Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

"Well, what is it that the defense wants to do with this glass?"

I stand immediately. "I want to take a look at it, Your Honor."

Sandy give me a corrosive glance. With his hand on my forearm, he puts me back down in my seat. I will have to learn: it is not my place to speak.

"Fine," says Larren, "Mr. Sabich wants to look at the glass. That's all. He's got that right. The prosecution has got to show him the evidence. You know, I've looked over the discovery and I understand why Mr. Sabich might want to look very carefully at that glass. So that motion will be allowed."

Larren points at me. It is the first real notice he has taken of my presence. "And by the way now, Mr. Sabich, you of course will be heard through counsel, but if it's your desire to speak yourself, you have that right. At any time. When we have our conferences in chambers or during the proceedings, you have every right to attend. I want you to know that. We all know Mr. Sabich is a fine trial lawyer, one of the finest trial lawyers we have in these parts, and I'm sure he'll be curious about what we're doin from time to time."

I look at Sandy, who nods, before I answer. I thank the court. I tell him I will listen. My lawyer will speak.

"Very well," the judge says. But his eyes hold the light of a warmth that I have never seen from him in court. I am a defendant now, in his special custody. Like a chieftain or a Mafia don, he owes me some protection while I am in his domain. "Next we have this motion to get into the apartment."

Molto and Nico confer.

"No objection," Nico says, "so long as a police officer is present."

To that, Sandy instantly objects. A few moments of typical courtroom skirmishing follow. Everybody knows what's going on. The prosecutors want to figure out what we are looking for. On the other hand, they have a valid point. Any disturbance of the contents of Carolyn's apartment will hinder their ability to make further use of the scene for evidentiary purposes.

"Well, you have pictures by now," Larren says. "Every time I have one of these cases, I wonder if the prosecutors haven't formed some kind of alliance with Kodak." The reporters all laugh and Larren himself smiles. He is like that. He loves to entertain. He directs his gavel at Della Guardia. "You can have a trooper by the door so you can be sure that no members of the defense remove anything, but I'm not gonna let you snoop on what they're lookin at. The prosecution's had four months to look all over that apartment," Larren says, including in his count the month when I was head of the investigative team. "I think the defense is entitled to a few minutes in peace. Mr. Stern, you draft an appropriate order and I'll sign it. And let's be sure that you give notice in advance to Ms. Polhemus's administrator or executor or whoever represents her estate, so they know what the court intends to allow.

"Now, let's talk about this motion to disqualify Mr. Molto." This is our request to prevent Tommy Molto from acting as one of the trial lawyers on the case, because Nico has said Molto may be a witness.

Nico, starts right in. To disqualify one of the prosecutors with three weeks to trial would be an onerous burden. Impossible. The state could never be ready. I do not know if Nico is looking for more time, or trying to defeat the motion. He is probably not sure himself.

"Well, look now, Mr. Della Guardia, I'm not the person who told you to put Mr. Molto on your witness list," Judge Lyttle says. "I cannot imagine how you thought you were going to proceed with a prosecutor who might be a witness. A lawyer may not be an advocate and a witness in the same proceeding. We've been doin business in our courts the same way for about four hundred years now. And I do not intend to change it for this trial, no matter how important it is to any of the participants, no matter how many reporters show up from Time or Newsweek or anyplace else." Judge Lyttle pauses and squints toward the reporters' gallery, as if he only now had noticed them there.

"But let me say this-" Larren stands up, and wanders behind the bench. Five feet off the ground to start with, he speaks from an enormous height. "Now, I take it, Mr. Delay Guardia, that the statement you are speaking of is the one where Mr. Sabich responds to Mr. Molto's accusation of murder by saying, 'You're right.'"

"Yeah, you're right," says Nico.

Larren accepts the correction, bowing his large head.

"All right. Now, the state has not offered the statement yet. However, you've indicated your intentions and Mr. Stern has made his motion for that reason. But this is what occurs to me. I really am not sure that statement will come into evidence. Mr. Stern hasn't made any objection yet. He would rather see Mr. Molto disqualified first. But I imagine, Mr. Delay Guardia, that when we get there Mr. Stern is gonna say that this statement is not relevant." This is one of Larren's favorite means of assisting the defense. He predicts objections he is likely to hear. Some of them-like this one-are clearly going to come. Others never would have occurred to defense counsel. In either event, when formally made, the objections foretold inevitably succeed.

"Your Honor," says Nico, "the man admitted the crime."

"Oh, Mr. Delay Guardia," says Judge Lyttle. "Really! You see, that is my point. You tell a man he's engaged in wrongdoing and he says, 'Yeah, you're right.' Everyone recognizes that's facetious. We all are familiar with that. Now, in my neighborhood, had Mr. Sabich come from those parts, he would have said, 'Yo' momma.'"

There is broad laughter in the courtroom. Larren has scored again. He sits on the bench, laughing himself.

"But you know, in Mr. Sabich's part of town, I would think people say, 'Yeah, you're right,' and what they mean is 'You are wrong.'" Pausing. "To be polite."

More laughter.

"Your Honor," Nico says, "isn't that a question for the jury?"

"On the contrary, Mr. Delay Guardia, that is initially a question for the court. I have to be convinced this evidence is relevant. That it makes the proposition for which it is offered more probable. Now, I am not ruling yet, but, sir, unless you are a good deal more persuasive than you have been so far, I expect that you will find me ruling that this evidence is not relevant. And you might want to keep that in mind in addressing Mr. Stern's motion, because if you're not going to be offering that evidence, or relying on it in cross-examination of the defendant, why then, I'd have to deny the defendant's motion."

Larren smiles. Nico, of course, is screwed. The judge has as much as told him that the statement will not be admitted. Nico's choice is to lose Molto and make a futile effort to introduce the evidence, or to keep Tommy and abandon the proof. It is really no choice at all for him-better to take half a loaf. My statement to Molto has just disappeared from this case. Molto approaches the podium. "Judge-" he says, and gets no further. Larren interrupts. His face drains of all good humor.

"Now, Mr. Molto, I will not listen to you address the admissibility of your own testimony. Maybe you can convince me that that time-honored rule prohibiting a lawyer from bein a witness in a case he tries shouldn't be applied here, but until you do, I will not hear further from you, sir."

Larren closes business quickly. He says he will see us for trial on August 18. With one more glance toward the reporters, he leaves the bench. Molto is still standing there, his look of disgruntlement plain. Tommy's always had a bad habit for a trial lawyer of allowing his dissatisfaction to be evident. But Judge Lyttle and he have been going at each other now for many years. I may not have recalled Carolyn's service in the North Branch, but I could never have forgotten Larren and Molto. Their disputes were notorious. Exiled by Bolcarro to that judicial Siberia, Judge Lyttle applied his own rough justice. The cops were guilty of harassment, unless proven otherwise. Molto, beleaguered and bitterly unhappy, used to claim that the pimps and junkies and sneak thieves, some of whom made daily appearances in Larren's court room, would rise to applaud him when he assumed the bench for the morning call. The police despised Judge Lyttle. They invented racial epithets that showed the same imagination which put humankind upon the moon. Larren had been downtown for years by the time I finished the Night Saints investigation and Lionel Kenneally was still complaining whenever he heard Larren's name. There was one story Kenneally must have told me ten times about a battery case, brought by a cop who claimed that the defendant had resisted arrest. The cop, named Manos, said he and the defendant had gotten into a tussle shortly after the defendant called the cop a name.