The jury left, as did the witness. I closed my eyes knowing what was coming.
“Ms. Ross, Ms. Todd,” Judge Graham said to us. “Please come back to my chambers.”
I sighed, knowing that I was about to get my ass handed to me. I also knew that I was going to have to start trying just a little bit harder.
The three of us went back to her chambers.
“Sit down,” she said to the two of us.
We both sat down.
“Ms. Todd, I don’t know what you’re doing,” Judge Graham said. “You obviously didn’t prep your witness before he sat down at that stand. He committed double hearsay and your question about whether his story was believable calls for a conclusion. Not to mention the fact that you brought up, in your opening statement, that Mr. Reynolds has a history of violence. This isn’t your first rodeo, Ms. Todd, so I don’t know why you are so unprepared.”
April looked embarrassed. As for myself, I braced myself for the judge laying into me.
I didn’t have to wait long.
“And Ms. Ross, you’re not doing your job at all here. We’re here in chambers discussing this for one reason – you aren’t objecting when you’re supposed to. I can’t protect your client, Ms. Ross, from hearsay accusations and from character assassinations. You must do that. Now, this is a warning to the both of you – Ms. Todd, you need to rein in your witnesses. You know better than that. And Ms. Ross, you need to object. I’m not going to stand for much more of this. If the two of you don’t want me to call a mistrial, then I suggest that you both start acting more professionally.”
“I will your honor,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”
“I’m sorry too, your honor,” April said.
At that, the three of us walked back into the courtroom.
I was slapped down, so I knew that I was going to have to take a different tact.
Everybody filed back in, and the Officer Murphy was seated at the witness stand once again. “I’ll remind you that you’re still under oath,” Judge Graham told Officer Murphy.
“Now, Officer Murphy, you said that you arrived at the scene, and the defendant was eating a piece of chicken and he calmly asked you to join him on the couch. Was there any other behavior that the defendant exhibited that seemed odd do you or out of place?”
“Well, just the fact that I asked him questions and he answered them in a calm voice the entire time seemed abnormal to me. I asked him about where he was that evening, and he calmly said that he was getting fried chicken. And then he got up and got the cardboard container of chicken to show me and he smiled when he did that. He kept making jokes, too, about his father-in-law. Inappropriate jokes.” Officer Jackson shook his head. “Mind you, all of this was happening as the body of his father-in-law was still in the kitchen.”
“He’s lying again,” Michael said. “I wouldn’t make jokes like that. You better cross-examine him hard.”
“What kind of inappropriate jokes did Mr. Reynolds make in front of you?” April asked Officer Murphy.
“I don’t remember exactly, I only remember thinking that it was odd that he was making jokes.” He put his hand on his chin. “Oh, yes, I do remember one. He asked me what I would call 100 judges chained together at the bottom of the ocean. I told him I didn’t know, and he said ‘a good start.’”
I inwardly groaned. Of all the dumb jokes the Officer could have come up with, and he told that one. That particular one. That was the dumbest and oldest one in the book. Anyhow, he told it wrong. It was supposed to be 100 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean, not judges. Everybody loved judges. Everybody hated lawyers. That was the whole point of the joke.
“Lying, lying, lying.” Michael’s voice sounded frantic and hysterical.
“So, Mr. Reynolds told you that he was out getting chicken and came home to find his father-in-law shot dead. Did you take him into custody right there at the home?” April asked.
“Yes.”
“What gave you probable cause to make an arrest?”
“The fact that he was there at the scene and that he was acting odd. He wasn’t acting like most people do who are in this situation.”
I reluctantly stood up. “Motion to strike. Witness stated a conclusion.”
“Sustained.” Judge Graham smiled at me and nodded. Her eyes said atta girl. Keep it up.
I inwardly rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to lift a damn finger in this case, but I was going to have to. To avoid a mistrial, I was going to have to.
“When you took him down to the police station, how was he acting in the transport over?”
“He kept making jokes to us in the backseat. And chatting to us about his day.” He shook his head. “He didn’t say a word to us about the fact that his father-in-law was murdered. Not a single word. He seemed to want to speak with us about anything else but what had happened to the deceased.”
“Lying,” Michael said.
“And how did he react when he was brought in for questioning?” April asked.
“He was smiling broadly and laughing. In fact, when his mug shot was taken, he was smiling in that photograph.”
“That’s really a lie. You can see in my mug-shot that I wasn’t smiling at all.”
That was true. I saw the mug-shot, and Michael really wasn’t smiling. I inwardly shrugged and tried to let it go.
“One more thing. Did you recover the murder weapon at the scene?”
“I did not.”
“Was the murder weapon recovered?”
“It was.”
“Tell me, using your own knowledge, how you came to know that the murder weapon was recovered?”
“A gun was found in the city landfill. Our officers searched for it for three weeks. This gun was the weapon that was used in this murder, because it was matched with the bullets that were found in the judge.”
