It was during my explanation to my young daughter that I finally realized why I had been drawn to this particular practice of law. Yes, some of my clients were just gaming the system. They were charlatans no better than the banks they were taking on. But some of my clients were the downtrodden and disadvantaged. They were the true underdogs in society and I wanted to stand for them and keep them in their homes for as long as I possibly could.
Hayley had raised her pencil and was itching to go back to work as soon as I dismissed her. She was polite that way and must have gotten it from her mother.
“Anyway, that’s what it’s all about. You can go back to work now. You want something else to drink or a dessert?”
“Dad, pancakes are like dessert.”
She had braces and had chosen lime green bands. When she spoke my attention was constantly drawn to her teeth.
“Oh, right, yeah. Then what about something else to drink? More milk?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Okay.”
I went back to work too and separated the three foreclosure files in front of me. I had been getting so much business off the radio ads that we had been bundling court appearances. That is, trying to schedule together hearings and appearances on all cases that I had before a particular judge. In the morning I had three hearings before Judge Alfred Byrne in the downtown county courthouse. All three were defenses based on claims of wrongful foreclosure and fraud perpetrated by the lender or the loan-servicing agent employed by the lender.
In each of the cases I had stayed foreclosure with my court filings. My clients were in their homes and not required to make their monthly payments. The other side viewed this as a scam equal in size to the foreclosure epidemic. I was despised by opposing counsel for perpetuating fraud myself and only delaying an inevitable outcome.
That was okay by me. When you come from the criminal defense bar, you are used to being despised.
“Am I too late for pancakes?”
I looked up to see my ex-wife slide into the booth next to our daughter. She landed a kiss on Hayley’s cheek before the girl could go on the defensive. She was at that age. I wished Maggie had slid into my side of the booth and planted one on me. But I could wait.
I smiled at her as I started pulling all the files off the table to make room.
“It’s never too late for pancakes,” I said.
Eight
Lisa Trammel was formally arraigned in Van Nuys the following Tuesday. It was a routine hearing intended to put her plea on record and to start the clock in order to meet the state’s speedy-trial requirement. However, because my client was free on bail, we would likely be waiving speedy trial. There was no reason to hurry as long as she was breathing free air. The case would slowly build momentum like a summer storm and begin when the defense was fully prepared.
But the arraignment did serve the purpose of putting Lisa’s forthright and emphatic “not guilty” on the court record as well as on video for the gathered media. Though attendance was lower than it was at her first appearance (the national media tends to retreat from the ongoing mundane processes of a case as it passes through the justice system), the local media still showed in force and the fifteen-minute hearing was well documented.
The case had been assigned to Superior Court Judge Dario Morales for arraignment and preliminary hearing. The latter would be a perfunctory rubber-stamping of the charges. Lisa would undoubtedly be held to answer and the case would then be assigned to another judge for the main event, the trial.
Though I had talked to her on the phone almost daily since her arrest, I had not seen Lisa in more than a week. She had declined my invitations to meet in person and now I knew why. She looked like a different woman when she showed up in court. Her hair had been cut into a stylish wave and her face looked both excessively pink and smooth. Whispers in the courtroom hinted that Lisa had had a Botox facial treatment in order to become more visually appealing.
I believed these physical changes, as well as the smart new suit Lisa was wearing, were the work of Herb Dahl. He and Lisa seemed inseparable and Dahl’s involvement was becoming more and more troubling. He had begun incessantly referring producers and screenwriters to my office number. This left Lorna constantly deflecting their attempts to secure a piece of the Lisa Trammel story. Quick checks of the Internet Movie Database usually revealed these Herb Dahl referrals to be Hollywood hacks and bottom-feeders of the lowest caliber. It wasn’t that we couldn’t use a nice big infusion of Hollywood cash to defray our mounting costs, but these were all deal-now-pay-later people and that wouldn’t do. Meantime, my own agent was out there trying to sew up a deal with an up-front fee that would cover a few salaries and the rent on an office and still leave enough to pay back Dahl and make him go away.
With almost any court hearing, the most important information and actions are not what ends up on the record. So, too, with Lisa’s arraignment. After her plea was routinely put on record and Morales scheduled a status hearing for two weeks later, I told the judge that the defense had a number of motions to submit to the court for consideration. He welcomed them and I stepped forward and handed his clerk five separate motions. I gave Andrea Freeman copies as well.
The first three motions had been prepared by Aronson after her in-depth review of the LAPD’s search-warrant application, the video of Detective Kurlen interviewing Lisa Trammel, and the questions regarding Miranda and when Lisa was actually placed under arrest. Aronson had found inconsistencies, procedural errors and exaggerations of fact. She drew up motions to suppress, asking that the taped interview be disallowed in the case and that all evidence gathered from the search of the defendant’s home be excluded as well.
The motions were well thought out and cogently written. I was proud of Aronson and pleased with myself for seeing her as a diamond in the rough when her résumé had crossed my desk. But the truth was I knew her motions didn’t stand much of a chance. No judge elected to the bench wants to throw out the evidence in a murder case. Not if he wants the voting public to keep him on the bench. So the jurist will look for ways to maintain status quo and get the decisions on evidence before a jury.
