Anatomy of a Murder (51 page)

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Authors: Robert Traver

BOOK: Anatomy of a Murder
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“And of course you also didn't discuss the trial with any of the other inmates.”
“What? Oh, no. No, I got troubles enough of my own.”
“So I suppose the bet you claim you made of your precious coffee ration with Lieutenant Manion was based solely upon intuition?”
“What's that there?”
“Guesswork.”
Swallowing: “I s'pose,” the witness answered, spreading his hands. “Musta been.”
“Tell me, Duke,” I said. “If you didn't read the newspapers or discuss the case with your fellow inmates how did you know that the prosecution was ‘quizzing' inmates, as you have already testified?”
“Well, we did discuss that some.”
“So for at least a day before you yourself were quizzed you knew the prosecution was asking prisoners what they knew bad about Lieutenant Manion?”
“Well, yes.”
“And you're as sure of this alleged conversation you claim you had with the Lieutenant as you are that you were previously in prison only three and not five times?”
Sullenly: “I flubbed that part about prison. I told you what the man said.”
“Thank you, Mr. Miller,” I said with a show of assurance I did not feel. “This has been a most illuminating encounter. It is always nice to meet a man of such varied talents and broad experiences. Especially one with such an intuitive and dedicated concern that the processes of justice shall prevail.”
The witness answered as Claude Dancer arose to object. “You're welcome,” he said, with a final parting swallow.
“Your witness, Dancer,” I said, abruptly sitting down.
“No further questions,” the little man said, bestowing on me one of his more winningly toothsome grins.
The courtroom had grown as still as a convention of enchanted mice. All of the jurors were avoiding my eyes and I quickly glanced away. I could still sense the curious air of ruefulness all about me, an air of puzzled and even faintly horrified resentment. Up to now this murder trial had been within the rules of the game, it seemed to whisper; now something disturbing had been added, something that didn't belong, that wasn't quite cricket. True or false, there had been a switch to strange dialogue that somehow didn't belong in this play … .
“Oh Lord, oh Lord,” I thought. “Can this egotistic bastard of a soldier man of ours have possibly been so stupid?” I choked back a sudden welling impulse to retch and again closed my eyes. Was all Parnell's and my weeks of work and worry to be in vain? Was our case shooting straight up through a shattered courtroom skylight?
“Call your next rebuttal witness,” the Judge said to Claude Dancer.
“No further rebuttal,” Claude Dancer said.
The Judge looked at me. “Any rebuttal for the defense, Mr. Biegler?” he said, well knowing that I simply had to recall Lieutenant Manion.
“The defense recalls Lieutenant Manion,” I said, prodding him in the side.
 
The Lieutenant, terse and grim, categorically denied having talked with Duke Miller, that noon or any time. No, he had never
called him Buster or anything. No, Claude Dancer did not care to cross-examine, thank you.
“Any further rebuttal, Mr. Biegler?” the Judge inquired.
“Nothing further, Your Honor,” I said.
“Both sides rest?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Claude Dancer and I said.
“Let us take ten minutes before the jury arguments,” the Judge said. “Mr. Sheriff.”
I wheeled around and looked at the courtroom clock. It was 2:17 —Wechsler-Bellevue time—on Saturday, September the thirteenth. The battle was nearly over. Was the battle also lost?
I sat alone in the conference room staring out at the lake. This was the lowest moment of the case. After all our work and toil were Parnell and I to lose on the word of a convicted felon? Had the Lieutenant really told him that? Why hadn't I warned him to clam up?
The door opened and Parnell joined me, his eyes rolled up in his head. “There's only one more thing you might have done, boy,” he said softly.
“What's that, Parn?”
“Asked the Lieutenant during. rebuttal if he was willing to take a lie-detector test on whether he talked with this lovely Miller character.”
I nodded my head glumly. “I thought of that, Parn, but rejected it for two reasons. First, the jury and everybody now knows that the results would be inadmissible, and Dancer could then argue that the offer was just a safe and cheap grandstand play. Then there's an even bigger reason.”
“What's that, boy?”
I stared at him a moment and sighed and lowered my voice. “Because the People might just possibly have taken us up,” I said. “Just between us, Parn, I was and am deathly
afraid
of what a lie-detector test might show.”
“Yes,” Parnell said thoughtfully, nodding his head. “I see what you mean, boy. Ah yes, I see exactly what you mean. Please forget that I ever mentioned it.” He shook his head. “May the Lord save us from the claws of a cat and seven homy animals.”
The door opened and Dr. Smith hurriedly joined us. During recess he had discovered he could catch a plane home if he hurried. Parnell, bravely hiding his disappointment over missing any of the argument, gallantly volunteered to drive him to the airport; we could do no less.
“I've never seen a shabbier performance in my professional life,” the young doctor said, shaking his head sadly, referring to the testimony of his fellow diplomate. “But at least I think your scorching cross-examination will discourage him from venturing an early repetition.”
