The Justice Game

by Randy Singer

  For a moment, Jason seriously considered telling him. It would feel so much better to have someone else share this burden. But he knew what would happen. As soon as his dad was brought into the know, Jason would no longer control the response. His options would disappear; his dad would try to dictate what to do. Another cover-up would be in full swing.

  “Will you do it?” Jason asked.

  “You’re not going to tell me why?”

  “Not yet. I can’t.”

  Jason’s dad blew out a big sigh, one of those where-did-I-go-wrong exhalations that Jason knew all too well. “When do you need it by?”

  “Anything you can have by tomorrow night would be great.”

  “You need any other miracles with that?” his dad asked. “A Red Sea parting maybe? Water into wine?”

  “Nope. I’m good,” Jason said. Despite the pressure of the case, something about this conversation seemed right. It was the first time they had talked without fighting since Christmas day.

  “By the way, whenever you’re done and ready to go, just come and get me,” Jason said. “I can always finish my work at the cottage.”

  “Thanks,” his dad said. “But I already checked into a hotel.”

  * * *

  Jason arrived at his cottage well past midnight, so tired he could barely move. He took off his shoes, threw his suit coat, shirt, and tie on a chair, and sat down on the couch in front of the TV. He flipped from one channel to the next, anything to distract his mind from the case. Before long he had curled up on the couch and fallen asleep with the remote in his hand, the channel stuck on a late-night talk show.

  A few hours later, his neck stiff from being propped against a pillow on the armrest, Jason woke up. Instinctively, before he staggered up to bed, he checked his BlackBerry. The e-mail jolted him awake:

  Slow the trial down. Don’t put Poole on the stand until Monday. Keep up the good work. Your secrets are safe with me.

  Luthor

  72

  Robert Sherwood arrived at work early on Thursday, content in the knowledge that the three mock juries hearing the Crawford case would start their day, as they had the day before, precisely at 7:00 a.m. The case was proceeding beautifully on all fronts except for the timing. Trials moved fast in the Virginia Beach Circuit Court. Maybe a little too fast.

  If they worked from 7 a.m. until about 10 at night, Sherwood figured his trial team should be able to complete the truncated version of the Crawford case that evening. All three mock juries would return a verdict by midnight.

  On Friday, Justice Inc. would make its move in the stock market. That would leave the weekend to meet with the various hedge fund managers who would in turn make their market moves on Monday. The actual verdict in the Crawford case would not come back until late Monday afternoon at the earliest. Most probably it would be Tuesday or Wednesday.

  The timing could work, but it was tight. There was no margin for error.

  * * *

  The pro-gun demonstrators had shown up in droves outside the courtroom on the first day of trial, but their numbers had dwindled by day two. They would probably be back tenfold for closing arguments, but unlike the colorful parade of characters who protested G8 summits, these folks had real jobs. Protesting was just a hobby. Plus, the forecasters were saying the temperature could reach a hundred degrees by early afternoon.

  The jury wasn’t ushered into the box until nearly 10 a.m., a full hour later than Judge Garrison had wanted to start. He apologized to the jury, told them that he and the lawyers had been working on a few housekeeping matters (Jason and Kelly had argued for an hour over Jason’s objections to certain portions of the Beeson deposition), and thanked the jurors for their patience.

  The jury began the day watching the videotaped deposition testimony of Jarrod Beeson. The felonious gunrunner came across every bit as disreputable on the screen as he had in person. His dark eyes darted back and forth from the camera to Kelly, and his facial expressions alternated between a smirk and a sneer. He had about three days’ worth of facial hair and wore an orange jumpsuit.

  Despite the man’s obvious status as a prison inmate, the jury watched carefully, and several members took notes.

  Beeson admitted that he had purchased a total of twenty-three guns from Peninsula Arms. Most of the guns he resold at a profit to convicted felons who weren’t eligible to buy the guns outright. Sometimes he filed off the serial number first; sometimes he didn’t. Two of the guns he purchased had been traced to crimes.

