[Damien Harrington 01.0] The Alibi

by Rachel Sinclair

  And really, if you think about it, crime scene photos really don’t add anything to most juries’ understanding to what happened in any given crime and who did it. Unless you have an expert on the stand testifying that the killer was left or right-handed, I never did see exactly why it was so necessary to show every gruesome blood splatter to the jury. I consequently always saw the massive blow-up pictures of people splattered in blood to be prejudicial and not at all probative, but, unfortunately, prosecutors had the right to show these pictures. It didn’t mean that I had to like it, however.

  I also had found out exactly what Ally meant when she told me that Vittorio was worth more dead than alive, and when I found out what she meant, I almost killed Gina for withholding that piece of information from me. Apparently, a mobster by the name of Francesco Veraldi was offering a $1 million bounty on Vittorio’s head. Vittorio was working as a spy for the Colombo crime syndicate, which was one of the largest crime syndicates in the area. He apparently had moved up in the ranks of the syndicate, even as he was still posing as a low-level soldier and two-bit gangster. He managed to infiltrate the Veraldi family, and was giving information to the Colombo family. Because of this, Francesco Veraldi offered a bounty to anybody who would kill Vittorio or bring Vittorio into Francesco so that Francesco could take care of him personally.

  This was all top secret, which was why Tom Garrett managed to miss it. The only reason why Ally knew about this entire arrangement was because she had been working with another mobster who told her about what went down. She learned about the bounty and she was going to use this information against Gina.

  What upset me was that I thought that Gina had to have known about the bounty arrangement herself. After all, Gina was desperate for money. Maybe she was the one who killed Vittorio after all. It was only after I did a thorough review of her financial statements that I was satisfied that she didn’t get the bounty money from Francesco.

  Nevertheless, Ally was going to use this whole scenario against Gina. One of her witnesses was the guy who told her about the arrangement. From what I understood, this guy was heavily guarded and was going to go into the witness protection program as soon as the trial was over.

  Ally had her theory of the case, and I had mine. Mine wasn’t the truth, and hers wasn’t either. We both were going to present a theory to the jury that just wasn’t true.

  I was also slightly pissed when I found out about the bounty situation because, if I would have known about it, I would have used that information to present Francesco as the alternative suspect in the case. I had a problem presenting one of the women he raped as an alternative suspect, because the last thing that I wanted to do was bring suspicion against an innocent woman. Especially since I knew for a fact that all of the women Vittorio raped were innocent. But it would be much less of an issue to throw a mobster under the bus, even if I knew that the mobster didn’t do it. After all, he wanted to kill Vittorio. In this case, it would be like that old law school scenario, where a guy comes into a room and stabs a guy who is already dead. Yeah, that guy isn’t guilty of murder, because the victim was already dead, but he had sufficient mens rea for murder, so maybe there should be some kind of punishment for him.

  But I had already explained to Ally that we were trying for self-defense, so I couldn’t take that back. The horse had already left the barn, and I didn’t get the chance to really investigate whether it would be worthwhile to go ahead and try to pin the murder on Francesco.

  Then again, perhaps it was all for the best. I really didn’t want to get involved with pinning a murder on a mobster. That would be dangerous, to say the very least.

  The judge dismissed the new jury panel for a short break. “Be back here at 3 PM,” he said to everyone. “And we’ll begin the trial with opening statements.”

  The jury came back, and the trial began.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Ally said to the men and women who were sitting in the jury box, each of them focused on her with rapt attention. I knew that that attention would soon fade when the boring parts of the case came to light, but, for now, she had their full focus. “Thank you very much for your service. I know that each and every one of you have a life outside of this courtroom, and that you are making a sacrifice by serving on this panel. I don’t ever want you to think that I take any one of you for granted.”

  She took a deep breath and paced back and forth in front of the panel. “You are here today because a man is dead. His name was Vittorio Degrazio and his wife, Gina Degrazio, killed him in cold blood. In cold blood.” She nodded her head and looked each person in the eye. “In cold blood. She didn’t have a justification for killing him, no excuse. No, actually, she killed him for one reason – greed, plain and simple. It’s a story as old as time, the story of a wife killing her husband for money, but that’s exactly what she did. The evidence will prove this, ladies and gentlemen. Here, exactly, is what the evidence will show.”

  “One, the evidence will show that Vittorio Degrazio was a petty mobster, two-bit, really, until he got a chance to run with the big boys. Specifically, he finally got an assignment from his boss, Vincenzo Colombo, that he could sink his teeth into. Something that was going to finally catapult him from the low-level shake-down activities he was doing for his organization to a promotion up the food chain of the Colombo crime family. He was assigned to spy on another crime organization, which was headed up by one Francesco Veraldi. He did infiltrate this organization, and he got caught doing it. That means that he was a marked man.”

  “Francesco Veraldi put a bounty on Vittorio Degrazio’s head, ladies and gentlemen, offering a $1 million reward for anybody who could capture Vittorio, dead or alive. That’s how much Vittorio was worth to Francesco. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Gina Degrazio killed her husband. She killed him because she needed that money. She needed that money because she, herself, was in debt to yet another mobster, Joey Caruso. Joey Caruso needed Gina to pay him back for what she owed him, and he needed that money as soon as possible. I will carefully lay out all the evidence about this complicated arrangement, and you will see that Gina Degrazio killed Vittorio for the money.”

