Joseph Teller - Guilty As Sin

In other words, by asking certain questions on direct and refraining from asking certain others, Jaywalker was able to not only predict what his adversary would ask on cross but to consciously and purposefully dictate her questions. So even as he was able to prepare his witness-in this case his client-to answer her questions, he could also prepare himself for his own next round of questions on his redirect examination.

But doing that was by no means all that Jaywalker did that Monday night into Tuesday morning. He considered it a distinct possibility that once they’d finished with Barnett’s testimony and the defense had rested, Shaughnessey would begin calling rebuttal witnesses. That, too, was something that inexperienced prosecutors tended to do. She’d recall agents and detectives-or call new ones-in an attempt to assure the jurors that Hightower hadn’t been working as an informer, and that the dangers involved in following Barnett too closely had been real ones. So Jaywalker prepared for those rebuttal witnesses, too, even though at this point they existed only in his imagination.

And when he’d finished working on his redirect examination of Barnett and his cross-examination of the imaginary rebuttal witnesses, he worked on his summation. Though the truth is, he’d begun working on it the day he’d met Alonzo Barnett and had been working on it ever since.

It certainly wasn’t easy, being Jaywalker. But it was the price he paid for being an obsessive-compulsive whose obsession forced him to do everything he possibly could in each case he tried, and whose compulsion drove him to avoid losing at any cost.

He finally climbed into bed around two in the morning, kissing his wife’s neck gently, so as not to wake her. Then he rolled over in the dark and blindly ran his hand along the floor by his side of the bed, until he felt the pen and notepad that were there, as they always were.

Just in case.

Miki Shaughnessey didn’t disappoint Jaywalker. She cross-examined on each of the areas he’d expected her to, though not in the order he would have bet on. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t quite Nostradamus yet. But by anticipating what she’d do, Jaywalker had been able to take a smart defendant with a nice manner of speaking and prepare him for just about every question that would come his way. Now, as he sat and listened to things play out, Jaywalker wondered if the combination of his preparation and his client’s receptiveness would be enough to offset what he was up against: the fact that no matter how well Barnett came off as a witness, he was going to be forced to admit that he’d knowingly and repeatedly sold large amounts of heroin for profit when he, of all people, should have known better.

It didn’t take too long to find out.

SHAUGHNESSEY: If I understand what you said yesterday, Mr. Barnett, you sold heroin to Agent St. James only because you felt you owed some kind of a debt to Clarence Hightower. Is that correct?

BARNETT: Yes, except that I wouldn’t call it “some kind of a debt.” It was a very specific debt. The man saved my life.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And you sold heroin to repay him.

BARNETT: That’s what it came to. I’d hoped to get off the hook by simply introducing Mr. Hightower to someone he could buy from. But it didn’t work out that way. So yes, it ended up with me getting the heroin for his friend, who turned out to be a federal agent.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did you make any money in the process of repaying this debt?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

SHAUGHNESSEY: How much?

BARNETT: I’d have to break it down for you.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Please do.

BARNETT: The first time I was given one hundred dollars and spent eighty of it.

SHAUGHNESSEY: So you made twenty dollars?

BARNETT: No, I gave the twenty dollars to Mr. Hightower.

SHAUGHNESSEY: All of it?

BARNETT: All of it. I wanted no part of it.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And the second time?

BARNETT: The second time I was given fifteen hundred dollars and spent twelve hundred. Of the three hundred left over, I gave Mr. Hightower two hundred, and kept one hundred.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Suddenly you did want part of it?

BARNETT: I’m human. I was behind in my rent, and I figured I’d earned it. It was wrong of me to keep it, but I did. I’m not going to lie about it.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And the third time?

BARNETT: The third time I was given five thousand dollars and spent four thousand five hundred.

SHAUGHNESSEY: So you would have made five hundred on that occasion alone, had you not been arrested. Correct?

BARNETT: No, that’s not correct.

SHAUGHNESSEY: No?

BARNETT: No. It wasn’t just a coincidence that Mr. Hightower showed up right after I was arrested. He was there to hit me up for some of the five hundred dollars.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Was your rent paid up by that time?

BARNETT: Yes, it was.

SHAUGHNESSEY: So you would have given him the whole five hundred. Right?

BARNETT: No, ma’am. I’d be lying to you if I said that. I was going to keep one hundred of it again, maybe even two hundred. I hadn’t decided which. I was going to keep it to buy something nice for my daughters. They were in foster care at the time, and were on a pretty tight budget. No new clothes, no new books or school supplies. Nothing but bare essentials. So the way I figured it, it was better spent on them than going into Mr. Hightower’s veins.

Bravo, thought Jaywalker. He and Barnett had worked hard trying to come up with zingers like that, hoping there’d be opportunities to use them. Score one for the bad guys.

SHAUGHNESSEY: You knew Mr. Hightower was using?

BARNETT: He told me he was. It was one of the things he told me, trying to convince me to help him.

SHAUGHNESSEY: So you helped him get money to feed his drug habit. You enabled him.

BARNETT: Actually, I was still refusing to help him at that point. It was only when he reminded me about the debt that I agreed to help him.

SHAUGHNESSEY: I see. You yourself weren’t using drugs at that point, were you?

Here it comes, thought Jaywalker. You’re a seller, not a user.

BARNETT: No, ma’am, I wasn’t.

SHAUGHNESSEY: You had no habit of your own to support, did you?

BARNETT: No, ma’am.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Yet you thought it was okay to sell heroin so others could use it?

BARNETT: I never thought it was okay, not even back when I used to sell to support my own habit. I always knew it was wrong.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And being a member of the Muslim religion, you knew it was wrong to use alcohol or illegal drugs. Did it ever occur to you that it might also be wrong to sell illegal drugs?

Good question, thought Jaywalker, and one he hadn’t seen coming. He bit down on the inside of his mouth, hoping that Barnett wouldn’t try to split hairs and insist that while using was prohibited by the Koran, selling wasn’t covered.

BARNETT: Please forgive me, ma’am, but the religion is called Islam. One who practices it is a Muslim. And yes, it was wrong of me, as a practicing Muslim, to do what I did, and I knew that. I am by no means perfect, and I have never claimed to be. I’ve made more than my share of mistakes in my life, and this was certainly one of them. For a lot of reasons, not just religious.

Not bad for an ad lib.

Looking to regroup, Shaughnessey sought a safe place and apparently figured a good bet could be found in Alonzo Barnett’s criminal record. But she hadn’t counted on the weeks of drilling Jaywalker and his client had put in on just that subject. For the next half hour, she tried to catch Barnett denying his guilt of some twenty-year-old arrest or hedging about some conviction from a decade ago. But she got nowhere. Alonzo Barnett was that rare defendant who truly understood, actually got it, that his record was his record, and as bad as it was, he could only make it worse by attempting to minimize it.