Steve Martini - The Judge

“I gotta go,” he says. “You’ve screwed up my whole lunch hour.”

“Yeah. Well, somebody screwed up Zack Wiley’s whole life,” I tell him.

“It wasn’t me,” he says. “And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t follow me.”

The last I see is his long stride making its way around the fountain and off toward the traffic light at the corner.

While we were talking the park has filled with people. It is twelve-thirty, and workers have made their way out of City Hall. Women with brown bags and dressy heels take a moment in the sun from their busy day. I see two judges strolling on the sidewalk across the way, their daily trek from the courthouse to restaurant row a few blocks away.

“Counselor!” It’s a voice from behind me, the direction of the garage.

I turn.

Staring at me with a Nicholson grin is Tony Arguillo, sporting round aviator shades over pearly white teeth, and a tan like he’s just stepped off a Caribbean beach.

“You do get around,” he says.

“Tony. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” he says. “Just fine. More than I could say for some people I know.” He looks off in another direction for an instant, and I track on his line of sight. Cousins is making his way up the steps of the center, back to his office.

Tony’s looking back at me. He does the thing that little kids do to the tune of shame-shame, one finger pointed at me, with the first finger of the other hand scraping over its top. He is backing up away from me all the while as he does this, in the direction of McGowen Center.

“Dangerous liaisons,” he says. “You should watch yourself.” With this he spins on his heels like something choreographed in a dance step, snaps the fingers of both hands down to his side, and walks away.

Witness lists have now been exchanged, and the name Oscar Nichols does not appear on theirs. Harry admits that Lenore was right not to kick this particular sleeping dog. For the moment, at least, he and Lenore seem to have put aside their differences. In the grind of final preparations for trial, they are both too busy and tired to fight.

It is midmorning and ten days have passed since the unpleasantness with Tony in the park. Arguillo is the original cop-child, what you would get if you issued guns and badges to kids in the fifth grade. Perhaps one day he will grow up, but with Tony I do not see it happening in this life.

“Well, do we have a consensus?” Lenore whispers, leaning over the counsel table. “What do we do with Mrs. Ramirez? Is she on or off? Or do you want to do more voir dire?”

Today we are ensnared in the next course of the Coconut’s juridical minefield. The four of us, Harry and Lenore, Acosta and I, are camped at the defense counsel table in Radovich’s courtroom, delving through a pile of jury profiles.

We did some legal parrying last week, motions to suppress, arguing that the cops had exceeded the scope of the warrants when they collected the fibers from Acosta’s county car and the animal hair from his home. Radovich gave them wide berth. With this judge, if we are to win at trial, it will not be grounded in the nuance of constitutional law. He gave our motion the old smell test, and flatly pronounced that the warrants were specific enough. The hair and fibers are in, subject to the state showing relevance and proper foundation.

Kline seemed vindicated. First blood for his side. On a roll, he told the judge that he wanted to join the prostitution case with the murder. We were hard-pressed to resist this, having argued for it originally ourselves, and so the matters are now joined, to be tried in one case.

It seems that he is headed somewhere with this, but we are not sure where. Kline then told Radovich that he had one other matter to be discussed in chambers when we are finished here today.

“The judge is waiting,” says Lenore. “Mrs. Ramirez,” she reminds us. “Thumbs up or down. Do we burn a preemptory or leave her on?”

“Maybe the state will waste her,” says Harry. “Mediterranean flavor,” he says, “they can’t be too happy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” says Acosta. Harry’s getting the evil eye.

“No offense,” says Harry. “But if I were defending, I would swing for a panel of your people every time. The last time they voted conviction was at the Inquisition,” he says.

“I don’t think so,” says Acosta. “It is true there is an ethnic factor,” he says. “But there is something about her I do not like.”

It is the thing about juries. There are as many theories as there are lawyers to produce them.

Ordinarily I would not expect the defendant to play an active role in the selection of jurors. But the facts that Acosta is trained in the law and has a vital stake here make it necessary for him to participate. It has me wondering if in doing this we are not merely spreading the accountability for a bad result.

“Could we have just one more moment, Your Honor?” Lenore says to Radovich.

“Take your time,” he says. “I want you to be happy with this jury,” he tells us.

If that’s the case, Acosta has a few hundred relatives in the hallway outside who would be happy to join the jury.

“Come on, guys, I need a decision,” says Lenore.

“Lookie here,” Harry whispers, lips barely moving, “she has a history of drugs.” Like a car salesman pitching the fact that his model has air conditioning.

Acosta hasn’t seen this in the profile, more personal information than a juror usually discloses.

Harry points it out to him. “No convictions, but to listen to her therapist, she’s a cognitive basket case, some shrink’s lifetime meal ticket,” Harry hisses.

“Maybe I have misjudged the woman,” says Acosta. This is the only place on earth where flirting with a criminal background is a positive reference.

I read the profile more carefully. Ramirez got hooked on cocaine in her late twenties, buying from a friend at work. She nicked her employer on a disability claim on her way out the door. At thirty-seven, she has been receiving supplemental Social Security benefits for eleven years, on the social fiction that self-induced drugs are a disability on the order of Parkinson’s disease. She lives in a group home, owned by a therapist who apparently tells her she will never recover, at least not until the government largesse runs out. Last year, largely on the political drag of her therapist and the drug culture’s circle of benevolence, Ramirez was appointed to a county commission and now serves as the local “drug czarina” of Capital County, where she makes public policy for other addicts. For this she is given a county car and a small stipend to go along with her perennial SSI. Upward mobility on the public dole.

“She’s our perfect juror,” says Harry.

“On its face,” I tell him. “But I am troubled as to why anyone would disclose this kind of lurid information unless they had to.”

“Why don’t you ask her?” says Lenore.

It’s a tricky point, sensitive materials picked over in front of the other jurors. And yet we cannot just ignore it.

Lenore gives me a gesture, as if to say, “Be my guest,” and sits down.

Mrs. Ramirez sits near the center of the jury box, in the second row. The courtroom is full of mostly other prospective jurors waiting their turns in the tumbler as we bounce their predecessors.

There is one row for press. This is mostly empty. Jury selection doesn’t rate heavy coverage. In the back row, Lili Acosta sits by herself. An elderly man and woman are across the aisle from her, flanked by a younger man. I am told that this is Brittany Hall’s mother, father, and younger brother, here to see that justice is done.