MD05 - The Confession

by Sheldon Siegel

  “That’s a nice lawyerly argument, but she didn’t buy it.”

  “She was wrong.”

  “She disagreed. She was also going to have to explain the situation to her mother.”

  “Who strikes me as a very understanding person.”

  “She is until you get into discussions about theology. Like many good Catholics, she views most moral issues in black and white.”

  “In my experience, people become more flexible when they’re presented with the prospect of having their first grandchild. She would have come around.”

  “I’d like to think so, but she wasn’t making things any easier for Maria.”

  I ask if Lita knows about her unborn grandchild.

  “She knew Maria was trying to get pregnant.”

  “She didn’t mention it to us.”

  “It isn’t the sort of news you talk about with strangers.”

  “How did she find out?”

  “When the police indicated it may have been a homicide, I knew there would be an autopsy. I told her that Maria had confided to me that she was trying to get pregnant. I thought it was better for her to have heard it from me.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “No. I didn’t know if she was pregnant and I was hoping the issue would go away.”

  “You must have known that everybody would have found out about it sooner or later.”

  “Not if she wasn’t pregnant.”

  Now, everybody is going to know about it. I think back upon Lita’s pain at having buried two of her children, and I realize she’s added an unborn grandchild to the list. “You should have told me about it right away,” I say.

  He swallows hard and says, “I’m sorry, Mike. I was trying to protect Lita’s feelings.”

  And I’m trying to save your life. “Is there any possibility Maria committed suicide?”

  “She wouldn’t have taken the life of her unborn child.”

  “She was in a lot of pain.”

  “She wanted that baby more desperately than you can imagine.” He gets a faraway look in his eyes. “Remember our first week at the seminary when Father John told us about the great wonders of going to heaven?”

  I’m not sure where he’s heading. “I’ll never forget it.”

  “I’ve tried to persuade Lita that her daughter is there, but I can’t imagine anything I’ve said has provided any solace.”

  I know the feeling. There were times when I was called upon to provide comfort when I was certain I was only making things worse. The possibility that Maria may have committed suicide is difficult enough for her mother. The chance she may have also killed her unborn child is unbearable.

  “Lita has endured so much sadness,” he says. “I wish there was something I could do to stop the pain.”

  “We can find out what really happened to her daughter.”

  “I’m a priest, Mike, not a cop, and I can’t leave this building without a police escort. Besides, it will never bring back Maria or the baby.”

  No, it won’t, but finding the killer may provide some closure. “We need to focus on your case,” I say. “The revelation of an unborn child has serious ramifications. You’ll lose the goodwill of the public and the potential juror pool if they think you were involved in the death of a pregnant woman.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Then we need to prove it–preferably before your preliminary hearing begins.”

  “It’s impossible to prove a negative,” he observes.

  “We’ll have to try. If all else fails, we’ll need to provide the cops with one or more viable suspects who may have been at her apartment that night. Did you see anybody as you were leaving?”

  “No.”

  “They found a partially eaten burrito from Lopez’s restaurant on her kitchen counter. Do you have any idea how it might have gotten there?”

  “No.”

  Dammit. “Do you recall her making a phone call to Lopez’s restaurant before you left?”

  “No.”

  “You were the only people there. How could you not have noticed?”

  He thinks about it and he says, “I used the bathroom right before I left and I started her bath. Maybe she was on the phone.”

  “That doesn’t help.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  I take a deep breath and say, “There’s another complicating factor.” I tell him that the State of California views an unborn fetus as a living person in the context of a murder trial. “The DA is likely to amend the charges to include double murder.” I add, “It also raises the specter of a more serious charge.”

  “What can be more serious?”

  “The death penalty.”

  The color leaves his face, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “It’s another lever they’ll pull to pressure you to confess,” I say.

  The air leaves the room and Ramon’s eyes are on fire. “I didn’t kill her,” he says.

  I believe him, but it’s time to turn all of the cards face up. I ask, “Are you the father?”

  He swallows hard and whispers, “It’s possible.”

  Chapter 28

  “The Technology Outpaced the Theology”

  “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

  — Exodus 20:14.

  Ramon’s tone is maddeningly even when he says, “It isn’t what you think.”

