The Last Plea Bargain (30 page)

70

Bill Masterson knew how to pick a jury. I watched in awe on Monday and Tuesday as Masterson made friends with the potential jurors for the Caleb Tate murder trial. He was relaxed and self-effacing, even poking fun at himself about his weight.

He had a manner that allowed the jury to open up and share with him, and he had his own theories about the best potential jurors for our case. He wanted men. “They'll be a lot more forgiving of Rikki.” He wanted Hispanics because Rafael Rivera was a key witness for us. And of course, he wanted bona fide evangelical Christians. Since he couldn't use his peremptory challenges solely on the basis of religion, he got at the issue in other ways.

“Now, the evidence will be that Rikki and Caleb Tate argued about a lot of things, and those things included Rikki's conversion to Christianity. Have any of you ever argued with your spouse about religious issues? If so, would that impact the way you looked at this case, or would you be able to put that aside and base your decisions solely on evidence?”

A few hands went up, and Bill chatted with them about the spats they'd had with their spouses. He discussed how Rikki's conversion caused her to change in a big way. I watched the body language carefully. There were two nodders, and I circled them on my list. They were keepers. Would anybody be unable to judge this case fairly because of these religious aspects? Of course not.

Then Bill explained how Rikki's conversion caused her to file a lawsuit against websites that contained her topless pictures. Caleb Tate opposed the lawsuits. This time I circled the frowners. Bill knew a lot of people struggled with pornography. Would anybody be unable to give Rikki a fair trial because she had once had topless pictures taken? Nope.

Caleb Tate had his turn in front of the jury as well. It frustrated me that he could talk to the jurors under the pretext of voir dire and then hide behind the Fifth Amendment and not take the stand. But there was nothing Judge Brown could do about it. On the plus side, Caleb seemed much stiffer and less at ease than Masterson. A couple of jurors crossed their arms when he asked them questions. When Masterson cracked a joke, everybody smiled. But for Caleb Tate, they were all business.

After two days of probing and haggling and trying to prejudge people based on limited information, both sides finalized their peremptory challenges, and we had a jury in the box. It was a diverse cross section of the citizens of Milton County, and it made me thankful for the jury system. Unlike a lot of trial lawyers, I trusted jurors. They didn't know the law as well as the judges, but they had an instinct for justice, and they usually got it right.

Judge Brown dismissed the jury with the usual instructions about not discussing the case with anyone. He told them we would start openings first thing in the morning. The thought of it made my palms sweat. Normally I settled down during jury selection, and my nerves would be well under control by the time I gave the opening. But in this case, because Bill Masterson had handled all of the chores of jury selection, I just sat at counsel table and made myself more nervous.

That night, I knew I couldn't sleep without the help of medication, and I didn't even try. When I closed my eyes, I thought about my sessions with Gillespie and visualized the jury enraptured by my opening, affirming me with their eyes, drinking in the evidence against Caleb Tate.
Deep breaths. Relax every muscle. Remember how they smiled at Bill Masterson.

I fell asleep dreaming of guilty verdicts.

For the most important day of my professional life, I wore a charcoal-gray suit, a white silk blouse, black pumps, and a gold chain around my neck. I had bought into the philosophy of my trial advocacy professor—don't turn off the jury by the way you dress. It was better to keep it conservative so the jury could focus on what you were saying rather than how you looked.

I arrived ridiculously early and was able to riffle through my notes several times before the courtroom began filling up. During jury selection, the courtroom had been half-full. But this morning there would be standing room only. Judge Brown had allowed one pool camera, which would send a live feed to all of the local television stations. A few of my friends from law school came, as did a good number of Milton County's prosecutors.

Bill Masterson had been coaching me and assured me that I was ready. Just before Judge Brown came out to gavel the court into session, Masterson leaned over and put his arm around my shoulders. “Your father was one of the best trial lawyers I've ever seen,” he said quietly. And Masterson had seen his share of trial lawyers. “You're just as good, Jamie. Maybe better.”

“Thanks. But I feel like I'm going to puke.”

Masterson chuckled and patted my shoulder. Then he put his left hand on the table in front of me. “Notice anything about the fingernails?” he asked.

He had gnawed them down so far that they looked painful. I had never noticed that Masterson chewed his nails.

“They looked pretty good before I started jury selection,” he said. “If you aren't nervous for a case like this, you're in the wrong business. We just learn to hide it.”

The man was a genius. Who knows—maybe he had just chewed his fingernails that morning to put me at ease. But the trick certainly worked. Even the legendary DA of Milton County got nervous before a big murder trial. And look how well he performed.

By the time Judge Brown took the bench, called in the jury, and finished the preliminaries, I was ready.

