Steve Martini - The Judge

“Doctor, can you tell us, do you have on record the vision prescription for the defendant, Armando Acosta, as last recorded by Vision Ease?”

“I do,” he says.

“And what is it?”

“What I have just given you,” says Hazlid. “It is the same prescription as found in the pair of glasses in evidence before you.”

As he says this, you could drop a pin in the jury box and locate it by its own sound. The glasses on the jury railing at this moment are the focal point for eighteen sets of eyes, jurors and alternates, all with a single question. How will the defendant explain the presence of these at the murder scene, a sliver of their broken glass embedded like a piece to a puzzle in the victim’s foot?

After the testimony on the eyeglasses, Kline brings on his next witness like icing on the cake, cream in your coffee, or a nail in your coffin, depending on your point of view.

With hair that went fully white before he was fifty, Oscar Nichols has an amiable face and a soft sermonizing style that makes the passing of a sentence in criminal matters sound like a religious experience. There is a certain ethereal quality to his manner that has caused the less benevolent of the courthouse crowd to refer to him over the years as “Uncle Remus.”

He is not an imposing figure. I would guess he stands five feet six and weighs a hundred and fifty pounds with sand in his pockets. He has a kind of permanent smile etched in his cheeks, grin ridges like cement. His ascendancy to the bench lends credence to the theory that the meek shall inherit the earth, or at least that portion of it inside the bar railing. To this day I do not know his politics. He runs his court by consensus, an endless search for agreement among the disagreeable-a kind of legal burlesque in which prosecutors and defense attorneys who despise each other haggle over justice for defendants who would kill them both if the guards would only remove the shackles.

Nichols is everyman’s vision of the benevolent grandfather, a monument to innocence who prays at the altar of trust. He would give matches to an arsonist who said he was cold. He would also, in a pinch, do the right thing, which unfortunately at this moment means offering incriminating testimony against an old friend.

This morning Acosta seems almost relieved to see him. I have to stand and do barricade duty in the aisle to keep the Coconut from talking to the witness who is about to hang him. Even with this they get in a quick exchange of pleasantries-inquiries about each other’s wife and family, the press taking notes.

Kline is busy pushing some papers at his table across the gulf, while he confers with one of his associates. He has been deft in his handling of these last witnesses, making up for lost ground.

With the glasses he laid a nice trap, discovering evidence that was outside of the loop, spectacles not purchased from Acosta’s regular optometrist and therefore not discovered by us. For Armando’s part, he has apologized profusely for this oversight. He now remembers that the glasses were last seen in his house months before. He has no idea how they came to be found at the scene of a murder.

My cross of Hazlid was an exercise in damage control. I picked around the edges, the only point of any import, the missing temple screw. On this Hazlid threw me a bone, acknowledging that based on the condition of the screw hole, the lack of torque and twisting around it, it is probable that the screw was missing before the glasses were trampled in Hall’s apartment. Forensics never found the screw, and Hazlid testified that it would be difficult if not impossible to use the glasses without it.

From this I drew conjecture, that the witness could not discount entirely, that it was possible that the glasses had been discarded by their owner, perhaps tossed aside where anyone could have found them. The inference is clear; somebody planted them. Whether the jury will buy this is another matter.

Nichols presents a different set of problems. From a strategic point the difficulty is the relationship between the two men. It goes back twenty years. Everyone in the courthouse knew they were tight. If there was one person on a professional plane that Acosta would have confided in, it was Oscar Nichols. It is this friendship, and the notion that Nichols has now been persuaded that Acosta is guilty, that is the most damaging aspect-a friend, a judge, who has made his own judgment. Coming on top of the glasses, this is certain to have an insidious effect on the jury.

Kline stumbles on the social proprieties starting off. He calls him “Your Honor” and then corrects himself, referring to Nichols instead as “Judge.” This seems to run contrary to his earlier insistence that there should be only one judge in the courtroom using the title. But Kline is not one to be shackled by consistency.

“Judge Nichols, would you tell the jury how long you have known the defendant?”

“More than twenty years,” he says.

“Would you consider yourself a friend?”

Nichols looks over at Acosta and issues a deep sigh, something painful that could be read in many ways. “Yes. I would.” Then adds: “I hope so.”

If his voice were analyzed for stress at this moment, it would send the dial off the meter, pencil marks skittering over the edges of the graph paper.

Kline disarms and inveigles, floating up marshmallow questions about the cloistered nature of the judicial branch, the loneliness of judging, and the need to confide, like gods, only among themselves.

“I suppose this would spawn an element of trust among colleagues?” says Kline. “To share things?” He means their darkest secrets.

“I suppose, on professional matters over the years,” says Nichols, “you would develop confidants. People you could talk to.”

This is not exactly what Kline had in mind.

“And on personal matters. I suppose you would discuss those, too?”

“It happens,” says Nichols.

“Would you say that in the past you’ve had such a relationship with the defendant?”

“At times.”

“And is it fair to say that at times he’s had the same kind of confidential relationship with you? He would talk, share things?” Kline is animated, filled with gestures of good faith to show he has no cards up his sleeves.

“Yes.”

“So you shared things back and forth?”

“At times.”

“Judge Nichols, are you familiar with the Silver Street Diner, just down the street from the courthouse?”

“Yes.”

“Do you sometimes have coffee there?”

“On occasion.”

“Is it one of those places where judges sometimes go to get away from the courthouse?”

Nichols weighs this. Then concedes. “At times.”

“Where you can have a private conversation without a lot of lawyers, or maybe the media looking on?”

“Leading and suggestive,” I tell Radovich. The diner is not after all the village confessional.

“Sustained.”

“Anyway you can go there and get away from the courthouse?” Kline is back to where he started.

“Yes.”

He draws the witness to the twenty-fifth of June last year and asks him if he remembers a conversation with the defendant at the diner.

“Yes. I remember.” Nichols’s voice goes up an octave, anxiety registering as pitch. He takes a drink of water from the glass on the railing in front of him, and has trouble looking at Acosta as he does this.

“Do you recall who suggested having coffee that day, whether it was you or the defendant?”

“I think it was Judge Acosta,” says Nichols. For a moment he looks over as if perhaps he is going to ask, “Armando, do you remember?” But then he realizes where he is.

“Did the defendant come and get you in your office in the courthouse?”