The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel (45 page)

“I am going to allow it,” the judge said. “Once we see it the prosecution can object again if so inclined.”

The television and video unit I had used previously was rolled into the courtroom and placed at an angle viewable by Corliss,
the
jury and the judge. Minton had to move to a chair to the side of the jury box to fully see it. The tape was played. It lasted
twenty minutes and showed Roulet from the moment he entered the courtroom custody area until he was led out after the bail
hearing. At no time did Roulet talk to anyone but me. When the tape was over I left the television in its place in case it
was needed again. I addressed Corliss with a tinge of outrage in my voice.

“Mr. Corliss, did you see a moment anywhere on that tape where you and Mr. Roulet were talking?”

“Uh, no. I—”

“Yet, you testified under oath and penalty of perjury that he confessed crimes to you while you were both in the courtroom,
didn’t you?”

“I know I said that but I must have been mistaken. He must have told me everything when we were in the holding cell.”

“You lied to the jury, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t mean to. That was the way I remembered it but I guess I was wrong. I was coming off a high that morning. Things
got confused.”

“It would seem that way. Let me ask you, were things confused when you testified against Frederic Bentley back in nineteen
eighty-nine?”

Corliss knitted his eyebrows together in concentration but didn’t answer.

“You remember Frederic Bentley, don’t you?”

Minton stood.

“Objection. Nineteen eighty-nine? Where is he going with this?”

“Your Honor,” I said. “This goes to the veracity of the witness. It is certainly at issue here.”

“Connect the dots, Mr. Haller,” the judge ordered. “In a hurry.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I picked up the piece of paper and used it as a prop during my final questions of Corliss.

“In nineteen eighty-nine Frederic Bentley was convicted, with
your help, of raping a sixteen-year-old girl in her bed in Phoenix. Do you remember this?”

“Barely,” Corliss said. “I’ve done a lot of drugs since then.”

“You testified at his trial that he confessed the crime to you while you were both together in a police station holding cell.
Isn’t that correct?”

“Like I said, it’s hard for me to remember back then.”

“The police put you in that holding cell because they knew you were willing to snitch, even if you had to make it up, didn’t
they?”

My voice was rising with each question.

“I don’t remember that,” Corliss responded. “But I don’t make things up.”

“Then, eight years later, the man who you testified had told you he did it was exonerated when a DNA test determined that
the semen from the girl’s attacker came from another man. Isn’t that correct, sir?”

“I don’t… I mean… that was a long time ago.”

“Do you remember being questioned by a reporter for the
Arizona Star
newspaper following the release of Frederic Bentley?”

“Vaguely. I remember somebody calling but I didn’t say anything.”

“He told you that DNA tests exonerated Bentley and asked you whether you fabricated Bentley’s confession, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know.”

I held the paper I was clutching up toward the bench.

“Your Honor, I have an archival story from the
Arizona Star
newspaper here. It is dated February ninth, nineteen ninety-seven. A member of my staff came across it when she Googled the
name D.J. Corliss on her office computer. I ask that it be marked as a defense exhibit and admitted into evidence as a historical
document detailing an admission by silence.”

My request set off a brutal clash with Minton about authenticity and proper foundation. Ultimately, the judge ruled in my
favor. She was showing some of the same outrage I was manufacturing, and Minton didn’t stand much of a chance.

The bailiff took the computer printout to Corliss, and the judge instructed him to read it.

“I’m not too good at reading, Judge,” he said.

“Try, Mr. Corliss.”

Corliss held the paper up and leaned his face into it as he read.

“Out loud, please,” Fullbright barked.

Corliss cleared his throat and read in a halting voice.