  “Now, the defense will try to show you that Gina killed Vittorio for another reason. Mr. Harrington, the counselor for the defendant, is going to try to tell you that Vittorio was trying to kill Gina and that Gina shot him in self-defense. But the evidence will show that she didn’t tell the officers that when they brought her in for questioning.” Ally shook her head. “No, nothing was said to the officers about being in fear for her life or any of that. Instead, she just clammed up and asked for a lawyer. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about that.”

  I rolled my eyes when Ally started insinuating that Gina must not have had a self-defense claim just because she didn’t tell the cops that she feared for her life. Gina was simply reacting how I wished that all my clients would – she didn’t say a word to the arresting officers. Not a word. Thank God for that, because if she would have talked, I would have been sunk. I couldn’t have used the self-defense justification.

  “And Gina is going to tell you that Vittorio was strangling her with a belt at the time that she shot him. I’ll show you her mug shot, ladies and gentlemen, and there wasn’t a mark on her neck.”

  I had that covered, too. After all, Vittorio had been dead for several days by the time he had been found. Of course there wouldn’t still be marks on her neck when she was brought in for questioning. That was stupid reasoning on Ally’s part.

  “And here’s another thing, ladies and gentlemen. Vittorio had been dead for several days at the time he was found. Several days. Now, if Gina Degrazio really had killed her husband in self-defense, don’t you think that she would have gone to the police immediately and told them what had happened? That’s what I would have done if I was the one who killed my husband in self-defense. I certainly wouldn’t have hid out in the house of the identical twin brother of the victim and waited for the poli
ce to come and pick me up. No, ladies and gentlemen, the actions of Gina Degrazio after the murder of her husband were the not actions of an innocent woman. They weren’t the actions of a woman who killed a man in self-defense. They were the actions of a woman who killed her own husband for the money. For this reason, I would ask that you find Gina Degrazio guilty of first degree murder at the close of this trial. Thank you very much.”

  She sat down, and I stood up and went over to the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I, too, thank you for your service. Your service is vital to the justice institution, and that cannot be stressed enough. Now, I will admit that Vittorio Degrazio is dead. I will admit that my client, Gina Degrazio killed him. That much is not in dispute. What is in dispute is why she killed him.”

  “You see, under the law, there is a concept known as justifiable homicide. Justifiable homicide generally is used in cases of self-defense or defense of others. In other words, if somebody is threatening your life or the life of somebody else, you may kill that person. You may kill that person, and, if you do kill that person, you cannot be punished for doing so. It’s his life or your life, in other words.”

  “And that is what happened here. Vittorio Degrazio was a violent man. You heard Ms. Hughes, the prosecutor – Vittorio was a mobster. He was somebody whose job literally was beating people up for a living. He went after people who owed money to the Colombo family and he beat them up. That’s what he did. Plus, the evidence will show that Vittorio was a serial rapist. You will hear the testimony of two different women who Vittorio raped. Finally, Vittorio and my client, Gina Degrazio, had a violent relationship. Gina called the police on three separate occasions because Vittorio was beating her up. In all three of these situations, no charges were filed, but I can still show you a record of the disturbances.”

  “Now, with all of this evidence, I ask you if it’s really such a stretch to believe that Vittorio was strangling Gina at the time that she killed him? No, ladies and gentlemen, it would not be a stretch. It wouldn’t be a stretch at all.”

  “You heard Ms. Hughes. You heard her question why it was that Gina didn’t have belt marks around her neck at the time that she was arrested. Ladies and gentlemen, Vittorio had been dead for three days at the time that he was found. Three days. Of course there wasn’t a mark on her neck. Of course. And, in case you might think that Gina would still have marks on her neck three days after almost being strangled, I have an expert to testify that that is not the case. My expert will testify that marks made by a belt that was wrapped around somebody’s neck would be gone within 24 hours at the most.”

  “Then Ms. Hughes questioned why Gina just didn’t tell the cops that she was defending herself when she shot Vittorio. Well, all that I can say is that Gina was doing what she was trained to do, and that was to not speak to the police unless she had a lawyer. Then, she got a lawyer to come to her interrogation, and that lawyer told her not to speak at all. That is always sound advice, ladies and gentlemen – never speak to the police until you’ve had the chance to have your case thoroughly evaluated by an attorney. Gina was just being smart when she chose not to speak to the police.”

  “Finally, Ms. Hughes questioned why it was that Gina would have hidden out at Vittorio’s brother’s house instead of going to the police about what she had done. That, too, is easily explainable – she was scared. Terrified. In shock. She didn’t know what to do, where to turn. So, she was paralyzed. Listen, she’s only human. Only human. Not everybody is going to react the way that Ms. Hughes would like. Not everybody is going to do the right thing after a homicide. Many people would react just like Gina, because, after all, a man is dead and she killed him. That’s enough to intimidate anyone into running and hiding and hoping that maybe it would all just blow over.”

