A Criminal Defense

by William L. Myers Jr.

  I go right to the crime-scene photos. I quickly scan the shots of Jennifer Yamura’s house: outside, front and back, and the first and second floors. Then I focus my attention on the photographs of the basement steps and her body. My heart quickens as I look at her face, eyes open, seeming to stare up at me. I spot the blood spill on the sixth and fifth steps from the bottom, the steps her head must have struck when she fell. I study the massive pool of blood on the concrete block at the bottom of the steps, where her head is lying. And it strikes me that this is wrong.

  Her head should be higher on the steps. And there are fresh abrasions on both of her knees. She’s lying on her back, but her knees are bloodied.

  This isn’t making sense.

  I grab the police reports, which make mention of the head wounds, the knee injuries, and some lighter abrasions to the palms of her hands—all injuries that the investigating officers would have been able to see with their own eyes. Deeply confused, I reach for the autopsy report and learn that the cause of Jennifer’s death was exsanguination from a ruptured artery in the back of her head resulting from blunt-force trauma caused when her head collided with the steps. Going back to the police reports, I read that the basement floor had been scrubbed with a cleaning agent but that luminol testing revealed trace amounts of latent blood.

  There can only be one explanation for all of this, and it hits me like a bolt of lightning: Yamura must have survived the fall down the stairs!

  She made it off the steps, crawled along the basement’s rough concrete floor, scraping up her knees and her hands. Someone—whomever she was crawling away from—then took her back to the stairs and kept her there until she bled out.

  “Jesus Christ.” I spring from my chair, close the door to my office. I pace and think. Then pace some more. A million questions flood my brain. I sit down at my desk again, study the crime-scene photos, the police reports, the autopsy report, over and over. “Jesus Christ,” I repeat. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  After lunch, and after I’ve spent several hours reviewing and summarizing the prosecution’s evidence, I receive a call that I’ve been expecting from Devlin Walker. He offers the kind of deal that Detective Tredesco suggested he might: David pleads to first-degree manslaughter, “Man One,” and Devlin will urge the Court to impose the minimum sentence. “But,” Devlin is quick to add, “any plea agreement has to include producing that laptop. No laptop, no deal.”

  I chuckle. “David plead? Are you serious? I’ve just finished reading all the police reports, and I found more than enough to make reasonable doubt a lock.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the stolen computer you just mentioned. Along with stolen jewelry and cash. So, what, you’re going to argue that my millionaire client emptied Ms. Yamura’s wallet, then took her laptop and jewelry so he could pawn it, because he needed the money to buy that double-wide he’d always dreamed of owning?”

  “Please. Your client’s a smart man. He took the computer and the money and jewelry as a smoke screen to make it look like a robbery gone bad.”

  I let his theory hang in the air for a moment. “Why are you involved in this case at all, Devlin? You haven’t tried a murder case in years.”

  “That’s easy. I’m running the grand jury looking into the police drug syndicate. The decedent had information critical to the investigation. I had a vested interest in getting Ms. Yamura in front of my grand jury and questioning her. Her murder prevented me from doing that.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  “It’s that simple.” Devlin waits a beat. “Hanson killed that young woman, Mick. Something obviously went wrong with their affair. He got pissed, pushed her down the stairs. Then when it was clear she wasn’t going to die, he made sure she did. That’s cold. And a jury will crucify him for it. He’ll rot in prison forever. But he can avoid all that by pleading to Man One. If he produces the laptop. And it better not have been opened. Not a single document read. Our forensics guys will know it if Hanson or anyone else has even looked at the files. Please make that very clear to your client.”

  Not long after I hang up with Devlin, Angie buzzes to tell me that David has shown up at the firm and wants to see me. I have her bring him back to my office. David appears haggard and tired. Still not as bad as he looked the morning after his arrest, but close.

  “How are things with Marcie?”

