Linda Fairstein - Lethal Legacy

“Somebody’s got Battaglia wound up about Barr, or knows something about her attacker,” I said.

“So when we finish here, I’ll drive you to her apartment.”

“I just called Mercer. He’ll meet us there, too.”

He pulled on the large brass handle of the door in the middle of the hallway, holding it back so that we both could enter Part 53 of the Supreme Court of New York County, Criminal Term.

Harlan Moffett was on the bench, his back to the courtroom, seemingly engrossed in the New York Law Journal . Mattie Prinzer, the first woman to head the OCME crime lab, was seated alone in the front row. Only the staff was present-no spectators-and a well-dressed man who appeared to be younger than I, sitting at the defense table, the one farther from the empty jury box.

The court clerk saw us enter and signaled to the reporter, then got the judge’s attention. “We have the prosecutor, Your Honor. Shall we bring the prisoner in?”

Moffett spun in his chair and folded the newspaper. “Good to see you, Ms. Cooper. Detective, thanks for making yourself available on such short notice. Say hello to your adversary, here. What’s your name again, son?”

“Eli Fine.” He got to his feet and extended his hand to shake mine after I entered the well and dropped my files on the table.

“You have a chance to meet your client yet?” Moffett was in his seventies, close to mandatory retirement. His once-thick white hair had thinned and faded to a dull gray, but the garnet pinky ring he sported still sparkled as he twisted it while he talked.

“I spent a couple of hours with him at Rikers yesterday, after I flew in.”

“Let’s have Jamal Griggs,” the judge said, motioning to the court officer in charge. “How long you been out of school, Eli?”

“Six years, sir.”

“I’ve been a judge for more than thirty.” Moffett had been around long enough to know most of the New York bar that practiced in this forum. The courthouse regulars were used to his schmoozing and put up with his clumsy attempts at humor in hopes he would rule in their favor. The judge didn’t bother to clean up his act for strangers.

Fine was biting his lip. “Judge, would you mind if we-?”

The court reporter had worked with Moffett often enough to know to keep her fingers away from the keyboard until the judge signaled that he wanted to go on the record.

“Take off your sunglasses, Mr. Fine. That’s what I mind. We’re not in Malibu. You admitted in New York?”

“Yes, sir. I graduated from New York Law School. Took the bar both here and California.”

“Long as we’re legal, son.”

The door to the holding pen opened and an officer led Jamal Griggs into the room. He smiled when he saw his lawyer, and waited for his hands to be uncuffed before taking the seat beside him.

Fine was whispering something to Griggs when Moffett interrupted him. “What brings you to town today?”

“Ms. Cooper and her team have been conducting an investigation, and-”

“We’ve got a habit here, son. We stand up when we address the court,” Moffett said, turning the motion papers over to read the name of Fine’s law firm. “Stein, Schlurman, and Fine. Ever try a murder case, son?”

Eli Fine slowly rose to his feet. “Entertainment law, sir. It’s our specialty.”

“Entertainment lawyers? That’s an oxymoron,” Moffett said, resting his elbows on the bench and tapping his fingertips together. “Ms. Cooper’s had-what is it, dear? Six, seven trials to verdict in front of me. You’re not careful, she could take you to the cleaners. What’s your motion?”

The young lawyer looked at the reporter. “Are we on the record?”

Moffett rapped the gavel to regain Fine’s attention. “When I tell you we are. Give me a sense of what you want.”

“As you know, Judge, my client is incarcerated for an armed robbery. Despite Ms. Cooper’s best efforts to connect Jamal to the unsolved homicide of Kayesha Avon, his genetic profile did not match the evidence in the case,” Fine said, reading from notes that I expected had been prepared for him by a defense attorney familiar with the language of a criminal law practitioner. “Now she’s come before this court on an absurd fishing expedition, having applied for an out-of-state search warrant to get into the California database. I’m here to oppose that application.”

“Come all this way to try to stop Ms. Cooper? I’m impressed, son.” Moffett rubbed the hem of his sleeve over the garnet stone in his ring, admiring the polishing job when he finished. “Now, what’s in that databank that’s so damn important to the People of the State of New York?”

“Nothing worth invading the privacy of any citizens of California, sir. The attorney general has taken a strict position on protecting the integrity of the state’s database.”

“What are you after, Alexandra?”

I was on my feet, ready with my arguments. “We’d like to do a familial search, Your Honor.”

Moffett cupped his hand to his ear. “A what?”

“A familial search, Judge. It’s a new forensic technique, and we’d like to use it in this matter. The warrant requests the DNA profile of Jamal’s brother, Wesley Griggs, which we believe is in the crime scene evidence database of California.”

“Wesley’s a convicted felon out there?”

“No,” I said. That would make our task simpler. His profile would probably be in the FBI’s CODIS files if that were the case. “We understand he was present at a drug-related shooting, and that genetic material of his was recovered and processed. He’s not in the convicted offender files, but we have reason to believe he’s in the evidence databank.”

“Why go through all this red tape?” Moffett said. “You asked the AG nicely for it?”

“Yes, Your Honor. But Mr. Fine is right. California is among the toughest jurisdictions on kinship searches. They simply don’t allow them at this point, although there is precedent in several other states. There haven’t been many cases on point. I’ve submitted documents to you and have a copy for counsel,” I said, passing a memo and stack of scientific treatises to the court officer to give to Eli Fine.

“So you want to make some law here, hon, is that it?” Moffett said, shuffling papers around on his blotter. “Eli, did you brief this for me?”

“No, sir. I figured you’d take oral argument.”

“From the land of the hip-shooters, young man,” Moffett said, swiveling in his chair and pointing to the elaborate portrait of Lady Justice, standing beneath the flag, with the words E Pluribus Unum at her feet. “You know how that translates, Mr. Griggs?”

Jamal leaned forward and squinted at the Latin inscription, then shook his head.

Harlan Moffett stood and adjusted the belt on his trousers before wagging a finger at the defendant. “ E Pluribus Unum. Always hire local counsel, Mr. Griggs.”

“Judge, I really object to that kind of comment in front of my client,” Fine said.

“Move for a change of venue if it suits you. You got some nice racetracks in California. I’d like to hold these proceedings somewhere near Santa Anita myself,” Moffett said, taking his seat. He liked the ponies more than he enjoyed writing decisions, since he had an unusually high percentage of reversals by the Court of Appeals. “Maybe I’d better take some testimony.”

He pointed at the reporter and made a few comments about the nature of the hearing, then asked me to call my witness. I signaled for Mattie to go out to the witness room to wait for her turn to testify, and I called Mike’s name into the record.

Mike Chapman walked to the stand and placed his hand on the Bible that the court officer held out to him. I walked him through his education at Fordham College, where he majored in military history, through his years on the job and early successes that vaulted him to the prestigious homicide squad, and brought him to the current re-investigation of Kayesha Avon’s death.