David Ellis - Jury of One

The judge finally settled his look on Shelly, telling her that he had enjoyed the moment but that she had behaved improperly.

“I’ll be here all week, your Honor,” she said, which sparked some more laughter, but then she held up her hand. “I apologize for the interruption.”

The judge settled things down, admonishing Shelly and striking the statements made by both Shelly and the witness. But the smile remained on his face. What was more important to Shelly was that the smiles remained on the jurors’ faces.

Morphew had regarded her during the spectacle with some admiration, demonstrated by the soft upturn of one side of his mouth. He had bowed his head to her at one point.

“Well, it sounds like you got lucky,” he said to Todavia.

So score one for him. He got his share of laughter as well. The judge probably felt like Morphew was owed one, but this was a trial that was heavily covered by the press, and he did not want to be a judge who lost control of his courtroom.

“Let’s move on, Counsel.”

“Mr. Todavia, after the defendant told you that he had to get rid of this cop, did you ever hear from him again?”

“Nope.”

“And Mr. Todavia, do you have any personal animosity toward the defendant? Any grudge or anything against him?”

The witness looked at Alex. “Nope. Me and Alex is all good. We all good.” He nodded at him.

Alex nodded, as well, without looking at the witness.

“Thank you. Judge, that’s all I have.”

Shelly hoped that the comedy stood out more than the drama. But she knew better. Todavia had damaged her self-defense case. He had damaged every part of her case, regardless of which theory she had pursued. Alex was a drug dealer, pinched by a cop, who decided to resolve the problem by killing the cop. All of this, if you believed Eddie Todavia. She had to see what she could do about that.

“Ms. Trotter,” said the judge. “Do you want that recess?”

“Why don’t we get started and see how it goes,” she suggested.

She got to her feet and looked at the jury. Several of them smiled at her. She was their buddy now. The comedienne. She’d been called worse. And you had to work with what you had. She wanted to keep a favorable impression with this jury if she could. That, of course, was where the double standard came in. A man could be nice and charming but still rip a witness’s throat out. A woman could only be sweet or tough, not both.

“Hello, Mr. Todavia.”

He was openly hostile toward her, especially after he’d been the butt of some courtroom humor.

“You sell drugs, don’t you?” She gestured around the room. “I mean, that’s why you’re here. You sell drugs.”

“Yeah.”

She wanted to pore over his brushes with the law over the last few years, but he had been a juvenile at the time, and the law did not allow her to impeach Todavia with his juvenile convictions. The judge had ruled, prior to trial, that this area of inquiry was closed. She only had one incident to which she could refer.

“Powder cocaine?”

“Yeah.”

“Crack?”

His head inclined. “Yeah.”

“Heroin?”

“Time to time. Not much.” He scratched his cheek.

“Same was true eighteen months ago. When you claim you sold cocaine to Alex for the first time. January 2003. You were a drug dealer.”

“I s’pose so.”

“You suppose so, or yes?” She reached for a file and looked back at him.

“Yesss,” he hissed with cold eyes.

“You turned seventeen on September sixteenth, 2001, right?”

“Right.”

“And on February fourteenth, 2002, you were arrested for selling crack cocaine.”

“Yeah.”

Seventeen was the age of majority in this state for most drug-related crimes. Which meant Todavia had been tried as an adult. This was when Todavia left high school.

“You served ten months in prison and got paroled at the end of 2002.”

“Yeah.”

The irony here was that Todavia’s incarceration ended just before Alex’s first visit to him. She believed in her heart that if Todavia hadn’t been around, Alex would not have entered into this trade. It was one thing to go to someone he’d known in high school. She couldn’t imagine him hitting up a stranger on the street. Not a kid like this.

“You’ve been on parole since then, right, Eddie?”

“Right. Well-parole ended-I got twenty months.”

“Your parole ended some time this year. January of this year.”

“Right.”

“So this first time, when you tell us you sold Alex drugs, you were on parole at that time.”

“Yeah.”

“In fact, both times, you were still on parole.”

“Right.”

“Part of the condition of your parole, obviously, is that you do not sell drugs.”

“Yeah, lady.”

“And you have to meet with a parole officer.”

“Saw my P.O. every month, at least.”

“And he asked you, every month, if you were selling drugs.”

Todavia smiled a worldly smile. “Right.”

“And you lied to him.”

“Guess I did.”

“You lied to him in January 2003.”

He waved at her. “Yeah.”

“You lied to him in February 2003.”

“Okay, lady.”

“Every month, you lied to your parole officer about your involvement in narcotics trafficking.”

“I’m saying yeah, lady. Yeah.”

“Ten straight times, once a month, you lied.”

Morphew objected; the question had already been answered. The judge sustained. Through the exchange, Todavia held his stare on her, then slowly smiled. If he was trying to creep her out, he had succeeded. If he thought that this would stop her from questioning his credibility, he had failed.

“You lied because you didn’t want to go to prison. Right, Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

“And when you got busted for selling cocaine just recently, you knew that it would mean more prison time for you, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“And you didn’t want to go back to prison, did you?”

“Nope. I sure didn’t.”

“And for testifying in this case, you get to walk out of jail a free man, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The prosecution had obviously instructed Todavia to be forthcoming on this issue.

“And you also have immunity for any drug dealing that you’ve done in the past. Right?”

“Correcto.”

She crossed her arms and looked over his head. “What about immunity for this thing here, Eddie? For the shooting of Officer Miroballi? Did you get immunity for that?”

“Objection, Judge,” Morphew said.

“I want his understanding, your Honor. For bias.”

The judge took a moment with that. He didn’t seem to get her point, but probing a witness’s bias was a sacrosanct arena in cross-examination. “Proceed, Counsel.”

She looked at the witness. He held up a hand like a waiter holding a tray. “This here crime, I don’t know.”

“So as you understand it, it’s possible that you could be prosecuted-you don’t have immunity-if you had something to do with this officer being shot.”

The witness studied Shelly. His eyes moved beyond her. Maybe he was looking at his lawyer, but she doubted it. He’d had a public defender who probably wasn’t here. For the first time, he sat up in his chair.

“I didn’t have nothin’ to do with this here cop gettin’ shot.”

“Well, that’s not what I asked you. What I asked you is, if you did have something to do with it, do you think you’re covered here?”

“Man, I don’t know. You telling me I can be in trouble for this ?”

It was notable that Morphew wasn’t objecting. As Shelly understood the plea agreement, Eddie Todavia was not immune from prosecution for this shooting. That was probably because he had nothing to do with it, and it hadn’t occurred to Todavia’s lawyer to cover him for something that was only tangentially related to the drug bust. Really, all that he was testifying to, in the end, was that Alex had made an obscure reference to killing Miroballi. That didn’t put him in the soup in any way, shape, or form. His immunity deal didn’t cover him for the Miroballi shooting any more than it covered him for the Kennedy assassination.