Justice Returns

by William Bernhardt

Now I’d made my point, so it was indeed time to move on. “Let’s discuss that storage shed. How many people had access?”

  “It was locked.”

  “How many people had the key?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did Mina Ali?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because you never bothered to talk to her. What about her brother, Kir? He came to the apartment frequently, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did he have access?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sounds to me like, after you found the so-called explosives, you stopped investigating.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Or to be more accurate, you stopped investigating anyone other than the defendant. Because you’d already made up your mind that he was guilty. Based on unsigned memos and prescription meds.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “You mentioned fertilizer. Is it unusual for people in Oklahoma to have fertilizer in the gardening shed?”

  “We all know that fertilizer can be used—”

  “Motion to strike. Nonresponsive. Let’s try this again, Officer. Is it unusual for Oklahomans to have fertilizer in the gardening shed?”

  “It wasn’t just a gardening shed.”

  “I bet you have fertilizer in your garage as we speak. True?”

  He squirmed. “Possibly.”

  “Did you discover any bomb components?”

  “There were some computers.”

  “But no bombs. Right?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Isn’t it a fact that what you’re calling explosives were actually fireworks?”

  “What’s the difference? Both contain gunpowder and fuses.”

  “What’s the difference? In Oklahoma? In June? Who doesn’t have fireworks?”

  Takei frowned. “Foreigners.”

  “Foreigners can’t be patriots?”

  “People conspiring to bring down the government aren’t likely to celebrate Independence Day.”

  “Except my client isn’t a foreigner. He’s a US citizen. Born and raised in Oklahoma.”

  Takei shifted his weight.

  “Did you find any evidence indicating that Oz wanted to bring down the government?”

  He hedged. “The documents speak for themselves.”

  “The documents don’t say a word about bringing down the government, and you admitted you don’t know who wrote them. You’re not basing this accusation on evidence. You’re basing it on Oz’s religion and politics.”

  “We’re trained to keep an eye out for people who pose a threat.”

  “Such as?”

  Takei was becoming agitated, which caused him to speak more freely than he probably should. “Look, we all know who brought down the World Trade Center. We know who supports PACT, which your boy was—”

  “You’re saying that, because Oz—an American citizen—is also a Muslim interested in political and religious freedom, he’s a terrorist.”

  “I didn’t say that. But we have to take care of our people. We’ll be the first blamed if we slip up. That’s just reality.”

  “I think the reality is that you targeted Oz because he’s Muslim. You decided he was guilty before you got to that apartment, and then you turned garbage into evidence to prove the conclusion you’d already reached.”

  Takei leaned forward, rising a bit. “We targeted him because he shot Nazir!”

  A loud buzz rose out of the gallery. The judge pounded his gavel, trying to bring the courtroom back into order. He was not happy. “Strike that outburst from the record. Anything further, Mr. Kincaid?”

  “Yes. Officer Takei, what did you mean just now when you used the word targeted.” Just to remind the jury that he did.

  “I didn’t mean that. I was using your words. I meant to say ‘investigated.’”

  I just let that hang in the air a few moments.

  “Anything else?” Judge Santino asked.

  “No, Your Honor.”

  Thrillkill chose not to redirect. I returned to our table. I couldn’t read Oz. He probably didn’t know what to think of that spectacle. I trusted Christina’s instincts.

  “Did I do any good?”

  She shrugged. “I think you did the best you could with a bad hand.”

  I nodded. Probably the best I could hope for under the circumstances. But I wasn’t at all sure it would be enough to save Oz’s neck.

  35

  Thrillkill could see the clock just as easily as I could, and I knew he would plan the remainder of the day accordingly. When you schedule your witnesses, there are practical constraints, like the witnesses’ availability. But first and foremost, you must never forget that you’re putting on a show for the jurors, and jurors like to be entertained (without feeling that they’re being entertained). When the trial turns tedious, you can’t count on them absorbing anything you or your witnesses say. You have to maintain rhythm and pace.

  Thrillkill needed a witness he could squeeze into the remaining time and still feel he ended the day on a high note, leaving the jurors enthralled and itching to convict. It would seem he felt he had just the witness to do the trick.

  “The United States calls Traye Conners.”

  Conners was a middle-aged man, heavyset, a little stubbly, but not unfashionably so. Definitely of white European descent.

  Thrillkill quickly established who he was, where he was from, and that he worked in Nazir’s CIA office. “What did you do for Agent Nazir?”

  “I was his personal assistant.”

  “Can you describe the duties you performed?”

  “About what you would expect.” He shifted his weight somewhat awkwardly. He was not the first large man who found it challenging to squeeze into the witness box. “I screened his phone calls. Opened the mail. Typed his correspondence. Kept his calendar. The usual.”

  “In the course of performing your duties, did you ever have an opportunity to see or read correspondence directed to Agent Nazir?”

