Jury of One (38 page)

He threw up a hand. “Boy wanted it all at once. I told him, keep it slow. But he wanted it all at once. I don’t think”—he laughed—“don’t think he liked comin’ out to my ’hood.”

She thought of moving to strike the testimony but kept quiet.

“So he would purchase one hundred grams of cocaine at a time from you?”

“Right. ’Bout every six months, he pays me for what he couldn’t at first.”

“So how often did he purchase this amount from you?”

“Twice, man, is all. First time, like I say, it was fifty then another fifty. Second time, I give him all hundred at once.”

And he was caught with 74 grams of it. The cops had never found it, in their searches of his house and automobile, because it was sitting in a federal warehouse.

“When was that?”

“September or October, seems like. Last year.”

That was also accurate. It was in November of last year that the feds caught Alex.

“Did you and the defendant ever talk about cops? Law enforcement?”

“Once.”

“Where was this? When?”

Todavia rolled his neck. He was doing his best to look bored. He pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling. “January,” he said. “Six months ago.”

Shelly froze. This was new, too. She looked at the state’s disclosure of Todavia as a witness. It said that the witness would testify about Alex’s relationship as a confidential informant with Miroballi. She had no basis for objecting to this, other than her general objection that the witness was disclosed too late, which she had made again before the witness even entered the room.

“January of this year?”

“Yeah. He comes to my house. Says he’s got a problem.”

“Judge.” Shelly got to her feet, which she normally preferred not to do unless she wanted to be noticed, but she had an extended objection. “I don’t want to keep interrupting. I want to make a running objection to the hearsay.”

“Fine, Counsel. That will be overruled. Mr. Morphew?”

“What was the problem, Mr. Todavia?” Morphew asked.

“He says he’s got a cop on his tail,” said the witness. “Says this cop is tryin’ to put a hole in the Cans.”

“The Cans. The Columbus Street Cannibals?”

“Right.”

“That’s a street gang.”

“Right.”

“Are you a member?”

“Yeah, I’m C-Street.”

“So go on, Mr. Todavia.”

“Man, he says he’s got this cop lookin’ to be a hero, y’know? Says this cop is puttin’ a pinch on him.”

“Explain that to the jury, Mr. Todavia. A ‘pinch,’ if you would.”

Shelly looked at the jury. She hadn’t been watching them, entranced as she was by the witness’s testimony. That had been a mistake. Always watch the jury with one eye. Theirs was the only opinion that counted.

Hard to read them, as always. Other than the high points, it was hard to know what was going through someone’s head. She could say this much—they did not appear to be on the verge of inviting this kid over for tea. They saw him for what he was. Part of the problem. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t believable.

“He says to me, this cop has busted him. I say, okay, then take the hit and keep your mouth shut. But Alex, he says no, no. ‘This guy wants me to help him,’ he says.”

“He’s lying,” Alex said to her, his volume somewhat above a whisper. She saw two of the jurors turn toward him.

“He says this cop is looking to take down the Cannibals. Y’know, make a name for hisself. He says this cop wants him to be, like, an informant or some such.”

Morphew put out his hands as if framing the perfect summation. In doing so, he was highlighting the importance of the question. “The defendant told you that a certain police officer was trying to get his help to make a drug bust against the Cannibals?”

“That’s what I’m sayin’. He was all upset and shit. He kept sayin’, ‘What am I gonna do? The guy’s got me pinched.’”

“What did you say to him?”

“Told him to keep his mouth shut. Don’t do it. Take the hit.”

“And can you tell the jury what the defendant said to that, Mr. Todavia?”

Shelly steeled herself. Morphew had told Todavia to “tell the jury” for a reason. It was a device to get the jury’s attention; this was something he wanted to be sure they heard. She could guess what was coming at this point, more or less.

Todavia wet his lips and looked at the jury. “This boy Alex, he says to me, ‘I gotta get rid of this cop.’”

The gallery reacted to that. The jury did, too, scribbling in their notebooks.

“‘I gotta get rid of this cop.’ That’s what the defendant said?” Morphew asked.

