George looked at me quizzically. “What do you mean? And how do you know this?”
“I have a client. His name is Michael Reynolds. He’s being charged with the murder of Judge Sanders.”
“Yeah, I read about that in the paper. But what does that have to do with Judge Perez?:”
“Gerald Stone was involved in murdering Judge Sanders. And I have proof that Judge Perez was involved in a blackmail scheme involving Judge Sanders. I don’t have proof that this blackmailing scheme was directly connected to Gerald Stone, but I think that it would be easy enough to find that out.”
George looked like was skeptical but interested in what I had to say. “I think that I see,” he said. “You’re saying that Gerald Stone murdered Judge Sanders, because Judge Sanders would have awarded my clients millions of dollars and would have ordered hundreds of millions in punitive damages?”
“Yes. And I also have proof that Judge Perez wasn’t randomly assigned to this case. Somebody hacked into the computer at the Western District of Missouri to make sure that Judge Perez was assigned to this case. That, combined with the murder of Judge Sanders and the fact that Judge Perez was involved with finding a bogus paternity finding that showed that Judge Sanders fathered a child with his own daughter, and I think that it’s pretty easy to show that Judge Perez is dirty. You need to figure out a way to petition for a peremptory challenge to Judge Perez, so that your clients don’t have to face him.”
“Hold on,” George said. “What do you mean, Judge Perez bogusly found that Judge Sanders fathered a child by his own daughter?”
At that, I showed him the proof. I had printed out the entire file that Anna found for me. It showed that Judge Perez signed an order finding that Judge Sanders fathered a child with Christina Sanders, despite the fact that the DNA tests showed that Michael Reynolds was actually the father.
George blinked his eyes, as if he didn’t quite know what he was seeing. “This paternity case was when he was a state court judge,” he said. “Which wasn’t that long ago.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I said. “Remember, he was a state court judge just six months ago. That was about when you were gathering your class and doing your investigations on this case. So, Gerald Stone knew, even then, that this case was coming.”
“But what would be the point in the blackmail then?”
“This is my theory. Gerald Stone has Judge Perez in his pocket. Gerald Stone knew that the Dowling Chemical case would be assigned to Judge Sanders, so he had Judge Perez rule on this bogus paternity case so that he, Gerald, could blackmail Judge Sanders into recusing himself from the case when it was assigned to him. When Judge Sanders refused, he was murdered.”
George shook his head. “This sounds like a bad movie. But I’ll look into it. In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and try for a peremptory challenge against Judge Perez, but unless I can get some kind of hard evidence that Perez is in the tank for Gerald, I don’t see that happening. But I will do my due diligence on the allegations that you’re making.”
“Please do. Follow the money. Maybe you can find out if there were any secret payments made between Gerald and Judge Perez. Hopefully you can figure that out.”
We chatted for several more minutes before I excused myself.
As I left his office, I knew that there was no guarantee that anything would come of this, but I knew that I did my part. That made me feel good.
Thirty-Three
Eight Weeks Later
“Your Michael Reynolds trial is today, isn’t it?” Tammy was in my office, talking to me as I gathered together my files for my trial.
“It is. We picked a jury yesterday, and today’s the day.” I didn’t tell Tammy this, but my jury selection was the worst I ever did. I made sure that I got as many women on the jury as possible. I knew that the prosecutor was going to try to get in the evidence that Michael had raped women in the past, and I wasn’t going to object to any of that, even though this evidence was not allowed, at all, in this context. But if I didn’t object to her putting this evidence in, then it was going to come in. I knew that women were going to want to hang him once this evidence came in, so I loaded the jury up with 9 women. April didn’t object to that, of course, and she admitted to me that she was surprised that I would do that.
“Method to my madness,” I said. I hoped that she would accept that explanation and not question it.
I was still determined to bring down Gerald and Judge Perez. I hadn’t yet figured out just how to do that, but I knew that I was going to have to do it after this case was over. Perhaps, at that point, I could go to the police and tell them my suspicions and ask them to look into it. I could have possibly gotten Kayla to speak with them, but she wasn’t on their radar, so she had been laying low.
That was so frustrating to me. I couldn’t do anything with the information I had, because implicating Kayla and Gerald would also implicate my client, and I couldn’t do anything to implicate him. At least, I couldn’t do anything to implicate him at the moment. Once his case was over and he either had a guilty verdict or a not guilty verdict, and he was no longer my client, I could go ahead and tell the police what I knew about Gerald and Kayla, and what I suspected about Judge Perez.
Gerald was going to be relatively easy. Kayla would roll on him in a heartbeat. But Judge Perez was going to be trickier. The evidence against him was circumstantial at best. But I was going to show Chief Judge Haynes the evidence in the Christina Sanders paternity case and hopefully she could piece it together on her own. That was my hope, anyhow.
I got to the courthouse early and sat at my table. I was going to have to make a bit of a show in defending Michael. I had to walk the line between total incompetence, which would get me in hot water, and basic incompetence, where I could tell the Missouri Bar that I simply was having a bad day. That was going to be a tough line to walk.