I nodded my head, knowing that the forensic guy who matched the gun with the bullet was going to be called. I could cross-examine that guy, but I wasn’t going to very hard. This forensic guys knew their stuff, so if that gun from the landfill was matched with the bullets found in the judge, then that was the gun, all right.
“I have nothing further,” April said and sat down.
My heart was pounding, as I realized that I had to question this guy just enough to avoid a mistrial and a Bar complaint, and not so much that my client suddenly started looking sympathetic. I was going to have to walk a fine line, which was made complicated by the fact that I wasn’t prepared for this cop’s testimony. He told me, when I went down to the station, that he arrested Michael simply because he was on the scene. I wasn’t prepared for him to lie like he was doing on the stand.
“Ms. Ross,” Judge Graham said. “Your witness.”
I walked towards the witness stand. Ordinarily, I would have ripped this guy apart. I would have been able to use his statement to me at the police station that there was nothing amiss with Michael, and I would have thrown that up in his face. I could have asked him to point to the police report and to show me where he wrote down that Michael was acting odd and that Michael’s car was in the driveway for an hour.
In short, I ordinarily would have made mince-meat out of this guy. He would have completely lost credibility by the time I got through with him.
But in this case…I needed the jury to believe him. He had a good story, one that made Michael look guilty as the day is long. I wanted that story to stay in the jury’s mind.
I cleared my throat. “Officer Murphy, have you had experience with men acting like you claim that Michael was acting?”
I was carefully laying the groundwork for his testimony to damn Michael even more, all while making it look like I was trying to cross-examine him, and, oops, I didn’t get the answer I wanted. Happens all the time.
Be careful, Harper. You don’t want this conviction overturned on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel. Just do enough, but not too much.
“I have.”
&
nbsp; “How many times have you encountered men who acted like you say that Michael acted at the scene? Non-chalant, uncaring, joking around?”
He shrugged. “A good dozen times, I guess.”
“Out of those men that you arrested who acted extremely calmly when you arrested them, how many of those men ended up being convicted for the crime for which they were arrested?”
“100% of the time.”
Good, good. “100% of the time? So, you’re saying that every time you have arrested somebody who acted extremely calm when there was a dead body in the room, that person was found guilty by a jury of his peers?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Nothing further, your honor.”
There. That was plausible enough. When Michael filed his ineffective assistance of counsel appeal, I could simply say that I was looking for a different answer there. That I was looking for the officer to say 50% of the time or something like that, and I was going to use that answer to springboard to different questions. But he said 100% of the time, so there wasn’t anywhere I could go with that, so I decided just to rest.
I sat down and Michael was ready to kill me. I knew this. I could feel his eyes on me, even though I refused to turn my head to look at him. “Why did you do that? Why didn’t you question him harder?” Michael’s voice was a whisper, but I could feel it. I could feel it in my bones.
I turned to look at him. “Stop questioning me.”
I looked up at Judge Graham and saw that she was still studying me. She knew that I wasn’t on my game. I had been in front of her enough times that she knew how I usually operated. I was usually aggressive with lying witnesses. I could always break them down.
I closed my eyes and prayed that there wouldn’t be a mistrial. I needed this conviction. The judge calling a mistrial would be a disaster, because it would delay my plan to try to bring down Gerald. I had decided that bringing down Gerald, and bringing him down quickly, would be the best way to also bring down Judge Perez before the Dowling trial. Assuming I was correct, and Gerald was in on the whole scheme with Judge Perez, I knew that he was going to sing like Adele about the judge, in order to get a better deal.
I needed that to happen, and I needed that to happen quickly. I wanted everyone who was involved in this sorry affair to burn. Except maybe Kayla. I kinda felt badly for her.
“Call your next witness, Ms. Todd,” Judge Graham said.
“The State calls Bradley Cipolla.”
Bradley was the guy who was going to testify about matching up the gun with the bullets. I knew this, because he was on April’s witness list and I had also seen his interrogatories and deposition transcript. There wasn’t much that I was going to be able to impeach him with. He was pretty solid.
Brad went to the witness stand and was sworn in.
“Mr. Cipolla, could you please state your name for the record?”
“Bradley J. Cipolla.”
“Mr. Cipolla, what is your current title?”
“I’m the lead forensic investigator for the Kansas City police department. I specialize in firearm forensics.”
“Firearm forensics. Can you please explain what that means?”
“Basically, I match bullets with guns. That’s what I do, in a nutshell.”
“Okay. And what kind of training did you complete to become a forensic investigator?”
“I received a Bachelor of Science degree at Colorado State University, with a concentration in criminal forensics. I studied as an apprentice with Officer Dayton Roswell, who was the lead forensic investigator prior to my becoming the lead. Officer Roswell retired last year. My training with him lasted three years, and I learned about bullet striations, gunpowder residue, trajectory and ricochet, pin impressions and bullet tissue damage.”
“Tell me about the gun that was recovered from the landfill. Was it matched up with the bullets that were found in Judge Sanders?”