  “Hell,” he says. “Half the time, she’s screaming at me. Half the time, she’s giving me the silent treatment. Stomping around the house, slamming doors, ignoring me. The boys know something’s wrong between us. I don’t know what to tell them.” David pauses here, looks past me out the window. “Her family hates me. Her sister called me on my cell phone the other night for the sole purpose of telling me what a piece of shit I am.”

  David’s looking at me now. “My own family’s hardly on speaking terms with me, either. Except Edwin, of course. He has plenty to say.”

  Eighteen years David’s senior, his half brother, Edwin, is the CEO of Hanson World Industries. Groomed from an early age to take control of the family business, Edwin is reputed to be both brilliant and ruthless.

  “Such as?”

  “He just told me to take a leave of absence from the company. It was all I could do not to hit him in the mouth. I came here instead, to blow off steam.”

  “Are you going to do as he says?”

  “What choice do I have? Edwin runs the show.”

  I think about this. “A leave of absence isn’t a bad idea, actually, so long as it looks like it’s your idea. You need to issue a statement that although you’re innocent, you’re taking some time off for the sake of your family, and also for the good of the company and its many employees. It’ll look selfless and high-minded of you. It’ll also tell potential jurors that you’re already suffering as a result of the charges brought against you.”

  I call Vaughn, explain the situation, and ask him to draft something.

  David asks if there’ve been any developments in the case. I tell him that, as a matter of fact, I’d just that morning received the prosecution’s materials. I tell David about Jennifer’s head injuries, her scraped knees, the blood traces on the basement floor where someone tried to clean up. David’s eyes never leave me as I explain it all. He doesn’t move a muscle.

  After I finish, David waits for moment, then says, “But I didn’t clean the basement. I never went the whole way down.”

  Which makes me wonder, If David didn’t put her back on the steps, then who did?

  7

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20

  The following week, on Wednesday, Susan and I are in the conference room talking about firm finances when Tommy and Vaughn come in together. We say our hellos, and I ask Tommy if he has anything new on the Hanson case. He lets me know that a cop he’s friends with in the Ninth District has confided to him that in the weeks before Jennifer Yamura’s murder, her neighborhood had been struck by a small crime wave of break-ins and burglaries.

  “That could be pretty helpful to us at trial, right?” Tommy asks. “Supports the theory that she was killed during a burglary gone bad? It’d jibe with her computer and jewelry and cash being gone.”

  “Absolutely,” I say. “I’ll have Vaughn serve a subpoena on the police department asking for all reports of break-ins and burglaries in that neighborhood during the six months before the murder—and since. We’ll see what we can flush out. Good work. Anything else? How about those three cops?” I ask, referring to the three cooperating police offers who had been named two weeks earlier.

  “Word on the street,” Tommy answers, “is that Terrance Johnson is holed up in a hotel room downtown, being guarded by some cops assigned to the DA’s office. Lipinski’s spending his days drinking himself blind at a North Philly cop bar, daring them to come and get him.”

  “And Lawrence Washington?” I ask.

  “Off the radar. He’s the smart one.”

  Susan looks at Tommy. “You really think the ba
d cops will actually try to kill those three?”

  Tommy nods. “A message for anyone else thinking about turning state’s evidence. And three dead cops floating facedown in the Schuylkill River would be a pretty loud message.”

  We talk a little more, then they leave me alone in my office. I think about the robberies in Yamura’s neighborhood and ponder whether I could persuade a jury to believe that Yamura was merely another random victim in Philly’s endless stream of murders. That David didn’t scrub the house because he’d killed Jennifer, but because he found her already dead and freaked out about being identified as her lover. But why would a home invader drag Jennifer back to the steps to wait for her to bleed out and die rather than simply run away?

  Whatever tack I take, I’ll have to deal with the fact that David had no problem casually traipsing around the house one flight above the murdered corpse of his lover, perhaps for hours. Not something you’d expect a person to be able to stomach.

  Unless he was a sociopath.