Michael soon arrived, along with April and her second chair, Ron Lankford. Michael sat down next to me at the table. “Were you harassed by the press outside?” he asked me.
He was referring to the fact that the media was outside the courtroom. This was a huge case, so there was media outlets from all over the nation sending their reporters to the courthouse. The cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, but that didn’t deter the satellite trucks and the hordes of press agents that were surrounding the perimeter of the Jackson County Courthouse.
“Of course. I can’t tell them anything, of course.”
Michael looked nervous. “Are you ready for this? I have to say, I thought that you and I would have been meeting a lot more to go over trial strategy. I was disappointed that you haven’t called me more to come in. I thought that we’d go over cross-examination questions and would have gone over discovery and everything like that by now.”
I shrugged. “I got this. There was no need for the two of us to get together.”
“Do you treat all your clients like this?”
“Like what?”
“Ignore them before trial. I’ve been calling for weeks now, and I’ve come into your office to track you down, and I haven’t been able to get in touch with you. This is my life, Harper. My life.”
“I got this.” I didn’t have it, of course. I wasn’t going to, either. By the end of this proceeding, Michael was going to do the perp walk.
And I was finally going to be free.
“All rise,” the bailiff announced. “God save the State of Missouri and this honorable court.”
At that, Judge Graham took her place at the bench. “You may be seated,” she said. “Ms. Todd, you may address the jury with your opening statement.”
“Thank you, your honor.” April walked over to the jury and began. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I want you to tell the story about an honorable man, Judge Robert Sanders. He was an excellent judge and an excellent family man. During his time on the bench as a federal district court judge, he consistently was a man for the people. He delivered justice for the little guys,
the Davids who were taking on the Goliaths. He always loved the Davids, because he was one of them. He knew them. He took his job very seriously and he loved what he did. He was about justice first, last and always.”
April hung her head, walked away from the jury box and then came back. “Justice first, last and always. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the federal judiciary lost a shining light. A beacon of justice. On October 19 of this year, that light was cruelly snuffed by the defendant, Michael Reynolds. You will hear evidence in this case that Mr. Reynolds was found at the scene of the crime, standing over the body of his father-in-law. You will hear evidence that, prior to the actual murder, Judge Sanders was being slowly poisoned. His life drained away, agonizingly, day by day, hour by hour. You will hear evidence that Mr. Reynolds had special access to Judge Sanders, in that he, and he alone, filled Judge Sanders’ pill boxes, which gave him opportunity to poison Judge Sanders’ orange juice. You will hear evidence that Mr. Reynolds had motive to kill Judge Sanders, as Mr. Reynolds was carrying on multiple affairs, and Judge Sanders had threatened to tell his daughter, who Mr. Reynolds was married to, about these affairs. You will hear evidence that if Christina Sanders, the daughter of Judge Sanders, divorced Mr. Reynolds that Mr. Reynolds would have been left penniless. You will hear evidence that Mr. Reynolds has a violent past. Finally, you will hear evidence that directly ties Mr. Reynolds to the murder weapon.”
As she spoke, she walked back and forth, looking each and every juror in the eye. “Mr. Reynolds murdered Judge Sanders in cold blood. In cold blood.” She shook her head. “And, in so doing, he deprived this world of a generous and just man. Thank you.”
She sat down.
“Ms. Ross,” Judge Graham said to me. “Please present the jury with your opening statement.”
I stood up. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecutor was absolutely right. Judge Sanders was a man of enormous stature. A generous man who found for the plaintiff against the defendant more often than any other judge in the Western District of Missouri. By an order of magnitude. If you were a plaintiff, you wanted to draw Judge Sanders, because he cared. He cared very much for the little guy.”
I walked over to my table and then walked back to the jury box. “My client did not kill Judge Sanders. He called the police from the scene of the crime. He wouldn’t have done that if he had killed the judge. Thank you very much.”
At that, I sat down.
Michael put his hand on my arm. “That’s it?” he hissed. “That’s the only opening statement you’re going to make? Why didn’t you talk about what your evidence is going to show and all that?”
“Method to my madness,” I whispered.
Actually, there was no method. I just had to go through the motions. I had to make some kind of showing for the Missouri Bar when the inevitable complaint came down the pike.
“There better be,” he said. “And what’s up with her calling me a violent guy? She can’t say that.”
I grimaced. “I’ll object when she brings that in,” I said.
“It’s already in. It’s in the opening statement. Why didn’t you object?”
“I don’t object to opening statements. It’s bad form.”
“It’s worse form to allow something like that to go unchallenged.”
Judge Graham was glaring at the two of us as we whispered back and forth to each other. “Ms. Ross, please. If you need to have a conference with your client, then I’ll call a recess.”
“No, your honor, that will not be necessary,” I said. I turned to Michael. “Please be quiet.”
I looked in his eyes and I saw that he was ready to blow a gasket. I smiled, knowing that the jury was watching him, and, if I could get him to lose his temper, all the better.
“Call your first witness, Ms. Todd,” she said.
“The state calls Officer Chris Murphy,” she said.