“ ‘A man wrongly convicted of rape was released Saturday from the Arizona Correctional Institution and vowed to seek justice
for other inmates falsely accused. Frederic Bentley, thirty-four, served almost eight years in prison for attacking a sixteen-year-old
Tempe girl. The victim of the assault identified Bentley, a neighbor, and blood tests matched his type to semen recovered
from the victim after the attack. The case was bolstered at trial by testimony from an informant who said Bentley had confessed
the crime to him while they were housed together in a holding cell. Bentley always maintained his innocence during the trial
and even after his conviction. Once DNA testing was accepted as valid evidence by courts in the state, Bentley hired attorneys
to fight for such testing of semen collected from the victim of the attack. A judge ordered the testing earlier this year,
and the resulting analysis proved Bentley was not the attacker.

“ ‘At a press conference yesterday at the Arizona Biltmore the newly freed Bentley railed against jailhouse informants and
called for a state law that would put strict guidelines on police and prosecutors who wish to use them.

“ ‘The informant who claimed in sworn testimony that Bentley admitted the rape was identified as D.J. Corliss, a Mesa man
who had been arrested on drug charges. When told of Bentley’s exoneration and asked whether he fabricated his testimony against
Bentley, Corliss declined comment Saturday. At his press conference, Bentley charged that Corliss was well known to the police
as a snitch and was used in several cases to get close to suspects. Bentley claimed that Corliss’s practice was to make up
confessions
if he could not draw them out of the suspects. The case against Bentley—’ ”

“Okay, Mr. Corliss,” I said. “I think that is enough.”

Corliss put the printout down and looked at me like a child who has opened the door of a crowded closet and sees everything
about to fall out on top of him.

“Were you ever charged with perjury in the Bentley case?” I asked him.

“No, I wasn’t,” he said forcefully, as if that fact exonerated him of wrongdoing.

“Was that because the police were complicit with you in setting up Mr. Bentley?”

Minton objected, saying, “I am sure Mr. Corliss would have no idea what went into the decision of whether or not to charge
him with perjury.”

Fullbright sustained it but I didn’t care. I was so far ahead on this witness that there was no catching up. I just moved
on to the next question.

“Did any prosecutor or police officer ask you to get close to Mr. Roulet and get him to confide in you?”

“No, it was just luck of the draw, I guess.”

“You were not told to get a confession from Mr. Roulet?”

“No, I was not.”

I stared at him for a long moment with disgust in my eyes.

“I have nothing further.”

I carried the pose of anger with me to my seat and dropped the tape box angrily down in front of me before sitting down.

“Mr. Minton?” the judge asked.

“I have nothing further,” he responded in a weak voice.

“Okay,” Fullbright said quickly. “I am going to excuse the jury for an early lunch. I would like you all back here at one
o’clock sharp.”

She put on a strained smile and directed it at the jurors and kept it there until they had filed out of the courtroom. It
dropped off her face the moment the door was closed.

“I want to see counsel in my chambers,” she said. “Immediately.”

She didn’t wait for any response. She left the bench so fast that her robe flowed up behind her like the black gown of the
grim reaper.

J
udge Fullbright had already lit a cigarette by the time Minton and I got back to her chambers. After one long drag she put
it out against a glass paperweight and then put the butt into a Ziploc bag she had taken out of her purse. She closed the
bag, folded it and replaced it in the purse. She would leave no evidence of her transgression for the night cleaners or anyone
else. She exhaled the smoke toward a ceiling intake vent and then brought her eyes down to Minton’s. Judging by the look in
them I was glad I wasn’t him.

“Mr. Minton, what the fuck have you done to my trial?”

“Your—”

“Shut up and sit down. Both of you.”

We did as we were told. The judge composed herself and leaned forward across her desk. She was still looking at Minton.

“Who did the due diligence on this witness of yours?” she asked calmly. “Who did the background?”

“Uh, that would have—actually, we only did a background on him in L.A. County. There were no cautions, no flags. I checked
his name on the computer but I didn’t use the initials.”

“How many times had he been used in this county before today?”

“Only one previous time in court. But he had given information on three other cases I could find. Nothing about Arizona came
up.”

“Nobody thought to check to see if this guy had been anywhere else or used variations of his name?”