Nevertheless, Aronson’s motions played an important role in the defense strategy. Because accompanying them were two other motions. One sought to jump-start the discovery process by requesting defense access to all records and internal memoranda pertaining to Lisa Trammel and Mitchell Bondurant held by WestLand Financial. The other was a motion compelling the prosecution to allow the defense to examine Trammel’s laptop computer, cell phone and all personal documents seized in the search of her home.
Since Morales would want to act equitably toward both defense and prosecution, my strategy was to push the judge toward a Solomonic solution. Split the baby. Dismiss the motions to suppress but give the defense the access requested in the other two motions.
Of course, both Morales and Freeman had been around the block a few times and would see this strategy coming from a mile away. Still, just because they knew what I was doing didn’t mean they could stop it. Besides that, I had a sixth motion in my pocket that I had not yet filed with the court and it was going to be my ace in the hole.
Morales gave Freeman ten days to respond to the motions and adjourned the hearing, quickly moving on to his next case. A good judge always keeps the cases moving. I turned to Lisa and told her to wait for me in the hallway because I was going to speak to the prosecutor. I noticed Dahl waiting for her at the gate. He would be more than happy to escort her out. I decided to deal with him later and went over to the prosecution table. Freeman had her head down and was writing a note on a legal pad.
“Hey, Andy?”
She looked up at me. She had just begun to smile, expecting to see some friend who typically called her Andy. When she saw it was me the smile disappeared in an instant. I placed the sixth motion down on the table in front of her.
“Take a look at that when you have a minute. I’m going to file it tomorrow
morning. Didn’t want to inundate the court with a blizzard of paper today, you know? Tomorrow morning should be fine but I thought I’d give you a heads-up since it involves you.”
“Me? What are you talking about?”
I didn’t answer. I left her there and made my way through the gate and out of the courtroom. As I stepped through the double doors I saw my client and Herb Dahl already holding court in front of a deep semicircle of reporters and cameras. I quickly walked up behind Lisa, took her by the arm and pulled her away while she was in midsentence.
“Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!” I said in my best Porky Pig.
Lisa struggled against my pull but I still managed to get her away from the pack and start walking her down the hallway.
“What are you doing?” she protested. “You are embarrassing me!”
“Embarrassing you? Lisa, you are embarrassing yourself with that guy. I told you to drop him. Now, look at you, all done up like you’re some kind of movie star. This is a trial, Lisa, not Entertainment Tonight.”
“I was telling them my story.”
I stopped walking when we were far enough away from the crowd not to be overheard.
“Lisa, you can’t talk openly to the media like that. It can come back to bite you on the ass.”
“What are you talking about? It was a perfect opportunity to give my side of this. I’m being railroaded here and it’s time to speak out. I told you, it’s guilty people who don’t speak.”
“The problem is the DA has a media unit and they copy and record every story about you that is printed and aired. Everything you say, they have a copy of it. And if you ever change your story even slightly from one statement to the next then they’ve got you. They’ll crucify you with it in front of a jury. What I’m trying to say is it’s not worth the risk, Lisa. You should let me do the talking for you. But if you can’t do that and really want to put out your story yourself then we’ll prepare and rehearse you and plan it with strategic hits in the media.”
“But that’s where Herb comes in. He was making sure I didn’t—”
“Let me explain it again to you, Lisa. Herb Dahl is not your attorney and does not have your best interests as his priority. He has Herb Dahl’s. Okay? I can’t seem to get the message through to you. You have to cut him loose. He—”
“No! I can’t! I won’t! He’s the only one who truly cares.”
“Oh, that’s really breaking my heart, Lisa. If he’s the only one who cares about you what’s he doing still talking to those people?”
I pointed to the knot of reporters and photographers. Sure enough, Dahl was still holding forth, feeding them whatever they needed.
“What is he saying to them, Lisa? Do you know? Because I sure as shit don’t and that’s sort of funny because you’re the defendant and I’m the defense attorney. Who’s he?”
“He can speak for me,” Lisa said.
As we watched Dahl pointing his finger to call on reporters, I saw the door to the courtroom we had just left swing open. Andrea Freeman strode out, holding my sixth motion in her hand, her eyes scanning the hallway. At first she zeroed in on the media knot but then she saw it was not me at the center of it. When her radar picked me up, she corrected her course and made a beeline right toward me. A few of the reporters called to her but she sharply waved them off with the document.
“Lisa, go over to one of those benches and sit down and wait for me. And don’t talk to any reporters.”
“What about—”
“Just do it.”
As Lisa walked away Freeman came up on me. She was mad and I could see the fire in her eyes.
“What is this shit, Haller?”
She held up the paper. I maintained a calm demeanor even as she stepped right into my personal space.
“Well,” I said, “I think it’s pretty obvious what it is. It’s a motion to have you dismissed from the case because you have a conflict of interest.”
“I have a conflict of interest? What conflict?”
