The Law Partners (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by John Ellsworth

"We're done here," says the Judge. "Let's go out and pick our jury."

  With a flutter and a dive her hands finally come to rest on her bench book and notepad.

  The judge is ready.

  The question for me is, am I? Am I ready?

  I tell myself that I am and put on my most confident face.

  Beside me, Mira is elated. She had thought we wouldn't get the judge's help in this. She is beaming ear-to-ear as we stand but I have to tell her to wipe it off.

  A jury should never see a smiling defendant. At least not before they rule. After they rule, that's when we all want to see a smiling defendant.

  Shaughnessy is grimacing and gives me a deadly look.

  Not everyone wants to see a smiling defendant.

  33

  Tuesday afternoon, second day of trial in State of Illinois vs. Miranda Morales. We are all in our places and jury selection is just about complete. I am on my feet at the lectern, questioning the jury members about their fitness to serve on Mira's jury. Surprisingly, the State hasn't attempted to create reasons around which the judge would have no choice but to delay things--my worst fear. Shaughnessy hasn't protracted jury Q&A's and hasn't nitpicked every little issue that would require us to step up to the judge's throne and make ourselves heard in private. I'm beginning to think he has accepted the court's conditions, the ones I requested.

  "It's a different kind of trial," I'm explaining to prospective juror number eight, "because the State is putting one of its own on trial. The District Attorney has indicted one of his own prosecutors. Is there anything about that kind of case that would affect your ability to serve as a fair and impartial juror?"

  Juror number eight is a young woman with three children under six. Even with so many youngsters at home, she has let us know that she is determined to sit on our jury. That being the case, I know the question I have just asked her about affecting her ability to serve will draw a "no" response. Which is a good thing, because I really want her on my jury.

  Without hesitation she answers, "No, that won't affect me at all. I can be a fair and impartial juror no matter who the defendant happens to be."

  Excellent. Time to move along.

  At which point Robert Shaughnessy himself stands at the prosecution table and asks to have a sidebar with Judge Itaglia. The judge nods so we hurry up to her station. This is only the second time this has happened in two days. I'm not pleased with the delay and will tell the judge what I think about it.

  "What is it, Mr. Shaughnessy?" she demands.

  "I think this juror number eight should be excused for cause," he replies.

  Her eyebrows raise. "And what cause would that be?"

  "She has small children at home, young ones, and clearly they are going to be uppermost in her mind throughout any trial. It's the State's position that she won't be able to give her full attention to the trial and the witnesses and their testimony. We move to excuse her for cause."

  "Mr. Gresham?"

  I smile. "Judge, that's about as specious as it gets. I'm no longer surprised at the lengths the prosecution in this county will go to get rid of jurors it doesn't like, but small children at home? What's next, old parents at home? Too many bills at home on the table? Too much NBA to watch on TV? The possibilities for how the State will attempt to expand on such a dangerous precedent are endless. As endless as the State's imagination, which, judging by this objection, seems boundless already. This objection is made for the pure purposes of delay. Counsel should be admonished so we're not up here again in ten minutes."

  Judge Itaglia looks down at me and winces.

  "That's a pretty commentary," she whispers to us, "let's try to avoid speechifying up here, shall we? At any rate, the State's request for dismissal for cause is denied. Counsel, do you wish to exercise one of your peremptories on number eight?"

  "No, Your Honor," Shaughnessy says, which totally makes the case I was aiming for. If he really was worried about the juror, he would use one of his dozen peremptories. But he's not. He was just looking for a delay.

  "Please take your places, gentlemen. Let's move it along now."

  We sit down and I scan over my drawing of the jury box and its occupants for my next target.

  That turns out to be Amelia M. Briggs, who is sitting in the number four chair loudly snapping her chewing gum. Something about her casual demeanor tells me to follow up on the judge's earlier questions to her.

  "Miss Briggs," I begin, "you told Judge Itaglia that you're a graphic artist, isn't that correct?"

