The Last Plea Bargain

by Randy Singer

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “And just so the jury is clear, I’m assuming that means you deny it?”

  LA’s face had turned crimson. His muscles were tight and his jaw was set. “That’s right; I deny it.”

  Caleb Tate stood there for a moment as if trying to determine whether he should take the next step. Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a few photographs. I looked quickly at LA and hoped he picked up on the cue. He stared at the pictures, but Tate was holding them facedown.

  “I want to make sure I’ve got this right. Are you denying that you and Ms. Brock spent intimate time together last night?”

  “No. We were not intimate.”

  “Did you give her a back rub on the couch?”

  LA swallowed hard and seemed to be weighing his options. How did Tate know? Did he have pictures? “I might have.”

  “Might have,” Tate taunted. “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “I gave her a back rub. She fell asleep next to me on the couch. After that, I went back to work.” LA’s voice had adopted a defeated tone. He stared at Tate while making the admissions, avoiding eye contact with me. “Then that’s all I have for this witness,” Tate said.

  My mind raced, but I could think of no way to undo the damage. “No redirect,” I said.

  On the way by my counsel table, LA looked at me and whispered a “sorry.” I pretended to be busy writing something on my legal pad. I hoped the jury hadn’t seen the quick exchange.

  I could practically feel the steam coming from Masterson’s body. This was why, on my first day in the office, he had drilled into me cardinal rule number one—no relationships with victims or members of the force.

  “It’s nearly five o’clock,” Judge Brown said. “This court stands in recess until Monday.”

  82

  Masterson asked me to follow him back to the office for what he called a brief meeting. I expected an angry tongue-lashing. But when we arrived, he spoke in measured tones, conveying a profound sense of disappointment rather than anger. I wished he would have just yelled at me.

  He estimated our chances of pulling out a guilty verdict as “slim to none.” Continuing with the case would just put my father’s reputation at risk and make the DA’s office look vindictive. And even if we won, Tate now had too many issues for appeal. Instead of fighting Tate on this case, we should work on tying him to the recent gang killings of Ricky Powell, Rontavius Eastbrook, and Jimmy Brandywine and the brutal murder of Latrell Hampton’s girlfriend and her young son. “We’re going to nol-pros this case first thing Monday morning,” Masterson told me. “It’s not open for discussion.”

  I didn’t say anything. But I wondered how much of this was driven by politics. Dismissing the case would make Masterson look magnanimous, like he was committed to justice more than winning. Losing a jury verdict would make us both look incompetent.

  “We’ll turn Rivera loose, and he can get what’s coming to him,” Masterson continued. “I’m not sending him out to California, and I’m not wasting any police protection on him. He lied on the stand, though that tape is too ambiguous for us to prosecute him for perjury. But now that he’s cut his deal, let’s see how long he survives.”

  Even to me, the most hard-nosed of prosecutors, it seemed harsh. The man had perjured himself and played us for fools, but I didn’t like the idea of just abandoning him on the streets to die. Yet I was so angry with so many people right now—including Rafael Rivera—that I wasn’t about to stick up for him.

  “And, Jamie, I hope you’ve learned a few things from today. You’re one heckuva prosecutor, but you’ve got to keep your emotions out of it.” Masterson paused and gave me a look that could melt steel. “And I mean that in every respect.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  I sat there for another moment as Masterson got busy on some paperwork. He looked up. “That’s all,” he said.

  I checked my BlackBerry on the way home, and I had more than twenty messages. Most of them were from friends who tried to encourage me. There were two phone calls and one text message from Mace James, who wanted to meet with me as soon as possible. The text said it was a critical issue that could impact Caleb Tate’s case. But Caleb Tate’s case was over. I ignored the message.

  I didn’t ignore the text messages from LA asking if we could get together. I texted him back, telling him that getting together right now would be a bad idea. I wished with all my heart I could have taken back the night before. It wasn’t necessarily LA’s fault, but I knew Masterson was right. I’d let my emotions get out of control, and now I was paying for it in so many ways.

  When I arrived home, there was a car in my driveway, and I recognized it immediately. My brother, Chris, to the rescue. He was sitting in the driver’s seat and got out to give me a big hug. Somebody had apparently called him about our day in court.

  Justice greeted us both like conquering heroes. He jumped all over Chris, who laughed and played with Justice because anybody who came to our house had to play with Justice. They wrestled in the family room for a few minutes with Justice hunkering down and making runs at Chris and rolling on the floor and doing his fake growl. The only way I could calm him down was to feed him dinner.

  Chris and I sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, waiting for the burgers to cook on the grill. I know Chris expected me to cry, but I had done enough crying in the last few months. Tonight I was just confused, frustrated, and angry. I started talking and put it all out there—the guilt at being away from the house when Mom died, my resentment toward Dad for being a defense lawyer, the frustration of not knowing whether Antoine Marshall was truly Mom’s killer, and even my disappointment in Chris for not being a more forceful advocate for justice. But most of all, my bitterness at everything that had happened in Caleb Tate’s murder trial and Masterson’s decision to nol-pros.