“Look, Andy—I can call you Andy, right? I mean my daughter does so I should, too, don’t you think?”
“Cut the shit, Haller.”
“Sure, I can do that. The conflict that I am objecting to is that you’ve been discussing this case with my ex-wife and—”
“Who happens to be a prosecutor working in the same office as me.”
“That’s true but these discussions haven’t taken place in the office exclusively. In fact, they’ve taken place at yoga and in front of my daughter and probably all over the Valley, as far as I know.”
“Oh, come on. This is such bullshit.”
“Really? Then why did you lie to me?”
“I’ve never lied. What are you—”
“I asked you if you knew my ex-wife and you said in passing. That’s not really the truth, is it?”
“I just didn’t want to get into it with you.”
“So you lied. I didn’t mention that in the motion but I could add it before I file it. The judge could decide if it is important.”
She blew out her breath in agitated surrender.
“What do you want?”
I looked around. No one could hear us.
“What do I want? I want to show you that I can play it your way, too. You want to be a hard-ass with me, I can be one with you.”
“Meaning what, Haller? What’s the quid pro quo?”
I nodded. We were getting down to the deal now.
“You know if I file this tomorrow you are history. The judge will err on the side of the defense. He’ll avoid anything that might have any chance of getting him reversed. Besides, he knows there are three hundred able-bodied prosecutors in the DA’s office. They can just send in a replacement.”
I pointed to the gaggle of reporters assembled in the hall, most of them still surrounding Herb Dahl.
“You see all of those reporters and all that attention? All of that will go away. Probably the biggest case of your career and it all goes away. No press conferences, no headlines, no spotlight. It all goes to whoever they send in to take your place.”
“First of all I will fight this thing and it is not a given that Judge Morales will fall for your bullshit. I will tell him exactly what you are doing. Trying to DA-shop. Trying to get rid of a prosecutor you are flat-out scared of.”
“You can tell him all you like but you’ll still have to tell the judge—in open court—how it is that my fourteen-year-old daughter was reciting facts of this case back to me at dinner last week.”
“That is bullshit. You should be ashamed of using your—”
“What, are you saying that I’m the liar or my daughter is the liar? Because we can bring her into court, too. I’m not so sure your bosses are going to like the spectacle this will cause—or the headlines. You know, DA grills fourteen-year-old, calls the kid a liar. Kind of tawdry, don’t you think?”
Freeman turned her back and took a step to walk away from me but then stopped. I knew I had her. She should walk away from me and the case, but she couldn’t. She wanted the case and all that it could bring her.
She turned back to me. She looked at me as though I were not even there, as if I were dead.
“Again, what do you want?”
“I’d rather not file this tomorrow. I’d rather just withdraw the motions I had to make to get my client’s property back and to see the WestLand documents. All I want is cooperation. A friendly give-and-take on discovery. I want it to start flowing now, not later. I don’t want to go to the judge every time I want something I’m entitled to.”
“I could complain to the bar about you.”
“Good, we can make cross-complaints. They’ll investigate both of us and find that only you acted inappropriately by discussing the case with defense counsel’s ex-wife and daughter.”
“I didn’t discuss it with your daughter. She was just there.”
“I’m sure the bar will make that distinction.”
I let her twist for a moment. I
t was her move but she needed one final push.
“Oh, and by the way, if I file the motion tomorrow I’ll be sure to drop a dime to the Times. Who’s their court reporter? Salters? I think she’d find this to be an interesting little side story. A nice exclusive.”
She nodded as though her predicament had just become crystal clear in front of her.
“Withdraw your motions,” she said. “You will have everything you asked for by the end of the day Friday.”
“Tomorrow.”
“That’s not enough time. I have to pull it together and get it copied. The copy shop is always backed up.”
“Then Thursday by noon or I file the motion.”
“Fine, asshole.”
“Good. Once I go through it all, maybe we can start talking about a plea. Thank you, Andy.”
“Fuck you, Haller. And there isn’t going to be a plea. We’ve got her nailed and I’m going to be looking at you, not her, when the verdict comes in.”
She pivoted and started to walk away, but then turned right back to me.
“And don’t call me Andy. You don’t get to call me that.”
She marched away then, moving in long, angry strides toward the elevator lobby, totally ignoring a reporter who trotted up to her and tried to get a quote.
I knew there would be no plea agreement. My client wouldn’t allow it. But I gave Freeman the opening so she could throw it back in my face. I wanted her to go away angry but not that angry. I wanted her to think she had salvaged something. It would make her easier to deal with.
I looked around and saw Lisa waiting dutifully on the bench I had earlier pointed her to. I signaled her to get up.
“Okay, Lisa, let’s get out of here.”
“But what about Herb? I drove in with him.”
“Your car or his?”
“His.”
“Then he’s fine. My guy will drive you home.”
We walked into the elevator alcove. Thankfully, Andrea Freeman had already caught a ride down to the DA’s office on the second floor. I pushed the button but the elevator didn’t come soon enough. We were joined by Dahl.
The Fifth Witness: A Novel Page 8