Shelly didn’t write the words down, because she didn’t want
the jury to see her giving them any credence whatsoever. She rolled her eyes, in fact, but she knew the jury wasn’t watching her. She noticed Alex was sweating.

“It’s okay,” she whispered to him, and nodded for emphasis. She was hoping to convince herself as much as him.

“O
BJECTION, YOUR
H
ONOR,
” Shelly managed, but there was enough noise in the courtroom that the judge didn’t even hear her. So she stood. This was the last thing she wanted to do. Eddie Todavia had dropped a bombshell, and now she was highlighting that fact. The judge finally brought the courtroom back to order and nodded at Shelly.

“Unfair surprise,” she said. “We were never given any notice of anything remotely like this—this so-called
statement.
The fact that we were never told about this statement is a disgrace. We have been ambushed.”

“It’s all there, your Honor.” Morphew was referring to the witness disclosure. He was probably right. There was nothing specifically listed about this particular comment, but he was on good paper. There had been much talk around the state of changing the law and requiring every alleged admission by a defendant to be specifically listed before trial by the prosecution, but the legislation had stalled in the state’s House of Representatives. So Morphew was under no requirement to list the words, “I gotta get rid of this cop” to Shelly.

They went back and forth with the judge. Shelly hoped, somehow, that she could distract the jury, but they weren’t really listening. After a few exchanges, the judge called for a sidebar—a conversation outside the jury’s presence but on the record. The court reporter picked up her transcription machine and met the judge and lawyers in the far corner of the courtroom
behind the judge’s bench, the corner opposite the jury. In hushed tones, the lawyers barked back and forth about the adequacy of the disclosure. The judge was not unsympathetic to Shelly. The disclosure had not been particularly forthcoming. But she had had the opportunity to talk to Todavia, even if he had refused to talk. She had talked to him prior to that, in fact.

“I’ll be willing to give you a short recess before you cross, Counsel,” the judge said. “Which is more than fair. But I’m not striking the testimony. Let’s go back on.”

All things considered, it had been about ten minutes since Todavia had testified to Alex’s statement. She hoped in vain that the jury had focused their attention elsewhere during that time. She would have done a circus trick right there in the courtroom, if she could, to distract them. Juggling. Cartwheels. But the fact was, the jury had probably taken those ten minutes to let that testimony sink in nice and good.

I gotta get rid of this cop.
If those words were spoken, they were not spoken by the boy that Shelly had come to know. Maybe he’d lied to her a time or two, but she couldn’t fathom that Alex could speak so casually about committing homicide.

“All right, Mr. Todavia.” Morphew resumed his position at the podium. He seemed energized now, and small wonder. “Before this break, you said that the defendant told you he needed to get rid of this cop.”

“Yeah.”

“Did he elaborate on that? Explain that at all?”

“Naw, man. I knew what he meant.”

“Move to strike,” Shelly said from her chair.

“That comment will be stricken,” the judge said. He then asked the jury to disregard the statement, which was like telling someone to disregard that they had just been punched in the stomach.

Morphew walked over to a tripod and placed the photograph of Officer Raymond Miroballi on it. “Do you know this person?”

“Nope.”

“Ever seen him?”

“Nope.”

“Did the defendant mention the name Raymond Miroballi?”

“Nope.”

“Have you ever heard that name?”

“Just when that chick axed me,” he said, motioning toward Shelly. Actually, it had been Joel Lightner who had “axed” the question.

“Right before she kicked me in the stomach,” he added.

The judge looked at Shelly. So did the jury. She felt all of the eyes in the courtroom on her, the lawyer who apparently had physically battered a witness.

She got to her feet. “Your Honor, to be fair,” she said, “I was aiming for his crotch.”

Two of the jurors snickered, then some people behind her, and in that small space of time within which such things happen, the courtroom had erupted in laughter. Even the judge smiled. Courtrooms were often the place for some of the greatest releases of tension, because they were also the sources of the greatest tension. Jurors loved to laugh during a trial. It was such an odd scene, an utterly incriminating bit of testimony placed next to a moment of high comedy. It was a dumb thing to say, her comment, but it was better than cartwheels or juggling and it might buy her something with the jury.

