by Gerry Spence
“Have you examined the questioned document in this case, Mr. Widdoss?” Sewell asked.
Coker interrupted. “Hold on there. I wish to voir dire the foundation for this witness’s testimony.” Coker hurried to the witness stand and aimed his sights on Widdoss. “You claim to be an expert in handwriting analysis?”
“Just a minute,” Sewell interrupted. “I ask the court to order Mr. Coker to step back from the witness. He has no call to tower over Mr. Widdoss in an attempt to intimidate him.”
“Are you intimidated?” Coker asked Widdoss
“Step back, Mr. Coker,” the judge ordered.
Coker took two steps back and began again. “So, like a doctor or an accountant, you went to college to study handwriting analysis?”
“There is no such discipline offered.”
“You mean there is no college or university in this country where I can be trained as a qualified handwriting expert?” Coker asked in feigned amazement.
“You could go to the FBI’s school if you could get in the FBI.” He smiled at Helen Griggsley, the piano teacher. She seemed on the rim of rapture, as if listening to a Mozart piano concerto.
“Tell us how long you went to school at the FBI in order to be qualified as a handwriting expert.”
“It’s a six-week course.”
“You mean that in six weeks any person with average intelligence could go through that school and claim to be an expert?”
“I worked after that under well-known experts in the field.”
“Like who?” Coker asked.
“I can’t recall all of their names.”
“I suppose these ‘well-known experts’ went to school for six weeks, as well?”
“They are professionals who have examined thousands of documents and handwriting exemplars.”
“Well, Mr. Widdoss, the fact that someone who taught you has examined even millions of documents doesn’t mean that person was even competent at it. It may mean he has looked at them in the same wrong way a million times, don’t you agree?”
“They were good at it.”
“How do you know that?”
“They had spotless reputations in the Bureau.”
“That means, I suppose, that they put a lot of people in prison as a result of their testimony.” Before Sewell could object, Coker asked, “Were any of your findings ever tested against established standards?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Widdoss pulled the glasses off his nose.
Coker also pulled the glasses off his nose. “Are there any standards against which to test the conclusions of a handwriting analyst?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course you don’t,” Coker said. “How could you know the standards if there are none?” He fought back an emerging sneer. “Who tested you?”
“We did the test at the department,” Widdoss said.
“Who tested you?” Coker asked again.
“We gathered fifteen hundred unknown signatures and compared them with fifteen hundred known signatures, and my individual rate of error was—”
“The question is, who tested you?”
“The department.”
“The department is not a person. Who tested you?”
“It was done by a committee.”
“Who were the committee members?”
Sewell, seeing his witness in trouble, said, “Objected to as irrelevant.”
“Overruled,” the judge.
“I don’t remember. That was over ten years ago.”
“Did you get a diploma with a gold seal on it to verify your expertise?”
“That’s argumentative,” Sewell objected.
“Did you get a diploma?” the judge asked.
“No.”
“I suppose you belong to the National Organization of Forensic Handwriting Analysts, better known as the NOFHA?”
“Yes, I do.”
Coker was still on him like a hound barking at a treed cat. “Well, sir, did you pass an examination in order to belong to that organization?”
“You have to have the necessary credentials to become a member.”
“Did you pass any examination?” Coker insisted.
“You have to have been employed in the—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Widdoss, but did you pass an examination?”
“No. But you—”
“I suppose that if one of our jurors decided to become a handwriting expert, put his or her name in the phone book as an expert, and paid the required dues to NOFHA, he or she could be a member, isn’t that true?”
Widdoss’s durable smile had faded. He was holding on to the arms of the witness chair, as if to launch himself in an assault against Coker.
“And this committee at the police department is composed of persons with substantially the same education in handwriting analysis as yours—that is, each with their six-week course?”
“I don’t know what their education had been,” Widdoss said.
“So you don’t even know that the regulating committee itself is qualified. Sort of the blindfolded pinning the tail on the donkey, right?”
“That is argumentative, Your Honor,” Sewell said.
“Sustained.”
“Would you say that handwriting analysis is an art or a science?”
“I would say it’s a little of both.”
“How do you test art?” Coker waited. Finally, he added, “I mean, what is, or isn’t, art is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t that true?”
“I wouldn’t know how to answer that.”
“And have there been any set standards by any scientific body known to you by which the science of handwriting analysis has been tested?”
“NOFHA has a committee that has set standards for testing.”
“But NOFHA isn’t a scientific body, is it?”
No answer.
“And even the members of that so-called committee, whoever they are, and whatever their education, did not examine you for your qualifications, isn’t that true?”
“It does not examine. It sets standards.”
“And, of course, you can tell us what those standards are, can’t you?”
“Not offhand. However, I can assure you that the comparison I did here would meet those standards in every way.”
Long pause. Then Coker asked, “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that you should tell this jury that your work can meet those standards when you can’t tell us what those standards are?”
“I know them. I just can’t quote them verbatim.”