  Judge Garrison had sustained Jason’s hearsay objections to the portions of the deposition describing the alleged phone call between Larry Jamison and Beeson. But that didn’t prohibit Beeson from talking about the way he purchased the gun.

  On the video, Beeson explained that he and Jamison had arranged to meet at Peninsula Arms. It was Larry Jamison who talked to the sales clerk and checked out various guns while Beeson watched. Once Jamison had settled on the MD-9, the two men went outside the store, and money changed hands. Beeson returned to the store, filled out the paperwork, and gave the clerk the money. He then carried the gun out to the parking lot and handed it to Jamison. He never saw Jamison again.

  Jason’s videotaped cross-examination followed. He had focused on Beeson’s lack of connection with MD Firearms. Beeson had bought and resold all kinds of guns, from several different gun stores, and it just so happened that this particular gun was manufactured by MD Firearms. Plus, Beeson was an admitted liar—he had lied at least twenty-three separate times, on twenty-three separate forms, all signed under oath and under penalty of jail time for dishonesty.

  But as Jason watched the jury, it seemed that they believed every word Beeson said. His confession had earned him twelve months in a federal pen. Why would he make it up?

  Kelly followed Beeson’s testimony by calling Lisa Roberts, WDXR’s photogenic news anchor, to the stand. In Jason’s opinion, the witness tried way too hard, milking her time on national TV for everything it was worth. She broke down crying at least twice and used all kinds of animated facial expressions and hand gestures in talking to the jury. Jason could read the frustration on Kelly’s face as she tried to rein in the witness.

  Lisa had not exactly played the role of hero on the day Larry Jamison had walked into the studio, so she worked hard to recast events in a more favorable light. But a few things were undeniable. She had ratted out the show’s director, Bob Thomas, when he was hiding. Later, she had refused to stick up for Rachel Crawford’s innocence. Granted, she had the business end of the MD-9 pointed at her face, but the jury still seemed to dislike her, folding their arms in stone-faced disapproval as she tried her best to charm them.

  The irony of a jury trial, thought Jason. They believe the felon. But they don’t like the innocent news anchor.

  After Lisa Roberts’s direct examination, Jason announced he had no questions for cross and thought he noticed some disappointed looks from the jury box. “Oh, wait,” he said, “I do have one question.”

  Lisa had already climbed halfway out of the witness box, and Jason waited for her to sit back down.

  “Are you going to sue MD Firearms too?”

  “Objection,” said Kelly Starling. “That’s not relevant here.”

  “Goes to bias, Your Honor,” Jason said calmly.

  “Overruled.”

  The witness stared at Jason for a moment. He knew that MD Firearms had already received a letter from her lawyer.

  “Depends on how this case turns out,” Lisa said.

  “I see,” Jason said. And he hoped the jury did as well. The slippery slope—Where would it all stop? “So you’re thinking about suing even though you weren’t actually shot by Jamison, am I right?”

  “Objection!”

  Jason held up his hands. “She’s right, Your Honor. That was two questions. I promised the jury just one. I’ll withdraw it.”

  73

  The parade of witnesses continued throughout the morning and into the early afternoon
. The WDXR station manager testified about how much potential Rachel had demonstrated as a reporter. The medical examiner certified the cause of death. Kelly even trotted two Peninsula Arms clerks and the store owner to the stand and forced them to plead the Fifth Amendment in front of the jury.

  Then Kelly called Case McAllister and asked him just enough questions to lay a foundation for the memo he had written to Melissa Davids. Just to preserve the record, Jason objected to the memo on the basis of the attorney-client privilege. Judge Garrison overruled the objection again, stating that Melissa Davids had waived that privilege when she shared the document with others.

  Jason had no questions for Case at this time. He planned to call Case to the stand when it was his turn to put on witnesses, unless Melissa Davids did so well that Case was not necessary. In either event, Jason would save his questions until later in the trial.

