I had originally thought; he was certainly better than most of the judges in whose courtrooms I had tried cases, judges who had said the same thing so many times before they did not ask themselves whether the words had any meaning to blank-eyed jurors who knew nothing about the technical terms of the law. Honigman seemed actually to want the jury to understand what they were doing.

  “Opening statements themselves,” Honigman repeated one last time, “are not evidence.”

  With that, he turned to Annabelle Van Roten and invited her to call the first witness for the prosecution.

  Richard Crenshaw was in his late thirties, with evenly set brown eyes, and a firm, straight jaw. His nose looked a little too straight, as if it had been surgically altered; his teeth seemed almost too white, as if they, too, had been the subject of cosmetic work. There was nothing exceptional, or even out of the ordinary, about the color of his hair, but it had been cut with the kind of meticulous care I would not normally have associated with someone who lived on a police detective’s salary. His nails were clean and cut short, all the edges polished smooth. His clothes—slacks, a sports jacket, shirt and tie—seemed at first what any detective might wear; then I realized that they were of a finer fabric, and fit him far better, than what could be found on a department store rack.

  With the self-assurance of someone who had been there many times before, Detective Crenshaw settled into the witness chair. Under the helpful questioning of Annabelle Van Roten, he explained that he was a homicide detective and that he had been one for the better part of ten years. Two uniformed officers had arrived at the home of the victim, summoned by the frantic call of the housekeeper; but he was the first detective on the scene and had immediately taken charge of the investigation.

  “And what exactly did you find when you arrived?” asked Van Roten, standing at the end of the counsel table, her right hand resting lightly on her hip, one foot crossed in front of the other.

  “The victim—Mary Margaret Flanders—was floating facedown in the swimming pool,” replied Crenshaw. “The water around her was full of blood. It was like a red cloud around her head. When we turned her over, you could barely see her face.”

  His answer seemed spontaneous and unrehearsed, a straightforward description of what he had seen; but there was something odd about his voice, as if he had practiced for a long time to make it sound always the same way: calm, controlled, a voice that carried with it a sense of unflappable confidence; a voice that would give whomever was listening confidence in him.

  Van Roten knew what the jury must be thinking.

  “Why didn’t the two officers—the ones first on the scene—remove the body from the pool?”

  Bent forward at a slight angle, both feet planted squarely on the floor, one a little in front of the other, both elbows on the arms of the chair, Crenshaw appeared to listen intently until the question had been asked. Then, turning only his head, a sober expression on his face, he looked at the jury.

  “To prevent any contamination of the crime scene. We did not remove the body from the pool until the forensic people had done everything they needed to do.”

  He turned his head back to Van Roten and waited.

  “Would you identify these photographs, please?” she asked as she stepped forward and handed him a large packet.

  Without expression, he thumbed through the photographs.

  “These are photographs taken of the body at the crime scene.”

  “This was the way she looked when you first saw her— floating face down in the pool?”

  “Yes,” he answered in that calm, measured voice.

  “Your Honor, I would ask that these photographs be entered into evidence.”

  Honigman waited while I glanced through them. It was strictly for show. I had filed a motion to keep them out of evidence and he had ruled against it.

  “I would renew my objection, Your Honor,” I said as I gave them back to the clerk. “The defense is willing to stipulate as to the manner of the victim’s death and to the location of the body when it was found. These pictures,” I added, shaking my head in disgust, “are an obscenity. They serve no purpose other than to inflame the emotions of the jury. They certainly do nothing to help prove any fact in dispute.”

  “Your objection has been noted, Mr. Antonelli,” said Honigman as he gestured for Van Roten to continue.

  “May the jury be shown these photographs, Your Honor?”

  I had just sat down, and now I sprang up from my chair, barely able to contain myself.

  “I should be glad to know precisely how these photographs—photographs of a naked woman with her throat slashed—a very famous naked woman, I might add—are supposed to assist the jury as it attempts to weigh the evidence in a purely rational manner?”

  Honigman’s eyes turned cold.

  “Your objection was noted,” he sought to remind me.

  “My objection was to allowing them to be entered into evidence; the question of having them passed round the jury box at the beginning of the prosecution’s case has never been discussed!”

  His face reddened, and with the knowledge that he had not been able completely to hide his discomfort, it grew redder still.

  “I’m asking that the jury see them now,” interjected Van Roten, “so they can follow more closely the testimony of the witness, Your Honor.”

  I was trying to take as much of the shock out of seeing those photographs for the first time as I could; I had to make them sound even worse than they were. There was another reason as well, but I was not ready to reveal that either to Van Roten or the court: not yet, not until they had both come out in favor of letting the jury see things for themselves.

  “Perhaps instead of these pornographic pictures of death, Ms. Van Roten would prefer to have Mary Margaret Flanders dug out of her grave so she can have the body passed round the jury box!”

  “Your Honor!” shouted Annabelle Van Roten as she flew out of her chair, more stunned, I think, than enraged.

  She need not have bothered. Honigman had already bolted forward, fixing me with a murderous stare.

  “That is an outrageous thing to say.”

  I cocked my head and raised an eyebrow. “Passing those photographs around the jury box is an outrageous thing to do,” I retorted with an insolence that made Honigman’s face turn an even deeper shade of red.

  “Mr. Antonelli,” he warned, “I don’t want to find you in contempt.”

  I threw out my arms and turned up my palms. I looked at him with a puzzled expression, as if the last thing I had intended was any disrespect.

  “Forgive me, Your Honor. They’re just words, words to express my frustration at my own inability to find other words, words with which to convey more clearly and more persuasively the concern I have that, as you were just a few minutes ago explaining to the jury, evidence, and only evidence, be the basis for their decision. I went too far, and I apol
ogize for that.”

  His authority intact, Honigman could afford to show magnanimity. The tension that had held him rigid began to dissipate. The color in his face returned to normal. He had, or at least he thought he had, put me in my place. He became almost friendly.

  “It’s easy to become a little too intense,” he said, assuming a diplomatic attitude. “Your objections have been noted. The photographs have been entered into evidence. Will the clerk please hand them to the jury.”

  Grumbling silently to herself, the clerk took the few short steps to the jury box. She flopped the short stack of black-and-white photographs in front of the first juror.

  I watched as each juror leafed through them. What was going on inside their minds—what were they thinking—as they examined the pictures of a naked woman taken hours after her death? And not just a naked woman, but a woman all of them knew. Was it what I had felt when I first saw them? The strange sensation that someone had made a mistake; that this utterly ordinary looking woman caught in the unfortunate exposure of violent death could not possibly be the same woman who had seemed so breathtakingly beautiful on the motion picture screen and so exciting and glamorous in the photographed pages of the movie magazines? It was in a way depressing to realize that she had really been no different than anyone else. If you had not known who she was, you would not have given her any more thought, nor been any more affected by her death, than anyone else you had never met.

  Van Roten nodded perfunctorily toward the photographs being circulated in the jury box.

  “Detective Crenshaw, these pictures were taken both before and immediately after the body of Mary Margaret Flanders was removed from the swimming pool at her home?”

  Crenshaw waited until the juror holding the photographs glanced up.

  “Yes.”

  “And these photographs accurately reflect the condition of the body as you saw it?”

  “Yes.”