Steve Martini - Undue Influence

We talk about Lama’s photo lineup. I’m shuffling some of the prints in my hands, images down so she cannot see them.

‘Do you think you would remember those pictures if I showed them to you again?’

‘I think so. I could try,’ she says.

I show her the first in the series, one of the shots offered up by Lama moments before.

‘Emm.’ She asks if she can hold it in her hand, so I give it to her. She’s shaking her head. ‘Maybe I don’t remember as well as I thought,’ she says.

I try the next. No luck.

It’s not until the third picture, Laurel’s, that she finally smiles. ‘That’s the one I identified,’ she says. She looks at me. ‘Your client, I believe,’ she says.

I nod.

She’s squinting at Dana in the distance.

Finally Cassidy gets it.

‘Your honor, I’m going to object to the process being used with this witness.’ Cassidy’s out of her chair. ‘This is deceptive,’ she says.

‘A fair test of the witness’s memory,’ I say. I ask the court if I can approach for a sidebar, a conference at the bench.

‘What’s the problem?’ whispers Woodruff.

Cassidy wants Dana outside the railing. She’s leveling assertions that I’m intentionally confusing the witness.

‘Lawyers are routinely allowed inside the bar,’ I tell him.

He makes a face. ‘Fine,’ he says, ‘but no more private conversations with the lady.’ He gives me a look.

‘Fine, your honor.’

We’re back out.

‘Mrs. Miller, can I ask you to look at a few more pictures?’

‘Certainly.’

I give her the last two that Lama culled from the file. No cigar. She has no recollection of these. ‘But then I only saw them once,’ she says.

‘How many times did you see the picture of my client?’ I keep it face down so she can’t get another look.

‘Oh. At least twice, maybe three times,’ she says. ‘The officers showed it to me the first time they came to the house. They asked me if I ever saw the woman before.’

‘This was in connection with the death of Melanie Vega?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Did you assume from this that the woman in the picture might be a suspect in the crime?’

‘Objection,’ says Cassidy. ‘Calls for speculation on the part of the witness.’

‘I’m asking about her state of mind at the time,’ I say, ‘not what she thinks now.’

‘I’ll allow it,’ says Woodruff.

‘And they kept showing you this picture, the one of my client?’

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘Fair game,’ says Cassidy. ‘That’s a permissible process during the course of investigation.’

‘And a very good way to alter the memory of a witness,’ I tell the court.

Woodruff wags his head from side to side. Maybe, but not sufficient to exclude the identification.

I’m wandering in the courtroom. I end up leaning against the railing, a few feet from Dana, where we look at each other but say nothing.

Lama’s talking to Cassidy, but she sees what’s going on and tears herself away.

‘Your honor, I’m going to object. This is a clear deception. Counsel would have this witness believe that Ms. Colby, the lawyer sitting there, is the defendant.’ She points toward Dana. ‘It’s a clear effort to confuse the witness, and I think it should be put on the record.’

‘What are you objecting to?’ says Woodruff. ‘I didn’t hear a question,’ he says.

‘I’m objecting to where counsel is standing.’

‘Give me a break,’ says the judge.

‘Fine,’ says Cassidy. ‘Withdrawn.’ She smiles, damage done.

Lama has the back of one hand halfway down his throat, suppressing a high-strung cackle.

Mrs. Miller gives me a look like ‘you nasty man.’ Still, she reserves a goodhearted smile. A woman who enjoys a contest of wits.

So we’ll do it the hard way.

‘Mrs. Miller — did you think that the woman sitting here looked like the defendant? Like the woman in the photograph?’ I ask. It’s a fair question.

Cassidy’s expression is little simpers, like good luck.

‘I thought maybe she changed her hair color,’ says Miller. ‘It’s different,’ she says. ‘But I think there is a little resemblance.’

Apart from the fact that they share a gender, there is virtually no likeness between Laurel and Dana. What mischief suggestion can play with the human mind.

‘Now, you’ve looked at five photographs of different women, Mrs. Miller. Apart from the picture of my client, do you recognize any of the other pictures in the group?’

‘I can’t say that I do,’ she says.

‘Are these the pictures that Lieutenant Lama showed you at the time of the photo identification?’

‘I can’t be sure of some of them,’ she says. ‘But two I know are missing,’ she tells the court.

‘Which are those?’

‘The black woman,’ she says.

Woodruff is incredulous. ‘He showed you a picture of a black woman?’

She nods to the judge.

Lama’s ducking for cover, slinking in his chair.

‘Lieutenant. None of these pictures, the ones you picked out, shows a black woman.’ Screw the fact that Lama isn’t on the stand. The judge wants an answer.

Shoulders and a lot of shrugging from Lama.

‘What about it?’ says Woodruff.

‘I think the witness is mistaken,’ he says. Left with an alternative, admitting to perjury or impeaching the memory of his own witness, Lama’s made his choice.

‘You also missed the one that looked like my granddaughter,’ says Miller. ‘Remember? We talked about it.’ If the devil is in the details, Lama’s on his way to hell.

It was the question about the black suspect from Mrs. Miller on the phone that alerted me. Why would a police officer show her a picture of a black woman when she had told him repeatedly that the figure she saw that night outside the Vegas’ house was white?

I offer her the folder and ask her to look through it. She finds the black woman in twenty seconds, a mug shot of a face with corn-rows, a severe birthmark going up the side of her face into the hairline. There would be no confusing this with pictures of Laurel. It takes her a couple more minutes to find the other four photos. Like debutantes at a ball, these are not mug shots, but black-and-white glossies, like something from a high-school yearbook. Lama must have scoured the files of some local modeling agency for these. If you were going to pick a doer from among the bunch, it would not be this lot.

‘I told him that this one here looked like my granddaughter,’ says Miller. She holds up one of the photos, proud of the good-looking girl in her hand, all-American youth, a good twenty years younger than Laurel.

‘Your honor, I move that the identification of the witness be excluded.’

Cassidy is hissing profanities into Jimmy Lama’s ear, feeling victimized by his shoddy practices. She breaks off in midsentence to salvage what she can.

‘Your honor, the witness may have an independent recollection of the defendant, untainted by the photographs.’ Morgan’s out of her chair, open palms to the bench, the supplicant. ‘It could be harmless error,’ she says.

‘You have a strange notion of error, counsel.’ Woodruff bearing down from the bench. It is one thing to argue legal points, another to mislead a court. Lama has crossed the line. The only question for Woodruff is whether Cassidy was along for the ride.

Woodruff, for a show of fairness, allows her a chance to redeem the evidence. A token gesture. I think he’s already made up his mind. What happens when you drag lies before a court.

Cassidy’s off-balance. She throws a few softball questions at Mrs. Miller. Whether she had a firm recollection of the figure she saw that night in front of Vega’s house. Whether she had a clear view.