MD04 - Final Verdict

by Sheldon Siegel

  Her eyes flash. “They don’t need to cut a deal. They have a freebie. They won’t have to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  “What if they find the real killer later on?”

  “Banks will have a little egg on his face and he’ll issue an apology. Leon will still be dead and nobody will care.”

  “Have you become that cynical?”

  “I’m not being cynical. I’m being practical.”

  “Marcus is tough, but he’s professional. I think he’s still interested in finding the truth.”

  “Have you become that naive?”

  “I’m not being naive. I’m being truthful. We’ve had our disagreements over the years, but I believe he’s fundamentally honest. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the guy who put away a terminally ill man for something he didn’t do.”

  “Do you think he cares that much about his legacy?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  The telltale sigh. I’ve exhausted her patience. “Grow up, Mike,” she says. “This doesn’t have anything to do with truth and justice and reputations. This is about settling an old score. Everybody in this building wants to nail Leon Walker.”

  “We can make them work for it. We owe Leon that much.”

  “We don’t owe him anything.”

  “You don’t think he’s entitled to representation?”

  “Of course he is, but it doesn’t have to be us.”

  “He wants us.”

  “He can get adequate representation from the PD’s office.”

  I drum my fingers on the bench and say, “You don’t want to spend your life defending DUI cases and I don’t want to make a career of representing Terrence the Terminator.”

  She fires back. “True enough, but we have to think about the best interests of our firm and we agreed that wouldn’t do any murder trials.”

  “It won’t go to trial.”

  “It will be every bit as draining as a full-blown murder case.”

  “It will be over in a few weeks.”

  “He can’t afford to pay us.”

  “We won’t take the case unless he gives us a retainer.”

  “You know what it costs to handle a murder case. He’ll never come up with the money.”

  It’s true. A murder defense can easily run into six figures–maybe more. “Then we can handle it pro bono,” I say. “It will be good publicity.”

  “Not if we get a lousy result.” She takes a deep breath and then exhales slowly. There is exasperation in her tone when she asks, “Why can’t you let it go?”

  “He’s dying, Rosie.”

  It’s her turn to drum her fingers. She invokes her managing partner voice when she says, “We have limited resources, Mike. We can’t always save the world. We don’t have the time and I don’t have the energy.”

  “Then I’ll do it myself on my own time.”

  “We agreed that we wouldn’t accept new cases unless all three partners approve.”

  “We can make an exception.”

  “Then we’ll have to make another one the next time you want to do something on your own. That’s why we practice together. Our firm will fall apart if we start acting unilaterally.”

  “You never used to back away from the hard fights.”

  “I’m suggesting that we might want to pick our fights a little more carefully.”

  Conceptually, this isn’t a bad idea. We stare at each other for a long moment. I decide to turn down the volume when I say, “We’re doing it again, aren’t we?”

  This elicits a knowing nod. “There’s something about Leon Walker that leads us to take out our frustrations on each other.”

  I struggle to keep my tone even. “What’s really bugging you, Rosita?”

  She glances down for an instant, then she looks up and whispers, “Bad memories.”

  I replay the highlights of our representation of Frankie and Leon Walker in my head. Frankie got under Rosie’s skin the day they met and things got progressively worse. Eventually, she stopped talking to him altogether and I had the unenviable job of doing shuttle diplomacy between my wife and our client. It wasn’t just the Walker case. Grace was a baby and we weren’t getting any sleep. Our marriage was in the rinse cycle. Then the press turned us into a piñata. I can understand why she might not want to relive the experience.

  “Maybe it’s a chance for us to stare down some of our old demons,” I suggest.

  Her resolve stiffens. “Maybe it’s better to leave them in the past.”

  “I know you had big problems with Frankie.”

  “He was a self-absorbed, delusional asshole. I don’t think the 7-Eleven clerk was the only person he killed.”

  “But we didn’t have problems with Leon,” I say. “He did what Frankie told him to do.”

  Her eyes turn to cold steel when she says, “He lied to us.”

  It’s a huge hot button for her. According to Rosie, you can lie to your family and friends, but not to your lawyer.

  I try for a practical tone. “All of our clients lie to us.”

  “This was different. After they matched the bullets to the gun, I asked him to tell me what really happened–person-to-person, attorney-client privileged. I promised that I would never reveal what he said and I told him that I would find another attorney to represent him separately if his interests conflicted with his brother’s.” Her expression turns to one of open disdain. “He lied to my face. He told me that his brother never went into the Seven-Eleven.”

  “I trust you informed him that we couldn’t suborn perjury.”

  “He wasn’t impressed.”

