Double Tap (24 page)
A few seconds later I hear Gilcrest whisper “Excuse me” down the darkened corridor. The judge is telling the guards to get out of his way so he can clear the hallway and mount the bench.
“Excuse me, Your Honor.”
“All rise,” says the bailiff in a booming voice, and instantly everyone in the courtroom is on their feet. The judge quickly climbs the three steps and takes his seat. He opens the file in front of him on the bench. “You may be seated,” he says. It takes a couple of seconds for the noise of shuffling feet and cushioned behinds to die down. “The clerk will call the case.”
“
People of the State of California versus Emiliano Ruiz
. Case number . . .”
We have already waived a reading of the charges, so, with the preliminaries done, Gilcrest cuts to the chase. He looks out at the audience, a squinting stare that could freeze ice. “Before we get started, I’m going to lay down some ground rules for the people in the audience,” he says. “I don’t want to hear any talking, shouting, hooting, clapping, or laughing from anybody out there. I don’t want to see anybody reading newspapers or books in my courtroom. You want to do that, you go to the library. I don’t want to hear any comments or see any signs being held up for the jury or anybody else to read. If I see any of this, you will be removed from the courtroom. No if’s, and’s, or but’s.
“I don’t want to hear any cell phones going off,” he goes on. “I don’t want to see anybody talking on a cell phone. In fact, I don’t want to see any cell phones at all. All electronic devices should have been checked at the door. They are not allowed in the courtroom. If anybody has an electronic device, including any camera, recorder, or cell phone, now is the time to hold it up and announce it.” He waits for a moment and scans the courtroom with his eyes to see if any hands go up. “Because if one of the guards or one of my bailiffs sees you with any kind of electronic device from this point on, they will seize it, and you with it. You will be detained,” he says. “And trust me, you will not enjoy the reception or the accommodations in the county jail.
“I don’t want to hear any audio recordings of the proceedings in my courtroom being played on the six o’clock news or any other news, and if I do, there will be a very select audience admitted to this courtroom for the next day’s proceedings and from that point on.” This last is aimed at the first three rows of reporters seated directly behind us. “I hope I make myself clear.”
You can almost hear the nodding of heads and bobbing of Adam’s apples in the chairs behind us.
“If anybody gets up and leaves, they lose their seat. That goes for reporters as well as the public. There are no favorites in my courtroom,” he says. “Now, if there are any questions, this is all posted on the board outside the courtroom as well as online, so that you can read it on your computers at home at night if you want.
“Mr. Templeton, are you ready to proceed?”
“I am, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Madriani?”
“We are, Your Honor.”
“Then we’ll bring in the jury,” says Gilcrest.
A minute later, with one of the bailiffs leading the way, they file in, five men and seven women: a schoolteacher; an architect; two college students; an employee of one of the local telephone companies; a store clerk at Robinson’s; a retired college history professor, one of our two picks who survived only because Templeton ran out of peremptory challenges; a bus driver for the local transit district; a housewife; a guy who installs fire suppression systems for a construction company; a waitress at one of the local Coco’s; and a short-order cook who looks as if he’s been eating too much of his own food. A cross section of modern America.
In addition there are six alternates seated in chairs just outside the jury box at the judge’s end of the courtroom.
Fortunately for us, Templeton had to steer away from retired military personnel. With a naval base, Miramar, and Camp Pendleton all within a stone’s throw, retired military make up a sizable chunk of the local population and are usually well represented on local juries. Ordinarily they are a good bet for a foundation around which a prosecutor can build a hanging jury, especially retired military officers. But with Ruiz—himself a retired career soldier—in the dock, Templeton can’t be sure exactly how we will play this card. It could backfire on him. He has been cautious. One wrong pick—if the person has the sand to stand up against the mob and you have a hung jury—no verdict. If one is to listen to Harry, this is the best we can hope for.
