Steve Martini - Undue Influence

We establish the facts, that he heads up the investigation in the case, and that he interviewed Mrs. Miller.

‘How many times did you interview her?’

Lama’s counting on his fingers. ‘Three…’ A glazed look in his eyes as he thinks back. ‘Three interviews and a lineup,’ he says.

‘And at this lineup did Mrs. Miller identify Laurel Vega?’

‘She did. She said the defendant was at the house twice that night.’

‘This lineup — it was the one attended by my colleague, Mr. Hinds?’ I look over at Harry.

‘Yeah. He was there. He didn’t object, say anything was wrong at the time,’ says Lama. Getting in his digs.

‘Was that the only lineup you conducted for this witness?’

He makes a face. ‘How do you define lineup?’ he says. Knowing Lama, he is not above a little perjury — it’s just that if he’s doing it, he wants to know it.

‘I’m talking about a live appearance of the defendant with other potential suspects before the witness.’

‘Then that was the only lineup,’ he says.

Harry has advised me that Laurel was picked out of a group of five other women, all dressed as she was, in jail togs. The women were all of the same approximate height and coloring. Each one was asked to step forward and one at a time to don a sweatshirt with a hood, and to give a full profile, both sides of her face, to the witness, who was in a booth, behind a glare screen. It was a textbook lineup, no suggestions by Lama or the other cops who were present. The problem, it appears, developed earlier.

‘Before you scheduled the lineup for the witness, did you have occasion to show Mrs. Miller some photographs?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How many photographs did you show her?’

He makes a face. ‘Four, five, maybe a half dozen?’ He leaves a lot of wiggle room.

‘And was Mrs. Miller able to identify the defendant from the photographs shown to her?’

‘She was.’

‘Did you bring these photographs with you?’ I know that he has because I have subpoenaed them. It is reversible error, grounds to exclude Mrs. Miller’s identification if he cannot produce all of the pictures used.

Lama’s holding a large manila folder, an inch thick, overflowing with a couple dozen photographs, various sizes, black-and-white and color.

He hands me the folder. Jimmy’s starting to play games — hide the trees in the forest.

‘This is all very nice.’ I start to chew his ass. ‘But I subpoenaed the photographs used in the identification by Mrs. Miller, not your entire file.’

‘They’re in there,’ he says, like you find ’em.

I hand the file back to him. ‘Show me.’

He makes like a table with the railing in front of the witness box and starts propping up pictures, first one, then another.

‘I think it was this one. No. No. This one here.’ He goes through twenty shots and finds two that look familiar.

The law is clear. A defendant has an absolute right to the presence of counsel at a lineup, something that doesn’t attach to a photo identification. But there are rules. The police are free to show a witness pictures of a suspect who is in custody, as a prelude to a more formal lineup. The problem develops when the photo identification is so suggestive as to single out the defendant and therefore poison the whole process.

It is the kind of game that Lama lives for — sear some picture of your client into the mind of a witness, with all the finesse of a branding iron on a bovine’s ass, and then run the suspect through the loading chute of a lineup. This is Jimmy’s kind of sport.

It takes Lama three minutes, and he is certain only about the picture of Laurel, an eight-by-ten color photo with bright lights in her eyes and numbers jammed under her chin on a placard. As for the other four shots of women he pulls from the file, he thinks they are the ones used in the photo lineup.

These are harmless, all color shots, the same size as Laurel’s of women in booking poses with white numerals on black placards.

Lama wiggles and twists like a worm on a hook when I ask him if he’s absolutely certain that these are the photos. I press him.

‘Pretty sure,’ he says.

This gets the eyes of the judge looking at him.

‘Lieutenant, I ask you for the last time — are you absolutely certain that these are the photographs used in the identification of Laurel Vega?’

Cassidy’s looking at him. A critical piece of evidence hanging in the balance. If he says no, the fate of the witness is sealed. The law is clear. The identification must be excluded. The defense has an absolute right to see the pictures used to identify a suspect, to test the validity of the process. If the state can’t produce them, that’s all she wrote.

Sweat on Jimmy’s head. Looking at me, then to Cassidy.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘They’re the ones.’ He leans as if he’d like to say it — ‘I’m pretty sure’ — but I’m waiting to kick his ass and he knows it.

The sigh from Cassidy at her table is nearly palpable.

‘That’s all for this witness,’ I say.

‘Anything on cross?’ says the judge.

Cassidy begs off.

Lama starts to leave with the folder of pictures.

‘I’d like to keep those for the moment.’

He starts to pick through, to hand me the five he identified.

‘All of them,’ I say.

A look that could kill, then he hands me the folder.

I ask the court if another attorney can join Harry and me at the table.

Cassidy is all eyes.

‘Any objection?’ The judge looks to her.

She steps into it with trepidation, the two women locking eyes.

‘I know Ms. Colby well,’ she says. Some light banter — what Dana’s doing slumming in the state courts. The two women exchange stiff smiles. ‘Though I would like to know what a Deputy U.S. Attorney is doing in these proceedings.’

‘Here in an unofficial capacity,’ I tell the court.

‘What’s the purpose?’ says Cassidy.

‘Professional courtesy,’ I tell her.

The court allows her to come inside the railing and sit in the chairs behind us but not at counsel table.

Close enough for my purposes, I think.

Miller has been outside, sequestered in the hallway. We had a cordial conversation by phone a week ago, a follow-up to our earlier meeting. We talked about the lineup and the photo ID, a conversation that proceeded with regularity until near the end, when she asked a question.

Lama takes his seat next to Cassidy. He’s whispering in her ear.

‘I hope this won’t take long,’ says Woodruff.

‘A couple of minutes,’ I tell him.

Margaret Miller is on the stand and sworn, the picture of fairness, what you would think of as womanhood if someone said ‘apple pie.’ She wears a print dress and an attitude like portraits on a candy box, hair like spun silk, all smiles and maternal warmth. Sitting next to Woodruff, the two look like the ‘before’ ad for some aging-hair elixir.

I ask the court for a moment in private, and I spend my time turned away from the witness, talking in Dana’s ear, idle chatter, but obvious so that Mrs. Miller cannot miss this. Then I turn my attention to the witness.

She identifies herself for the record, and we take up the details of the photo ID. I ask her if she remembers meeting with Lama on the day in question.

‘Very clearly,’ she says.

‘And did he show you some pictures?’

‘He showed me one picture first, by itself, the night that Melanie — Mrs. Vega — died, and then later several others.’

‘That one picture, do you remember it?’

‘Oh sure. Your client,’ she says. ‘I’ve seen plenty of pictures of her in the paper since.’

I have wondered what Jack was doing with a picture of Laurel, the ex-wife he loathed, unless there was some design in this. It appears that he and Lama found a purpose for this photo in poisoning the wellspring of Mrs. Miller’s recollections, planting the seed that it was Laurel that Miller saw that night — an onslaught of suggestion.