  After lunch, Kelly cued up portions of the videotaped depositions of Melissa Davids. The MD Firearms CEO looked angry as Kelly grilled her about the redesign of the MD-9 after 833 of those guns had been converted by criminals into full automatics and later traced to crimes. She responded testily as Kelly quizzed her about the silencer parts MD Firearms sold and the company’s run-in with the ATF, including Davids’ agreement with the letter to the editor that compared the ATF to the regimes of Hitler and Stalin.

  Jason watched despondently as Kelly asked in the first deposition whether Melissa Davids had ever considered whether she should stop selling guns to Peninsula Arms based on their three ATF violations and the number of their guns that had been traced to crimes.

  “No,” Davids said. “If anybody had suggested such a thing to me, I would have told them I still believed in the Second Amendment and the free enterprise system.”

  Kelly followed that response with excerpts from the second deposition, where she showed Case McAllister’s memo to Davids. This time, the witness became outright hostile. It was not hard for Jason to read the jurors’ body language; every one of them demonstrated a thinly veiled contempt for his client.

  The last witness of the day, an ATF agent named Bill Treadwell, took the stand with an air of unmistakable confidence. He wore a buttoned blue blazer, a white shirt with a red tie, and khakis. He had short red hair and a freckled complexion—a young man’s face that invited trust.

  When he settled into the stand, he removed a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and placed them on the rail in front of him. Kelly Starling led him through a series of artfully phrased questions—the choreographed waltz of direct examination.

  Treadwell had been one of the agents who obtained the confession from Jarrod Beeson, and he described his investigation into the straw purchase. He also taught the jury about the paperwork and process required to purchase a firearm—the background check, the ATF Form 4473, and other aspects of the sale. He testified about the three other times Peninsula Arms had been cited for straw sales.

  Treadwell spoke softly, listened carefully, and confined his answers to the precise questions before him. Through his testimony, Kelly managed to put a boy-next-door face on the ATF, making Davids’s statements about the ATF seem even more outrageous.

  Kelly finished her direct examination of Treadwell at about 4 p.m., ending with the introduction of the gun into evidence.

  Jason rose quickly to begin his cross. He was so caught up in the competition of the moment that he was hardly even nervous.

  “Are you aware of any gun manufacturers in the entire country who refuse to sell guns to licensed firearm dealers because they don’t trust those dealers?”

  Treadwell thought for a moment. “No. Not that I’m aware of.”

  “As a point of fact, it’s the ATF’s job to police firearm dealers, is it not?

  “We regulate dealers, yes.”

  “The ATF can revoke licenses of gun dealers, true?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And you have personally been involved in that process, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you aware that fifteen years ago there were about 250,000 licensed dealers in America, and today there are less than half that number—about 108,381?”

  Treadwell shrugged. “I’m not aware of the precise numbers. But that sounds about right.”

  “Do you recognize the name Red’s Trading Post of Twin Falls, Idaho?”

  Treadwell’s face dropped a little. He had been transferred east a few years earlier. “Yes.”

  “That store’s been in business for seventy-one years, correct?”

  “I don’t know. Sounds about right.”

  “You tried to revoke their license, right?”

  “Objection,” Kelly said. “What’s this got to do with the Crawford case?”

  “I’ll link it up,” Jason promised.

  “Make it quick,” Garrison said.

  Jason turned back to the witness. “You tried to revoke their license, right?”

  “We did revoke their license. In 2006. For multiple violations over a series of years.”

  “But the gun store appealed that case to federal court, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “And let me ask you if this is a statement that the federal judge made in that case: ‘The ATF speaks of violations found during the inspections of 2000 and 2005, but fails to reveal that additional investigations in 2001 and 2007 revealed no violations or problems.’”

  “I don’t have the opinion memorized, but it was something like that.”

  “So the court overturned the revocation, didn’t it?”