My partner is laying most of his wagers on our history professor. According to Harry, the man is no doubt a liberal. He would have to be to have kept his job at a state university. He would be used to lecturing others and not likely to be cowed when people disagree with him. Harry is hoping that with any luck, if we can shape the evidence to conform to what we suspect may have happened, his history professor will vote to cut Ruiz free or, if not, that he will at least vote against death. It is the latter that is Harry’s principal burden as counsel to Ruiz in the penalty phase, should we arrive at that point.
The jurors settle into their chairs. The judge welcomes them. He has already laid down the ground rules for the operations of the jury: what is to be considered evidence and what is not. Templeton’s opening statement is not evidence; it is supposed to be an oral outline of what the state intends to prove by way of evidence. The evidence itself will come later, introduced during the course of the trial.
During Templeton’s opening, jurors who are smart will take detailed notes of his promises so that they can determine later in the jury room when the trial is over whether he has delivered. For those who fail to take notes, it is my job to remind them of promises and failures. For this I will save two shots, deferring my opening statement until after the prosecution rests its case. At the end of the trial I will have one final opportunity, my closing argument, to reinforce this.
“Mr. Templeton, are you ready to present your opening statement?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“You may proceed.”
Templeton comes down off his perch and walks in short, quick steps to the box at this end of the jury railing, then climbs the two steps and gets on top of the scaffold.
“Good morning.” He smiles at them. Most of the jurors respond to the greeting, smiling warmly back at him. Templeton engages them with his eyes as he walks slowly from one end of the scaffold toward the other, stopping between the boxes, lifting his weight on his toes and dropping it on his heels as if to test out the planks at their weakest point. Some of the jurors smile as he does this. He straightens his bow tie and puts his hands in his pockets, then walks on to the other end as if he were a hobo on the tracks, smiling all the while.
When he gets to the far end, he turns toward them, looks down at his feet for a moment, his hands still in his pockets, then lifts his eyes. In a booming voice that you would not expect from such a small body, he begins: “We are here today to examine the cold and calculated murder of another human being. The intentional taking of a human life in such a callous and cruel manner that the state permits you”—he takes one hand from the pocket of his pants and points at them, peering over his finger down the length of the jury box—“each one of you, to decide whether the defendant committed that crime, and if so, whether to exact the ultimate penalty: the imposition of a death sentence.” He pauses for effect, looking at them. “Make no mistake about it,” he says, “this is an awesome responsibility, one which in ancient times was reserved for emperors and kings and in some places the envoys of gods. It is unlikely that any of you during the course of your lifetime will ever again face such a formidable duty as this. To decide the fate of another human being is not something that any one of us can ever take lightly. It is the most serious business we are ever likely to attend to. You will sit here for many days listening to witnesses, observing physical evidence.”
Templeton is being optimistic. Given the evidence—or, from our perspective, the lack of it—the case against Ruiz is straightforward. It will take the state no more than a week, possibly ten days, to make their case, and—unless I can come up with something solid from Isotenics—another two days for me to fall on my sword. Ruiz may get his death wish.
“In the end,” says Templeton, “you will be instructed on the applicable law by the judge and then you will be sent to that room”—he points across the courtroom to another door opposite the one leading to the holding cells—“to make the most momentous decision of your lives: to decide whether the defendant, Emiliano Ruiz”—he turns halfway and points toward our table—“murdered Madelyn Chapman, and whether he did so with premeditation and malice aforethought after lying in wait for her to return home from her job, her office at Isotenics, Incorporated, Software City. We are here for the purpose of deciding the fate of Emiliano Ruiz.”
He falls silent for a moment, then plunges his hand back into his pocket, turns, and takes a few steps, this time away from the bench toward the audience while he allows the jury to consider this.
Twelve sets of eyes now focus on Ruiz, studying his face, his response to the charge, whether his expression at this moment is that of a cold-blooded killer.
