Randy Singer: Fatal Convictions

“And then you and Ghaniyah decided that she should fake an injury so she would never be suspected?”

Mahdi smiled and gave a little chuckle. “You are truly mad,” he said. “Ghaniyah Mobassar is going to run her car into a tree so that she won’t be suspected?”

“You don’t trust Ghaniyah to navigate the in-depth police interviews without a crutch, so you concoct a plan that will minimize her interrogation. And if she forgets something or gets mixed up, you can blame it on the brain damage.”

“Objection! That’s a speech, not a question.”

“Is it true?” Alex asked, without waiting for Rosenthal’s ruling.

“It is ludicrous,” Mahdi sneered. “Where do you come up with such things?”

“I’ll show you.” Alex walked to his counsel table, and Shannon handed him a packet of documents. Before he could turn back to the witness, Khalid grabbed Alex’s arm and pulled him closer.

“You’ve got to stop,” Khalid whispered, his voice desperate. “I don’t want another word said about Ghaniyah. I don’t care if I go to jail.”

Alex nodded. He looked into his client’s desperate eyes and reminded himself that the highest duty of a lawyer was defending an innocent man… even when that man wanted no defense. “No more questions about Ghaniyah,” he promised Khalid. “But I’ve got to finish my job.”

Hassan had heard enough. While Alex Madison retrieved something from his counsel table, Hassan locked eyes with Fatih Mahdi. He knew Allah had brought him here for this very moment.

Mahdi stared back at him, his face composed and confident. Alex was back in the well, holding some papers and asking another question, but Mahdi ignored him, looking directly at Hassan. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

Hassan walked toward the back of the courtroom and approached the lone deputy stationed there. Hassan showed the deputy his bar card and leaned in so his voice wouldn’t be heard by others. “Excuse me. I’m representing Mr. Mahdi. A minute ago I was standing against the wall on the right side of the courtroom.” Hassan pointed to the place where he had been a few seconds earlier. “A man who had been there earlier left a briefcase and exited the courtroom after my client took the stand. Can you come check it out?”

The deputy looked around the back of the courtroom and nodded. He followed Hassan toward the briefcase as the testimony continued.***

“Were you here when I questioned Ghaniyah Mobassar about her pen register?” Alex asked.

“You know I was,” Mahdi said. “I was sitting in the second row.”

Alex hadn’t had time to subpoena the pen register associated with Mahdi’s wireless router between the time of Kayden Dendy’s visit last night and the start of court this morning. But that small detail wouldn’t stop him. Instead, Alex glanced down at the documents he had retrieved from his table and hoped Mahdi would remember his testimony earlier in the case when Alex had used other documents to discredit him. Sometimes, you just had to bluff it.

“The authorities confiscated your computers and hard drive when they conducted a search of your property. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s correct.”

“And they didn’t find anything on those hard drives that was suspicious. True?”

“Of course not. I had nothing to hide.”

“But now you know that under the Patriot Act, there are also records kept of every Web site visited by any computer hooked up to your home’s network. Do you understand that?”

“That is what you said in court this morning. I have no independent knowledge as to whether it’s true.”

Mahdi was being cagey, but Alex could see the calculating look in his eyes. Alex took a step closer to the witness, but not close enough so that Mahdi could see the writing on the documents. “Would you care to explain to the jury why you were looking at Web sites about brain injuries in the sixty days prior to Ghaniyah Mobassar’s accident?”

The witness stared at Alex for a long time without answering.

“Mr. Mahdi?” Rosenthal prompted.

“I do not know. Perhaps your client came to my house and used his laptop.”

“That’s the best you can do?”

This brought Deegan to her feet. “Your Honor, he’s badgering the witness.”***

Hassan pointed out the briefcase, and the deputy looked it over. When the deputy bent down to get a closer look, Hassan made his move. He slammed his knee into the deputy’s face, crushing the man’s nose. At almost the same moment, he brought his elbow down hard on the back of the deputy’s neck. The crack of bone told Hassan he had landed the perfect blow. In less than a second, he had the deputy’s revolver in his hand and whirled to face the infidels, feet spread wide in a combat stance.

A few spectators screamed. Somebody yelled, “Gun!” as Hassan squeezed off his first two shots in rapid succession. Though there was chaos in the courtroom, the world moved in slow motion for Hassan, presenting itself in vivid Technicolor-the vibrant hues of his childhood dreams.

He winged one of the deputies with his first bullet and put the second bullet into the neck of the other deputy at the front of the courtroom. The man crumpled to the floor in a lifeless heap. In the same motion, Hassan swung the gun toward Khalid Mobassar and his legal team, sitting ducks in a shooting gallery.

The noise in the courtroom became the din of his childhood battles, the sound of paradise calling. He was astride his horse, his nerves calm as he took aim at the infidels: Taj Deegan, Alex Madison, Khalid Mobassar, and Shannon Reese. He had a bullet for every one of them. His own bullet would come from the deputies who would eventually enter the courtroom to provide reinforcements.

Alex had been so focused on the witness that he didn’t know anything had happened behind him until he heard the shots. There was instant chaos, people screaming and scrambling for cover. In his peripheral vision, he saw Taj Deegan take a hit. He whirled toward the back wall just as Shannon lunged from her seat and knocked Khalid Mobassar to the floor. Alex froze. Where are the shots coming from?

He dove for the floor, but that split second of hesitation cost him. He saw the flash of a gun and had time to register that it was held by a Middle Eastern man on the side wall with an eerily calm look in his eyes. Before Alex even heard the noise, he felt the slug explode in his left side and drive him backward, sucking the wind out of his lungs with the most intense pain he had ever experienced. There were more screams, but they seemed distant now as Alex gasped for air and the edge of his vision started going black.***

Hassan had trained his whole life for this. He felt an almost supernatural ability to process all the stimuli at once, slowing the world like a frame-by-frame video. He had hit Taj Deegan and Alex Madison, but the little gymnast had reacted too quickly, tackling her client to the floor and pulling him behind the safety of the solid wood rail that separated the spectators from the counsel area.

Everyone else in the courtroom reacted the way Hassan had predicted for the weak-kneed Americans. Hysteria. People screaming and diving for the floor. There were no heroes in this bunch.

He swung the pistol in a wide arc and started quickly moving toward the front of the courtroom so he could stand over Khalid Mobassar and see the look of fear in his eyes before Khalid met his maker. Just before he got there, the back door burst open, and two deputies rushed in, guns drawn. Fortunately for Hassan, it took them a fraction of a second to locate their target. By the time they realized that Hassan was their man, he had unleashed a flurry of shots, dropping both of them as more screams filled the courtroom.