A Killer's Alibi (Philadelphia Legal)

by William L. Myers Jr.

  The CODIS report states that there was hair, blood, and brain tissue found on the hammer. The blood and brain evidence were too deteriorated to test, but the hair yielded a DNA match to Lester Dowd.

  She reads the report twice, then uses it to fan herself. “This is it,” she tells Susan. “Everything Lois said was true. Darlene is innocent.”

  Susan takes the report and is about to read it when Tommy walks in.

  “Tommy!” Piper bolts from her chair. “We have the results from the FBI: Cindy Dowd was the killer, not Darlene!”

  She runs to him and gives him a hug. Then she steps back. “Didn’t you hear me? Darlene’s innocent. She’s going to go free.”

  She instantly sees through his forced smile. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. That’s great. I . . . something’s up.”

  He turns and leaves the conference room.

  “What was that all about?” she asks Susan.

  “Don’t ask me. I never got that guy.”

  Piper sits. She and Susan discuss the petition Susan’s going to file under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act. They’re going to base their claim on the part of the law that allows for a new trial, in which a petitioner can prove the existence of newly discovered exculpatory evidence that was not available to the petitioner at the time of trial and that would have changed the outcome of the trial. A recently uncovered murder weapon bearing someone else’s fingerprints certainly fits that definition. So does the existence of a witness turned away by law enforcement.

  The law, though, requires the petition to be brought within sixty days of the date the claim could have been presented. And the state’s conservative appellate courts interpret this time limit narrowly.

  “If he wants to be aggressive,” Susan explains, “the district attorney could argue that Darlene should have brought her claim as soon as she received her mother’s deathbed letter.”

  “But we couldn’t prove the hammer is exculpatory of Darlene until we received the test results, which is today,” Piper says, her voice rising. “Same with Sonny Foster shutting down Lois Beal; we couldn’t prove that until we met with Melvin Ott, which was toward the end of April, which is less than sixty days ago.”

  “I understand. Remember: I didn’t say the prosecutor would win the argument, only that he could make it.”

  “Sorry. I just . . .”

  “I know. I want to win this one, too. Which reminds me . . . I also received this today.” Susan hands her a signed certification. Along with their petition, they have to provide the court with certifications of each witness who will attend the hearing, stating their backgrounds and the substance of their proposed testimony.

  Piper scans it. “Hmm. Lois signed it as ‘Megan Corbett.’ Not that she had much choice.”

  “She had no choice at all, Piper. And I’m not going to apologize for that.”

  The most difficult part of all this for Piper has been Susan’s refusal to overlook Lois Beal’s role in the armored-truck heist. At the airport on their way home from Georgia, Susan made clear that she felt compelled to turn Lois in, even though it meant that Lois would likely face charges for murder in California.

  Tommy had asked then, “So if some other lawyer had taken on Darlene’s case, Lois would be in the clear? But since it’s you, she’s gotta go down?”

  “Lois was going to have to face charges no matter what lawyer came on board, at least so long as she was planning to help Darlene. Look, when we file our petition asking for a new trial based on Lois’s information, Lois will have to sign a certification with her name and date of birth. And she’ll have to testify to who she is, too. No lawyer could submit a certification under a false name, let alone put her on the stand to perjure herself about her identity. It would cost the lawyer their license. Not to mention the fact that as an officer of the court, no honest attorney would do any of it.”

  “Then why should she help us?” Piper asked loudly enough that several of the other passengers turned toward them.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” Susan answered. “And because if she doesn’t, I can make the call right now rather than wait until after the hearing.”

  “That’s what we’re going to tell her?”

  “It’s what I’m going to tell her,” Susan said. Then, softening, she added, “If Lois calls the authorities in California just before the hearing, tells them where she’ll be, and then comes clean at the hearing about who she is, it’ll help her. She’ll be a lot better off than if I, or anyone else, makes the call.”

  Piper still doesn’t think it seems fair, but Susan clearly hasn’t changed her mind.

  “Let’s not forget what we’re doing here,” Susan tells Piper. “We’re trying to save a young woman who was raped repeatedly by her own father and then tossed into prison. Lois Beal, a.k.a. Megan Corbett, has the chance to help us free this woman. That she’s going to have to accept responsibility for some bad things she did when she was younger is . . . Well, it’s just something she’s going to have to do. For Darlene’s sake. Maybe even for her own sake. There’s a part of each of us, I think, that wants to be held accountable, wants to be punished when we cross the line. I’d like to believe that’s the better part of us.”

  Piper nods. She knows that part is a huge part of Tommy’s history, the reason he spiraled into self-destructiveness. He had a drive to be punished for something he’d done that he’d felt was unforgivable. Ultimately, he bared his soul to her about it, and she helped him come to terms with the guilt.

  “I know,” she says. “I get it. I just think Lois is a good person, despite what she did as a nineteen-year-old. And it’s not like she hasn’t paid a price already. Having to live in constant fear of being caught. Never having children because she thought she might get dragged away to prison at any time.”

  “And never having closure,” Susan said. “Which she will have now.”

  Down the hall in his office, Tommy sits back in his chair and rubs his eyes.

