Steve Martini - The Judge

“Yes.”

“Do those records reveal a sale of this particular brand and model frame to the defendant, Armando Acosta?”

“No.”

The sigh of relief from Harry at the end of our table is palpable. He picks up his pencil, wipes some sweat from under his nose, and looks over at Acosta. He actually slaps him on the arm, the first show of solidarity Harry has displayed with our client.

There is little emotion from the Coconut other than surprise at Harry’s jubilation.

“Do you show any sales for this frame in the last name of Acosta?” asks Kline.

“Yes.”

Harry stops the party.

“And in what name is that?”

“Lili Acosta,” says the witness.

“And is there an address?”

“Two thirty-four Sorenson Way, out in Oak Grove,” he says.

Harry snaps the pencil in his fingers, one end flying onto the floor. The Coconut is dog shit again.

Lili is not here today, the first time she has missed since the trial’s start, and I am left to wonder if this is by design. Harry looks down the line at me, over the top of his own glasses, a flat expression like I told you so.

“I had forgotten about them,” says Acosta. He is in my ear. “They were a gift from my wife. I did not wear them, except at home.”

It is the reason we have been blindsided by the glasses from the murder scene: they were not purchased through Acosta’s regular optometrist, whose records we have scoured. Now we are left with egg on our face to bluff our way through.

Kline steps back a pace and looks up at Radovich on the bench. “I think the record will reflect that that is the residence address of the defendant, and that Lili Acosta is the wife?” He turns toward me.

“We’ll stipulate,” I say. Anything to cut this short.

“When was the purchase made?” Kline’s back to the witness.

“September eighteenth, a year ago,” says Hazlid.

He gets the price, full retail, and the fact that Lili paid for them with a credit card, a joint account with her husband.

“But these are men’s glasses?” says Kline.

“Right. I would have to assume-”

“Objection.”

“Sustained. There’s no need to be assuming anything,” says Radovich.

Kline regroups, that avenue being blocked, he tries another.

“Did she indicate who they were for at the time of purchase?”

“Objection. No foundation. Hearsay. The witness has not testified that he sold these glasses,” I tell Radovich.

“Sustained.”

“Do the business records reflect this?” says Kline.

“No.”

Kline doesn’t need an answer, the question is enough. The jurors are capable of filling in this blank for themselves: a wife’s purchase of men’s glasses.

“Let’s talk about the lenses,” he says. “Is there anything that stands out with regard to these?”

“The glass is quite expensive, and it’s not a common prescription,” says the witness.

“Tell us about the expensive glass.” Kline is looking at Acosta.

Here we go again.

“Top of the line,” says the witness. “What we call ‘high-index glass.’ Very thin. Very light. But capable of taking a high prescription value.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You get lightness in terms of weight, comparable to plastic, but more resistant to scratches, and you can load the glass with a high degree of correction.”

“Cheaper glass won’t do this?”

“No.”

“And I take it the customer pays for this?”

“Usually twice as expensive as normal optical glass.”

“What are we talking about?”

“A hundred, a hundred and fifty dollars.”

“In the case of these glasses, how much?”

“A hundred and fifty dollars,” says the witness.

We are rapidly approaching what most families would spend for food and clothing in a month, and we haven’t costed in the doctor, his prescription, or calculated the tax.

“I thought you were a discount store?” says Kline.

“We are,” says the witness. “We also offer prompt service. Some customers want it done right now.” He actually snaps his fingers when he says this, so that one cannot help but come to the notion that this has been rehearsed.

“Objection. Speculation.”

“Overruled,” says Radovich.

Kline has done his homework and is now reaping the rewards, doing a tap dance on our bones-all the flourishes to aggravate a jury. The image he is nurturing is clear; Acosta with his face in the public trough, drawing down the salary of a prince, enough to buy designer eyewear and too important to wait in line like the unwashed masses.

“You wouldn’t expect to make too many sales like this, would you?” says Kline.

“As I said, maybe just a handful each year.”

What he means are a few potentates, an Arab oil sheikh or two, and perhaps a judge.

“But they would be very profitable sales, so you’d remember them and record them?”

“Objection. Leading. Assumes facts not in evidence.”

“Mr. Kline,” says Radovich. “You wanna testify, you raise your hand and take the stand.”

“Sorry, Your Honor.”

“Why don’t you try again?” says the judge.

Kline regroups. “Would the records of such a sale stand out, Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how many customers purchased glasses of that kind, the so-called high-index glass set in Specter Four Thirty frames, since the frames were offered for sale by Vision Ease?”

“Two,” he says.

“Do you know whether one of these was Lili Acosta?”

“It was,” he says.

For an accused defendant it could be said that there is not much that is more damaging than a matching fingerprint, though Kline is working with evidence approaching that realm at this point. It is now becoming clear what he laid on Oscar Nichols to convince him of Acosta’s guilt-the bloodied spectacles resting on the railing, and the witness who sits on the stand.

“Anything else peculiar about the lenses?” asks Kline. He is not finished.

“I would say the correction for astigmatism is unusual.”

“Perhaps you could explain to the jury in laymen’s terms?”

“The prescription here is for a reading glass, a common prescription for eyes as they age. But the patient who wore these also suffered from serious astigmatism. That’s an irregularity in the curvature of the lens of the eye. It results in light entering the eye not meeting at a single focal point. If serious, this can result in blurred vision. The patient who wore these glasses suffered from astigmatism in both eyes.”

“Was it serious?”

“For some forms of work,” says Hazlid, “it would be quite an impairment.”

“I won’t get into the methods of corrects. We don’t need to do that,” says Kline. “But with regard to the pair of spectacles before you in evidence, do you know what the prescription is for each lens in these glasses?”

The moment of drama, Kline with his sword drawn, aimed at our vitals.

“I do.”

“Would you please tell the jury?”

“Omitting the correction for reading, which is common, a plus two for each eye, the correction for astigmatism to the left eye is three point two five diopters, by twenty-three degrees. For the right eye it is four point two five diopters, by one hundred and fifty-seven degrees.”

“Would you say that is an unusual prescription?”

“I would say that it is highly unusual.”

With this, Kline appears to have come further than he anticipated with this witness. He is beaming at the jury box, not a smile, but the stern expression of resolve. There is an electric atmosphere in the room at this moment, a clear shift of momentum that I am not likely to reverse with this witness. With a single item of evidence Kline is on the verge of crossing the threshold beyond reasonable doubt, over the river and into the prosecutor’s promised land, where the burden would shift to us.