  “I can’t believe God’s going to let him get away with killing his wife,” I said.

  Chris listened patiently and responded softly. He had his hands laced together on the table and looked down as he spoke. He told me that I couldn’t blame myself for Mom’s death. He assured me that Caleb Tate wasn’t getting away with anything.

  He paused and looked at me. Tonight, it was Chris who had tears in his eyes. “When you hurt, I hurt,” he said. Then he turned philosophical. “We can’t bring about perfect justice in this world, Jamie. It pleases God for us to try. But at the end of the day, this is a fallen world. Even the best systems put together by men—and I believe our justice system is pretty darned good—are going to be imperfect. But there’s a verse in Genesis that I’ve always loved: ‘Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’

  “That’s what I hold on to. Even on days like today, when the world is so messed up. That jury doesn’t have the last word. And Judge Brown doesn’t have the last word. And neither does Bill Masterson.”

  Chris used the back of an index finger to wipe a tear from the bottom of his eye. “Sorry to preach,” he said. “I’d better go check on the burgers.”

  83

  My sleeping pills did their trick, and I might have slept forever if Justice hadn’t pawed at me until I took him out at about 10 a.m. Chris had gotten up early to get ready for his sermon the next day and had fixed chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast.

  “What did I do to deserve a brother like you?” I asked.

  My saint of a brother left at noon. I was still in my sleepshirt and a pair of shorts and planned on staying that way all day. I had received a few more phone calls and text messages, including ones from Mace James and LA. I was tempted to call LA, but I suddenly had mixed emotions about that relationship. It wasn’t just that our lack of discretion might have cost us the case. I was also getting bad feelings about the way LA could adjust the truth when it served his purposes. He came from a different place than me spiritually, and our values were very different.

  Plus, there was the issue of trust. He had seemed as devastated as I was aft
er his testimony, but what if that was all an act? My emotions were swinging wildly back and forth, which was precisely why everybody said you should never start a relationship in the middle of a pressure cooker like the Tate case.

  When the doorbell rang at twelve thirty, Justice went flying from the family room toward the front door at full speed, barking all the way. I half expected to see LA standing there and maybe J-Lo on a leash. A big part of me wanted to see LA standing there. Instead, I opened the door and found myself looking into the eyes of a man I had never wanted to see again.

  Justice squirmed through the crack in the door and jumped all over Professor Mace James.

  “Justice!” I said. “Sit!”

  But Justice, with his lousy lack of character judgment, ignored me. Mace laughed and rubbed Justice’s head. “He’s okay,” Mace said.

  Though I wanted to tell Mace James to get out of my life forever, I found myself apologizing. “Sorry about that,” I said. “He thinks everybody comes to see him.”

  Mace got down on one knee and patted Justice a little. He looked up at me. “His name’s Justice, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fitting. You got a minute?”

  Not for you. “I’m pretty busy.”

  Mace stood to his full height. He was wearing a pair of jeans, flip-flops, and a white T-shirt tight enough to remind everyone he could bench-press a small car. He had on a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days. “This really can’t wait,” he said.

  I frowned.

  “I know you don’t trust me, Jamie. But just give me a few minutes.”

  It was late August and over ninety degrees outside, but I wasn’t about to let this man in my house. There were two wooden rocking chairs on the front porch, and I decided they would have to do. “Hang on a second,” I said.

  I went into the house and got Justice’s leash, my running watch, and my shades. If I couldn’t see his eyes, I didn’t want him seeing mine. I came back out and pointed to the rocking chairs. “Three minutes,” I said. “Not a second more.”

  The last time somebody had asked for a few minutes of my time was when Caleb Tate dropped the bombshell on me about my father. My stomach had a similar feeling this time.

  We probably looked like quite the pair on my front porch, gently rocking back and forth. A six-two bodybuilder with sweat beading on his bald head and a five-eight former kayaker in her sleepshirt and shorts, her hair sticking up, her face void of makeup, her mouth in a permanent scowl, trying to look hard. Justice took a spot between us, still on his leash, his head resting on his front paws.

  I started my stopwatch and Mace said, “I guess that’s my cue.”

  “Two fifty left,” I said, looking at my watch.

  Mace didn’t waste any more time. “Before Antoine Marshall died, I promised him I would keep working to vindicate his name. Though I had some doubts after the brain-scan test, I’ve spent two weeks reevaluating every aspect of his case. I reread the entire case file, asking myself if there were any hints that someone else might have murdered your mom. I researched a number of your mom’s and dad’s cases to see if they had any enemies. I also researched the two things that bothered me most about Antoine’s case. The first was the way Judge Snowden treated my client. The second was the fact that Antoine passed a polygraph, even though, to my surprise, he failed the brain-scan test.”

  Mace took a breath, and I said, “Two minutes.” I realized where he was headed, and it made my heart start pounding. He must have discovered the connection between my dad and Judge Snowden. Deep breaths. Slow pulse. Relax.

  “I figured that Caleb Tate must have done something to get on the bad side of Judge Snowden, so I looked at all his cases in front of her. I didn’t find any reason for their apparent animosity, but I did find something else that intrigued me.”