  “It’s precisely what I think.” I may have found a way to forgive him for not revealing Maria was pregnant right away, but this is far more damaging. “The last immaculate conception happened two thousand years ago.”

  “Hear me out.”

  “I know where babies come from.”

  “This is different.”

  “No, it isn’t. You lied to me.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “What would you call it? I asked you flat out if you were sleeping with her and you looked me right in the eye and said you weren’t.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “When I turned fifty last year, Rosie bought me an x-rated videotape that promised to improve our sex lives. It showed one hundred and fifty-three different positions. I think it covered every possible permutation as to how one can get pregnant.”

  His jaws tighten. “You aren’t listening. I wasn’t sleeping with Maria. I agreed to be a sperm donor.”

  It stops me dead in my tracks. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “About three months ago.” He says he took care of business at a clinic in Berkeley. “She was desperate to have a child and I had a chance to help.”

  I’m reeling. “Priests aren’t allowed to do that,” I stammer.

  “I’m familiar with the theological rules on the subject.” He assures me he hasn’t performed a similar service for any of his other parishioners.

  Here we go. “Are you the father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know?”

  “She decided to be inseminated after she broke up with Lopez, but I didn’t know the process had been successful, and she said there were other donors. I don’t know who they were and some were anonymous.”

  Swell. “Were you planning to find out if you were the father?”

  “Yes, but for obvious reasons, we had agreed to keep my part in this process a secret.”

  Everybody is going to find out now and I struggle to sort out the scenarios. If he’s the father, the complexion of the case changes significantly for the worse. If he isn’t, we may be able to deflect some attention to the person who is–if we can identify him. The most obvious candidate is Lopez, but I learned long ago that there are no sure bets in murder cases and we’ll still have to deal with the fact that Ramon is accused of murdering a pregnant woman. We also have an immediate issue as to what, if anything, we should tell the press and our esteemed co-counsels, Quinn and Shanahan, who are certain to find out that Concepcion was pregnant within minutes, if they haven’t already.

>   I ask him if Maria told anyone about their arrangement.

  “No.”

  “What about her mother?”

  “Maria swore to me that she didn’t say anything to her. As far as I know, Lita doesn’t know the identity of the donors, including me.”

  “What did you say when you told her Maria was trying to get pregnant?”

  “That there was an anonymous donor.”

  I don’t relish withholding material information from Maria’s mother. Ideally, we should also try to find somebody at the clinic who can corroborate the fact that Ramon went there, but it will only draw attention to him if we show up on their doorstep and start asking questions. I ask him if he used his real name at the clinic.

  “No. Everything was done anonymously.”

  “How did they identify your. . . uh. . . donation?”

  “They asked me to give them an alias.”

  “What pseudonym did you use?”

  “Michael Daley.”

  Perfect.

  I watch the second hand on the clock go around twice before he speaks again. “What do we do now?”

  Our alternatives aren’t attractive. “We have three options,” I say. “We can issue a vehement denial and hope the DNA tests prove negative, in which case this problem goes away.” Leaving us only with the small task of defending Ramon against a double murder charge.

  “And if the results are positive?”

  “We’ll look like lying idiots and our credibility will be completely shot.”

  He asks what’s behind door number two.

  “We’ll come clean and explain that you attempted to assist a woman who was desperate to have a child. We’ll tell the truth–that you didn’t engage in sex with Maria.”

  “It will rank right up there with President Clinton’s denials about Monica Lewinsky.”

  “You were helping a person in need. In a way, you were doing God’s work.”

  “The perception is always more important than the truth.”

  “There are mitigating circumstances. You’ll apologize for the lapse in judgment and make a confession seeking the forgiveness of the Church and the public.”

  “The Church isn’t going to give me a pass.”

  That’s no longer my department. “It’s a risk,” I say, “and you’ll be criticized for not coming forward in the first place.”

  He drums his fingers on the table, but doesn’t say anything.

  I lay it on the line. “I know your intentions were good, but you crossed the line. I can make good legal arguments, but you’re going to have to make your own peace with the Church.”

  “I’m out of a job.”

  I feel badly about that, but it’s the least of my concerns. “We’ll make your case to the archbishop after we get the murder charges dropped. You didn’t do anything illegal and you shouldn’t be penalized just because the technology outpaced the theology.”

  “The archbishop isn’t going to buy it.”

