No Truth Left to Tell

by Michael McAuliffe

  MS. BATTLE: Why?

  MR. STONE: Because it looked like flames were consuming someone, like a real person. I admit to you right here and now I got like a little upset.

  MS. BATTLE: Was a person on fire?

  MR. STONE: No, thank God. It was a cross that was staked right in front of our courthouse. Can you believe that?

  MS. BATTLE: Did you see anything else?

  MR. STONE: Sure.

  MS. BATTLE: What?

  MR. STONE: I saw several—maybe three, but could be more—people running off. I just saw their figures in the dark. One was waving something. They were hollering.

  MS. BATTLE: Did you hear anything besides hollering?

  MR. STONE: They ran to a vehicle—maybe a pickup; I couldn’t see that good. I heard the truck backfire or a gun go off.

  MS. BATTLE: Do you know which?

  MR. STONE: I think it was a gunshot, but I’m not sure.

  MS. BATTLE: What was your reaction to seeing the cross explode in front of the courthouse?

  MR. STONE: I was pissed off.

  MS. BATTLE: What does a burning cross mean to you?

  MR. STONE: It means some morons think too much of themselves and not enough of others.

  MS. BATTLE: Were you afraid?

  MR. STONE: Look, I’m from the Bronx. If I’d had my gun, I would have chased the sons-of-bitches—

  MS. BATTLE: Nothing further.

  MR. DAWSON: Sir, you have no idea who actually planted that cross in the lawn, correct?

  MR. STONE: You’re wrong! I know it was a bunch of morons that done it.

  MR. DAWSON: Well, my question is, you don’t know names or identities, correct?

  MR. STONE: That’s right.

  MR. DAWSON: Nothing more.

  COURT: Redirect?

  MS. BATTLE: You did see that several people—more than one—planted and lit the cross, correct?

  MR. STONE: Yeah. Three, maybe more.

  MS. BATTLE: That’s all from the government.

  COURT: Mr. Stone, you’re excused as a witness.

  . . .

  Detective James Batiste of the Lynwood Police Department was the last witness in the government’s case-in-chief. The jury had heard from the victims, reviewed pictures of the crime scene, and even touched a charred, dead lump of wood in the well of the courtroom, so it was time for Batiste, in Mercer’s words, to deliver the knockout punch.

  The government’s evidence had come in with only token resistance. Defense counsel had lodged the occasional objection, but lawyers engaged in no extended wrangling about what evidence was getting to the jury. Daniels scribbled and passed notes to his lawyer during the trial, but Dawson all but ignored his client. So far, Dawson had been acting like a nonemergency patient waiting in a hospital lobby.

  To satisfy the judge’s pretrial discovery order, the government had turned over to the defense a copy of the detective’s grand jury testimony and his much shorter police report of Daniels’s arrest and confession. The defendant’s confession about the crosses was damning, but Rush wanted the detective on and off the stand as quickly as possible. He couldn’t shake his mistrust of Batiste. The cavalier way in which the detective presented himself struck Rush as cocky, like he was making a joke at everyone else’s expense.

  Rush and Battle predicted that Dawson would keep Batiste on the stand. The defense’s goal would be to degrade Batiste as a witness through rapid-fire questioning, and hope for a mistake or misstatement. As everyone on the jury and in the courtroom realized by now, the detective was the only link between the burning crosses and the defendant. The courtroom spectators sensed the collision was coming.

  On direct examination, the detective clung tight to his previous grand jury testimony that he—at Mercer’s insistence—had studied the night before. Because the trial was in public and not before the secret grand jury, the detective gave an even more dramatic presentation, including his hand mimicking the weapon, which he pointed directly at several of the trial jurors.

  Rush leaned over to Battle at one point. “How’s the jury taking all this?”

  Battle, accustomed to rough-cut DEA task force agents and slimy drug-dealing snitches as witnesses, responded: “They’re eating him up.”

  “Really?”

  “Remember, the jurors are with us.”

  When Rush finished with Batiste, Dawson took his turn at the lectern. Daniels repositioned his body in the chair like he was adjusting his weight in anticipation of the start of a televised football game.

  MR. DAWSON: Detective, you testified that you were traveling along Dakota when you first saw my client, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: Yes.

  MR. DAWSON: You weren’t on duty, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: That’s right.

  MR. DAWSON: You were in an unmarked vehicle, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: It’s a police vehicle.

  MR. DAWSON: But it’s not a marked police unit, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: No, it isn’t.

  MR. DAWSON: That means you had no emergency lights on the top of the car or any insignia to show the car was a police vehicle, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: That’s what unmarked means.

  MR. DAWSON: You’re not a traffic cop, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: No, but I’m capable of making a traffic stop.

  MR. DAWSON: I don’t doubt that, but my question is, you do not make traffic stops as a regular part of your police duties, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: That’s right.

  MR. DAWSON: Your assignment last September was with narcotics, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: Yes. We go after dope dealers and gangbangers.

  MR. DAWSON: But you don’t usually stop them for traffic violations, do you?

  DET. BATISTE: No—well, if we need to in order to get them, we would.