The judge finally settled his look on Shelly, telling her that he had enjoyed the moment but that she had behaved improperly.

“I’ll be here all week, your Honor,” she said, which sparked some more laughter, but then she held up her hand. “I apologize for the interruption.”

The judge settled things down, admonishing Shelly and striking the statements made by both Shelly and the witness. But the smile remained on his face. What was more important to Shelly was that the smiles remained on the
jurors’
faces.

Morphew had regarded her during the spectacle with some admiration, demonstrated by the soft upturn of one side of his mouth. He had bowed his head to her at one point.

“Well, it sounds like you got lucky,” he said to Todavia.

So score one for him. He got his share of laughter as well. The judge probably felt like Morphew was owed one, but this was a trial that was heavily covered by the press, and he did not want to be a judge who lost control of his courtroom.

“Let’s move on, Counsel.”

“Mr. Todavia, after the defendant told you that he had to get rid of this cop, did you ever hear from him again?”

“Nope.”

“And Mr. Todavia, do you have any personal animosity toward the defendant? Any grudge or anything against him?”

The witness looked at Alex. “Nope. Me and Alex is all good. We all good.” He nodded at him.

Alex nodded, as well, without looking at the witness.

“Thank you. Judge, that’s all I have.”

Shelly hoped that the comedy stood out more than the drama. But she knew better. Todavia had damaged her self-defense case. He had damaged every part of her case, regardless of which theory she had pursued. Alex was a drug dealer, pinched by a cop, who decided to resolve the problem by killing the cop. All of this, if you believed Eddie Todavia. She had to see what she could do about that.

“Ms. Trotter,” said the judge. “Do you want that recess?”

“Why don’t we get started and see how it goes,” she suggested.

She got to her feet and looked at the jury. Several of them smiled at her. She was their buddy now. The comedienne. She’d been called worse. And you had to work with what you had. She wanted to keep a favorable impression with this jury if she could. That, of course, was where the double standard came in. A man could be nice and charming but still rip a witness’s throat out. A woman could only be sweet or tough, not both.

“Hello, Mr. Todavia.”

He was openly hostile toward her, especially after he’d been the butt of some courtroom humor.

“You sell drugs, don’t you?” She gestured around the room. “I mean, that’s why you’re here. You sell drugs.”

“Yeah.”

She wanted to pore over his brushes with the law over the last few years, but he had been a juvenile at the time, and the law did not allow her to impeach Todavia with his juvenile convictions. The judge had ruled, prior to trial, that this area of inquiry was closed. She only had one incident to which she could refer.

“Powder cocaine?”

“Yeah.”

“Crack?”

His head inclined. “Yeah.”

“Heroin?”

“Time to time. Not much.” He scratched his cheek.

“Same was true eighteen months ago. When you claim you sold cocaine to Alex for the first time. January 2003. You were a drug dealer.”

“I s’pose so.”

“You suppose so, or yes?” She reached for a file and looked back at him.

“Yesss,” he hissed with cold eyes.

“You turned seventeen on September sixteenth, 2001, right?”

“Right.”

“And on February fourteenth, 2002, you were arrested for selling crack cocaine.”

“Yeah.”

Seventeen was the age of majority in this state for most drug-related crimes. Which meant Todavia had been tried as an adult. This was when Todavia left high school.

“You served ten months in prison and got paroled at the end of 2002.”

“Yeah.”

The irony here was that Todavia’s incarceration ended just before Alex’s first visit to him. She believed in her heart that if Todavia hadn’t been around, Alex would not have entered into this trade. It was one thing to go to someone he’d known in high school. She couldn’t imagine him hitting up a stranger on the street. Not a kid like this.

“You’ve been on parole since then, right, Eddie?”

“Right. Well—parole ended—I got twenty months.”

“Your parole ended some time this year. January of this year.”

“Right.”

“So this first time, when you tell us you sold Alex drugs, you were on parole at that time.”

“Yeah.”

“In fact, both times, you were still on parole.”

“Right.”

“Part of the condition of your parole, obviously, is that you do
not
sell drugs.”