A Case of Redemption (11 page)

“I hope it isn't going to change your view about how we defend L.D.,” Nina said. “He's got to testify if we're going to have any chance.”

“Jackson's right about our ethical duty. L.D. hasn't confessed to us, so we're within our rights to believe that he's innocent, and that means we're not suborning perjury if we let him testify to that.”

“Good,” she said with obvious relief.

“Don't misunderstand me, though. I'm not saying we should put him on. Just that we're not ethically prohibited from doing so. It's still way too early to make the decision about whether he'll be able to stand up to a strong cross-examination.”

“Okay,” she said, sounding disappointed. “But we need to start developing a defense, don't we?”

“No worries there, Nina. There's only one type of defense that ever works in a murder case,” I said with a sly smile.

She smiled back. “Yeah, what's that?”

“The tried-and-true SODDI defense.”

“Is that Latin?”

“No, it's an acronym,” I said with a chortle, pleased that she fell into the joke. “It means Some Other Dude Did It.”

“Do you have another dude in mind?”

“No.” I laughed. “But we better find one. In my mind, our only shot at an acquittal is if we give the jury enough so that they can blame someone else. In a high-profile case like this, I just don't think it's realistic to expect an acquittal based on reasonable doubt alone. I
mean, do you see a juror appearing on
Dateline
after the trial explaining that he or she thought L.D. was guilty but still voted to acquit because the prosecution hadn't met its burden of proof? But if we can plausibly point the finger at someone else, they'll say, ‘I thought that other dude might have done it.' Or, ‘I was really troubled that the prosecution didn't focus more on that other guy. It seemed to me that they rushed to judgment on Legally Dead because of the song.' ”

“Okay,” Nina said. “That makes me feel better.”

Despite what she said, she didn't seem to be at any greater ease. She sat with her arms folded, her legs crossed, as if she was wary. Although she didn't tell me what she was thinking, I had a pretty good idea: She was wondering whether, despite what I'd just said about our defense, I believed Jackson. If I thought we were representing the guy who did it.

The truth was, I didn't know.

A
few days before Darrius Macy's trial, his wife came to my office to prepare for her testimony. I'd previously told Erica that a lot was riding on her, not only because jurors would be apt to think that if the wife believes the sex was consensual, then who are they to think otherwise, but also because Erica could directly rebut Vickie Tiernan's claim that she fought Darrius, scratching him to the point of breaking skin. Erica's testimony that she saw no such marks on her husband would go a long way to showing that there was no force used by Darrius.

I knew from the moment I met Erica's eyes, however, that she had a different agenda.

“I need to talk to you about Darrius,” she said, closing my office door behind her.

A shrink might say that I knew what was coming, but I tend to think that it's just an occupational hazard to set ground rules before I talk to anyone in my office. Especially when my visitor makes a point of closing the door behind her.

“I'm happy to talk with you, Erica, but you need to remember that I'm not your lawyer, I'm Darrius's. The attorney-client privilege doesn't apply to what you tell me, and I have a duty to report it back to your husband.”

In a cold voice, she said, “I don't care.”

Since our first meeting the day Darrius was released on bail, I'd
had only sporadic contact with Erica. Darrius usually came to our meetings alone, and so my interaction with Erica was in passing, when we said hello or chatted briefly on those occasions when she met Darrius at my office. Even so, I saw her enough to know that Erica was the worrier in the marriage. As a criminal defense attorney, I had probably seen as much marital tension as a couples counselor. If the indicted share a common personality trait, it's that they're not the kind of people who spend a lot of time pondering worst-case scenarios. Perhaps it's social Darwinism at work—or just plain irony—but they often marry people who spend a lot of time considering the downside risk.

“Okay, so . . . what's up?” I asked.

“I don't think I can go through with this.”

I smiled, hoping to put her at ease. “Everyone gets nervous before they testify, but a few questions in, the butterflies go away. Then it just seems like a conversation.”

“That's not what I mean. I'm not nervous. It's just . . . I've got to find a way for all of this to stop. If I don't, it's going to keep happening, again and again.”

“I don't see what you can do to prevent this type of thing from happening, Erica. Sometimes people are falsely accused, and celebrities are natural targets for that sort of thing. Needless to say, Darrius should stay out of situations that might give rise to such a possibility, and he clearly made a mistake by putting himself in a compromising position with this woman, but given how badly he feels about it, I'm sure that's not going to happen again.”

She laughed, but it was not because she thought anything I'd said was funny. Rather, it was to express contempt.

“You don't know?” she said. It was as much an accusation as a question.

“Know what?”

“You don't really think Darrius is innocent, do you?”

I didn't know what to say. Of course I thought he was innocent.
He'd been telling me that nonstop for months, and she'd confirmed it the few times we'd spoken.

She looked at me like I was pathetic. “Well, here's a news flash for you: he's guilty. Guilty as they come.”

My heart dropped like a rock, and I felt a cold sweat break out just below my hairline. I should have stopped her right there. There was nothing in it for me to find out that my client—who I was about to put on the stand to swear to his innocence—was actually an honest-to-God rapist.

But something inside me needed to know.

“What do you mean, he's guilty?”

“Do you have any idea how many women have accused Darrius of rape in the past two years?”

I just shook my head no.

“Three.” Her faced tightened, and she bit down on her lip in an effort to hold back her rage. “Okay?
Three
. And he always picked these poor little things, and so ten grand was like a million to them. Once he paid them off, they usually stayed quiet, and if one of them asked for a little more, he'd throw another few thousand at her. You know, I think Darrius thought of them as high-priced hookers. They'd say something nice to him or something, and maybe they were flirting, but he thought that meant that he could do . . . whatever the hell he wanted to do to them.”