  MR. DAWSON: Would what?

  DET. BATISTE: Make a traffic stop.

  MR. DAWSON: So, Detective, you were off duty and in an unmarked vehicle when you say you stopped my client. Correct?

  DET. BATISTE: You said it, not me.

  MR. DAWSON: But isn’t it true that, in fact, you were off duty and in an unmarked vehicle when you stopped my client?

  DET. BATISTE: If that’s what you say.

  MR. DAWSON: It’s not that I’m saying it; the statement is true, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: Yeah.

  MR. DAWSON: Now, Detective, you stopped my client’s car for a traffic infraction, but you ended up arresting him and impounding his car, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: Right.

  MR. DAWSON: You didn’t call for backup, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: That’s right.

  MR. DAWSON: Even after you say my client threatened you, you didn’t call for backup, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: I handled the situation myself. I’m a detective, counselor.

  MR. DAWSON: I understand that you’re a detective, but you were off duty in an unmarked car making a traffic stop, correct?

  MR. RUSH: Objection. Asked and answered several times.

  COURT: Mr. Dawson, I think you’ve plumbed this enough. The objection is sustained.

  MR. DAWSON: You had a handheld radio, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: I did.

  MR. DAWSON: The government didn’t turn over any recordings of you calling for backup or reporting what was happening during the stop, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: I don’t know what was turned over.

  MR. DAWSON: You didn’t use your handheld to call for backup when my client allegedly threatened you, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: Yeah. That’s right.

  MR. DAWSON: You didn’t find any gas cans in my client’s vehicle, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: He told me it was his wife’s car.

  MR. DAWSON: Again, the question is, you didn’t find any gas cans in the car my client was driving, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: No.

  MR. DAWSON: You didn’t find a shovel or wood in the car, correct?

  DET
. BATISTE: You serious? The car’s a four-door sedan.

  MR. DAWSON: I take it your answer is no. No shovel or wood was found in the car, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: No, nothing like that.

  MR. DAWSON: My client’s signature isn’t on his purported statement to you, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: He refused to sign. But it’s what he said that counts. Who cares if he signed it?

  MR. DAWSON: My question is simple. My client didn’t sign any alleged statement, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: Right.

  MR. DAWSON: When you brought my client into the police station, you didn’t book him right away, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: I wanted to talk to him.

  MR. DAWSON: But you didn’t book him. Instead, you took him down the hallway and locked him in an empty room, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: So what?

  COURT: Detective, please just answer the question asked of you.

  DET. BATISTE: Yeah. I had him wait.

  MR. DAWSON: And there’s no recording of your alleged conversation with my client, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: We don’t record interrogations.

  MR. DAWSON: No video of the defendant’s statement, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: It’s policy.

  MR. DAWSON: But the fact remains that you didn’t record in any way your alleged conversation with my client, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: No, the confession wasn’t recorded.

  MR. DAWSON: And no one else heard my client’s alleged confession, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: I heard it.

  MR. DAWSON: My question to you is this: you were the only witness who heard my client’s alleged statement, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: Yes, I’m the only one.

  MR. DAWSON: Other than your testimony about what my client allegedly said to you about the cross burnings, no other witness implicates my client in the cross burnings, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: That’s more than enough to convict.

  MR. DAWSON: Let me ask it again. Aside from your account of what my client allegedly said, no other witnesses connect my client to the cross burnings, right?

  DET. BATISTE: That’s right.

  MR. DAWSON: Detective, you weren’t investigating the cross burnings, were you?

  DET. BATISTE: No.

  MR. DAWSON: The supposed traffic stop wasn’t made because you thought my client was responsible for that incident, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: No. He was weaving and speeding in traffic.

  MR. DAWSON: There were no calls or reports of a driver speeding and weaving on the street, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: I don’t know.

  MR. DAWSON: You’re not aware of any, correct?

  DET. BATISTE: Correct.

  MR. DAWSON: So let me sum this up. You aren’t a traffic cop, yet you stopped my client for a traffic violation in an unmarked police car without a siren or light. You weren’t on duty, you weren’t in uniform, and you didn’t call dispatch for any backup. All that correct?

  MR. RUSH: Objection. Compound question.

  COURT: Sustained.

  MR. DAWSON: And on top of that, you didn’t record the defendant’s alleged statement, you don’t have the defendant’s signature on the purported statement, and you don’t have anyone else who witnessed my client make a statement, true?

  DET. BATISTE: So what?

  MR. RUSH: Judge?

  MR. DAWSON: Nothing further of this witness.

  COURT: Any redirect?

  MR. RUSH: Thank you, Judge. Detective, what did you find in the back seat of the defendant’s car during the traffic stop?

  DET. BATISTE: Like I said before, the defendant—the guy right over there—had a Klan outfit in his car.

  MR. RUSH: Thank you, Detective.

  COURT: You’re excused.

  With Detective Batiste off the stand, the government rested. The defense didn’t call any witnesses, and Daniels reluctantly declined to testify, but only after speaking about it again with his defense lawyer—the person who knew best how badly Daniels would come across to a jury. Rush told the judge the government was finished. All the evidence in the case was before the jury.

