Philip Margolin - Capitol murder

Later on, Ginny came across a series of reports about a man named Lawrence Cooper who owned the concession stands where the suicide bombers had been employed. It came as a shock when she found out that he had been murdered. She thought about that. The terrorists had to figure out a way to get their people into FedEx Field. Maybe Cooper was part of the plot or a dupe who had been talked into hiring the suicide bombers. Maybe he was killed to prevent him from telling anyone who had arranged for him to hire the four bombers. Ginny felt proud of herself when she read a report by a detective who had drawn a similar conclusion.

B y the time six o’clock rolled around, Ginny’s head was swimming, her stomach was rumbling, and the lines on the reports were starting to blur. After calling Brad to tell him that he shouldn’t wait up for her, Ginny went down to the cafeteria. It was good to get away from the banker’s boxes, even if it was only for the time it would take her to buy her dinner. She carried a sandwich, two bags of chips, and more coffee back to her office.

Twenty minutes later, Ginny was finished with her sandwich and one of the bags of chips. She tossed her trash in the can under her desk and opened the next banker’s box. It contained transcripts of the interrogations of the suicide bombers. Ginny was surprised at how little most of the bombers knew. They were all from small villages and were educated in madrassas where they studied the Koran and little else. Their only exposure to a wider world had been in a training camp in Somalia, a day or two in a safe house in Karachi while they waited to be smuggled out of Pakistan, and their work in FedEx Field.

One prisoner, AB, was the only bomber who appeared to be of above-average intelligence. While reading the transcript of his interrogation, Ginny found out how the FBI had learned Ron Tolliver’s license plate number. An autopsy report let Ginny know that AB had committed suicide.

The next set of 302s dealt with the way Ron Tolliver had been tracked down, the raid on his house, and his transportation to the Department of Justice. Ginny sat up straight. That’s what had bothered her before. The suicide bombers had been captured at FedEx Field and immediately transported to a secret prison. Why was Ron Tolliver taken to the DOJ? If he’d been imprisoned in the secure facility where the other members of the cell were being held, Bobby Schatz would never have been able to find him. Ginny puzzled over this problem for a while, then gave up.

B y eleven, Ginny had developed a dull headache and her vision was blurred. She decided that she would finish reading the last pile of paper in the banker’s box on her desk, then call it a night. She was halfway through her last stack when she found a typed transcript that looked out of place among all the 302s. After finishing the first page, she realized that she was reading the transcript of Terrence Crawford’s interrogation of Ron Tolliver.

Crawford started off by insulting and threatening the prisoner. Ginny wasn’t surprised. If she studied a genome of Crawford’s DNA, she was certain she wouldn’t find the gene for subtlety. From the one-sided nature of the conversation, Ginny concluded that Tolliver had not been intimidated.

Ginny turned the page and smiled when Schatz appeared on the scene, brandishing his court order and demanding that the cameras and microphones be turned off. She could imagine what Crawford looked like when he was forced to leave the room.

By the time she had flipped to the next page, Ginny’s smile had morphed into a frown. The transcript should have ended when Crawford left the interrogation room, but it went on for many more pages. It was clear that the microphones had been off for a while, because the conversation between Schatz and Crawford ended abruptly as soon as Schatz made his demand that his attorney-client conference not be recorded. But the transcript continued in the middle of one of Schatz’s sentences. Someone had turned on the microphones again, and Ginny bet that it was her boss.

Was it legal for Crawford to listen in on a conversation between an attorney and his client? It had been made crystal clear in law school that the attorney-client privilege was a sacred cornerstone of the judicial system. Competent representation of a client was almost impossible if a client didn’t feel she could speak freely to her lawyer. Ginny could not imagine that there was an exception to the rule that would permit Crawford to eavesdrop on the discussion between Schatz and Tolliver.

Ginny turned to her computer and logged on to Westlaw, a tool for legal research. It didn’t take long to find cases that held that the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provided a right to counsel for defendants in criminal cases and that a defendant’s rights under that amendment were violated if a prosecutor eavesdropped on an attorney-client meeting.

In Coplon v. United States, the defendant was convicted of giving United States intelligence reports to a Russian agent. The D.C. Court of Appeals reversed the conviction presuming prejudice when the defendant’s telephone conversations with her lawyer were monitored after her arrest.

In Caldwell v. United States, a government agent managed to get himself employed by the defendant’s lawyer. The agent learned confidential attorney-client communications, which he revealed to the United States attorney. The appellate court held that this intrusion was so serious that the defendant didn’t have to show actual prejudice to get the case reversed.

By the time Ginny logged off, she was convinced that taping an attorney-client conference was an act of prosecutorial misconduct so serious that a defendant didn’t even have to show that the taping prejudiced his case to win a dismissal.

Ginny was no longer tired. Her mind was racing. She finished reading the transcript, then she set it aside and read the rest of the documents in the box. Most of the reports she had reviewed in this box and the other boxes had some relationship to each other, but none of the other documents in the box with the transcript had anything to do with the interrogation of Tolliver or the attorney-client conference between Tolliver and his lawyer. So what was this ticking time bomb doing in the banker’s box? The only conclusion Ginny could draw was that the transcript had been included with the other documents by mistake.

Ginny’s heart was pounding. What should she do? If she made the violation public, she could lose her job. At minimum, it would destroy any chance of advancement she might have in the DOJ. But she couldn’t just put the transcript in a binder and let someone else worry about it. She was certain that would be a violation of her ethical responsibilities. She would have to tell someone about it, but whom?

Crawford was her boss, but he was probably the person who had intentionally violated Tolliver’s rights. Crawford would not want the transcript read by anyone. He might even destroy it. Then it would be her word against his, and she knew who would come out on top in that scenario if she didn’t have proof that the transcript existed.

Proof! If she made a copy of the transcript, she would have proof that Crawford had violated Tolliver’s constitutional rights. Crawford could argue that Ginny had faked the transcript but Schatz, and maybe even Tolliver, could tell a judge that the transcript was, word for word, what they had said in the interrogation room.

Ginny picked up the transcript. She felt sick to her stomach. She knew what she had to do, but she was paralyzed. After a few moments, she took a deep breath and forced herself to her feet. There was a copier down the hall. She walked toward it feeling a little like a death-row inmate on the way to her execution. She looked around nervously, ears alert for any sound, but it was so late that the only people on the floor would most likely be members of a cleaning crew or security guards. Even so, she couldn’t risk being seen by a witness.