Joseph Teller - Depraved Indifference

"This is a fraud!" shouted Firestone. "A fraud!"

"You've got one day already," the judge reminded him. "Want to try for two?"

Apparently not.

"Mr. Mermelstein," said the judge. "May I assume that if your client is asked additional questions along this line, she will continue to invoke her privilege and refuse to answer them?"

"You may."

"Upon that representation, the court is satisfied that it would be useless, and therefore improper, to have the witness asked any more questions on the subject and be forced to invoke her privilege. Now, Mr. Firestone, as district attorney, you have a remedy. You can grant the witness immunity from prosecution. If you do that, I'll compel her to answer, since her answers will no longer incriminate her, except for perjury if she lies."

"Immunize her?" Firestone shouted. "If she was driving, I'm going to prosecute her for murder. Why would I want to immunize her?"

"Very well," said the judge. "It's your call."

"If Your Honor please?"

"Yes, Mr. Kaminsky?"

"The witness has already testified on direct examination. If no further questions may be put to her, the effect will be that the People will be denied the right to crossexamine her. That's unfair."

"So it is," the judge agreed. "Therefore, you have a choice. You can ask me to strike her direct testimony altogether and tell the jury to disregard it. Or you can let it stand as is. Or, if you're very careful about it, you can cross-examine her on other areas."

Firestone, Kaminsky and Napolitano went off to the corner of the room to confer. When they broke their huddle and returned, Kaminsky spoke for them. "We'd like to cross-examine her," he said. "And we intend to ask her about her relationship with Mr. Jaywalker."

"Her relationship?"

"Yes. We want to try to show that there's been collusion between the two of them."

"I'll let you ask relevant questions," said the judge. "If I feel you're crossing the line, I'll rule accordingly. Now, Mr. Jaywalker, are you through with Mrs. Drake?"

"In exactly what sense do you mean?"

"I mean do you have any further direct examination of her."

"No."

"Good. Your wisecrack is contemptuous, and you'll be joining Mr. Firestone in jail tonight. Mr. Clerk, bring the jury back in."

"And the spectators?"

"Them, too."

While David Kaminsky might have had a better handle on how to cross-examine Amanda Drake within the boundaries Justice Hinkley had set, Abe Firestone's ego was again too big to assign the task. He began innocently enough, asking her to describe her husband's condition when she'd first seen him emerge from the End Zone. She stated, as she had on direct, that he'd appeared drunk.

FIRESTONE: Too drunk to drive?

AMANDA: Certainly too drunk to drive safely.

FIRESTONE: No doubt about that in your mind?

AMANDA: No doubt about that.

FIRESTONE: And yet he insisted he was fine. Right?

AMANDA: I don't know if he used the word f ine. But he insisted he could drive.

FIRESTONE: And you disagreed.

AMANDA: That's right.

FIRESTONE: And you then fought over the keys.

AMANDA: Yes.

FIRESTONE: Who won?

MERMELSTEIN: Objection.

THE COURT: Sustained.

FIRESTONE: Tell me, Mrs. Drake. Do you love your husband?

AMANDA: I would say we have a love-hate relation ship.

FIRESTONE: So you do love him?

AMANDA: In part, I do.

FIRESTONE: Would you help him out if he was in trou ble?

AMANDA: If I could. I helped him out by driving up to Nyack.

FIRESTONE: Would you lie to help him out?

It was a question prosecutors couldn't resist, Jaywalker knew. So it was a question he'd made sure to prepare Amanda for. And not to just say no; common sense dictated that a wife would lie to help her husband out, and jurors were smart enough to know that. AMANDA: I'm not sure. I might, I guess. But I haven't had to decide. I haven't lied up till now, certainly, and I don't expect to. Besides, I'm very bad at lying, and you'd know as soon as I tried.

(Laughter)

FIRESTONE: How about your relationship with Mr. Jaywalker?

AMANDA: I wouldn't characterize that as a love-hate relationship, if that's what you're driving at.

(Laughter)

FIRESTONE: How would you characterize it?

AMANDA: I was asked by my husband to find him the best criminal defense lawyer I could. I found Mr. Jay walker. Because he's my husband's lawyer, I've devel oped a professional relationship with him. I've also come to consider him a friend.

FIRESTONE: Have the two of you discussed the case?

It was another area prosecutors loved. And therefore another area Amanda was ready for.

AMANDA: Of course.

FIRESTONE: A number of times?

AMANDA: Naturally.

FIRESTONE: Were some of those conversations, shall we say, beneath the bedsheets?

THE COURT: Sustained, we shall say.

FIRESTONE: Well, you and Mr. Jaywalker have been intimate. Have you not been?

THE COURT: Sustained. Move on, Mr. Firestone.

FIRESTONE: By "intimate," I mean THE COURT: And by "Move on," I mean "Move on." Is that clear enough for you, Mr. Firestone, or do I need to explain myself further?

FIRESTONE: It's clear enough, Your Honor.

God bless.

FIRESTONE: Well, Mrs. Drake, did Mr. Jaywalker ever tell you what he wanted you to say when it came time for you to testify?

AMANDA: Yes, several times. He told me to tell the ab solute truth, no matter what happens.

Nicely done.

FIRESTONE: Did the two of you discuss strategy?

AMANDA: Strategy?

FIRESTONE: Yeah, trial strategy. In other words, how he intended to get your husband off.

AMANDA: No, we didn't.

FIRESTONE: Never?

AMANDA: Never.

FIRESTONE: And he never told you what to say? Not even once?

AMANDA: Only to tell the truth. He said that would be good enough, once the jury heard it.

Firestone didn't quite give up there, but he might as well have; it got no better for him. After another fifteen minutes of dancing, he finally quit, and Amanda was allowed to step down.

"The defense rests," said Jaywalker, in a voice meant to sound both soft and self-assured. And just like that, the trial testimony had ended, not with a bang, but a whisper.

With the testimony completed, the lawyers spent the afternoon in conference with the judge. First, perhaps exhibiting a measure of buyer's remorse, Abe Firestone asked her to strike the testimony of Amanda Drake, as she'd earlier offered to do. Jaywalker objected, naturally.

"No," she told Firestone. "I gave you your choice, and you made it." Then she spent the better part of an hour explaining how she intended to charge the jurors. Only when she'd finished did she turn to her clerk. "Are the accommodations for Mr. Firestone and Mr. Jaywalker ready?" she asked.

"Won't you reconsider?" Kaminsky pleaded. "I'm sure they're both sorry."

Jaywalker said nothing. Sorry had never been a big part of his vocabulary.

"Certainly," she said. "Very well, I've reconsidered. And I'm not changing my mind. Take them away."

So that night, the two of them doubled up in the same cell that Jaywalker had shared with his client two nights earlier. Firestone was livid; he kept complaining that he was supposed to be home, working on his summation. Jaywalker, who'd been working on his summation for six months, couldn't have cared less. He used his one phone call to ask Amanda to bring him another change of clothes.

"I don't have the key to your apartment this time," she pointed out.

"Look under the doormat of the apartment across from mine," he told her.

"The one across from yours?"

"Yeah. The little old lady's, 4-G. We keep each other's spare keys. Only this way, anyone who happens to discover one under the mat will find it won't unlock the door it's in front of."