The Vendetta Defense raa-8

by Lisa Scottoline

  Judy permitted the word a hang time, as she had with Angelo Coluzzi’s death, and her gaze met Pigeon Tony’s. She locked eyes with him for a minute, keeping him in that moment, remembering the day he’d welled up in court, and his eyes grew shiny again, with remorse restrained enough to ring true. Then she said, “I have no further questions, Your Honor,” and returned to counsel table.

  But Santoro was stalking to the podium. “Likewise, I have only one question on recross, Your Honor,” he said, but didn’t wait for Judge Vaughn to nod him on. He reached the podium and fixed a glare at the witness stand. “Mr. Lucia, are you sorry you killed Angelo Coluzzi?”

  Pigeon Tony paused only a second. “No.”

  “Thank you,” Santoro said quickly and went back to counsel table.

  Judy kept an eye on the jury. A juror in the back row looked shocked. Another juror, next to her, had knitted her brow in confusion. Judy considered going up to the podium to mitigate the damage, but she knew Pigeon Tony would tell only the truth: He was sorry Angelo Coluzzi was dead, but he wasn’t sorry he had killed him. Whoever said that the truth, while plain, was easy? Or that human behavior was ever black and white? It gave her an idea.

  “Ms. Carrier?” Judge Vaughn asked, cocking a questioning eyebrow, but Judy had arrived at a decision and held her head high, with a confidence she didn’t feel.

  “The defense rests, Your Honor,” she said.

  They were the hardest words she had ever said, and also something of a lie. Because she was already hatching another plan.

  Chapter 48

  Judy stood at the head of the table in the courthouse conference room, pitching Plan B to her client. “Pigeon Tony, listen to me. We can still save your life. You know you are charged with murder in the first degree, which is the worst kind of murder there is.”

  “Si, si,” he answered wearily, almost slumping in the chair across from Judy. He was clearly exhausted from testifying, and the grind of the trial had taken its toll. Frank sat next to him, his expression tense, with an arm around the back of his grandfather’s chair. Bennie listened as she stood with folded arms against the side wall. She had given Judy her blessing for this last-ditch effort.

  “We can move the Court—ask the Court—to charge you on a lesser crime. For example, murder in the third degree. I have the definition right here. Murder in the third degree is when someone kills someone else”—Judy read from her pad—“‘without a lawful justification, but acts with a sudden and intense passion, resulting from serious provocation.’”

  “What means voca—?” Pigeon Tony asked. “It’s like when Coluzzi told you he killed your son and his wife. He provoked you.” “Provocare,” Frank translated, and Pigeon Tony nodded, seeming to perk up.

  “Coluzzi provoke me, è vero.”

  Judy nodded, encouraged. “He did provoke you, and you did kill him with a sudden and intense passion. It fits! Now is the time the Court charges the jury, or tells them what the law is. If we ask the Court to charge the jury on murder in the third degree, I think they won’t convict you on murder in the first degree.”

  Frank brightened. “What’s the difference, Judy?”

  “One big difference. No death penalty. The mandatory minimum for third-degree murder is ten to twenty years.”

  “Hmm.” Frank shook his head. “That might as well be life in prison for him. But at least it’s not death.”

  “Exactly,” Judy said, heartened. “It gives the jury a compromise. They want to punish him, they can convict on the lesser crime. It’s not all black and white.”

  Frank nodded. “I like it.”

  “So do I,” added Bennie, still leaning against the wall.

  Judy felt relieved. “It’s your choice, Pigeon Tony, but I advise that you let me do it.” She checked her watch. “I meet with the judge in five minutes to go over the charge, and after that we have our closing arguments. Then he charges the jury and they go out to deliberate. You have to decide now. Say yes.”

  Pigeon Tony blinked, his lids slower than usual. “Say again.”

  “Say what?”

  “Say what you say before.” He motioned at Judy’s legal pad. “What you read.”

  Judy looked at her pad. The definition of third-degree murder. “Killing someone without lawful justifi—”

  “What means?”

  “It means the killing wasn’t legal. There was no legal reason for it.”