  “Yes, regularly. I screened his mail just as I did his phone calls.”

  “Have you ever seen this before?” He approached with the document premarked “Prosecution Exhibit 21.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Would you tell the jury what it is?”

  “This is a letter we received on”—he checked the stamp on the front of the attached envelope—“May fourteenth.”

  “Could you describe the contents for the jury?”

  “It’s a death threat.”

  I saw a woman on the front row of the jury box stiffen slightly. “Objection,” I said. “Instead of characterizing the contents, why don’t we have the witness read it and let the jury decide for themselves?”

  The judge shook his head. “This is not your witness examination, though if you want to do that on cross, you are free to do so.”

  I’d planted the seed. It was all I could do at this point.

  “A threat against whom?”

  “Agent Nazir.”

  “Who’s making the threat?”

  “The letter is unsigned. But it makes specific reference to”—he glanced down—“the torture and brutal mistreatment of Omar al-Jabbar.”

  “Did you make any effort to find out who sent the letter?”

  “Yes. We launched a full investigation. We take threats seriously.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We organized—”

  “Objection,” I said. “The witness was asked what he did, but he’s about to tell us what his office did. He should only be speaking about activities of which he has personal knowledge.”

  Thrillkill picked up on that. “Mr. Conners, are you familiar with the investigation your office conducted into the letter?”

  “Extremely.”

  “Were you involved in the investigation?”

  “Very much so.”

  The judge nodded. “You may proceed.”

  Conners picked
up right where he left off. “We used the postmark to trace the letter to a particular post office.”

  “Which office?”

  “The one two blocks from the defendant’s apartment.”

  “Anything else?”

  “We ran fingerprint tests.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Nothing one hundred percent conclusive. But some partial prints that would be consistent with handling by the defendant.”

  “So there’s a good chance the defendant held the envelope.”

  “Objection. Leading.”

  The judge nodded. “Sustained. Let the witness choose his own words.”

  Thrillkill rephrased. “Do you have an opinion as to whether the defendant held this envelope?”

  “Given the fingerprint evidence, there’s a good chance that he did.”

  “Thank you. Pass the witness.”

  I’ll give Thrillkill credit for moving things along, if nothing else. He was not wasting anyone’s time.

  I plowed right in, even though I knew I had precious little that was going to make any difference to the jury. “You said the letter contained a death threat, but I noticed you never read the alleged threat. What does the letter actually say?”

  “Basically, it warns Nazir—”

  “Sir, I did not ask for the Cliffs Notes version. Read us what the letter actually says.”

  I could see his hands trembled. I didn’t normally think of myself as the kind of guy who inspires fear and dread, but being a witness was always nerve-racking. “It says, ‘Behold the pale rider will come for you, and his name is death.’”

  “And you think that’s a death threat?”

  “Yeah. What do you think it is?”

  “I think it’s another verse from the Bible. And what do you know, I just happen to have one on me.” I read from the Book of Revelation, the King James Version. “‘And I looked and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’” I closed the book. “Do you find the Bible threatening?”

  “Well, no .

  “Then why would you find a Bible verse threatening?”

  “It seemed clear given the context—”

  “What context? That’s all the letter says.”

  “It has Agent Nazir’s name at the top.”

  “And that makes the Bible verse a threat?”

  “That’s how I read it.”

  “Because that’s how you wanted to read it. Or, rather, that’s how you want the jury to read it.”

  “Look, we’re in the intelligence business. We have to respond to potential threats against our agents. There are many people who would like to take out every CIA agent on earth.”

  “Would you be willing to admit that, at best, this message is ambiguous?”

  “If you say so.”

  “If someone really wanted to threaten or terrorize a CIA agent, they could probably do a better job of it than this rather vague message.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like saying, ‘I’m going to kill you.’”

  “Perhaps he’s on a religious jihad.”

  “So you think the defendant is dangerous because he’s Muslim.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Sounded like it.”

  Thrillkill jumped to his rescue. “Your Honor, this is argumentative. He’s deliberately trying to confuse the witness.”

  The judge drew himself up. “I do get the sense that we are not moving forward. Let’s move on, Counselor.”

  I was done anyway. “Mr. Conners, you said the fingerprints on the envelope could belong to the defendant.”

  “I did.”

  “And then again, they might not. Correct?”

  “The partial latents we discovered were consistent—”

  “Forgive me, but you’re not answering the question. Isn’t it a fact that they might not belong to the defendant?”

  “They are consistent—”

  “Which is your convoluted way of saying they might or might not belong to the defendant. Right?”

  Conners was pissed. “Whatever.”

  “Did you take prints from anyone else who had access to the apartment where Oz lived?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t think that might be relevant?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Because you’d already decided who committed the crime?”

  “Because we already had a fingerprint match.”