Coker turned to Judge Murray. “I object to any testimony from this witness concerning the suicide note of Horace Adams the Third on the grounds—”
“I object to Mr. Coker’s characterizing the note as a ‘suicide note,’” Sewell interrupted. “This note is a forgery, as can be established by this fully qualified witness.”
The judge interposed. “I’ve heard enough, gentlemen. I will take your arguments in chambers.”
When Coker arrived in chambers, Sewell was already pacing the floor, his shiny, black, leather-heeled shoes beating their angry cadence. “I want to make an offer of proof,” he began. “Mr. Widdoss will testify that the document, Exhibit five, the alleged suicide note, supposedly written by Horace Adams the Third, is a blatant forgery. I offer to show that Mr. Widdoss has examined that document and has analyzed the handwriting and concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that the document was not written by Adams.”
“Is that all?” Coker asked.
“No. I will further prove by this witness that he has examined a number of known exemplars of Lillian Adams’s handwriting and has concluded that the document in question, the supposed suicide note, was likely written by her.”
Lillian let out a small, pinched cry. “That is a horrible lie!”
The judge hit his gavel to bring order.
“I object to Mr. Sewell’s offer of proof on two grounds,” Coker said. “First, handw
riting analysis cannot be tested against any known standards, and, second, this witness himself has never been tested by his peers against any known standards. This man is nothing but a bogus bunch of … I ask the court’s pardon for the forbidden word I was about to employ.”
The judge needed time to think this through. “I will excuse the jury and take this matter under advisement. The weekend will provide needed relief for all concerned and, indeed, I will add Monday, as well. You are each ordered to provide me with your brief of authorities by eight-thirty Tuesday morning.”
“Pray tell how I am going to research this supposedly difficult question if I am locked in my cell?” Sewell asked.
“The sheriff can accompany you to the county library,” the judge replied. “Such an exposure to further learning will not endanger the sheriff’s reputation as a man whose life has been dedicated to a search for the truth.”
* * *
Old Horatio had followed Sewell out of the judge’s chambers, the smell of the prosecutor’s small hairless lapdog having invited Horatio’s canine curiosity. He was trailing behind Sewell when Undersheriff Bromley, renowned for his unmitigated hatred of dogs, came hurrying down the same hallway. He charged up behind the old dog. “Get out of here, you goddamned cur,” Bromley hollered. He kicked Horatio in his ribs, and Horatio let out a yelp. “I oughta shoot the son of a bitch. Damn dog’s got no business in this courthouse.”
Sewell turned on Bromley. “That’s the judge’s dog.”
“I don’t give a shit whose dog it is,” Bromley snapped. He started again for the old dog, who was cornered at the end of the hall.
“Let the dog alone,” Sewell said.
Sewell reached behind him and gave Horatio a reassuring pat on the head. Then he said to Bromley, “A man who’ll kick a friendly dog is a man who’ll kick a friendly man as quickly.”
Bromley spun back around and stomped back down the hall.
Sewell took old Horatio by the collar and led him to the judge’s chambers. “Here’s the judge’s pal,” Sewell said to Jenny Winkley. “He got lost.”
“I keep telling the judge he shouldn’t bring that dog here,” Jenny said. “I hope he didn’t cause any trouble.” She offered Horatio another doggy cookie.
“No, he was no trouble at all,” Sewell said.
* * *
That night, the judge spent late hours seeking some case, any case authored by a respected authority, that would bolster the decision he wanted to make. The law provided no way out. The weight of authority acknowledged handwriting analysis as a science, and he’d have to permit Widdoss’s testimony. Widdoss’s purchased opinion could convict Lillian Adams. Would Coker call an expert? Probably not.
The judge knew that Coker rarely called experts in his cases. He argued it this way: “You call your expert to prove that the prosecutor’s expert is a store-bought whore and the jury figures that you must be guilty or you wouldn’t need to call a whore of your own. The jury’s always going to believe the prosecutor’s expert over yours. I attack the state’s whore,” Coker said, “and if I can show him for what he is, and I usually can, I win the battle of the experts without taking the chance of calling one.”
And Lillian hadn’t been around the judge all those years without learning something about trial dynamics. She’d learned that if she hired a big-time lawyer, the jurors would resent it. Her spending all that dough for a fancy mouthpiece, one the jurors damn well couldn’t afford, would simply mean that she was probably guilty and was trying to buy herself out of prison by hiring some famous foreign shyster. When she hired Coker, the townfolks knew him. He might represent anybody with a dollar and a half to pay him, but he was one of their own, and she wasn’t flouncing her money around.
* * *
Leaving the courthouse that night, the judge thought that perhaps his judicial answers would come floating up to him from the subterranean caverns of sleep. He’d make his decision Tuesday morning. He was still wrestling with the issue as he walked through the snow to his truck in the courthouse parking lot, old Horatio trotting along, his tail still wagging.
With his bare hand, the judge brushed the snow off the windshield. He pulled open the door on his side of the cab, helped the old dog up, and, grateful for the steering wheel, which he used as a handle, pulled himself up into his truck. Once in, he was suddenly startled by a dark figure sitting next to the door on the passenger’s side. He smelled the faint fragrance of a woman’s perfume. Horatio was licking the face of Lillian Adams.