  I’ll have to carefully plan my portrayal of David to the jury and craft a story to fit it. Reciprocally, I’ll need to figure out how to cast Jennifer Yamura herself.

  I had met Yamura twice. The first time was at a black-tie charity gala sponsored by Project Home to raise money for the homeless. I was standing with Jack Lafferty, a chief inspector and one of only a handful of cops I could still count as friends after I’d left the DA’s office. Jennifer Yamura was petite, thin, and no taller than five two. She had slender arms, highlighted by her sleeveless blue-sequined dress, and tiny, well-manicured hands. Her face was round, with almond eyes titled slightly upward at the ends. Jennifer Yamura’s white teeth were flawlessly aligned, and the overall effect of her face was so striking that she could’ve been featured in one of those Korean Air TV commercials—except that her ancestry was Japanese.

  She had planted herself in front of us and greeted Jack. “How have you been?”

  “Well enough,” Jack answered coolly.

  “And you’re Mr. McFarland, one of the rising stars of the criminal-defense bar.” Yamura said this with just enough irony to make it more cutting than complimentary.

  “I’ve tried a few cases,” I said.

  “Bet you have some good stories.” She smiled.

  “Is that why you’re here?” I asked. “Looking for a story?”

  “I’m here to support the cause. But, of course, I’m always looking for a story. You have one you want to share?”

  I tried to think of something glib but fell flat.

  Yamura persisted, asking questions about my practice. The inquiries seemed innocuous enough, but I got the distinct impression I was being studied, probed. Evaluated for my potential usefulness.

  Jack turned to me after Jennifer Yamura had walked away. “That one’s radioactive,” he said. “She glows real pretty. Just don’t get too close.” He then proceeded to tell me all he knew about her. Jennifer Yamura was socially ubiquitous. She frequented cop bars as often as she attended high-end social events. She went to Flyers, Phillies, Sixers, and Eagles games. She attended all the city’s ethnic parades. She participated in and reported from the Broad Street Run in May and the Distance Run in September. And, of course, she attended all the political rallies, press conferences, and contentious city-council meetings.

  “She seems to be everywhere, all the time,” Jack said. “On the hunt, trying to bag the big scoop that will land her in an anchor’s chair.”

  I looked across the room to see Jennifer Yamura talking to the mayor. She touched his wrist, laughing at something he said.

  “She seems enthralled,” I told Jack.

  “I’m sure that’s exactly what she wants him to think.”

  I shelve the memory and remind myself that Jennifer Yamura was someone’s daughter. That, somewhere, her parents are shattered by her loss.

  This grim thought sends me back to the birth of my own daughter. I see Piper on the birthing table, squeezing my hand so hard I thought she’d break it, until the obstetrician lifted our tiny, purple baby into the air.

  “Oh my God,” I had whispered, my heart awash in joy. I looked down at Piper, who was crying, and it was my turn to squeeze her hand.

  We took Gabrielle home with us the next morning, after Piper’s parents stopped by the hospital to see the baby. As I drove our precious new cargo through the city streets, I felt an unfamiliar sense of fear—the first of many moments of new-baby terror I would experience over the next month. Gabrielle was so tiny and looked so fragile to me that I held my breath the first fifty times I held her. Piper laughed at my obvious trepidation.

  “You’re not going to break her,” she’d say.

  “Of course not,” I would agree, but I continued to handle Gabby like a pack of nitroglycerin.

  During the early days of Gabby’s life, Piper and I spent hours next to Gabby’s crib, watching the gentle rhythm of her breathing, overwhelmed by the new life we’d created.

  I remember one afternoon, sitting there, stroking her thick black hair and letting my mind carry us both into the future where Gabrielle’s life would unfold. I envisioned her as a toddler, crawling along the floor looking for new things to touch and lift and put into her mouth. I saw her walking between Piper and me, looking up at us, holding our hands as we escorted her to the bus stop for her first day of kindergarten. I saw Gabby sitting in fifth grade, drawing hearts and writing the name of some boy she had a crush on over and over again inside the cover of her notebook. I saw her, gawky and long-legged, crying on her bed as a teenager. I saw her walking next to me down the aisle as I steeled myself to hand her off to a better man. And I saw her in a hospital bed, cradling her own firstborn child.