Office Murphy was the cop on the scene. I sat up, because I had a feeling that the case was about to fall apart right in front of my eyes. At least, I hoped that it would. I really didn’t want to sit next to my client any longer than I had to.
Then again, this guy probably wasn’t going to be the one who was going to sink Michael. It was going to be forensic guy who would testify that the gloves that belonged to Michael perfectly matched the glove print that was found on the gun. After I received the forensic analysis on Michael’s gloves, which perfectly matched the glove print that was found on the murder weapon, I sent that analysis over to the prosecutor as a part of the discovery documents that she had requested from me.
Of course, if I cared to object to the prosecutor using that analysis, I certainly could have. I could object to lack of foundation. I could object to chain of evidence.
Yet, I knew that the prosecutor was going to bring that evidence in, and I wasn’t going to object. I was going to let her do it. And that was going to be the smoking gun that was going to reduce Michael’s case to a rancid pile of rubble.
At least, that was the hope. And my prayer.
April swore Officer Murphy in and asked the basic questions about his name, rank, etc.
“You were the officer that was the first responder, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Who called 911 in this case?”
“Mr. Reynolds,” he said, pointing to Michael.
“Mr. Reynolds called 911,” April said knowingly. “And please tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury about what you found when you arrived at the scene.”
“I found the deceased on the floor of the kitchen. He had been shot twice, once through the head and once through the chest. And Mr. Reynolds was sitting down on the couch, waiting for us to arrive.”
“And what was Mr. Reynolds’ demeanor at this time?”
“He was calm. In fact, when he called 911, he was calm then, too. That was what the dispatcher told me.”
That was hearsay, full stop, but I let it pass. Because I let it pass, Michael nudged me, but I shrugged my shoulders.
“By calm, what do you mean? Explain to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what you mean by that.”
“He was sitting on the couch eating a piece of chicken,” he said. “He had a piece of chicken on the coffee table in front of him. I asked him what he was doing, and he said that he was having a snack while he waited for us to arrive.”
I suppressed a smile. I hadn’t heard this part yet. Somehow that chicken was going to make an appearance. I just didn’t know that it would make its appearance in quite this way.
“He’s lying,” Michael whispered. “Lying. I wasn’t calmly eating a piece of chicken. He’s making me look like a sociopath.”
I realized then that Michael was right. The Officer was lying about Michael calmly eating a piece of chicken. He specifically told me that the only reason why he arrested Michael was because Michael was on the scene. Not that Michael was on the scene and acting like a sociopath by calmly eating chicken while his father-in-law’s body was in the kitchen.
Still, it was an entertaining story, so I let it go.
“Sitting on the couch eating a piece of chicken. Sitting on the couch eating a piece of chicken,” April said. She nodded her head. “What else caused you to believe that Mr. Reynolds was perfectly calm?”
“Just his body language. He was sitting on the couch, but he was slouched on the couch. As if he was just getting ready to watch television or something. I had to ask him to stand up so that I could question him, because he suggested to me that I should have a seat next to him to ask my questions. It was very odd.”
“Lying, lying, lying,” Michael whispered.
“Odd,” April said. She nodded again and paced. “Odd. What happened when you questioned him?”
“He told me that he was out getting fried chicken and he came back and found that Judge Sanders had been killed.”
“I see. And was his story believable?”
Michael nudged me. “Object to that. It calls for speculation.”
<
br /> I just sat there and I heard Michael start to breathe heavily.
“No,” Officer Murphy said in answer to April’s question about whether Michael’s story was believable.
“No. And why wasn’t his story believable?”
“Because my partner, Howard Flynn, was outside speaking with the neighbors. There were neighbors on the street, because they heard the gunshots, and they all said that Mr. Reynolds car had been in the driveway for the past hour. That was unusual, because Mr. Reynolds said that he had been getting fried chicken, and that he called 911 immediately after he got into the house. That contradicted the witness statements.”
I looked up at Judge Graham, who was staring right at me.
Michael, for his part, was nudging me hard the entire time that this witness was speaking. “Hearsay, hearsay, hearsay. Where are you? And he’s lying about that. My car wasn’t there in the driveway for an hour. Not at all.”
Yeah, it was hearsay. It was double hearsay, really. This cop was quoting his partner, who, in turn, was reporting on what the neighbors were saying. I was sure that April was delighted that I was allowing all this to come in, because it made her job that much easier.
As for the fact that the cop was lying…so be it. Let him lie. I wasn’t going to cross-exam him very hard. I knew that the cop was lying, because he told me that he arrested Michael simply because he was on the scene. I remembered that when I spoke with Officer Murphy. He certainly didn’t say a word about the neighbors stating that Michael’s car was parked in the driveway for an hour. That would have been significant, and it would have been in the police report. So, Michael was right - Officer Murphy was lying. But it was a good story, and this testimony made it look like they really had a reason to arrest Michael, so I let it pass.
The judge banged her gavel. “I need to call a recess,” she said. “To speak with counsel. I’m very sorry, Officer Murphy. I will have to excuse you, but I don’t want you to go too far. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are also excused. Thank you.”
Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller Page 27