Templeton may have just answered one of the more nettle-some questions that has plagued us for months. “Lying in wait” is the single special circumstance charged by the state in their criminal complaint that allows them to seek the death penalty against Ruiz. They are apparently prepared to argue that he entered Chapman’s house and either stalked her from room to room, seeking to kill her, or waited for her to come home from work and simply shot her as she came into the entry hall.
Harry and I have wondered for weeks whether Templeton would try to amend the state’s complaint to add the charges of murder for financial gain or murder during the course of robbery or burglary, either of which would carry additional special circumstances to justify the death penalty. The key in all of this, of course, is the
Orb at the Edge
, the half-million-dollar piece of art glass that went missing from Chapman’s house after the murder. It would appear that Templeton and the cops have no more idea what has happened to this piece of art than we do. If they had the
Orb
or knew where it was, and if they could connect it to Ruiz, there is now no question but that they would have brought the additional charges.
I glance over at Harry, who is making a note. This fact has not gone unnoticed by my partner.
“Yes, it is an awesome responsibility,” says Templeton, “and one that an ordered and just society must place upon the shoulders of ordinary citizens, because an ordered and just society has no emperors, it has no kings, it has no spokesmen who speak to the gods. It has only ordinary citizens, whose judgment and reason it respects and whose decisions by long history and proud tradition are the legal fabric holding that society together.”
He veers into the evidence, nibbling first at the edges. He may not know what happened to the glass artwork, but for every deficiency Templeton highlights five or six points so that his case overflows like a horn of plenty. Most prosecutors might shy away from issues involving Chapman’s wealth for fear that we would seize it and turn it against them in an orgy of class warfare. But not Templeton. The state’s computer technician flashes images on the large screen on the wall of the courtroom across from the jury box, pictures of Chapman’s home on the beach, her corporate jets, and the expensive Ferrari parked in her garage.
Templeton turns and walks slowly toward the other end of the scaffold once again, all the while talking as if he’s conversing casually in a room filled with friends. At one point he nods toward the computer tech at his table, and suddenly a full head-and-shoulder shot of Madelyn Chapman, her face beaming with a smile, flashes up on the large screen. In the photograph Chapman appears youthful, vital, full of life, a measure of what was taken from her when she was killed.
He talks about Ruiz and his time in the military, the fact that he is a divorced father of two who took a job working for a security firm, and that the Fates placed the defendant, a retired Army sergeant with nothing more than a high school education and a few units of community college, in close contact with one of the wealthiest women in the world.
Templeton starts to catch a rhythm, stopping at places along the top of the boards to face the jury straight on, bending at the waist using his tiny hands, fingers extended, palms out, to emphasize important elements. At one point he strikes a pose like a magician about to throw flash powder into a fire.
“You will hear testimony that, during his employment providing security for Madelyn Chapman, Mr. Ruiz was able to indulge in travel in the form of luxurious international flights on board corporate jets to exotic locations. There he was able to observe at first hand and up close the good life which he had never experienced before, certainly not in the military and certainly not before that time.”
He has taken the sword of Chapman’s wealth from our hands and blunted it, and now proceeds to club us about the head and shoulders with it. He goes on.
For a moment Templeton dabbles at the edge of the ice. He would like to argue overtly that Ruiz could not bear to pass up this opportunity of a lifetime to gold-dig his way to wealth and comfort. This is the state’s theory of the motive for murder. But Templeton saves himself, avoiding an objection to a conclusion that his evidence would never be able to prove. Almost leaning off the edge of the boards into the jury box, he pulls himself back and instead stays with the facts.
“You will hear testimony from witnesses,” he says, “that there was a sexual relationship between the defendant and Madelyn Chapman and that, following her decision to end the security detail, Mr. Ruiz was removed from the assignment and instructed by his employer to have no further contact with the victim. You will also hear testimony that he failed to comply with those instructions and that Emiliano Ruiz proceeded to stalk the victim and was observed on more than one occasion following Madelyn Chapman as she was engaged in private activities.”