  Pigeon Tony’s eyes flared open. “Is no murder! No! No! No!”

  “Pigeon Tony—”

  “No!” he erupted.

  It was over. Judy knew she could move Mount Vesuvius sooner. There was no Plan C. And it was time to go.

  At the podium, Judy stood for a moment before the jury, thinking of what to say in her closing argument. Events had obviously mooted her neatly outlined reasonable-doubt closing, with Points A through F. She was on her own.

  She looked up and eyed the jury, and they looked refreshed and eager. The schoolteacher smiled at her, but Judy had to speak to the back row, which had already decided that Pigeon Tony was guilty. She had thought that once, too. Maybe it was a good starting point.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. You have heard something extraordinary in this courtroom, in Pigeon Tony’s testimony. I heard it for the first time myself, when I met my client. You all heard him tell you, because he insisted on taking the witness stand to talk to you and tell you the truth. He didn’t hide behind me, an expert, or even his rights under the Constitution. But when Pigeon Tony told me that story of what happened in the back room, the same way he told it to you today, I was appalled. I didn’t know if I should represent him. After all, he had killed someone. In my mind then, he was guilty.”

  Judy paused, thinking aloud. “But I came to know him, and to hear about his life, much as you did through the stories he told you when he testified today. I began to understand what he had gone through. First, his wife murdered in a stable, on his young son’s birthday, and then his son and his wife burned alive in a truck that went flaming off a highway overpass. Pigeon Tony Lucia is a man who has had his entire family taken from him.” Judy was choosing her words carefully, because Santoro was on the edge of his seat, waiting to object. She couldn’t say Angelo Coluzzi had committed the murders because he hadn’t been convicted, but she didn’t have to, she hoped.

  “And as time went on, I began to understand what would happen to a normal person, if pushed to that length. What would happen to me, or to you. And if I, or you, were provoked the way Pigeon Tony was, had lost the people we loved, wouldn’t we behave the same way, in that one instant when we are taunted, teased, and provoked, with the source of our greatest pain? Remember Angelo Coluzzi’s words: I killed your son and—”

  “Objection, irrelevant!” Santoro said, and Judy’s head snapped around. Most lawyers would never interrupt another’s closing, especially with an objection that lame.

  “Your Honor,” Judy said. “That was Pigeon Tony’s testimony, and I’m entitled to argue it.”

  “Overruled.” Judge Vaughn looked askance at Santoro, who sat down.

  Judy paused to collect her thoughts. If Santoro was trying to break her stride, she wouldn’t let him. “And hearing that, Pigeon Tony flew at Angelo Coluzzi and pushed him, breaking his neck. And after that he screamed. At the horror of what he had done. You heard him say he was sorry that Coluzzi was dead. He was, and is, sorry.”

  Judy drew herself up. “But you are here to judge Pigeon Tony, and Judge Vaughn will charge you on the law, and he will tell you that you are the ultimate finder of the facts in this case. You alone will decide what is truth. You alone will decide whether Pigeon Tony committed murder when he killed Angelo Coluzzi.”

  Judy paused, eyeing each juror. “Your best guide in that deliberations room will be this question: What is justice? Because it is justice that brings the lawyers here, and the court personnel, Judge Vaughn, and the Lucias and the Coluzzis and all of the spectators, the reporters, and most of
all, each of you. Juries are convened for one purpose only: to do justice. Justice is the reason for this system, and for objections, and for opening and closing arguments. Justice is, in fact, the entire point of the law.”

  Judy thought about it, clarifying her own thoughts as she spoke. “Pigeon Tony has never had justice in his life, and he is seventy-nine years old. He grew up under Fascism, in prewar Italy, and he doesn’t expect justice. He has learned not to expect justice. But he remains hopeful. It is time for him to have justice now.” Judy paused. “Show him what this country was built on. Teach him what we are all about. Grant him, finally, justice. And find him not guilty of murder. In so doing, you will not be ignoring the law. You will be fulfilling its highest and best purpose.”

  “Thank you.” Judy nodded at the jury, then made her way to her seat. She didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead as Santoro hurried to the podium and slapped his legal pad on it with a resounding thwap.