“Thanks, Doc,” I said, grasping his hand. “You were our rock and I'll surely send you word. As for Doc Gregory, I intend in my argument to burn his soft diplomatic ass.”
“To a crisp, I hope,” Dr. Smith said with feeling.
“Let's hurry, gentlemen,” Parnell said, looking at his watch. “I want to get back for the arguments. I've waited over three weeks for this hour.”
“Two minutes,” Max said, popping his head in the door, and I sighed and grabbed up my brief case.
Recess was over and the whispering thronged courtroom slowly fell silent. The Lieutenant and I sat alone at our place (I had purposely retired Laura to one of the lawyers' chairs behind us), and our long table was bare except for the accumulated dust and the notes for my jury argument and a small scratch pad. The pad was small because I guessed that Mitch would probably open, saying little or nothing that I could gnaw on; then would come my turn; and then, I suspected, the little giant-killer Claude Dancer would arise and wind it all up.
The tense courtroom grew as hushed as a graveyard and the Judge nodded at the People's table. A mote-streaming shaft of sunlight penetrated the skylight. Mitch got up and formally addressed the court and jury and walked up to the court reporter's table, where he rested his pad of notes. He then proceeded to make a very capable review of the People's case, very capable and very dull: capable, because it was all there and yet gave me little or nothing to argue about; dull, because all of us had heard all of it at least once and much of it almost a dozen times. He briefly outlined the elements of murder and reviewed the possible verdicts. He pointed out that the People would speak twice and the defense once; that the People had the privilege of making the opening and closing argument; that I would speak after him; and that the People, doubtless meaning Claude Dancer, would then finally close.
Significantly enough Mitch made no direct mention of the rape or of Laura's lie-detector test. About the only mention of this argumentative area he made was in asking the jury to ponder why Barney would ever have driven Laura to the tourist-park gate in the first place if he had meant her any harm. At that point I scribbled my first fresh note: “Slam damn gate!” I wrote.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a violent killing in this county,” Mitch continued soberly, “and we believe that the People have shown beyond any doubt that that killing was done by the defendant here. We further believe we have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that the killing was done deliberately, maliciously, and in a fit of homicidal anger, and that it was done without legal justification or excuse.
“If
you tell this man he has done nothing wrong,” Mitch continued soberly, “aren't you thereby telling the forty-nine thousand people of Iron Cliffs County and indeed all of Michigan that they may safely go and do the same thing?”
Mitch turned and gathered up his notes and marched to his table where Mr. Dancer rather ostentatiously arose and congratulated him; the little man was always in there pitching, he never missed a trick. The Judge looked down at me and nodded. “We will now hear the argument of the defense,” he said quietly.
“May it please the court and ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I began, advancing before the jury rail. I lowered my voice and solemnly launched my argument. “When, in Kipling's phrase, the tumult and the shouting dies, and this tall old courtroom empties and falls silent, and our patient long-suffering Judge returns to his concerns in lower Michigan, and, yes, when Mr. Dancer goes back to Lansing—when all this has happened, ladies and gentlemen, I wonder what will have become of Lieutenant Manion?
“This is the time when we lawyers, we men of many words, continue to indulge the amiable fiction that anything we can say here will possibly change your minds. For in all truth if we have done our work well there should really be nothing more to say. I sometimes think in these cases that if at this point counsel would retire and play cribbage or go fishing—and I can scarcely wait to do both with Mr. Dancer—while the Judge gave you his instructions on the law, all of us might be saved considerable time, and you certainly infinite boredom. But our system is otherwise, this is the time when we lawyers must traditionally trot out our little verbal wares, however tarnished; and I only hope that I can suggest a point or two which you might otherwise have possibly overlooked. For surely it is impossible in the brief time allotted us here to cover all the facts and angles of this tangled case.
“Most of you know that I was formerly a prosecutor of this county. During that time, under the wise guidance and example of our own Judge Maitland, I conceived it to be the duty of the People in a criminal case to bring out all relevant and admissible evidence bearing upon the guilt or innocence of the defendant, the bad along with the good. I had been led to understand that it was
not
the duty of the People to at any price convict all defendants charged with crime, but rather to lay the entire transaction fairly before the jury so that they, guided by the Court's instructions, might try to reach a sensible and just verdict. Our own good Judge here will correct me if I
am wrong. I may add that so firm was my belief in this procedure that never in my ten years as prosecutor did I once ask a jury to convict a defendant charged with crime. And I don't think anyone ever fairly accused me of being a softie.
“Now I do not think it is necessary for me to rescue the American jury system from Mr. Claude Dancer, but under it no one is either freed or rushed to the gallows without a full and free inquiry. But that means inquiry to all the facts, not just part of them, not just the part that helps one side or hurts the other.”