  “So, in short, ladies and gentlemen, there is plenty of evidence, plenty of evidence, to show that my client killed Mr. Degrazio in self-defense. Because my client was justified, under the law, in killing her husband, I ask for a finding of not guilty. Thank you very much.”

  I sat down, and Judge Reiner looked at the clock. “Alright, ladies and gentlemen. As you can all plainly see, it is 4:45 PM. That means that it’s quitting time. You all are excused for the evening, but be back here tomorrow at 9 AM sharp, and I mean sharp. I won’t tolerate tardiness in my courtroom.” Then he smiled, to show that he wasn’t that much of a hard-ass. “Thank you very much, and I’ll be seeing all of you tomorrow morning.”

  They filed out, and I went over to Ally. There was one thing that I wanted to ask her. She didn’t include this person’s testimony as a preview in her opening statement, so I didn’t know if she was still going to call him.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “are you still planning on calling Enzo Degrazio?”

  Chapter 19

  I had an unpleasant surprise ten days before the trial, when I got Ally’s witness list. I saw that Enzo was going to be one of her witnesses. That pissed me off to no end, and it made me almost wish that I didn’t promise Gina that I wouldn’t finger him for the murder. I had told Gina that he was going to be a problem. He wanted that $3 million that he gave to Gina, and he knew that, if she was convicted, he was going to get that money back. So, it was clearly in his interest to make sure that Gina was convicted.

  That meant that he was going to get on the stand and lie.

  Sure enough, when I brought him into my office to talk to him, I found out what he was going to say. And there wasn’t a thing that I could do about it, except prepare to cross-examine him and bring him down hard.

  Now, I was trying to find out if Ally was, indeed, going to call Enzo as a witness. If she did, then that was the one thing that might send Gina to jail. The dominoes were going to fall from there.

  “Of course, I’m going to call him,” she said. “He’s my star witness.”

  How ironic that the person you call a star witness is actually the killer. I guessed that this wasn’t the first time the actual killer ended up testifying against the accused, but this might be the first time that the defense attorney knew this fact going in.

  I shook my head. “Go ahead and call him,” I said. “You’ll find out that he’s unreliable, at best.”

  “Whatever.”

  Whatever, indeed. “Okay,” I said. “I guess that’s the way you want to play it,” I said.

  “What do you mean? I have a witness who is going to testify against your client and I’m going to use him.”

  “You’ll find out.” At that, I just walked away. I knew how I was going to handle Enzo on the stand. The problem was, I had to not go too far. I couldn’t press him too much, because I didn’t want him to end up looking like a suspect. Enzo was to be handled with kid gloves, as he was the linchpin for all of the financial shenanigans that was going on. The last thing that I wanted to do was piss off Enzo, so that he offs Gina, which would mean that Joey Caruso wouldn’t get his money, and then Nick would be the ultimate victim. That, in the end, was my ultimate worry – Nick’s future hinged on whether or not I could somehow, someway, help Gina beat down her murder charge without implicating Enzo in the process.

  That night, I decided to relax with the kids and Sarah. Sarah was going to come over at 6 and fix dinner for us, and I actually was looking forward to it a tiny bit. Sarah and I had become friends over the past few months, nothing more than that. Our marriage counseling was helping to bring us closer together, however. The therapist managed to get beneath the layers and find out what was really driving her abhorrent behavior when Amelia was sick.

  At the core was profound fear. I never learned how devastated she was when her brother Noah died all those years ago. She opened up about what had happened to her family after that happened.

  “My parents became people that I didn’t recognize anymore. My mother was angry all the time, when, before Noah died, she was the most patient and sweet woman I had ever met. My father was dead before Noah died, dead from a suicide. I didn’t have them to lean on when I nee
ded them the most, and I was dying inside. I started to fail in school, started to run with the druggie crowd, started losing a lot of weight. Mom never even noticed. It was like I was invisible. Noah was dead and I was a ghost. It was the worst period of my entire life.” She took a deep breath. “Until I found out that Amelia was sick. I thought that I put that whole thing behind me – Noah, my parents, my troubled past. But I guess that I didn’t. I couldn’t handle Amelia’s sickness. I just couldn’t handle it.”

  Little by little, Sarah and I were becoming fixed.

  So, I was looking forward to her coming to the house that evening after the trial.

  She showed up with a bag full of groceries, and she kissed me on the cheek as the walked through the door. “Hey, Damien,” she said. “I’m making sour cream chicken. It’s a James Beard recipe. I went to the store and got free-range chicken, sour cream, paprika, onions and chicken stock. I’m going to serve it with new potatoes and asparagus.”

  “Sounds great,” I said. “Nate, Amelia, your mom is here,” I called them. They were both in their bedrooms with their doors shut.

  Amelia poked her head out. “Hello, Sarah,” she said, and then ducked her head back in. Amelia had not yet forgiven her mother, and I didn’t really blame her. She was a child. She couldn’t understand why her mother abandoned her when she was sick. My only hope was that she would someday understand and forgive Sarah, but that seemed a long way off.