Steve Martini - Double Tap

“What can he say? He told me that if we don’t have a ruling from the court by the time the state rests its case, he is inclined to give us a brief continuance.”

“How long?” says Harry. “How much time?”

“Three days.”

“Three days? Lotta good that’s gonna do.” According to Harry, this is just enough time to have a good anxiety attack.

“Gilcrest said there wasn’t much he could do,” I tell him.

“With the jury sequestered, locked away in a hotel with guards to usher them everywhere they go, there is a limit to how long he can hold them and keep the lid on the trial.”

“The state, through Isotenics, is sitting on a pile of evidence, thumbing their nose,” he says.

“We think they are.” I don’t want to place too much hope in the unknown.

“You know they are. Otherwise, why hide the ball?” says Harry.

“They can do that? Wait until the trial is over and keep us from getting the stuff?” Ruiz asks.

“The appellate court,” Harry says. “They can do whatever they want. They can sit on the appeal until the case is over and then decide that, while we had a right to the evidence, the failure to give it to us was not prejudicial-that the failure to deliver didn’t affect the outcome of the trial.”

“I don’t get it. They can make up the rules like that?” Ruiz, the soldier with scar tissue from nicks and wounds all over his body, looks surprised.

“Welcome to the Middle Ages, son,” says Harry. “They hold the pencil and wear the robes, so they get to write any fairy tale they like. And unless another set of wizards in black with a bigger wand comes along to slap them around, their fable becomes law-that is, at least as far as you’re concerned.”

What Harry means is that if the appellate court realizes it has made a bad decision, they are likely to refuse to certify it for publication. In that case it will apply only to Ruiz. Lawyers would not be allowed to cite the decision as authority in other cases, and because of the decision’s limited effect, higher courts would not be likely to waste their time reviewing it-though, in a death case, review to the state supreme court would be automatic. It would be an interesting social survey to find out how many people currently sitting behind bars in penitentiaries in this country are the victims of bad procedural decisions by appellate courts, written opinions that were dropped into a black hole and never certified for publication and therefore skirted review by more reasoned minds.

“Are we ready?” I ask.

Ruiz checks himself in the mirror one last time and takes a deep breath.

Harry nods.

“I just got one question,” says Ruiz.

“Jeez, only one,” says Harry. “You’re lucky.”

“You know, you asked me the other day about the frangible rounds, the bullets,” says Ruiz. “I couldn’t remember whether there were any in the case or not. But I do remember that over the last couple of years I shot a lot of them at the range before I was discharged from the Army. It is possible they were in the clips that were inside the bag.” The way he says this makes me wonder if perhaps there is something else he isn’t telling us.

“What I don’t understand,” he says, “is why whoever killed her would have mixed the rounds, used two different kinds of bullets.”

The guard taps on the little window in the door, the signal that the judge is ready to get started.

“I don’t have time to explain right now. Stay tuned,” I tell him.

We head to the courtroom, a constellation of guards segregating Harry and me from Ruiz until we get to the counsel table and take our seats. Chapman’s mother and sister are in the front row again. Nathan is in the cheap seats today toward the back of the courtroom. His intern must have overslept. It doesn’t look as if Jean Kaprosky could make it.

Templeton and his minions are already assembled at their table. A few seconds later the judge takes the bench and instructs the bailiff to bring in the jury.

This morning Templeton does a quick tap dance on our bones. His first witness is the ballistics expert from the county’s crime lab.

The witness quickly identifies lands and grooves on the partially deformed lead bullet that correspond with several test bullets fired in the lab through the HK Mark 23, Ruiz’s gun.

“Then there is no question in your mind,” says Templeton, “that the gun that fired at least one of the rounds that struck Madelyn Chapman is that firearm, the pistol identified as People’s exhibit six, is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Let’s talk a little about the other round. The frangible round. The bullet that the medical examiner testified fragmented into pieces inside the victim’s body. Are you familiar with frangible bullets?”

“I am.”

“Can you tell the jury the purpose behind the design of such a bullet?”

“There are several purposes and several different kinds of frangible bullets. Usually they are subsonic rounds: that is, the velocity of the bullet is designed and intended to remain below the speed of sound, roughly a thousand feet per second.”

“Did the frangible bullet that struck the victim, Madelyn Chapman, fall in this category?”

“Yes.”

“Go on, tell us the purposes of the round.”

“A forty-five-caliber automatic, such as the murder weapon in this case, is generally-unless it’s a special manufacture-in the nine-hundred-foot-per-second range in terms of bullet velocity. It is considered a large-bore pistol. Frangible rounds are a perfect fit for such a weapon. They could be used for target shooting where, for reasons of safety because of protocols of close-in fire training, you want to avoid ricochet. They are also used by law enforcement in certain hostage-rescue situations-on board airliners, for example. The frangible round is designed to fragment whenever it strikes something harder than itself, so it avoids overpenetration.”

“What is that? Overpenetration. Explain for the jury if you could.”

“In a hostage situation-say, where there are numerous innocent hostages-you would not want to shoot through your intended target, have your bullet pass through one of the hostage takers and hit an innocent victim. So a frangible round would be a good choice. The fragments would be absorbed, contained within the target. Also you wouldn’t want to punch holes in an airliner, perhaps have a ricochet go into one of the engines or a fuel tank.”

“What else? Any other purpose for a frangible bullet?”

“They’re also used for their lethality,” says the witness.

The way Templeton moves his hands and smiles makes it clear this is the one he is interested in. “Can you tell the jury a little about the lethal effect of these so-called frangible rounds?”

“Most frangible bullets are used in pistol loads where the velocity is lower than would be the case in a rifle. There is a tremendous transfer of kinetic energy when a bullet hits an object such as bone or flesh-a human target, for example.”

“Go on,” says Templeton.

“If a solid projectile passes cleanly through a target and doesn’t encounter any major resistance, much of the energy of the round is dissipated outside the target. This is what is referred to as overpenetration. In a frangible round of the type encountered in this case, overpenetration is eliminated.”

“How is that?” Templeton asks.

“Again, because the frangible bullet is designed to penetrate and to fracture or fragment into multiple small, often tiny pieces the instant it comes in contact with anything harder than itself. As I said earlier, when this happens, virtually all of the unexpended kinetic energy is transferred to the target.”

“Is this why it’s more lethal?” says Templeton.