  "Yessir," she snaps, never missing a beat with the gum.

  "What kind of art?"

  "Graphic."

  "I'm sorry, I'm trying to ask what kinds of things do you render."

  "People making love."

  It is very still in the courtroom as I fire through my mind looking for ways her response might come back to hurt Miranda Morales. Thinking of none, I plunge on.

  "People making love can mean a lot of things. Is what you do pornography?"

  She looks askance at me. "Anime."

  "Isn't anime a form of Japanese visual expression?"

  Her face brightens. A point was just scored.

  "Exactly! Most people are clueless about it. I'm impressed!"

  "So your animations feature people making love. Would that be physical lovemaking?"

  She pulls herself upright in the chair. "No, that would be people doing things that they love for a living. I work for an insurance company. One rendering was of a man mowing his grass with great care until a car came veering through his fence and ran him down. Another was of a young mother taking her child out for a walk in the stroller until a tree branch fell on them. In both cases no one was that seriously injured, but it demonstrated how unexpected life's need for good insurance can be."

  "So you're doing animations for commercials?"

  "Exactly."

  "Is there anything about that which would affect your ability to be a juror in this case?"

  "If anything," she replies through two snaps of her gum, "it qualifies me as someone with a great eye for viewing any video you might want to show us. I have a great skepticism about much of the police video I see on TV, so much of it is doctored."

  "What about video taken by CCTV security cameras? Would your background in visual art make you somehow prejudiced to where you wouldn't want you on this jury if you were the one on trial?"

  She smiles. "Someone like me is exactly who I would want on my own jury. I'm good at visuals and I'm very fair."

  Those two about cover it for me. I'm finished here. This is our second full day of jury selection and it is almost five o'clock.

  "Judge, the defense accepts the panel. We're very happy to have this group of twelve jurors and four alternates helping us from here forward."

  Judge Itaglia nods and looks at Shaughnessy at the prosecution table. It is extremely unusual for the DA himself to try a case. But this isn't just any old murder case. This one is extremely high profile and he wants to end his term in office with a bang and a nod to the police he has protected over his entire career. Press and TV are jamming the courtroom and he wants more than anything for his office to come across as fair and unbiased.

  He stands up.

  "The State accepts the panel as well, Your Honor."

  "Very well. The remaining contingent on this case are excused. Please report to the main jury room tomorrow for your next assignments. The other sixteen selected here today, we will begin trial at nine sharp in the morning. Please report to the courtroom no later than eight forty-five and the bailiff will show you into the court's jury room."

  She then goes into the usual litany against allowing conversations or news accounts about the case and the jury is dismissed. We stand in recess.

  Harley and I are on our feet while Mira remains seated between us, staring straight ahead.

  Harley touches her shoulder. "Okay?"

  Mira looks up at her. "Just shocked. I'm actually on trial for murder.
I should be over there at counsel table trying this case for the State. Instead, I'm here in the defendant's chair. I don't know if it ever will soak in all the way."

  "You're going to be fine," I tell her, and I hope the uncertainty in my heart isn't vocalized. Truth be told, the State has a very strong case against Mira. After all, it was her condo and her gun and it was she who had the fight with Darrell Harrow not an hour before he lay dead on her living room floor. Who else would be as likely to do such a thing as the dead man's lover? It is no secret, at this point, incidentally, that the two of them were lovers. The State has as much as said so in its jury list where general topics of testimony are required to be disclosed. While this doesn't surprise me, it does muddy the water. We tend to think of romance as more likely to elicit homicidal feelings between lovers than disputes between us and our dentist. It's that certain something so proliferated in song and poetry that makes men and women turn to guns, knives, and poisons, that certain something called love. Love kills. At least that's the thinking among those of us involved in criminal justice because that's what we most often encounter as the basis for violent crime. Love is, in fact, a many-splendored thing. Until it is rejected. Then all hell breaks loose.