  Jennifer Yamura’s father must have had the same experience with his own daughter, the same hopes and visions for her future. A future that ended in a pool of blood in a dark basement. Thinking this cuts me to the bone.

  8

  TUESDAY, JULY 10; FRIDAY, JULY 20; THURSDAY, JULY 26; WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1

  Three weeks pass. The Hanson case is pushed off the front pages by other, equally sad stories: a local congressman faces corruption charges while his son is convicted on twenty-two counts of bank and tax fraud; a local man is on trial for allegedly shooting his stepdaughter and then videotaping himself having sex with her corpse.

  On a Tuesday in the second week of July, I get to argue the Justin Bauer case before the state supreme court. It’s been said of Pennsylvania that it’s made up of Pittsburgh on the west end, Philadelphia on the east, and Alabama in the middle. Geographically, most of the state is populated by staunch conservatives who hold a dim view of the rights of criminal defendants, a view historically well represented by the justices elected to our state’s supreme court. The panel that faces me now, however, gives me reason for optimism. Last year, two of our Republican justices were forced off the bench when the state attorney general released copies of pornographic and misogynistic e-mails exchanged by the justices and members of law enforcement. They were replaced by two Democrats who both began their careers as criminal-defense attorneys.

  From the get-go, the court’s questioning makes clear that most of the justices are as convinced as I am of the ineptitude of Justin Bauer’s trial attorney. But that’s not enough. I have to show that the trial attorney’s ineptitude so undermined the truth-determining process that no reliable adjudication of guilt or innocence could have taken place. In other words, I have to convince the justices that, were it not for the trial attorney’s blunders, there would have been a good chance Justin would not have been convicted.

  It’s a high hurdle.

  The rules of appellate procedure do not require the defendant’s presence in the courtroom during oral argument. But I have brought Justin nonetheless—and Celine as well. Not because I expect they’ll understand the nuances of my legal argument, but because I want them to see the passion with which I present their side. Justin was let down by his former attorney, and I believe it’s im
perative that he and his mother witness a lawyer actually fighting like hell for them. They’re owed at least that.

  The argument goes as I expect. The justices are tough on both sides but more on me than the prosecution. Still, I hear in their questions an openness that I haven’t come across in a long while. After the hearing, I walk Celine into the hall. She grills me on the questioning, wanting to know why the judges were pressing me so hard. I do my best to explain, wishing the law weren’t so obtuse. In the end, all I can do is leave her with a sense of guarded optimism and, hopefully, the feeling that, finally, the law is hearing her and her son.

  The next two weeks bring a heat wave. Day after day of high humidity and ninety-degree temperatures require me to change shirts twice a day. The heat makes me yearn for the beach. Makes me remember how, when we were first married, Piper and I used to bolt out of Center City every Friday afternoon in the summers and head to Cape May, where we’d rent a room in a bed-and-breakfast.

  The first time we’d gone to the beach together was when we’d just started dating.

  “Next to the museum, this is my favorite place,” Piper told me as we walked the broad sand beach toward the lighthouse. “When I look out at the ocean, at all that open space, it feels like time, too, expands. That the pace of everything slows down. And if I stop and stand here facing the ocean”—Piper continued, doing so—“and take a deep breath . . . it feels like the whole world is inhaling with me. And all the pressures of the world melt away.”

  Piper turned to me when she said this. She smiled when she finished and, in that instant, her beauty struck me. It physically struck me. The shimmering blonde of her hair as it danced around her tiny ears in the balmy sea breeze. The sapphire of her smiling eyes. Her rose-pink lips. Her fine jawline. The way she tilted her head ever so slightly to the left.