“Erica . . . hang on here. I can tell that you're very upset, but let's slow down a bit. I don't know anything about those other situations, but I've settled many cases, usually for a lot more than ten thousand dollars, and it was just to avoid having to go to trial, not because my client had done anything wrong. Nuisance value, it's called. Just because people make an accusation, and you pay them to avoid a lawsuit, that doesn't mean the allegation was true.”

I knew instantly she wasn't buying it. From the look on her
face, I could tell every fiber of her being knew what her husband really was.

I was getting the sinking feeling that I knew, too.

“When he came home after that night at the hotel,” she began in a slow but steady voice, “he was so badly cut up that I knew what had happened. First he tells me that it was a bar scrape. Some misunderstanding with a drunk. Complete bullshit. Those were nail scratches. From a
woman
. So I tell him that he better not try to play me. I know what I know, and he's going to need my help, so he better tell me the truth. He looks like he don't know what to do, and then he finally starts telling me how sorry he is, and how much he loves me, but he had this one-night stand with some waitress. The same BS he's been giving you. The same shit he's going to say at the trial. But I know the difference between scratching somebody's back because you're feeling it and because you're trying to get away from something bad.
Real
bad. And I told him so. I told him that I wouldn't help him if he lied to me.”

She began to cry. I looked around my office for tissues, but there were none. No one had ever cried in my office before.

“I'm still not following you completely, Erica. Are you saying that Darrius admitted to you that he raped her?”

“He told me that . . . I don't think he honestly understands what's rape and what's not, to tell you the truth. But what he described to me was her clearly trying to stop him, and his not giving a damn. So, yeah, that's rape.”

We talked for another five or ten minutes, but nothing was resolved.

I told her I would explain to Darrius that we wouldn't call her to testify, but couldn't make any other promises to her, stressing that I had a duty to zealously represent her husband, even if I believed he was guilty. When I walked her to the elevator, I could tell that she felt she'd wasted her time by coming to see me.

As soon as the elevator doors closed, I went to Benjamin Ethan's office. He was on the phone, but I told Janeene that it was important, and she ushered me in.

When Ethan saw my expression, even before I said anything, he told whomever he was talking to that he had to go, and put down the phone. “Daniel, you look like you've seen a ghost. What's wrong?”

I told him what Erica Macy had just told me. About the other women who claimed Darrius had raped them and how he'd paid them off, the scratches on his back, what he'd told his wife about Vickie Tiernan resisting, and that Erica was convinced that her husband was guilty.

When I was done, we sat silently. Ethan's fingers clasped together under his chin, as if he were praying.

“I fail to see the problem, Daniel,” he finally said with a smile to reinforce his belief that I was overreacting. “I suggest you mention the discussion to your client, but if he tells you that he's innocent, there's no prohibition to your letting him testify to that at trial. In fact, the opposite is true: he has the right to testify.”

“But his wife is saying he's lying,” I said, even though I knew the rejoinder I'd hear.

“She's not your client. There's only one question you need to answer: Do you know for certain that your client is going to lie on the stand?”

“Not for certain,” I said.

“Then there's no problem.”

I stared into space for a good thirty seconds. I knew Ethan was right as an ethical matter and wrong as a moral one.

“I . . . I really had no idea,” I finally said.

“And that's good, Daniel. I hate it when my clients lie in such a feeble way that it's obvious. If you know Macy is guilty because he tells you as much, then you should stop him from testifying, and even then, it's not that black or white. Some lawyers would still put
their client on, and just let him testify in a narrative. But since it's your client's word against someone else's, there's no ethical dilemma at all here.”

“It sure doesn't feel like that,” I said.

“But it
is
like that. Nothing bad is going to happen because you do your job well. Believe me.”

W
hen I was at Taylor Beckett, a fleet of Lincoln Town Cars would line up along Madison Avenue, like a luxury taxi stand. You'd just get in the first one, hand the driver a voucher so the firm could charge a client for the ride, and that was it. When I became a partner, I learned that the firm also owned the car service, a little fact that was not disclosed to the clients as part of the billing.

The travel arrangements for Sorensen and Harrington were far less luxurious. We walked the fifteen or so blocks from my apartment to the courthouse. The moment we turned onto Centre Street, a caravan of news vans came into view, their weather vane antennae seemingly stretching on for blocks.

“We're definitely not in Kansas anymore,” Nina remarked.

The Honorable Linda A. Pielmeier was something of a cautionary tale in state judicial politics. There was a time when she was considered United States Supreme Court timber, but that time was long past. She was elected to the bench in the late 1980s when she was only twenty-nine, the youngest judge in New York State history. That she was an African-American woman with a compelling biography—grew up in the Brooklyn projects; reared by a single mother; scholarship to Columbia; law review at Harvard; and then eschewed Wall Street for public interest law—put her on every politician's radar.

Her star turn came when she took over the trial of the Chen-Tao Tong—universally acknowledged to be the most savage of the Chinatown gangs. She was the second judge on the case, her
predecessor having been gunned down in front of his apartment building. The Chen-Tao trial lasted six months, during which Judge Pielmeier and her family were under twenty-four-hour security protection. In the end, all five defendants were convicted, and she gave each the maximum penalty. Rumor was that she had a security detail for years after.

The conventional wisdom after Chen-Tao was that Judge Pielmeier would get the next open appellate spot or the nomination for state attorney general. Neither of those things happened, however, and the Chen-Tao trial ended up being the high-water mark of her career. Whispers of crossing the wrong party boss about something. Whatever the reason, she was now a lifer in the purgatory known as the Criminal Division of the New York State Supreme Court. Of course, that didn't mean that Judge Pielmeier didn't want another turn in the spotlight, and the trial of Legally Dead might just be her last opportunity to bask in its glow.