Steve Martini - Undue Influence

From the inception I have wondered how much of Dana’s help in our case has been inspired by her belief that Laurel is innocent, by her affection for me, and how much by her increasing enmity toward Cassidy.

As for Jack, he is nowhere to be seen today. Vega is ducking the horde of media, which I am told are camped like vandals at his condo. I have visions of fiery torches dripping tallow in the night, their holders demanding that Jack come out and talk. Now that his conviction is public, sentencing in Jack’s case has been scheduled for a week from today. Harry is offering odds that he will do time. Federal judges, says Harry, do not like to be used, and Vega’s efforts at sympathy using Melanie’s murder has the odor of exploitation about it.

While there is no question but that Jack’s testimony was originally intended to conclude the state’s case, this morning when court is called to order, Cassidy tells Woodruff that they are putting up one last witness.

She asks leave of court to recall Simon Angelo, the county coroner.

‘Is there objection?’ says Woodruff. He looks at me.

I confer with Harry, who gives me one of his patented shrugs. Harry is certain that they are back-filling, some window-dressing so they can give the illusion that they are ending on a high note. Angelo is a safe witness, somebody Morgan can control, who is not likely to do more damage to their case.

I am nervous about this. If Cassidy wants something more from Angelo, there are only two possibilities: she forgot to cover some item with him originally or his testimony is intended to shore up some major hole we have ripped in their case.

I put up an argument. ‘Your honor, if the state wants to recall the witness, it should do so on rebuttal after we’ve presented our own case.’

Cassidy argues for some latitude, some equitable setoff for being sandbagged, the surprise on Jack’s conviction. This strikes a sympathetic chord with Woodruff. He asks her how long Angelo’s testimony will take.

‘Ten minutes,’ she says.

‘I’m inclined to allow it,’ he tells me, and gestures toward Cassidy to call the witness.

Angelo takes the stand and is reminded that he is still under oath.

It is when Morgan begins anew the task of qualifying him as an expert that little shivers course up my spine. She does not do this in the broad field of forensic pathology, but instead in the narrower subspecialty of serology, the study of blood, and DNA. Bells begin to go off. It is becoming clear that there is some point to all of this, and despite Harry’s best guess, it is not cosmetic.

‘Dr. Angelo, could you tell the court, as part of your medical examination in the present case did you perform any blood tests on the victims in this case, and in particular, the John Doe, the unborn fetus?’

With the mention of the child, Laurel winces. There is a palpable shudder through her body, and I take one of her hands and hold it under the table. I have not told her about Danny’s visit to my office. She has enough to worry about for the moment. We will deal with that over the weekend, and if need be I will ship the boy back to where he came from until this is over.

‘We didn’t do blood,’ says Angelo, ‘but we did do DNA.’ He explains to the court that after his initial testimony, when questions of paternity were raised on cross-examination, he went back and conducted some tests, ‘expedited,’ as he says.

‘Could you tell the court what tests you performed and why?’

‘I carried out what are known as DNA probes to determine paternity,’ he says.

‘Your honor.’ I’m out of my chair. I’m complaining about the lack of notice on this.

‘We are not talking about exculpatory evidence here,’ says Cassidy.

Constitutional law in this country requires public prosecutors not just to convict, but to act in the interests of justice. Cassidy is under a strict requirement to share with us at an early stage any evidence that she finds that might serve to exonerate my client. The fact that they did tests and did not disclose them until now can mean only one thing — that these tests do not advance our theory of the case that Melanie had a lover. It is my hope that maybe at best the tests were inconclusive.

‘Counsel made the issue relevant,’ says Cassidy, ‘when he excoriated Mr. Vega, suggesting, I might add improperly,’ she says, ‘that the victim was engaged in some lurid love affair. Now that he has raised this ugly specter, we must deal with it,’ she says. There is a look of rebuke from Cassidy, which on her face takes on a wicked aspect.

‘I’m going to allow it,’ says Woodruff. He motions me to sit down.

As I do, I turn, and catch Dana out of the corner of one eye through the slot in the door. She is tracking on Angelo on the stand, and from her expression, she senses what I do. Cassidy would not be calling this witness unless he was going to do some major damage to our theory of the case.

We are at a severe disadvantage here and Morgan knows it. The child and its mother had been buried before our case for the defense had sprouted a theory. It would have required an order to exhume the bodies for us to perform any similar DNA testing. Harry and I had discussed this option at an early stage. But considering the fact that Jack had his tubes cut and was presumably firing blanks from his cannon of conception, we saw no purpose. The child had to belong to someone else.

Cassidy nibbles around the edges for a while, a few preliminary questions to Angelo and then pops the one we are all waiting for. Was he able as a result of these tests to exclude Jack Vega from the population of men who could have fathered this child?

‘No,’ says Angelo. ‘Not only could we not exclude him,’ he says, ‘but using a single-locus probe, in which specific shared genetic factors were analyzed between the dead fetus and Mr. Vega, I would say there is a very high probability that paternity does exist.’

‘How high?’ says Morgan.

‘Based on the probes, he cannot be excluded from the class of potential paternity, and in this case the likelihood of paternity based on multiple DNA probes is more than ninety-nine percent, to be specific ninety-nine point four percent.’

I sit stunned at the table. What Angelo is telling the jury is that as a matter of scientific certainty, Jack is the father of this unborn child. The look of disbelief must register on my face, for when I glance over, several of the jurors are studying me as to effect, an ether of discontent sending over the panel. Several of the women are looking at me, wondering how, in the face of this evidence, I could scandalize a victim whose lips were sealed by death. There is an undercurrent of murmuring in the courtroom, and Woodruff slaps his gavel.

There is no need to manufacture a high point in her case. Cassidy has gone for the underbelly of our own, and ripped it out.

‘Nothing more of this witness,’ she says.

As I rise I feel like I am supported by limbs of jelly. I struggle to keep the stunned expression of anger off my face. But deep down I have the sense that this is manufactured evidence — something hatched at a midnight meeting, when at a weak moment Cassidy saw their case evaporating. It is scientific evidence we cannot test as to its accuracy or veracity.

‘Doctor, there’s no chance of error in your tests?’ I say. A feeble first strike.

‘No.’ No hesitation. Not ‘I wouldn’t think so,’ but an absolute, emphatic no from Angelo.

His hairless dome shimmers under the bright glare of the courtroom lights. The look of enigma is in his eyes. We both know that unless I can shake him on this, the motive for my theory of defense is gone. On the eve of our case, I will be left with nothing to talk about, already committed to a scenario of the crime that Angelo, in ten minutes, has completely destroyed. Without some shadowy lover in Melanie’s bed, why would Jack murder the mother of his own child? Even the most cold-hearted would not commit multiple murder for the purpose of propping up sympathy on sentencing in another, lesser criminal case. Even Jack could calculate the odds on this and find it a loser.