  “I cannot believe what I just heard,” Santoro said angrily, eyeing the jury. “I had expected that the defense would play on your sympathy, but I never thought I would hear her call upon justice.

  Is it justice to kill an innocent man, in cold blood, while he is doing nothing but practicing his hobby? How can that possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, be called justice?”

  Santoro held up a finger. “Ms. Carrier told you that the point of the law is justice. She is correct. But the law that governs this matter has already been decided and the law on this subject is clear. Please listen while I read it to you.” He picked up his pad. “‘A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing.’” Santoro slapped the pad down again, startling the jurors in the front row. “That is the law of this Commonwealth. And if you follow the law, as you must, you can only find defendant Lucia guilty of murder in the first degree.”

  Santoro didn’t break stride. “The defendant admitted he killed Angelo Coluzzi. The defendant admitted he intended to kill Angelo Coluzzi. The defendant admitted he hoped he could kill Angelo Coluzzi. And semantics aside, the defendant isn’t sorry that he killed Angelo Coluzzi. Which means to me, he’d do it again if he had the chance. Ms. Carrier wants you to imagine yourselves as Mr. Lucia, but on the contrary, please imagine yourselves as Angelo Coluzzi. Because that’s who you would be if we permitted people to kill each other for reasons they think are valid but that have no basis in reality. To kill for imagined slights. To kill for unsubstantiated revenge. To kill because they think they have the right to. To kill because of an ancient grudge. To kill for their cultural beliefs.”

  Santoro paused. “Ms. Carrier spoke personally, and so will I. I am an Italian-American, and I must tell you, I am absolutely offended by this defendant. Because this is not prewar Italy; this is America. This is not a time of war and disorder; this is a time of peace, and order. We in America are not about tyranny, we are about democracy and the law. We Americans all must abide by the law, for the safety and good of the whole. When the defendant came to this country from Italy, as did my own grandfather, he took on the responsibility to accept our laws. Just as he accepts our benefits and our riches.”

  Santoro eyed the jury, the front row and then the back. “In the beginning of this case, I told you that every murder case is a story. Now we are at the end of this one. All of us are here to hear it and witness it, except for one man. Angelo Coluzzi. The law will guide you, and Judge Vaughn will charge you on it. And when you follow it, you will be doing justice, not only for all of us, but for Angelo Coluzzi.

  “Thank you,” he said, and left the podium.

  Judy couldn’t ease the tightness in her stomach as Judge Vaughn began reading the law to the jury, taking them through the early paragraphs of the charge, regarding the jury as the ultimate fact finder. Though the boilerplate had always sounded like a bar-review course before, it took on a special significance now. Pigeon Tony listened to every word, sitting upright in his chair, and Judy was sure that Judge Vaughn was reading more slowly so he could understand it. Until the judge had heard Pigeon Tony’s admission on the stand, he had liked him. Judy hoped the jury wouldn’t feel the same way.

  She stole a glance at them as the judge read. Each face was grave, and from time to time many of them glanced over at Pigeon Tony and Judy, then at Santoro and back again, as if trying to reach a decision visually. Judy took a mental head count. The Abruzzese schoolteacher would vote for Pigeon Tony, and maybe the older woman next to her. Everyone else was against, and the back row wanted him drawn and quartered—with his lawyer. Judy stopped counting. It was a guessing game anyway.

  Her head began to throb, as the judge segued into reading the jury the definition of first-degree murder. It would be the only degree of guilt that went to the jury, on Pigeon Tony’s insistence, even though Judge Vaughn had raised a question about it during their earlier conference. Judy had told him this was her client’s wish, and he’d acceded to it. Legally the judge couldn’t add a lesser degree of guilt to the charge without a request from the defense or the Commonwealth. It had been obvious at the conference that Santoro was too confident of victory on murder one to do so. The case would go to the jury as all or nothing.

  It set Judy’s teeth on edge. She blamed herself, she blamed Pigeon Tony, then she blamed Italy and Mussolini, and then came back to herself again. She glanced over at Pigeon Tony, but he was listening to the charge. It was impossible for her to keep a professional mask for the jury, so she looked away.