  This brought Kelly to her feet again, palms out. “Judge, I still don’t see how this can possibly be relevant to this case.”

  “I agree,” Garrison said. “Objection sustained.”

  “Isn’t it true,” Jason said, checking his notes again, “that the number of gun dealers dropped by at least 50 percent in the ten years leading up to 2005 and that revocations of licenses increased nearly sixfold between 2001 and 2006?”

  “I wouldn’t know if those statistics are accurate or not.”

  “But you would agree that the ATF has stepped up its enforcement activities, aggressively going after gun stores that violate the law?”

  “We’ve always done that, Mr. Noble.”

  “Then what actions did you take to revoke the license of Peninsula Arms after its third straw purchase citation?”

  “We issued a license revocation notice on September 18 of last year.”

  “That’s after Mr. Jamison shot Rachel Crawford. I’m asking what you did before that—given the fact that Peninsula Arms had already been cited for three prior straw purchase transactions.”

  Treadwell adjusted himself in the chair and tried to make eye contact with Kelly. Jason took a half step to the side, placing himself directly in the witness’s sight path.

  “We didn’t deem those other citations—which were spread out over nearly ten years—sufficient to take revocation action,” Treadwell said.

  “But you were also aware, were you not, that a number of guns from Peninsula Arms had been traced to crimes in cities in the northeast—cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, and Washington?”

  “Yes. But without information that the sales of those guns somehow violated the law, we couldn’t take legal action against the dealer.”

  “My point exactly,” Jason said.

  “Objection!” Kelly said. “Move to strike.”

  Judge Garrison cast Jason a castigating glance and then turned to the jury. “Please ignore that last statement by Mr. Noble,” the judge said. “I will strike it from the record. And Mr. Noble—please keep your editorial comments to yourself.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” Jason checked through his notes. “I do have one other question,” he said. “To your knowledge, has Ms. Starling filed any lawsuits against the ATF for its failure to take action against Peninsula Arms?”

  “No, she has not.”

  “No further questions.”


  Before he sat down, Jason casually moved one more empty chair up to the defense counsel table. When he sat in his own seat, next to Case McAllister, all eyes were on him.

  Case leaned over. “After this case, you need to raise your hourly rate.”

  74

  At the end of Agent Treadwell’s testimony, Kelly stood up and announced that she rested her case.

  Inside, she was already second-guessing her strategy. She had started strong with the videotape of the shootings and the testimony of Blake Crawford. But she had wanted to finish strong too. She had toyed with the idea of ending on the videotaped testimony of Melissa Davids—a guaranteed high point for her side. Instead, she decided to end her case with Treadwell’s testimony, hoping to demonstrate in the flesh that ATF agents were the furthest thing from Hitler and Stalin.

  Unfortunately, Treadwell had been a disaster.

  Now Jason Noble was on his feet again. “I have a motion to make,” he said.

  The lawyers and Judge Garrison all knew what was coming—a Motion to Strike. Defense lawyers routinely made such motions at the end of a plaintiff’s case, asking the judge to throw out the case because the evidence was legally insufficient.

  “Okay,” Judge Garrison said, checking his watch. “I’m going to let the ladies and gentlemen of the jury go home for the night, and then we can discuss the motion.”

  Kelly nodded her head. This was normal and no cause for alarm.

  But then Judge Garrison added something that twisted her stomach in knots. “I’m also going to ask the jury not to arrive tomorrow until 1 p.m. It’s going to take us a while to work through this motion, and I’d like to give the jurors the morning off.”

  Almost every member of the jury smiled. Judge Garrison had just become a very popular man.

  And Kelly was sick with worry.

  * * *

  Jason stayed off the phone during the twenty-minute drive back to his office. His success in court had only made him feel like a bigger hypocrite. Only he knew that even if he tore apart witnesses like Agent Treadwell on cross-examination, his case would ultimately implode when Chief Poole took the stand.