“Yes it was.”
“And how did you match up that gun with the bullets found in Judge Sanders?”
He cleared his throat. “I was able to match it by bullet striations.”
“Bullet striations. Explain what you mean by that.”
“Well, every gun barrel is different. Every gun barrel has a unique pattern of grooves. Because of this, every bullet fired from a certain gun is going to have that same unique groove pattern. The gun that was recovered from that landfill was matched to the bullets found in the victim, Robert Sanders, by matching striations.”
“And how did you match the striations in this case?”
“I fired another bullet from the recovered gun and matched that bullet up with the bullets found in Robert Sanders. Under a microscope, I can compare the strata on each bullet. Both the bullet fired from the recovered gun and the bullets found in the victim had identical strata.”
“The bullets had identical strata? Is it possible for two bullets, fired from two different guns, to have identical strata?”
“No. That is impossible.”
“And why is this?”
“Because the strata on a bullet is like a fingerprint. It’s unique, because the every gun barrel is 100% unique.”
“And what is your professional conclusion?”
“My professional conclusion is that the gun that was recovered from the landfill was the same gun that was used to kill the victim, Robert Sanders.”
April then went to her table and brought a gun out of a box, after carefully putting on latex gloves. “Is this the gun that was used to kill Robert Sanders?”
“It is.”
“I would like to enter this gun into evidence as Exhibit A,” April said.
“I have no objection,” I said.
“It is so entered,” Judge Graham said.
“I have nothing further.” April sat down.
“Your witness, Ms. Ross,” Judge Graham said.
“I have nothing for this witness, your honor.”
“Mr. Cipolla, you are excused,” Judge Graham said to the officer. “Ms. Todd, please call your next witness.”
“The State calls Alan Dennehy,” April said, and I sat up in my chair. I rubbed together my hands, knowing that this was going to be the good witness. He was the forensic expert who was going to testify about the gloves.
After I “accidentally” included my forensic report for the gloves in my document dump to April, she apparently took the ball and ran with it. She formally asked for the gloves, and I gave them to her, without Michael’s knowledge. I was really covered there, because April formally asked for them, and I was obligated to give them to her. She then hired her own forensic guy to test the gloves, and I knew the outcome. Alan Dennehy was going to testify to this.
I looked over at Michael, and saw that he had no idea what was coming. He was slouched in his chair, doodling on a piece of paper, looking pissed off. He didn’t show any degree of alarm about seeing this guy, though, so I knew that he was about to be blindsided.
Alan came to the stand and raised his right hand.
“Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” April asked him.
“I do.”
“Please state your name for the record.”
“Alan B. Dennehy.”
“Mr. Dennehy, what is your profession?”
“I am a forensic investigator.”
“Please state your qualifications to be a forensic investigator.”
He cleared his throat. “I received a bachelor of science in biology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1991. I went on to receive a master’s degree in Criminal Justice and Criminology from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, graduating in 1992. In getting both my bachelor’s degree and master’s degree, I took extensive coursework in DNA analysis and finger and glove print analysis. I became an officer in training on the Kansas City police force in 1993. I was an officer for 10 years, and, in 2003, I underwent an apprenticeship with a senior forensic
investigator, Officer Finney, that lasted two years. I graduated from that apprenticeship in 2005, and, since 2005, I have investigated over 3,000 crime scenes using forensic analysis.”
Impressive credentials. This guy was unimpeachable. Not that I wouldn’t be able to make him crack if I was really trying, but I wasn’t going to try, so I knew that the jury was going to find him extremely persuasive.
That was my hope.
“Okay. Now, Officer Dennehy, did you examine the gun that was found in the landfill and was matched to the crime scene?”
“I did.”
“And did you find fingerprints on this gun?”
“No I did not.”
“Did you find glove prints on this gun?”
“Yes, I did.”
“How did you recover these glove prints?”
He cleared his throat. “Glove prints are as unique as fingerprints. Each glove has a unique grain, which is found on the surface of each pair of gloves. Most pairs of gloves, over a period of time, pick up dirt and grease, which leaves prints on hard surfaces, such as that of a gun. I dusted the surface of the gun and I retrieved a unique gun print from the weapon.”
I turned and looked at Michael and saw that he was looking alarmed. He frantically left me a note on the yellow pad of paper. “What the fuck?” was all that note said.
I simply shrugged and turned back to listen to Alan give testimony that was going to definitively sink my client. Michael was going to be as sunk as the Titanic by the time this guy got through with his testimony.
April started to pace a little bit in front of the witness. Then she went over to her table and put on her latex gloves again, and picked up the pair of leather gloves that were in a box next to her table.
She approached the witness as Michael wrote another note. “Those are my fucking gloves. How did she get my fucking gloves?”
I shrugged again, and I wrote back. “Maybe one of your enemies sent them to her. I guess you were careless and left them somewhere.”
Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller Page 28