Scott Pratt - An Innocent Client

So Landers did what she asked. He waited in the parking lot until the ex left and then, when the guy didn’t give him a legitimate reason to stop his vehicle, Landers made one up. He arrested the man for DUI, searched the car, and found an ounce of marijuana.

The ex-husband, a man named Shane Boyd, hired me to represent him. He had no idea he’d been set up until his ex-wife grounded their teenage daughter for staying out too late on a Saturday night two weeks after he was arrested. The girl was angry, so she called Shane and told him that both she and her boyfriend had heard her mother and Landers talk about the set-up. The teenagers came into my office and signed sworn affidavits. I filed a motion to suppress all of the evidence based on Landers having had no legitimate reason to stop the vehicle.

When it came time for the hearing, Landers got on the witness stand and lied. He denied he even knew Shane Boyd’s ex-wife. He said he stopped my client’s vehicle “because he failed to activate his turn signal before making a left turn.” I knew TBI agents didn’t routinely make traffic stops, and so did the judge. I called the daughter and boyfriend to the stand and subpoenaed Shane’s ex-wife. She was afraid of getting charged with perjury, so she admitted the affair with Landers, admitted she’d asked him to arrest her ex, but swore she never dreamed he’d do it.

The judge was so outraged that Landers had committed perjury in his courtroom that he dismissed the case and wrote a letter to Landers’s supervisor at the TBI, but nothing happened. It was my first reality check when it came to cops committing perjury. Since then, I’d questioned everything Landers did in every case I had that involved him. I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t have any problem letting him know it.

We set our evidence meeting for three-fifteen, but knowing Landers would enjoy making me wait, I didn’t show up until three-thirty. He wasn’t there, so I sat down at the table and fumed for a little while. I was about to leave when he finally walked through the door in his expensive gray suit, carrying a cardboard box under his arm. Landers is around my age, a couple of inches shorter than me, in pretty good shape, and has blue eyes and short brown hair. I suppose he’s handsome — he certainly thinks he is — but there were dark circles under his eyes and I could smell booze on him. It was the kind of smell you can’t shower off, the kind that comes from your pores.

“You’re a half-hour late,” I said as I stood up.

“Yeah?” he said with a smirk, “sue me.”

He started taking things out of his cardboard box, the last item being a photograph of Angel. She was sitting at a table looking up at the camera, and she had what appeared to be a nasty bruise on her left cheek. The photograph was dated two days after Tester’s murder. Angel hadn’t mentioned anything to me about the police taking her picture, and the photograph wasn’t in the initial packet of discovery material I’d picked up from the D.A.’s office. As soon as I saw the photo, I knew I’d need to file a motion to keep them from being able to use it at trial. Unless they had some concrete proof of how Angel got the bruise, the photo could unfairly prejudice a jury.

“So I hear Bill Wright’s about to retire,” I said, trying to keep things civil. “Who’s next in line?”

“No such thing as next in line,” Landers said. “The job will go to whoever the suits think is best.”

“Who do you think it will be?”

“What do you care?” He looked at me as if I were a fly on his wrist, nothing more than a nuisance.

“Just trying to make a little friendly small talk. No point in us being at each other’s throats all the time.”

He raised his nose in the air like he was sniffing me. It wrinkled, as though he found the scent repugnant.

“Hate to disappoint you,” he said, “but I don’t think me and you will ever be friends. I don’t like lawyers, especially defense lawyers who do everything they can to get criminals off on technicalities.”

“You misunderstand my role,” I said. “I just try to make sure you guys follow your own rules. If you were in the same boat as my clients, you’d want everybody to play fair, wouldn’t you?”

“If I were in the same boat as your clients, I’d sink it and swim away. Now are you going to look at this stuff, or did you get me down here to chit-chat? Because to be honest with you, I’m not in a real chatty mood today.”

I slid the items across the table and looked them over.

“Why’d you take this picture?” I said, holding up the photo of Angel. “And what’s it doing in your evidence file?”

“Why do you think I took it? Look at her. Somebody cracked her in the face. We’re gonna show it to the jury.”

“Any proof of how she got the bruise? What if she slipped on a banana peel?”

“She can explain it on the witness stand.”

“ If the judge lets it in.” I tossed the photo back onto the table. “I’m going to file a motion to keep it out.”

“You see?” Landers said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. This photograph was taken two days after the murder. Her hair was found on the dead guy, and she just happens to have a nasty bruise on her face. The logical conclusion is that she got the bruise during a struggle with the victim. But then you come along and want to keep the jury from finding out about it.”

“Is this all you’ve got?” I said. “I see some photos of Tester, a photo of what looks like a shriveled penis, a photo of Angel, a couple of hairs, a couple of lab reports, and some bank records showing that Tester withdrew money from the strip club’s ATM. Is that it?”

“It’ll be enough to convict that little tramp of murder.”

“It’s not enough to convict her of simple assault.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Landers said. “You just keep thinking that way.”

“The evidence in this case is as weak as any I’ve ever seen.”

“Since when is DNA evidence weak?’

“Her hair probably got on him while he was groping her at the club,” I said.

“Maybe. You can go ahead and try to sell that to the jury, but the fact is that her hair was found on his corpse in his room.”

“It’s not enough.”

“Our witness says your girl and Barlowe followed the victim out of the club that night. They were the last people to see him alive.”

“Your witness is a lying prostitute with a drug problem.”

“And your client is a mystery woman who was working in a strip club. A stranger. Not from around here. Jury won’t exactly love her, especially when they see that bruise on her face.”

“You don’t have a murder weapon or a motive.”

“Don’t need either one. We’ve got enough circumstantial evidence to get a conviction. And you know what? I think something else will come up before this is over.”

“Something else already has come up. You’ve heard of Virgil Watterson, haven’t you? I think you talked to him this morning.”

There was a long, tense silence.

“How would you know that?”

“He called me first. He described what he saw on the bridge that night. He said he thinks you guys arrested the wrong person. Just trying to do the right thing, you know? I told him he should call you and tell you what he saw and maybe you’d try to make it right. He called me back after he talked to you. Said you didn’t sound all that interested in his information. I should’ve known better.”

“He’s not reliable. He waited two months before he even bothered to call.”

“He’s worried about his marriage.”

“It was dark out there, after midnight. No way he could have made an identification.”

“He saw Erlene. She was alone. He saw the Corvette. It’s consistent with what Julie Hayes is saying. What’s the matter with you? You guys should be taking a closer look at Erlene Barlowe.”