Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

“So finding this envelope on the floor didn’t surprise you?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Can you tell the jury what you did with this envelope after you found it?”

“I picked it up, and I put it on your desk.”

“In my office?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t open it?”

“No.”

“Can you tell the jury why you didn’t open it?”

“It’s firm policy,” she says, “that items coming in marked personal or confidential are to be delivered unopened to the person they’re addressed to in the office.”

“What about other mail, not marked personal or confidential? Can you tell the jury what happens with that?”

“It’s opened by one of the secretaries. If it’s business or legal, the correspondence is normally removed from the envelope, and then the envelope is stapled to the letter or whatever it is, so that if there’s a postmark or a cancellation on the envelope, we have it.”

“But this didn’t happen with the envelope you found on the floor?”

“No.”

“Because it was sent to me, and marked personal and confidential?”

“That’s correct.”

We talk about the size of the envelope, large enough to hold letter-size paper laid flat, unfolded. I ask her if she touched the envelope again at any time after she set it on my desk, and she says no.

I ask her if anyone else touched it, and she says she doesn’t think so.

I ask her if she knows when the envelope was finally opened, and she tells the jury that this happened the following Monday morning when I returned to the office.

“And were you present when this was done?”

“I was in your office,” she says.

“So between Thursday morning when you discovered the envelope on the floor inside the door to our office and Monday morning when I returned to the office, as far as you know the envelope in question remained on my desk, unopened?”

“That’s correct.”

Now I have her tell the jury where Harry and I were during all this time, from the moment she discovered the letter on the floor until I returned on Monday morning to open it.

“You were out of the country on business,” she says.

“And how do you know that?”

“Because I helped make the travel arrangements, one of the secretaries and myself,” she says, “and because in preparation for my appearance here today, both you and Mr. Hinds showed me your passports with both entry and exit stamps for the dates in question from the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean.”

We have had certified copies of the passport pages prepared. I show them to Jennifer, we have them marked for identification, and we enter them in evidence.

“Do you know the date and time that we departed the airport en route to Curaçao?”

“It was just before eight last Wednesday night,” she says. “I think seven-fifty or seven fifty-five.”

“And can you tell the jury where you were at that time, on Wednesday night-this would be the night before you discovered the envelope on the floor?”

“I was having dinner with a friend at a restaurant on Coronado Island.”

“And what did you do after dinner?”

“I went back to the office for about an hour.”

“And what time did you arrive at the office?”

“A little after ten,” she says.

“And how long did you remain at the office that evening?”

“I had some work to finish. I left the office to go home. I think it was a few minutes after eleven.”

“When you left, was there anyone else in the office?”

“No.”

“And I assume that the envelope you discovered the next morning was not on the floor in the office when you left the office Wednesday evening?”

“That’s correct. It was not there.”

“Now let me change gears here. Do you know why Mr. Hinds and I traveled to the island of Curaçao?”

“Objection, hearsay,” says Tuchio. “All she can know is what they told her.”

“Sustained.”

I stop and think. At this moment we are winging it. Tuchio’s objection suddenly has me reaching for something I hadn’t planned on, something I’ve never discussed with Jennifer in our preparations.

“Apart from anything I may have told you, or that Mr. Hinds may have told you, put that out of your mind,” I tell her. “Apart from any of that, do you have any independent knowledge of your own, based on your own observations, your own work in the office, things you have personally observed or witnessed that give you any independent knowledge as to what Mr. Hinds and I were doing on the island of Curaçao during the period in question?”

“Objection, Your Honor.” Tuchio is on his feet, leaning over the table, both hands extended. He can’t get around the corner of the table fast enough. He wants a conference at the side of the bench.

By the time we get there, Quinn is already leaning over.

“Your Honor, they’re trying to come in through the back door on the restaurant video,” says Tuchio. “We know that this witness discovered the DVD in the evidence locker. We have to assume that she’s seen it. Madriani is trying to use the video to leverage her into saying Ginnis’s name, because as soon as she does, he’ll have the jury distracted, looking in all the wrong places for the killer. There is still no foundation for that video”-Tuchio pounds the words home-“and no basis in evidence to mention Arthur Ginnis’s name.”

I go back to my argument that the Jefferson Letter, Scarborough’s copy, which we now have, and its appearance in the restaurant video link these two items inextricably. To allow the letter into evidence without the video of Scarborough and Ginnis is to leave the jury half blind.

“Apart from that,” I tell Quinn, “Ms. Sanchez knows, based on her own independent observations and her own work product, that Mr. Hinds and I were searching for a witness on that island, and she knows who that witness is. She knows what we were doing in Curaçao. Mr. Tuchio would have the jury believe that we took a vacation in the middle of the trial.”

“Sounds about right to me,” says Tuchio.

Quinn is nodding. “I’m not going to allow you to talk about the video, Mr. Madriani. So stay away from that line of questioning,” he says. “However, I think it is fair to inform the jury that you were in Curaçao on legitimate business. The witness can confirm that you were on the island searching for a witness. But that is all. There is to be no disclosure as to the identity of that witness. Do you understand?” He looks at me.

I nod.

“No, better yet,” he says, “I’ll take care of this myself, from the bench.”

The judge waves us away. What Quinn is worried about is that Jennifer and I will get our signals mixed and that before anyone can stop her, she’ll blurt out the name Arthur Ginnis.

Quinn wheels around and sits upright in his chair.

By the time I get back to the witness stand, Jennifer is sitting there on needles. I can tell she knows where I’m trying to go, and she’s itching to answer the question.

The judge clears his throat and intones, “The jury may take notice of the fact that Mr. Madriani and Mr. Hinds were on legitimate business and that during the period in question they were searching for a witness on the island of Kureasaw.” He murders the name. “The record will so reflect.”

He looks down at me. “Now move on, Mr. Madriani.”

Jennifer gives me a slight shrug and an innocent smile as if to say, All we can do is try.

I draw her attention to Monday morning and the envelope on my desk.

For the next forty minutes, through questions and answers, she describes to the jury what she saw when I opened the envelope in my office that morning-the folded pages with the spots of blood-and then later when Harry picked up the envelope and the tiny plastic bag with the strands of hair fell out. We include testimony describing the awkward copying of the Jefferson Letter that went on in the office and the photographs that were taken.