  What in the hell am I going to do with the information about the second hammer?

  Susan is already hell-bent on nailing Lois Beal. And Piper has so much emotionally invested in the case. He leans forward, his mind taking him back to the many nights he and Piper sat in her kitchen or on her back patio while he told her about the terrible things he had done in his life, including the terrible thing that sent him down the dark path in the first place. She listened and listened and never once judged him. Even more important, she tried to make him see that there was no need to punish himself. That he’d spent so many years of his life rushing to judgment for something that wasn’t wrong. And then the Hanson case crashed down around all of them—Piper, him, and Mick—and he’d been forced to go down the dark path one more time to save them all. Since then, he’s treated Piper like a jerk, which only makes him mad at himself. So far, he hasn’t been able to find a way back to their friendship.

  Now he might have to ruin the Dowd case for her.

  “What am I going to do?”

  31

  THURSDAY, JUNE 13

  It’s just before noon, and Mick and Vaughn are seated at the table in the conference room, which is now officially the firm’s “war room” for the Nunzio case. The table is covered with legal pads, laptops, police reports, witness statements, and photographs. Scores of photographs: of the warehouse and Nunzio’s Escalade, taken by the CSU team that managed the crime scene; of Christina Nunzio and Jimmy Nunzio, both covered in blood; of the knife used to kill Valiante, taken by CSU; and of Antonio Valiante’s body, taken by the medical examiner. Enlargements of some of the photographs are pinned to the far wall on either side of the easels that still list the names of potential prosecution and defense witnesses.

  “I’ve never entered a trial feeling less in control than I do with this case,” Mick says.

  “Nunzio still hasn’t told you what happened at the warehouse?”

  Mick shakes his head. “I still think he’s sit
ting on an ace. But I can’t figure out which of the witnesses it could be.”

  “My bet’s on Giacobetti. Nunzio’s going to have him take the fall. Say it was him who killed Valiante.”

  Mick doesn’t share with Vaughn that Christina confirmed Giacobetti was at the warehouse. Nor does he tell them the whole thing was a trap Nunzio set for Antonio Valiante. He doesn’t like keeping things from his team, but he’s decided to play everything close to the vest on this one; he may have to suborn outright perjury, and he doesn’t want Vaughn to be part of it.

  “I’ve thought of that,” Mick says. “But how would he explain Giacobetti’s not being there when the cops showed up?”

  “He darted out the back when the cops came,” Vaughn says. “Nunzio’s office is only a mile or so from the warehouse. He probably ran there.”

  “And Nunzio stayed because he wasn’t going to leave Christina,” Mick says. He chews on it a minute. “But if he were planning on pinning the murder on Giacobetti, why let Johnny G. leave at all? Why not throw him the knife as soon as they realized the cops were there?”

  “I thought the cops surprised Nunzio. That he didn’t know they were there until they came through the door. At least, that’s how I envisioned it.”

  “We could go around and around on this,” Mick says. “The bottom line is it’s all speculation—not a defense. We won’t know anything until Nunzio decides to let us in on what happened.”

  “Let us in on whatever bullshit he’s baking, you mean,” Vaughn says.

  Mick nods. “So, for now, our strategy is simply to pick as many holes in the prosecution’s case as we can find.” He pauses a moment as Tommy enters the conference room. “Any idea what’s happening at the DA’s office?”

  “My guess? Pagano’s running everyone ragged. Every time the DA’s poll numbers go down a little further, he goes on TV and promises Nunzio’s gonna face jail time. So the pressure’s on Pagano, and that means Max the Ax is probably swinging his blade like a madman. He has a reputation of bringing people onto his team, using them up, then throwing them out.”

  “And knowing Fellner, he’d be okay with that,” Mick says.

  “Are you kidding? Fellner’s so panicked about the election, he’s even offered to pay for a big-time jury consultant, but Pagano turned him down. Said he doesn’t need a jury-whisperer, he can read jurors like books.”

  “Arrogant SOB,” Mick says.

  “Speaking of jury consultants,” Vaughn says, “Lauren Zito sent over her draft jury questionnaires this morning.”

  Based in Los Angeles, Lauren Zito is considered one of the country’s top jury consultants. A holder of doctorate and bachelor’s degrees in psychology and a master’s in education, she’s worked on hundreds of cases around the country—and has actually developed much of the currently accepted methodology used by experts in jury selection. Nunzio insisted that Mick retain her firm for his trial. She flew in the night before for a meeting with the trial team.

  “Good. I’ll review them. What time is she coming to meet with us?”

  “Three. In the meantime, I have a motion hearing set for this afternoon. You mind if I leave to get ready for it?”

  Mick says, “Sure.” He waits until Vaughn is gone. Then he turns to Tommy.

  “Have you seen Susan yet?”

  “She’s in a mood today,” Tommy says. “Gave me the cold shoulder. And Angie said she came in barking orders at Jill and Andrea.”

  He sighs. Susan continues to rebuff his invitations to open up to him about whoever’s creating havoc in her personal life. Tommy told him that she’s still seeing the soccer player but that Tommy’s efforts to get the guy to talk to him about Susan haven’t gone anywhere. More upsetting than any of that is the fact that—according to Tommy—Nunzio has Giacobetti spying on Susan for his own reasons. He can’t believe Susan would be tied up with the Nunzios.