I glanced at the People's table. “It seems that my views, if not wrong, are at least not entirely shared by the strolling representative of our Attorney General's department. Speaking of Mr. Dancer, there is no question that your young prosecutor, Mr. Lodwick, had a right to ask for assistance in trying this case. His right is clear and plain and I make no issue whatever about that.” I paused. “But I say that that assistance should be that and not usurpation. You have sat here for days now and watched this case stolen away from our young prosecutor before his very eyes. You have watched a deliberate and at times brilliant effort made here by the People—but not the police officers, I hasten to add—to suppress or pervert evidence that it was the clear duty of the People and not the defendant to produce. Now I am not talking about routine objections on procedural matters or the form of a question or about evidence which the court has ruled inadmissible. I am talking about the studied and deliberate suppression of truth, about fundamental and important matters of truth which it was the People's clear duty to bring out, not keep out.”
I turned to watch my time and observed Parnell sitting white-faced and grave over near the door. The old boy must have driven to and from the airport like a demon. “But enough of vague generalities, let us get down to cases. The unfair tactics of the prosecution have been double-edged: to keep out the truth, where possible, and to insinuate that certain things were so without bothering to prove them. In fact this latter tactic seems to be getting quite a settled procedure—almost an act of patriotism—in some quarters these days … . As a glaring example of the first tactic, let us take the People's biggest and sorriest fiction of all, the grotesque assumption that Laura Manion was not brutally beaten and raped by Barney Quill that night. Yes, for days now you have watched Mr. Dancer fight the fact of that rape tooth and nail, with all the pettifogging and delaying brilliance of a filibustering Southern senator. But more of that later.
“As a lovely example of the second tactic of perversion and sly insinuation let us take the incident of Hippo Lukes having supposedly danced with Laura Manion with her shoes in his pocket. Yet I ask you now: who in this whole courtroom has ever once testified she did that? Who alone has inferred it but Mr. Dancer himself? You will recall how he clawed away endlessly at Mrs. Manion on that score. The waltz of the dancing shoes, one might call it. Yet if that had actually happened could not the great Hippo Lukes have testified to it when he was first called? Would the clever Mr. Dancer have missed that chance to smear our lady? And if he forgot to then could not Mr. Hippo have been called in rebuttal after she had denied it?” I turned and pointed out into the body of the courtroom. “Behold Hippo Lukes sitting there now,” I said. “Temporarily forsaking the dance, for which nature has so splendidly endowed him, he has been sitting here all week as a witness paid by the People. If this thing actually happened Hippo should remember it. Or if he forgot, surely there was
someone
in that barroom that night who would have recalled it.
“But the most interesting thing about these tactics is the why of them. So what, you may be tempted to ask yourselves, so what if she did or didn't dance that way? Well, I'll tell you why. Because the clever Mr. Dancer was trying slyly to plant in your minds the picture of a Laura Manion as an abandoned and willful slut who would drink whisky neat and dance barefoot with beefy strangers and thus presumably go out and lay up with the first man that came along. Because Mr. Dancer, who dares not meet this rape issue head on, seeks subtly to confuse you and make you think this brutal rape was a mutual affair, that is why.
“Consider if you will his terrier cross-examination of her personal life while she was on the stand: his gallant raking over of her background, bringing out the fact that she was divorced, the awful revelation that she once sold cosmetics and worked as a saleslady and even dared answer telephones. What does the little man mean by all this? What does it signify? Does he mean to stamp all divorcées as immoral? Does he infer that all beauty and telephone operators are abandoned sluts? If he didn't mean that, then why did he buzz away at her like a gnat to bring all that out?
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he hammered and clawed away at this woman in every clever and insinuating way he could—and his talents for insinuation are impressive—to show her up as a bag and a flirt and, more, a casual and easy lay. But, remark you, never once did
this knight exemplar of the law refer to anything as coarse as the brutal assault and rape she suffered at the hands of the dead man. Never once did he mention anything as crass as a lie test. If he didn't and still doesn't believe her rape story then why in Heaven's name didn't he
examine
her about the rape? Do you think for a moment he was gallantly trying to spare her feelings? Do you think he wouldn't have assaulted her with every offensive weapon in his arsenal if he didn't know full well that she had told us the brutal truth?
“What does Mr. Dancer need to become convinced of this rape —Technicolor? I wonder how much proof he would need if, with his fine sense of detachment, he were instead
defending
this case? Ah, then the proverbial shoe might be on the other foot—or perhaps I should say, in Hippo's other pocket.”
I turned and pointed scornfully at Claude Dancer just as Amos Crocker used to point at me. “Ah yes, this is the able little man who has come up here into the brambles to show us bumpkins some of the sly city tricks he has learned so well from experts. Have any of you so soon forgotten how, when the Judge was not looking this morning, he several times got between me and the testifying Lieutenant? Why? I'll tell you why. In order to get me angry—in which he so richly succeeded; then in order that I might incur the Judge's wrath, which I so beautifully did; but mostly in order to plant in your minds the sinister notion that I was signaling lies to my client.” Still pointing. “For shame, Mr. Dancer! You brought only discredit and tarnish on your own considerable talents.” I turned back to the jury. “You may have also observed that the man didn't do it again.”

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