  Most clients aren’t. Defense lawyers are required to tap dance around perjury more frequently than we care to admit. It’s a big no-no for us to knowingly let our clients lie. As a result, we often choose not to ask certain questions if we think we aren’t going to like the answer.

  “He told me he wasn’t going to change his story,” she continues. “He clearly expected us to go along with him.”

  “And if we didn’t cooperate?”

  “He said Frankie’s friends would have had a word with us.”

  What? “He threatened you?”

  “Yes.”

  She never told me about this. “Was he serious?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did Frankie’s thugs threaten the eyewitness?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You kept this to yourself all these years?”

  “The charges were dropped and the issue became moot.”

  I can feel the anger welling up in the back of my throat. I can’t tell if she notices the crack in my voice when I whisper, “You should have told me.”

  “It was irrelevant and it wouldn’t have been in the best interests of our client.”

  “Getting yourself killed wouldn’t have been in the best interests of you.”

  “It was a long time ago. The issue went away and I never felt compelled to talk about it.”

  Until now.

  I decide to try another angle. “This may be our last chance to find out what happened at the Seven-Eleven. We won’t take his case unless Leon agrees to tell us everything.”

  She’s intrigued for an instant, but reality sets in. “We shouldn’t make our decision to represent him conditional upon obtaining admissions about an old matter,” she says.

  “This is an unusual situation and time isn’t on our side. We won’t reveal anything that he tells us or violate the attorney-client privilege. This will stay between us.”

  She holds her chin in her right hand, but doesn’t say another word.

  I give it one more shot. “It will take only a couple of weeks. This will be our last chance to close the books on the events of ten years ago.”

  She doesn’t respond for what seems like an eternity. Finally, she looks up at me and says, “I don’t like it, Mike. It’s too much old baggage for us and too big of a risk for our firm. He may be able to pay us a little, but he
can’t pay our standard rates. If we take this case and things go south, our reputation will go to hell. I’m not willing to put our firm at risk for Leon Walker–even if it means that we’ll never find out what happened ten years ago.”

  It’s all I’ve got. She’s been through a lot in the last couple of years and I’m ready to fold. “You’re the managing partner,” I say. “It’s your call.”

  She hesitates for another moment. I presume she’s trying to come up with the words to let me down gently when she looks over my shoulder and her eyes open wide. She says in a tone that drips with contempt, “Hello, Jerry.”

  I turn around and look into the pit bull face of Jerry Edwards, the muckraker at the Chroniclewho ripped us during the first Walker case. His alcohol-abetted tirades in his daily column, “The Untold Story,” are frequently truthful, occasionally eloquent and always entertaining. His editor freely admits that he has no control over his star columnist. A couple of years ago, he took his act to TV and became a regular on Mornings on Two. The jabs have become more pointed as his battles with the bottle have become more serious. An unapologetic and self-righteous liberal who grew up in the Richmond District and attended Lowell High, he fancies himself as the last line of defense between the good people of San Francisco and the chaos that would ensue from unchecked graft and corruption. Some would argue that he’s simply a publicity hound. To his credit, he’s an equal opportunity mudslinger. Over the past three decades, he’s bloodied mayors, police chiefs, DAs, the PD’s office, the county assessor, the registrar of voters and, of course, Rosie and me. He hasn’t taken a swing at us in a long time and my eternally forgiving nature has allowed me to let bygones be bygones. Rosie is somewhat less charitable. She still hates his guts.

  He’s probably in his late fifties, but his weather-worn face and bloodshot eyes suggest that he died five years ago. He rasps, “Well, if it isn’t Rosita Fernandez and Michael Daley, my favorite public defenders.”

  “Former public defenders,” Rosie corrects him.

  The living cadaver is wearing the same disheveled gray suit that’s comprised his entire wardrobe for two decades. The liver spots on his forehead contrast with his pallid skin and he reeks of cigarette smoke. He tugs at his stained tie and croaks, “Whatever.”

  Rosie correctly tries to set a civil tone when she says, “I thought you were spending your time at City Hall.”

  “It was a slow day for graft. When I heard that Leon Walker had been arrested, I decided to check things out.” He flashes a sarcastic grin and adds, “If I had known my two favorite former PD’s were going to be here, I would have come sooner.”

  Rosie tries to brush him off. “We’re having a private meeting,” she says.

  He emits a loud smoker’s hack and says, “I didn’t come down here to start trouble.”

  He doesn’t go anywhere without starting trouble. “We’re busy,” Rosie says.

  He’s undeterred. “Are you going to represent him again?”

  A big red light starts flashing in my brain and a booming voice in the back of my head screams, “Don’t engage!”