  So why is Johnny G. following her around? And what did the giant mean by telling Tommy he’s going to call, and that when he does, Tommy will have to move fast?

  “I’ll try to talk to her again,” Mick says.

  “You might want to bring up Giacobetti,” Tommy says.

  “That’s the last thing I’d tell her about. She’s rattled enough as it is.”

  “Maybe she already knows. Maybe that’s why she’s so upset.”

  At three o’clock sharp, Angie calls Mick to the conference room to meet Lauren Zito. This is the first time he’s hired a jury consultant. He’s not sure exactly how they work, or even convinced they really help. But Nunzio was adamant he hire Zito, and the money was there to do so.

  Zito stands when he enters the room. She’s an attractive woman in her midforties, petite and compact with toned arms and legs and a thick mane of dark hair. Her smile reveals perfect rows of white teeth. Her eyes are bright, but Mick sees something in them that gives him pause: an unpredictable intelligence he’s encountered before—on both sides of the law.

  Lauren offers her hand. They shake, and she introduces two of her assistants, Rob Sinnamon and Naumon Amjed. Everyone sits, and the meeting starts.

  “This is your show,” Mick begins, “but let me open it by telling you up front that I’ve never used a jury consultant before. I don’t know much about what you do other than help the lawyers with the voir dire questions.”

  Zito smiles. “Then let me take a few minutes to give you a broad-brush view of what our role will be. First, we do draft the questions we think you should ask the prospective jurors. A lot of the questions you’ve probably seen before. As counsel for the defendant, you’re looking for jurors whose background would cause them to mistrust the system, be skeptical of the police and the establishment in general—people at the bottom of the economic totem pole, or who have had run-ins with the police, or whose families and friends have been harassed. The questions are designed to identify them. We have to be careful, of course, not to oversimplify based on neighborhood or race. Bad jurors for a defendant generally include people who are fearful of crime in their neighborhoods, though, of course, this isn’t a case about someone being robbed on the street.”

  “Let’s get to that,” Mick says. “This isn’t the usual situation where the jurors know nothing about the defendant. Everyone knows about Jimmy Nunzio. How do we exclude jurors who won’t put his past aside?”

  “You can’t. No matter what the judge tells jurors about basing their decision only on the evidence presented in the courtroom, the fact is that everything the jurors know about Nunzio is ‘evidence’ they’re going to bring with them to deliberations. And all of that evidence, as I’m sure you know, is bad. The fact is, the proverbial scales of justice are already tipped heavily against Nunzio.”

  Mick leans forward. “So how exactly are you going to help us level the field?”

  “By helping you craft a compelling story, and by watching you and the jurors as you tell it.”

  “Watching me?”

  “Yes. You, your client, and your witnesses. When people think of jury consultants, they picture someone sitting in court, laser-focused on the jury. We do, of course, watch the jurors, but we also watch the parties. A big part of my job will be scrutinizing the lawyers and witnesses for each side—how they move, how they talk, how they dress, how they behave—basically taking it in from the jurors’ perspectives. That way I can tell you how you’re coming across, and how to change it. Normally, though, I don’t wait for the trial to get started. Before the first juror’s picked, I meet with your witnesses.”

  “Meet with the witnesses before trial? Why?”

  “I need to spend time with them, alone. I’ll ask each of them to talk to me, tell me their story. When they’re done, I’ll say, ‘Okay. Here’s what I’m hearing. Here’s where your story resonates with me. Here’s where you’re weak.’”

  Mick shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “That’s going to be a problem. I don’t know who our witnesses are yet.”

  She stares at him. He can’t read the look on
her face.

  “Nunzio won’t let me in on what happened in the warehouse that led to the victim’s death,” he explains. “There were one, possibly two, witnesses—his daughter, Christina, and one of his henchmen. He won’t tell me which, if either, he’ll let me call to the stand. And there’s no way I can call Nunzio. The prosecutor would crucify him.”

  “Seems like we’re going to have to go into this with our hands tied,” she says. “Partially tied, at least.”

  They stare at each other for a long minute; then he asks, “Tell me about the trial itself. What’s your program?”

  “Well, in addition to what I already told you, Rob, Naumon, and a third assistant will each have two shadow jurors with them—people we’ll pick as demographic matches for the jurors. The shadow jurors will watch the trial and give their impressions of the lawyers and the witnesses—and of the real jurors—to my assistants, who will share it all with you and me.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  Zito smiles broadly. “I drive a Lexus LS 460 and own two vacation homes. Most attorneys who hire me work for Fortune 500 companies that are defending multimillion-dollar civil suits.”

  He studies her. Notices for the first time how well dressed she is. Big corporations are smart with their money; they wouldn’t lay out big bucks for jury consultants unless they felt it was worth it. He’s about to say something when a light bulb goes off over his head.

  He realizes he’s found Nunzio’s ace in the hole: the jury.

  Nunzio believes Lauren Zito will be able to feed him the jury. He really believes she’s going to pave the way for a defense verdict that will let him walk.