  With these thoughts in mind, I return to the office with Harley. Mira has caught a cab back to her condo, where we've asked her to lay low and remain until the trial is over. Except for coming to the court, of course. The less of an appearance criminal defendants make in the world, the less opportunity there is for the police to interfere in their lives vis-à-vis traffic stops and the like. The police like nothing more than to intimidate a defendant during a criminal trial. So we ask her to stay at home and we trust that she will heed our admonition.

  "Love kills," I say to Harley as we ride the elevator upstairs to our offices.

  "What the hell?" she says. Then she gets my drift.

  "That's the angle they'll be using. I agree."

  "So how would you handle it?"

  "Simple. I would prove that it wasn't she who was enraged. It was him. He was coming there to hurt her. Put the shoe on the other foot."

  I turn and watch the floor numbers click by overhead.

  It's running through my mind for the umpteenth time as I begin yet another criminal trial, that the real duty of the State--the prosecution--is not to win; rather, it's to present a case without flourishes and without strategy in an attempt to help the jury get to the truth of a situation. But that notion fell by the wayside long before I became a lawyer. Today the State strategizes and tries to color situations and paint with a deceitful brush in order to win.

  The truth train left the station long ago.

  The door opens on our floor and we flee into our offices, where I sit at my desk and attempt to stop shaking inside.

  It's an unimaginable burden on lawyers who defend murder trials. At times I kid myself into thinking it's just something I do; I try to come across to myself as inured to the responsibility and convince myself that I handle these cases gracefully and easily without fear.

  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Like always, I am scared to death. And we haven't even really started yet.

  Tomorrow will be savage as the state weaponizes its witnesses. I will resist with all my wit, experience, and creativity.

  I only hope I'm up to it.

  I know the State, with its unlimited resources, will be.

  Days three, four, and five are stacked up against the defendant. Then a quick weekend and one day for the defense. I only hope I'm doing the right thing by telescoping it all down into one day for the defendant.

  As far as I know, I'm on the right track.

  But that's as far as I know. Which is never all of it.

  I say a silent prayer that I won't turn up at the end, Monday night, needing to extend the trial for another day or two. It could happen.

  It's my job to make sure it doesn't.

  34

  Wednesday morning, nine o'clock, and we begin the actual trial.

  Judge Itaglia calls court to order and takes on some minor housekeeping matters with the jury. (Some want vegetarian at lunch and some want a meat eater's diet.) When she is finished, she turns to DA Shaughnessy and tells him he may now begin with his opening statement.

  Ronald Shaughnessy played offensive tackle at Notre Dame. And, judging by the looks of him, he still works hard to stay in shape--the kind of guy you'd want on your team in a friendly game of touch football. He steps up to the lectern and sets before himself a small stack of note cards. That’s the sign of the lawyer who isn't all that comfortable talking to juries, needing signposts in the form of notecards to guide him along the way. With myself, anymore, I take a single sheet of paper with maybe five key points I want to cover--and that's it. Each to his own. But what Shaughnessy maybe lacks in comfort addressing the jury he more than makes up for with a huge, booming voice that fills the courtroom with a pleasant, nasal sound not unlike the voice of Samuel L. Jackson. The jury is attentive as he gets underway.

  "The State is going to present evidence that will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this pleasant looking woman over here--" pausing to point out Mira, sandwiched between me and Harley--"fired a single round from her gun, killing Assistant DA Darrell Harrow. Why would she do this? A lover's quarrel. No more, no less. We will be calling a witness, Harrow's own wife, who will tell you that her husband had come apart the night before his death, confessing to her that he had been carrying on an affair with his colleague, Miranda Morales. Tearfully, he promised his wife it was over and that he would break it off with Morales immediately."

  He stops and takes a sip of water. The jury is interested, leaning forward, eyes following the DA.

  "So the next night, July Fourth, at the Democratic Fundraiser for the upcoming November elections, Harrow approached Morales and an argument broke out between them. A man by the name of Nathaniel McMann will testify that he heard this argument from the dais and that he thought it beyond a mere lovers' quarrel, that it was very serious. He will tell you he based this judgment on the anger levels and the threats going back and forth. That's right, Harrow said some pretty mean things to Morales, but she reciprocated in kind. Meaning, she threatened him right back.