  “Then we’ll go to Rome and talk to the head guy as soon as the charges are dropped.”

  “This is serious,” he says. “I made a commitment to this vocation. Being a good priest is important to me.”

  “I understand that, too, and I believe you did something to sanctify the beauty of human life and you brought hope and comfort to someone in need. If that’s a sin, so be it. Surely, there must be somebody in the Church who is willing to lend a sympathetic ear.”

  “You were always the guy who argued with the priests about being flexible.”

  “Maybe I was preparing to become a lawyer even then.”

  He asks about the third option.

  “We say nothing for the time being, and then we re-evaluate our alternatives after the DNA tests come back.”

  “That will only delay the inevitable.”

  “At least we’ll know what the inevitable is. It’s better to know for sure before we say anything that could embarrass us later. If you aren’t the father, the problem goes away and we may have another viable suspect.”

  “Lopez?”

  “Precisely.”

  “So, if the tests show that I’m not the father, you’re saying we’ll invoke the time-honored theological doctrine of ‘No harm, no sin.’”

  “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  His lips form a tight line across his face. “I don’t like it,” he says. “It’s lying.”

  “No, it isn’t. You’re simply electing not to reveal certain facts that could be used to incriminate you. It’s your legal right.”

  “It isn’t my moral right.”

  “That’s out of my jurisdiction.”

  “You can dress it up however you’d like,” he says, “but lying was still on the hot list of sins last time I looked.”

  It may be a cop-out, but I’m no longer charged with interpreting laws that aren’t written in the Penal Code. “You’re under no legal obligation to talk about your case,” I say.

  “That may be true insofar as the State of California is concerned,” he replies, “but I still have to answer to a higher authority.”

  “I’m no longer licensed to practice in that courtroom.”

  “What do we tell Quinn and Shanahan?”

  “The truth.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “As long as they’re your legal counsel, anything you tell them is privileged. If they reveal this information to anybody–including the archbishop–I’ll haul their asses before the State Bar. It’s a clumsy metaphor, but the sooner you tell them, the sooner they’re pregnant.”

  Chapter 29

  “You’ve Put Me Into an Impossible Position”

  “Our faith is predicated on the principle that God loves us and is understanding of our human frailties.”

  — Father F.X. Quinn. San Francisco Catholic Magazine.

  It takes a supreme effort by Quinn to keep his deep voice modulated after he learns of Concepcion’s pregnancy. “This is now a complete disaster,” he says.

  We’re meeting in his office at archdiocese headquarters. A grim Shanahan is standing in the corner. Every major TV channel is broadcasting from the steps of the Hall, and a fleet of news vans is undoubtedly barreling down Van Ness Avenue toward us. We’ll need to begin defensive maneuvers right away.

  Quinn is just warming up. He points a threatening finger in my direction and says, “Jerry Edwards called for you.”

  “I’ll deal with him.”

  “We’ll deal with him,” he says. “What were you planning to tell him?”

  “That we have no comment.”

  “That’s the best you can do?”

  “Until we know more facts, it’s the correct answer.”

  “We’ll get crucified for looking evasive.”

  Interesting metaphor. “We’ll look careful,” I reply.

  Quinn turns to Ramon and asks him straight up. “Are you the father of Ms. Concepcion’s unborn child?”

  Ramon glances my way and I say to Quinn, “Are you still representing Father Aguirre?”

  “Of course.”

  I ask the same question of Shanahan, who nods. I turn back to Quinn and say, “And you would therefore agree this conversation is covered by the attorney-client privilege, right?”

  His bushy right eyebrow goes up slightly before he responds with a tentative, “Yes.” Shanahan agrees with him again.

  That’s all I need. I nod to Ramon, who swallows hard and whispers, “It’s possible.”

  The explanation takes just a moment and Quinn’s eruption comes fast and hard, followed by a diatribe that lasts a full five minutes. He punctuates his fury with hand gestures, table-thumping and an occasional expletive. His tirade is directed in equal parts toward Ramon, who created this mess, and me, who put him in a position where he can no longer rat out our client to the press, the DA or the archbishop without violating the attorney-client privilege. Every once in awhile, the California Rules of Professional Conduct work to your advantage, but this d
oesn’t seem like an opportune time to gloat about my satisfying legal conquest.