“I guess not. He was passed on to me by the original prosecutor on the case. I just assumed she had checked him out.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

The judge turned her eyes to me. I could have sat back and watched Minton go down but I wasn’t going to let him try to take
Maggie McPherson with him.

“The original prosecutor was Maggie McPherson,” I said. “She had the case all of about three hours. She’s my ex-wife and she
knew as soon as she saw me at first apps that she was gone. And you got the case that same day, Minton. Where in there was
she supposed to background your witnesses, especially this guy who didn’t come out from under his rock until after first appearance?
She passed him on and that was it.”

Minton opened his mouth to say something but the judge cut him off.

“It doesn’t matter who should have done it. It wasn’t done properly and, either way, putting that man on the stand in my opinion
was gross prosecutorial misconduct.”

“Your Honor,” Minton barked. “I did—”

“Save it for your boss. He’s the one you’ll need to convince. What was the last offer the state made to Mr. Roulet?”

Minton seemed frozen and unable to respond. I answered for him.

“Simple assault, six months in county.”

The judge raised her eyebrows and looked at me.

“And you didn’t take it?”

I shook my head.

“My client won’t take a conviction. It will ruin him. He’ll gamble on a verdict.”

“You want a mistrial?” she asked.

I laughed and shook my head.

“No, I don’t want a mistrial. All that will do is give the prosecution time to clean up its mess, get it all right and then
come back at us.”

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

“What do I want? A directed verdict would be nice. Some
thing with no comebacks from the state. Other than that, we’ll ride it out.”

The judge nodded and clasped her hands together on the desk.

“A directed verdict would be ridiculous, Your Honor,” Minton said, finally finding his voice. “We’re at the end of trial,
anyway. We might as well take it to a verdict. The jury deserves it. Just because one mistake was made by the state, there
is no reason to subvert the whole process.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mr. Minton,” the judge said dismissively. “It’s not about what the jury deserves. And as far as I am concerned,
one mistake like you have made is enough. I don’t want this kicked back at me by the Second and that is surely what they will
do. Then I am holding the bag for your miscon—”

“I didn’t know Corliss’s background!” Minton said forcefully. “I swear to God I didn’t know.”

The intensity of his words brought a momentary silence to the chambers. But soon I slipped into the void.

“Just like you didn’t know about the knife, Ted?”

Fullbright looked from Minton to me and then back at Minton.

“What knife?” she asked.

Minton said nothing.

“Tell her,” I said.

Minton shook his head.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” he said.

“Then you tell me,” the judge said to me.

“Judge, if you wait on discovery from the DA, you might as well hang it up at the start,” I said. “Witnesses disappear, stories
change, you can lose a case just sitting around waiting.”

“All right, so what about the knife?”

“I needed to move on this case. So I had my investigator go through the back door and get reports. It’s fair game. But they
were waiting for him and they phonied up a report on the knife so I wouldn’t know about the initials. I didn’t know until
I got the formal discovery packet.”

The judge formed a hard line with her lips.

“That was the police, not the DA’s office,” Minton said quickly.

“Thirty seconds ago you said you didn’t know what he was talking about,” Fullbright said. “Now suddenly you do. I don’t care
who did it. Are you telling me that this did in fact occur?”

Minton reluctantly nodded.

“Yes, Your Honor. But I swear, I didn’t—”

“You know what this tells me?” the judge said, cutting him off. “It tells me that from start to finish the state has not played
fair in this case. It doesn’t matter who did what or that Mr. Haller’s investigator may have been acting improperly. The state
must be above that. And as evidenced today in my courtroom it has been anything but that.”

“Your Honor, that’s not—”

“No more, Mr. Minton. I think I’ve heard enough. I want you both to leave now. In half an hour I’ll take the bench and announce
what we’ll do about this. I am not sure yet what that will be but no matter what I do, you aren’t going to like what I have
to say, Mr. Minton. And I am directing you to have your boss, Mr. Smithson, in the courtroom with you to hear it.”

I stood up. Minton didn’t move. He still seemed frozen to the seat.