  . . .

  The lawyers tangled over the jury instructions, but there wasn’t a lot to fight over. The case was straightforward enough—five crosses burned or left, and one Klansman confessed. The judge read the instructions in her practiced, monotone voice before the closing arguments by counsel.

  Rush spoke first. He pointed directly at Daniels and called him a violent racist. The defendant didn’t blink or shrink from the words. Rush reminded the jury that each victim had suffered from the defendant’s terroristic threats and that each cross was a separate crime worthy of punishment. He told the jurors that both Nettie Wynn’s home and her heart had been forever damaged by the defendant’s cruelty. He spoke in the third person like all prosecutors, because he was the messenger, but not the message. He asked for justice based on the evidence. Then he changed his mind and demanded it.

  Daniels’s attorney ignored nearly everything Rush said and focused his attention on Batiste. Dawson pointed beyond the wood railing separating the well of the courtroom from the audience and called out for the detective, who wasn’t present. Dawson remarked the detective was missing in action and said his testimony likewise was missing something: the truth. He argued the only evidence linking the defendant to the crimes was the detective’s rendition of a braggart’s boast. That, according to the defense attorney, was not enough to convict given all that the detective could have done, should have done, to document the so-called confession.

  Battle delivered the government’s rebuttal. The confession was indeed a critical part of the case, she said, but all the evidence fit together perfectly. The fiery crosses during the cold night, the defendant’s presence in Mooretown when he was stopped, the Klan outfit, with the confession serving as the final confirmation. The crimes were about a new race war, but the incriminating evidence in the case was all about the defendant.

  The jury absorbed the lawyers’ arguments like a pond receives water, changed but not showing it. The judge sent them back to a windowless room—almost identical to the grand jury room—to deliberate and decide the defendant’s fate in secret.

  23

  JUDGMENT

  Rush sat opposite Mercer and Battle at the Bench & Bar, a restaurant two blocks from the Lynwood federal courthouse. It was the default destination for lawyers waiting on juries. The court deputy clerk even had the cashier’s number to call when jurors reached a verdict in the event she couldn’t reach a lawyer.

  “Any guess?” Mercer asked. “I say two hours with a break.”

  Rush nodded the same hope before asking Battle, “What’s your land-speed record?”

  “Thirty minutes in a narcotics case,” she answered.

  “The first vote must’ve been their last,” Rush said.

  “With a confession and a snitch, it was more like a long guilty plea than a contested trial,” Battle said.

  “We got ourselves a confession here too, and this guy’s a Klansman,” Mercer said. “So two hours should be plenty.”

  “I invoked the Klan so many times in trial, I hope they didn’t get numbed to it,” Rush said.

  “Takes repeatin’ it to make it sink in.” Mercer’s approach was to deliver any message of importance with the brute force of a boxer’s barrage.

  “I hope you’re right,” Rush responded, “but if you watched the Rodney King beating video too many times, you ended up questioning everything you saw.”

  “Like what?” Battle asked.

  “The government used the video like a confession. The defense then turned the same video around to justify the beating,” Rush said. He had listened during the basement lunches to the prosecutors on the case—his colleagues—bitterly complain about the defense playing the video over and over to the jury.

  “But it didn’t work,” she said.

  “But it did. You just remember
the federal case ended in a guilty verdict, but the jury acquitted two of the defendants of all charges,” Rush said. “And the federal charges were brought only because the jurors had acquitted three of the four defendants and hung on one in the earlier state case. All of that happened with the incident right there on video.”

  “Our case isn’t a cop beating a suspect on drugs,” Battle pointed out. “It’s the Klan terrorizing minorities.”

  “True.”

  The odd exchange across the table was really about their shared knowledge that juries did their business in secret, behind closed doors that hid both bravery and bigotry from outside judgment.

  “I’m just makin’ conversation,” Rush said, his sudden habit of dropping the endings of certain words a hint that he was spending too much time in the South.

  The two-hour mark passed with no call from the deputy clerk. After another thirty minutes, the three wandered back to the courthouse with two deputy marshals along for the walk.

  The jury foreperson sent the judge a note at four in the afternoon. It was handwritten on a piece of lined paper torn from a spiral notebook. The judge appeared in court without fanfare. Daniels was already in his designated seat, and the lawyers stood together at the podium.

  “I’ve received a message from the jury foreperson,” the judge said. “I propose we read it into the record and come up with a response.” The judge looked out into the rows beyond the waist-high bar that separated the spectators from the participants in the courtroom. “Let’s do this up here.” She motioned for the court reporter and the lawyers to join her near the front of the courtroom.

  “Yes, Judge,” responded all three attorneys like the choir singing a refrain.

  “It says, There’s an issue with one of the jurors. He’s making race comments about witnesses that’s just not right. What do I do as foreperson? The note’s signed by the foreperson.”

  The judge didn’t say anything.

  Out of instinct, defense counsel promptly moved for a mistrial.

  Rush spoke up. “Judge, she’s looking for direction, not to end anything.”

  “It’s a mistrial,” Dawson argued. “She’s told us there’s been juror misconduct.”