  Rosie makes the strategically correct move by keeping her tone professional. “We’re going to refer the case to somebody else,” she tells him.

  “Then why are you here?”

  She tries to be polite. “He called us.”

  Now his questions start coming in rapid fire. “Why did he call you?”

  “He knew our names.”

  “Why aren’t you going to represent him again?”

  “We aren’t the right people to handle this matter.”

  “Sure you are.”

  Her tone turns emphatic. “We’re going to refer it to somebody else.”

  That’s not good enough for a pathological shit disturber. Whether it’s habit, contempt or mean-spiritedness, he’s incapable of letting it go. “You must be tempted to try it again,” he cajoles.

  Rosie’s tone is still even. “I’m afraid not.”

  “You got a helluva result for him last time. Everybody in town thought he was guilty.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  He shifts into attack mode. “Of course, you got that result by getting your clients to intimidate the key witnesses.”

  Rosie’s jaws clench when she says, “Let’s not go there again.”

  “Then you blatantly manipulated the system to get your client off on a technicality.”

  Rosie’s eyes light up. “Everything we did was legal and ethical.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.” She adds, “And says the investigative panel that was convened after you wrote all those lies about us.”

  Guys like Edwards keep tweaking until they piss you off or wear you down. “The fix was in,” he mocks. “That panel was a joke.”

  Rosie’s response is succinct. “Bullshit.”

  Nobody calls Rosie’s integrity into question without getting an earful. She doesn’t suffer fools and won’t waste her time fighting with idiots. Edwards is neither. He’s a professional asshole who knows how to push the right buttons. I back off as the two heavyweights stand toe-to-toe and slug it out. The gratuitous sniping continues for another five minutes.

  The pissing match looks like it’s going to be a draw on my card when Edwards shifts to a different taunt. “So,” he says, “you’re just going to leave a dying man hanging out to dry?”

  Rosie’s tone is measured when she says, “We will make sure Leon Walker has adequate representation.”

  “So you’re going to duck a tough case and run and hide?”

  She repeats, “We will make sure Leon Walker has adequate representation.”

  His red eyes turn wild and his face rearranges itself into an acerbic grin. “I talked to him downstairs,” he says. “He told me he wants youto represent him.”

  “We haven’t agreed to take the case,” Rosie says.

  “You damn well better.”

  He’s desperately trying to get a reaction from her, but she doesn’t bite. Her jaws tighten when she says, “We’re under no obligation.”

  His voice is smug when he says, “Then you’d better be prepared to see your names in my column tomorrow. I think the public has the right to know that a couple of self-righteous defense attorneys who used illegal tactics ten years ago don’t have the balls to step up and help a dying man. That’s as reprehensible as your conduct was when you were public defenders.”

  Rosie is seething. She strains to keep her tone measured when she says, “If you write one syllable that isn’t true, we’ll be in court the next morning to sue you for defamation.”

  “Be my guest. My newspaper has a team of lawyers who spend all of their time defending me. The mayor couldn’t nail me–and neither will you. Truth is an absolute defense.” His tone turns patronizing when he says, “I’m not trying to be unreasonable. I just want to make sure the system works–fair and square. You have a moral obligation to defend him.”

  Nobody can work up a case of self-serving righteous indignation like Jerry Edwards.

  “Why the hell do you care?” Rosie asks.

  “Because I’m a concerned citizen who is interested in seeing justice served.”

  And he’s a self-serving asshole who wants to sell newspapers. It’s a better story if the attorneys who represented Walker last time try to work the same magic again. It’s a terrific story if we fall on our faces.

  Rosie’s arms are folded and her tone is even when she says, “We’ll let you know.”

  His smirk grows broader when he says, “You’ll do the right thing.” He points a stubby finger at her and says, “If you provide Walker with an adequate defense and you play by the rules, you have nothing to worry about.” His beady eyes narrow when he adds, “If you duck this case or you don’t play fair, I’ll hang your ass out to dry on page one of the Chronicle.”

  And if we take on this case and it goes to hell, our reputations will be ruined and our firm will implode.

  He saunte
rs down the corridor without waiting for a response. It would be a mistake to underestimate him and his word processor will be burning tonight.

  Rosie and I assess the damage in silence. Finally, I say to her, “We don’t have to do this.”

  The anger her voice is palpable when she says to me, “Yes, we do. We have no choice.”

  Ironically, Edwards seems to have accomplished what I couldn’t: he persuaded her to take the case. The greater irony is that I now feel a moral obligation to try to talk her out of it. Taking a case as a personal vendetta or to settle an old score isn’t an especially inspired idea. I start to backpedal cautiously. “Let him write whatever he wants,” I say. “It will die down in a couple of days.”