  "Detective Jamison Weldon will testify that he was the lead detective on the investigation. He will tell you about his work out of the homicide bureau of the Chicago Police Department and he will go into what he observed and what he did at the condominium of Ms. Morales on July Fourth and early July Fifth. He has headed up the investigation ever since and will give you the twenty-thousand-foot view of things. It's very likely another one or two of the uniformed officers at the scene that night will also testify about the scene and how it was kept un-contaminated by people coming and going inside the premises."

  Again with the water and a minute or so of flipping through his notes. Then we continue.

  "The crime scene technicians will testify about their duties, their training, and what actions they took at the scene of this murder. They will talk about bloodstains and DNA evidence and other criminalists will talk about gunshot evidence. All of it neatly tied together by the time we're finished with them.

  "The medical examiner will testify after the CSI's and will tell you about the manner and cause of death. You will be told that DA Harrow died inside Ms. Morales' condo that night from a gunshot wound. Which leaves you with the question of who fired the fatal round."

  He steps away from the podium and leans across his table to whisper to Detective Weldon. They exchange words, Weldon nodding and then pursing his lips in a very serious look. They seem to be in agreement and my stomach falls. I'm not going to like what they just agreed to. Shaughnessy returns to the lectern and pushes the glasses up on his nose. Then he levels his eyes at the jury.

  "One key item of evidence needs to be mentioned at this point. Let me tell you why. Darrell Harrow was found stretched out dead on Miranda Morales' living room floor. His head was nearest
the wall where the entrance door is located. At his head was an upside-down cross. A Christian icon turned upside-down. This configuration is often seen in Satanic ritualism. Detective Weldon will testify about that. He will also tell you that on the wall above Harrow's head was where someone had drawn a pentagram. As many of you know, a pentagram is a five-pointed star set inside a circle that is also typically found in Satanic ritualism. What you may not know is that a pentagram with two points up inscribed in a double circle with the head of a goat inside the pentagram is the copyrighted logo of the Church of Satan. Well, this is exactly what was found drawn above Harrow's body, without the head of the goat. The drawing was primitive as it was done with a black drawing agent of some kind. Detective Weldon will tell you the drawing was made with a piece of charcoal taken from Ms. Morales' fireplace. Crime lab testimony and reports will prove this to be the case. Now why is this important?"

  He gives the question pause and lets it sink in. Then he picks it up again, his pace much slower now.

  "It is important because a cigarette butt has been located that involved two things. First, it had on the filter the DNA isolated from the defendant's lipstick. Second, it had smudges from the same charcoal that was used to draw the pentagram on the wall. Adding the two together, you will come to understand from all the testimony and evidence that Miranda Morales drew the pentagram, the sign of Satan, on the wall after she shot and killed Darrell Harrow with one shot from the gun she always carried inside her purse. She carried the gun because she was a homicide prosecutor in my office and was exposed by her work to some very dangerous and very upset people."

  Now he crosses over to the court clerk's evidence table where all exhibits have been marked and picks up the gun used to kill Harrow. He holds it up.

  "This gun was used to kill Darrell Harrow. But guess what else? This gun also has trace evidence on it of the same charcoal that was applied to the wall to draw the pentagram and the same charcoal that was found on Mira Morales' cigarette butt. Coincidence? How could it be? The evidence will connect up these three dots and you will be left with the compelling knowledge that the defendant touched all three and used two of the three to commit the murder and then tried to push the murder off on Satanists in order to disguise her involvement. How did this work? Simple. The murder appeared to be the work of Satanists as she would have us believe with the upside-down cross and the Satanic star. But in truth they were used to provide misdirection only. There was no Satanic involvement in this murder, only a lover's quarrel followed by a single gunshot. That's why we're all here today.