  “A possible fingerprint match. And just to be clear, even if this were a one hundred percent certain fingerprint match—which it isn’t—that still wouldn’t prove Oz wrote the letter or mailed it, right? Only that, at some time or another, he touched the envelope.”

  “I suppose.”

  I turned as if finished, but of course I wasn’t. I just wanted him to experience that brief moment of relief arising from thinking the persecution was over—and then to tear it away from him. “Oh, one more thing—did you check the letter for fingerprints?”

  “What?”

  “You checked the envelope. Logically, you must’ve checked the letter, too.”

  “Right.”

  “Now anyone could’ve touched the envelope at some stage in its travels, but the letter must’ve been touched by whoever wrote it.”

  “True.”

  “But you didn’t find anything remotely like Oz’s fingerprints on the letter, did you?”

  “What we found was a mass of unclear prints that made analysis difficult to—”

  “I’m sorry, but you’re not answering my question. You didn’t find Oz’s fingerprints on the letter, did you?”

  “No. We found no clear prints. Only smudges.”

  “So you do not know who wrote or sent that letter. Which only contains a Bible verse. Thank you. No more questions.”

  I headed back to my table. Christina gave me a little wink. I’d done the best I could to spoil Thrillkill’s end-of-day witness.

  One Lego brick at a time . . .

  36

  Next day, Thrillkill dragged us through several more technical witnesses and laid various bits of his circumstantial patchwork quilt. Exactly the kind of witnesses you want to blow through quickly before the jury is completely awake.

  I was surprised that Thrillkill called his PACT witness so early in the trial. When I thought about it a little more, though, I realized how potentially dangerous this witness could be for him. Yes, he wanted to establish Oz’s connection with this so-called terrorist organization, and perhaps to elicit some testimony about Oz’s bitterness over his arrest and interrogation. But he certainly didn’t want PACT going on about the injustice of CIA actions or Oz’s torture.

  “Do you know the defendant?” Thrillkill asked.

  “Yes.” The witness, Kaivon Siddig, sat tall in the seat, long, dark somewhat-wavy hair pulled back behind his head. His face bore a seriousness that made you wonder if he’d been born a political activist.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “He came to the PACT offices, not far from the mall.”

  “Why?”

  “He said he was sympathetic to our goals.”

  “And what are your goals?”

  “We hope to improve the public opinion of and ensure rights for Americans of Middle Eastern descent, especially citizens from Iraq. Most are no different from any other Americans, with kids and mortgages and car payments. Most deplore the idea of random violence perpetrated against innocent people for political causes. Not everyone from the Middle East is a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban or ISIS. Not everyone supports the Syrian government or, for that matter, the rebels. We want the same peace and safety as everyone else.”

  “Part of your agenda is to seek redress for past offenses.”

  “That’s the work of JUSTICE IRAQ.”

  “Your sister organization. Doesn’t that by definition make you an antigovernment organization?”

  “I disagree. I don’t think anyone is naive enou
gh to think the government has never done anything wrong. Sometimes we make mistakes—especially in wartime. That’s all the more reason to be diligent about addressing those mistakes later.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s get back to your discussions with the defendant. Did he ever mention any grudges again the US government?”

  “Not when I first met him. But later.”

  “What was his complaint?”

  “He felt he had been treated poorly at the hands of the CIA.”

  “Did he mention the late Agent Nazir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you please tell the jury what he said about Agent Nazir?”

  Siddig cleared his throat. “According to Oz, Nazir was instrumental in his arrest and . . . interrogation by the CIA.” No doubt Thrillkill had instructed him not to use the word “torture.”

  “Did you ever hear him indicate that he wanted to do something to avenge this allegedly wrongful treatment?”

  “I never heard him use the word ‘avenge.’ But he did say we needed to do something about Nazir. He said if this man were not stopped, there was no telling how many people he might harm.”

  “And how exactly did he propose to stop Nazir?”

  Siddig hesitated—just a fraction too long. “He never specifically said.”

  “Sir, I know you are possibly sympathetic to the defendant and his political goals, but you are under oath, subject to prosecution for perjury if you withhold the truth. Let me ask you again. Isn’t it true that the defendant advocated strong action against Nazir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it true he advocated violence in support of your cause?”

  “At times.”

  “In fact, he was so extreme you didn’t want anything to do with him, true?”

  “True. I felt it would be best if we kept him away from JUSTICE IRAQ. We kept him in the less controversial division. Lobbying work.”

  “You were afraid he’d kill someone.”

  “I wasn’t sure what he might do.”

  “But you didn’t want any part of it.”

  “Correct. I kept my distance.”

  “I would’ve done the same.” He glanced at me. “A man is known by the company he keeps. No more questions.”

  I couldn’t decide whether it was worthwhile to cross Siddig. Christina was equally ambivalent. This was a foundational witness. Thrillkill was laying groundwork, but this witness on his own didn’t say much. But like the fool I am and I’ll always be, I decided to make an attempt.