  In the front row of the gallery, beyond the bulletproof divider, sat Frank, his eyes as worried as Judy’s. He caught her glance and forced a tense smile, but Judy couldn’t find one. She could only imagine how Frank would react when his grandfather was sentenced to death, or life in prison. Or what would happen between them, when Judy became the lawyer who had put him there. She faced the front of the courtroom, where Judge Vaughn was finishing the charge and dismissing the jury to deliberate.

  “I am giving the bailiff a verdict sheet for you to take with you into your deliberations,” the judge said, handing several pieces of paper to the bailiff. The bailiff then brought one sheet to the jury, walked to the Commonwealth’s table and handed one to Santoro, and finally carried one to Judy, leaving it on counsel table in front of her. “Thank you in advance for your time and your best efforts. Court is now adjourned.” He banged the gavel as the jury rose and filed out of the pocket door beside the dais.

  Only then did Judy’s gaze fall to the verdict sheet, which contained but a single interrogatory:

  Murder (1st degree)—Guilty or Not Guilty?

  Chapter 49

  Judy sat with Bennie in the courthouse conference room. The small room was dead quiet. The lighting was harsh. Nobody was talking. They were all talked out. They had spent the first two hours of the jurors’ deliberations psyching them out, comparing notes on the raise of an eyebrow or a sniff of contempt. Extrapolating from stereotype and anecdote and sheer guesswork which way they would go. Who would be the foreperson? Who the holdout? How long would they be out? Would they come back with a question? Or worse, an answer?

  Judy checked her watch. 6:30. The jury had gone out at 3:13, but who was counting? When would they come back? How would they decide? Judy’s anxious gaze roved over a table cluttered with briefcases, papers, newspapers, and a copy of the charge, which she had explained to Pigeon Tony, just for something to do. He hadn’t seemed all that interested, and truth to tell, neither was she. They had rolled the dice and were waiting for them to stop.

  Judy checked her watch. It was 6:31. Pigeon Tony looked down at his lap, silent but not dozing. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, because Frank, sitting next to him, had an arm around him and was rubbing his back, jiggling Pigeon Tony with each stroke. They had been doing this for so long, Judy wondered if Frank would wear a hole in Pigeon Tony’s new jacket, but she didn’t say anything. Nobody acted normal when a jury was out, least of all the client, whose life, or money, was at
stake. And for the lawyers it was a limbo of the worst sort. Because whatever happened, they would be responsible for it, and the words of that closing would be a refrain of sleepless nights to come, causing a cringe of regret, or even a tear, in a dark bedroom.

  Judy sighed inwardly. Looked nowhere and everywhere. Tried not to think about it but failed. Every profession had its moments, moments only insiders experienced, and lawyering was no different. But for all the highs and lows of being a trial lawyer, Judy thought this was the most incredible moment the law had to offer. A moment that turned a job into a profession, and a profession into a love. A moment when life hung in the balance. A moment when human beings struggled together to govern themselves, to make sense of conflicting facts, and to discover and determine the most elusive of ideals. Justice. Truth. Fairness. Law. Morality. A moment to fix and define ideas that refused to be charted, that defied definition.

  Judy marveled at it, truly, anytime any jury went out, but in this case realized something for the first time. The law really wasn’t found in the green casebooks that contained the Pennsylvania Statutes or the pebbled maroon books that spelled out the United States Code. It lived in this moment, in the hearts and minds of the jurors who decided it day by day, in courtrooms big and small, everywhere across the country, under a system of law that had become a model for nations around the world. And even though it dealt with such lofty ideals, it always came down to one thing—

  A knock at a conference room door, a startled lawyer jumping up to open it, and a solemn bailiff standing at the threshold.

  “They’re back,” he said simply.

  In the courtroom the jurors filed from the pocket door into the jury box. Judy struggled to read each face, but they were all looking down as they found their seats. Courtroom lore held that it was bad news when the jury didn’t look happy, but Judy never got that. All verdicts were bad news for one side. She prayed it wasn’t her side, this time. Pigeon Tony’s side.