  I was rocking faster, realized it, and forced myself to slow down.

  “In three cases, Tate’s clients had taken lie detector tests and passed. In each case, Snowden ruled the results inadmissible.”

  Some birds landed in the bushes in front of the house, and Justice’s ears perked up. “It’s all right,” I said, petting his head. He lay back down as if he were just as intrigued about this story as I was.

  “I thought that was unusual, so I changed my research strategy. I went through all of Tate’s cases for the past ten years and found a total of nine defendants who had passed lie detector tests. Even though the tests were inadmissible, in seven of the cases, he worked out sweet deals for the defendants.”

  Mace had been looking out over the cul-de-sac as he spoke, but now he turned to me. I suddenly had no idea where any of this was going.

  “Jamie, you’ve been prosecuting long enough to know that no defense lawyer gets that many innocent clients. So how did Tate’s clients do so well on the polygraphs? I figured he must have had a polygraph expert on his payroll, so to speak.”

  Mace James’s story had taken an interesting twist. I quit worrying about my father’s reputation. And I quit looking at my watch.

  Mace returned his gaze to the street. “Wrong again. Instead, I discovered that the tests were performed by a variety of polygraph examiners. Nine tests. Five different examiners. So it must have been something else.”

  He stopped and checked his own watch. “I’m sorry; I see my time is up.” Mace smiled. I did not. “Will the court give me an extra two minutes?”

  “Just say what you came to say, and say it as fast as you can.”

  “Anyway, as you know, the polygraph test doesn’t really detect lies. It detects physiological changes that occur because we get nervous when we lie. Increased heart rate. Perspiration. Blood-pressure changes. That type of thing.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday,” I said.

  “Right. Sorry. So anyway, I assumed Tate had figured out a way to game the test. I talked to a few polygraph examiners and started researching countermeasures—”

  “I’m aware of the countermeasures,” I interrupted. “I researched them for Antoine’s case.”

  “I figured you had. Well . . . I actually met with several of Tate’s former clients who had taken the test, and they denied knowing anything about countermeasures. Plus, I think Antoine would have told me if he had used them. And another thing—these other clients didn’t seem all that sophisticated, yet every single one of them had passed the test. To the best of my knowledge, Tate never had a client fail a polygraph.”

  “Where’s all this heading?” I asked.

  Mace James stopped rocking. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “There’s another way to beat the lie detector—you make yourself honestly believe that you didn’t commit the crime. The polygraph can’t tell the difference between false memories and true memories; it can only test whether you think you’re telling the truth.

  “I started focusing on this when I tried to reconcile Antoine’s polygraph results with his brain-scan results. Jamie, there’s this whole branch of neurology focused on suggestive memory creation, a form of hypnosis that works on a large segment of the population. The effectiveness is even greater if the subject is taking certain drugs. This isn’t carnival hypnosis with swinging watches and all that stuff; it’s a very sophisticated form of top-down processing that can be tracked using neurological studies. The CIA experimented with it more than twenty years ago to develop agents who would carry out certain assignments with no remorse and no memory of the events afterward. Physicians in India have used it as anesthesia when they perform surgery—even the amputation of limbs. This stuff is real, and it works.”

  My mind was shooting in a hundred different directions. “It can re-create your memory?”

  “For certain segments of the population—yes.”

  “And Tate’s clients were nine for nine?”

  “Nine for nine.”

  “And ten for ten if you count Tate.”

  “I think you’ve got the math pretty much figured out,” Mace said.


  “But how does all this help me with Caleb Tate?” I asked. “Your text message said you might have something I could use.”

  “I’m just getting started,” Mace said.

  I was no longer worried about how long he was taking.

  84

  Beads of sweat had formed on the back of my neck, but I wasn’t about to move. “What’s your agenda?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t let Antoine’s case go—not with so many unanswered questions. And that’s led me to some information you may want to have.”

  He paused, but I waited him out. I had decided it was hard to rush a law school professor—you just had to let him tell the story his way.

  Sure enough, he started up again. “I met with two of Caleb Tate’s former clients who had passed the polygraph. One of them has done his time and is out. He retained me because he thinks Tate screwed him over, and he wants to get some revenge. A second of Tate’s former clients has a trial date in two months and is looking at a long stretch if he’s convicted. He hired me to handle his case.”

  “God help us,” I said. But Mace ignored it.

  “Dr. Chandar gave them the same brain scan he used on Antoine. The guy on the outside got the same results as Antoine.”

  “He failed?”

  “Yeah, he failed.”

  Mace got out of his seat and took off his sunglasses. He turned and faced me, leaning against the railing and crossing his bulging arms. His big body blocked out the sun.

  “I want to tell you about the results for my guy awaiting trial, but I have to know it won’t be used against him. I’m here to see if I can work out a deal.”

  I didn’t respond immediately. I needed time to process everything. “Let’s just speak hypothetically,” I said.

  “All right, let’s assume the same result as the other two guys,” Mace replied. “So now we’ve got three guys who passed a polygraph but failed the brain scan.”