CHAPTER 29
ON TUESDAY MORNING at nine sharp, the prosecutor, Haskins Sewell, stood waiting at the door of the judge’s chambers with a fistful of papers. Timothy Coker came strolling up, with Lillian at his side. She was pale and still as a statue.
“Well, what is your latest phony flimflam?” Coker asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Sewell said. At that moment, the door opened, and Judge Murray beckoned them into his chambers.
“I have papers, Your Honor,” Sewell said. He handed a copy to both the judge and Coker.
The judge slumped slowly into his chair. “I see,” he said. “So what do you propose, Mr. Sewell?”
“As you can see, I’ve asked the Wyoming Supreme Court to remove you. You are a material witness in this case, and you’re severely conflicted. You can voluntarily agree to step down, or you can await the order of the supreme court. It’s your choice.”
“This is more of his standard bullshit, Judge,” Coker said, slapping the papers against his pant leg in disgust. “I’m going to petition the attorney general to replace this prosecutor on account of his continued harassment and misconduct. There’s no end in sight.”
“I don’t think you’ll be making those rash statements when you hear the facts,” Sewell said.
“And, pray tell, what are the facts?” Coker demanded.
Sewell turned to the judge. “Do you want to hear the facts now, Your Honor, or would you rather wait until the supreme court holds its hearing?”
The judge grabbed for a breath and sought to focus on the papers in his hands. The allegations were in plain words. The bastard had charged him with carrying on an improper relationship with Lillian Adams. The supreme court had the power to bar him from the case, embarrass him before the townspeople, and perhaps even recommend impeachment.
“Well, Your Honor, what is your pleasure?” Sewell was holding his shivering little lapdog, Honeypot, under his arm, which covered most of the dog’s body.
The judge groped for words. None would come.
“Hearing nothing from you, I will present my case to the Wyoming Supreme Court,” Sewell said. “You will note that included in the papers is an order for you to appear before that court in Cheyenne at nine tomorrow morning.”
Cheyenne. Nine in the morning?
The judge finally heard himself say, “You understand that you have failed to purge yourself of contempt, and that you are to be confined in the county jail until further order of this court?”
“You will note from the papers that the supreme court has stayed that order,” Sewell said. “I will see you in court, Your Honor. Have a great day.” Sewell patted his small dog lightly on the head and, just this side of a parade step, marched out of the judge’s chambers.
Coker pulled Lillian on through the door and shut it behind her.
The door opened again. It was Sheriff Lowe. “Sorry, Your Honor. I forgot something.” He reached inside his jacket pocket and extracted a folded legal-size paper. “Here’s a subpoena for your appearance as a witness in the case of State of Wyoming vs. Lillian Mortensen Adams.” He gave an overlong bow. Then he shut the door behind him.
Sewell had subpoenaed him as a witness in this very case over which he presided—Lillian’s case. He called weakly for Jenny Winkley, but there was no answer. He tried to think. He saw Sewell’s mocking face. Then he seemed to understand: He should kill that bastard.
He boarded his old pickup and started for the cabin.
When he arrived at the cabin, and for reasons he hadn’t considered, he retrieved his pistol, a fully loaded Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum containing six cartridges, all nice and shiny. The manufacturer claimed the gun would shoot through an engine block.
As he held the pistol in his hand, he saw the surprised look that would flash on Sewell’s face if he were to blow a hole through the man’s head. In his mind’s eye, he saw Sewell stagger and fall. Then he walked off and left the bastard, a worthless pile of flesh, by his shiny new Chevy.
He wrote a note to Betsy and left it on the kitchen table:
Don’t worry, Honey. Going to Cheyenne. Some business to attend to tomorrow. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.
Love,
John
No reason to get her all riled up when there was nothing she could do except suffer.
In order to arrive at the Wyoming Supreme Court Building in Cheyenne by nine in the morning, he’d have to drive most of the night in his beaten-up truck. When he got there—if he got there—he’d be on trial in the highest court in Wyoming as a common criminal charged with improprieties that were not only shameful but fatal to his reputation. Even if he were acquitted by the high court, which was unlikely, he knew that once charged, an accused could never be innocent again. There’d always be doubts. His legacy was sullied. His professional life was over. He had nothing more to lose.
Snow was falling, and in his headlights he saw Sewell’s angry face. Yes, he should kill the bastard. “My God, who am I?” he shouted into the rumble and rattle of the truck’s ancient engine. “What am I thinking? How can I be premeditating murder like some depraved killer?”
Let there be reason, he begged.
It was too late. If he stepped down, Lillian, guilty or not, would be convicted. And Betsy believed that as judge he possessed the immutable power to save Lillian. If he failed, Betsy would feel betrayed.
Yes, it was over.
And he didn’t know how to defend himself before that arrogant cluster of old drones, the supreme court justices up there on their hallowed judicial thrones.