Steve Martini - Compelling Evidence

Nelson is looking at the table, at Meeks, for assistance. There is a motionless shrug from the hired help, a psychic “I dunno” from Meeks.

“I think maybe there’s some confusion here, doctor. Perhaps I’m not making myself clear.” Nelson does everything but genuflect in front of the witness box, his theory of conspiracy going up in smoke.

“The defendant is a woman who weighs what, one hundred fifteen, one hundred twenty pounds?”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Cooper. “I’ve never weighed her.” Some laughter from the audience. Acosta is on them with his gavel.

“So that we can be perfectly clear, you’re not telling this jury that a woman the size of the defendant could have shot the victim, a man over six feet in height, approaching two hundred pounds in weight, that she could then have moved the body by herself, transporting it from wherever he was killed to the office, that she then could have placed him in that chair and shot him with a shotgun, and done all of this by herself, without help from some other person?”

“It seems you have outdated notions of the fairer sex,” says Coop. “That is precisely what I am saying. It is entirely possible that a woman alone could have committed this crime.”

Nelson is clearly troubled by this. The theory of the weak female has been, from the beginning, at the heart of his case. Logic tells him that no reasonable jury will accept the notion that a lone woman, much less one who looks like Talia, could have carried out this grisly crime by herself.

Some jurors are taking notes. Cooper is shameless, sitting there in the box, paradox written on his face. Nelson and Meeks confer in a flurry of panic at the prosecution’s table. There is a little deja vu in this for me, the shoe on the other foot, a witness they cannot control.

And yet through all of this, I know what Coop is about. He is throwing me a bone, driving a stake through Nelson’s theory of an accomplice. If they later charge me or anyone else with this crime, the state will be faced with the testimony of their own witness, inscribed in stone, on the record. It is Coop neutralizing my affair with Talia, granting his own unique form of clemency. I get a glance from him, oblique, from the corner of one eye, as he sits there in silence.

It is clear that Acosta does not find this amusing. “Would you like some time, Mr. Nelson? Perhaps a recess?” he says. I would object, but it would do no good. Acosta would order an immediate break to let Nelson regroup, to have his way with Cooper in some back room.

“Just a moment, You Honor.” Nelson’s not interested in prolonging this. To recess is to emphasize it in the jury’s collective psyche, a mistake. He must deal with it now, quickly, or run the risk that it will be indelibly ingrained, an accepted truth, that if Talia did this, she acted alone. A theory that in the minds of these jurors, Nelson knows, may be a non sequitur.

“No, Your Honor, we’re ready.” He moves back toward the witness box.

“Doctor Cooper, could you explain to the jury how a woman the size of the defendant would begin to move a body more than half again as heavy as her own?”

“There are ways,” he says, “that this could have been done.”

“Such as?”

“During my examination of the body, I discovered mild abrasions on both arms in identical locations on each, and across the chest of the victim. These abrasions were in a straight line, just below the nipples on the chest, between the elbows and shoulders on the arms.”

“Abrasions?” says Nelson. “Like rope burns?”

“No, like a strap, broad, approximately two inches across from top to bottom.”

Nelson is looking at Meeks again.

“Doctor, why didn’t you tell us about this during your testimony in the preliminary hearing?”

“No one asked,” he says.

He is right; Cheetam was too busy being reamed by the witness, and Nelson wasn’t interested in any revelations beyond the minimum necessary to bind Talia over.

But the prosecution doesn’t ask the other obvious question, why Coop didn’t tell them about this during the hours of preparation for trial. He has clearly sandbagged them. And Nelson is now tongue-tied. It wouldn’t do to emphasize before the jury the fact that the state’s witnesses have gone through hours of grueling rehearsal. Jurors are funny in this respect-they like to think that testimony in open court is spontaneous.

“These strap marks,” says Nelson, “when did you first discover them?”

“During the autopsy.”

“They weren’t in your notes, why?”

“An oversight,” says Coop.

Nelson gives him a look, like Coop has just told him the Easter Bunny is under subpoena, coming on next. The prosecutor is shaking his head. As distasteful as this is, he cannot leave it unfinished. Having opened this Pandora’s box, he must now explore it fully, or he knows I will do it for him. Nelson retreats to the counsel table and Meeks for a little damage assessment.

“Can we go off the record, Your Honor?”

Acosta directs it.

Meeks and Nelson are whispering, but voices carry. Meeks is furious, embarrassed before his boss, that in his preparation of the case he has not ferreted out this surprise. There are a lot of single-syllable expletives here. It seems Meeks is of the opinion that Cooper’s testimony should be reported on little squares of tissue paper and stored on a cardboard roll in the men’s room. It is, in short, a lie, he says. In two minutes of consultation, this, it seems, is the only consensus they form. Nelson is back to the witness, back on the record.

“And what did you deduce from these strap marks that were not in your report?”

“That the victim was moved with the use of a small dolly, perhaps a light furniture dolly. The kind that uses straps with a ratcheted winch to tighten them.”

“A dolly?” Nelson’s nodding. There is an amused assent in his expression, the sort that parents normally reserve for a child’s tale of fantasy. He flashes this at the jury. An invitation for them to join him on this flight of fancy.

“Yes, a dolly such as this, laid on the ground or the floor, with the body rolled onto it, would provide leverage. It would allow a person to lift many times their own weight,” says Coop.

It’s a delicate matter for the state not to destroy their own witness. In pursuing too vigorously an accomplice the police have yet to identify, Nelson runs the risk of so discrediting Cooper that he loses this defendant, the proverbial bird in the hand.

“I see, and you think that the defendant might have moved the body on such a dolly?”

“It’s possible,” he says. “With a carpet or something tied around the frame of the dolly, to mask the body from view.”

“A carpet.” Nelson is nodding again. His disbelief grows with each embellishment of this fiction.

“You wouldn’t want to go out on the street with a body strapped to a dolly and nothing covering it,” says Coop, “now would you?”

“Not me,” says Nelson. There’s laughter from the audience, a few smiles in the jury box.

Nelson’s shaking his head, retreating to his counsel table. He’s laughing mildly, putting the face of good nature on this disaster. Taking the jury into his confidence. Treating this last bit by Cooper like an inside joke, a bit of comic relief, in a day filled with grisly details of murder. It is the only avenue of escape he has, and Nelson plays it like a master.

“Nothing more of this witness,” he says.

“Mr. Madriani?”

I consider the pros and cons, the benefits and detriments of taking on Coop when he is in one of these moods. It’s hard to say what the jury is thinking at this point, how badly Coop’s credibility may have been harmed. In trying to put a torpedo in the theory of conspiracy, he has, I believe, helped Talia’s case considerably, though this, I’m sure, was never his intent. I will be glad for little favors, glad to leave well enough alone.