“Does the prosecution wish to present an opening statement?” he asked.

“Yes, Your Honor. We would love to.”

71

My heels clicked as I approached the jury. I left my notes on the counsel table and walked in front of the podium—nothing between me and them except the jury rail.

“As the court has already told you, my name is Jamie Brock, and it is my privilege in this case to represent the State of Georgia. My job is to seek justice on behalf of Rikki Tate. She cannot speak for herself because she was murdered by the man she loved and trusted more than any other. But I am here to speak on her behalf, and I'm here to help you piece together the story of how and why she was killed.”

I delivered this part of my opening with hardly any movement. I kept my chin up and tried to appear confident. The jury would never believe my case unless I first believed it myself. I paused, took a deep breath.

“Caleb Tate is a control freak,” I said. “And what he cannot control, he kills.”

I was hoping the line might draw an objection from Tate, emphasizing my point. I had a ready response—
See, he's even trying to control my opening.
But he was too smart to take the bait.

“I like my hair short,” I said. I took a few steps and began to pace as I talked. “It only takes me a few minutes to get ready that way. I've always been an athlete, and I didn't always have time to fix my hair after I worked out. Once I got used to the convenience, I just liked this layered look. You women on the jury know, our hair is a big part of who we are.”

They were looking at me like I was crazy. They expected something more dramatic—a confession, DNA, maybe the 911 tape. But hairstyles?

I had set up a video screen for the jurors. I pushed a button, and Rikki Tate appeared. Computer monitors at the defense table and on the judge's bench reflected the same PowerPoint slide.

“This is Rikki Tate a year ago.” I flashed up another picture. “And one year prior to that.” Another one. “This is from five years ago. . . . And this one is from when she and Caleb Tate first met.”

Now all the pictures appeared, lined up on the screen. “You'll notice that Rikki Tate had a different philosophy about hairstyles than mine.” The pictures all reflected Rikki's long, dark hair. In one picture it was pulled into a tight ponytail, but in the others it hung below her shoulders, full and meticulously brushed. She could have done shampoo commercials.

“Rikki Tate was a performer. And one of her greatest assets had always been her long hair.”

A different shot of Rikki flashed on the screen. It was a close-up of her face from the night she died. You could see the vomit, and her skin looked pale and rough. There were circles under her eyes; she appeared to have aged ten years compared to the picture taken just a year before. The screen flashed again, bringing the two pictures side by side.

“Six months before her death, for the first time in her life, Rikki Tate cut off her long hair. Her friends from church will tell you why. Out of the blue, that man, Caleb Tate, started telling her how much he had always loved women with short hair. How sexy it looked. How she should try it. He became obsessed with it. He wanted—he
needed
—to control her hairstyle.”

I looked at the jury and twisted my face as if I were trying to figure something out. “In any investigation, there are a hundred seemingly minor pieces of evidence like this. Things that don't seem quite right. And so I decided to do a little research and look at some of the women Caleb Tate has loved.”

I took the jury through slides of Caleb Tate's first two wives and three of his girlfriends. They all had long, flowing hair. “Maybe the defendant did love short hair. Maybe he was just unlucky, and none of the short-haired women would go out with him. Or maybe . . .” I hesitated, and I could tell the jury was with me. “Maybe he began pumping his wife full of narcotics six months before he intended to give her an overdose and kill her. And maybe he needed to make sure that her hair was just the right length to appear she had been taking these drugs for a very long time. In other words, short enough so we could only test for six months of drug use and have to make assumptions about the time before that.”

For a few minutes, I explained how hair testing worked. Then I went to an easel and listed the drugs found in Rikki Tate's blood. I stepped back and looked at my handiwork, repeating the names of the drugs as if to myself. I turned to the jury.

“It's like that game—which of these is not like the other. Codeine and oxycodone are narcotics and can be fatal if taken at the right levels. But promethazine—that's just an antinausea drug. It's known in medical circles for helping patients keep narcotics in their system so the narcotics can achieve maximum medical effect. Yet Caleb Tate is no doctor. How would he know something like that?”

I centered myself in front of the jury box so I was looking squarely into their eyes. “Some of you may remember the case of rock star Kendra Van Wyck, accused of poisoning a backup singer because she thought the singer was having an affair with Kendra's husband. It may interest you to know that this exact same cocktail of drugs, along with a few others, was used in that case. And it may also interest you to know that the Van Wyck opinion and several briefs filed with the court had been downloaded by Caleb Tate
seven months
before Rikki Tate died.
One month
before she got her hair cut at the urging of her husband.

“You expect attorneys to download cases on their computers. But the evidence will show that he wasn't working on anything remotely similar to the Van Wyck case.

“You know what else the evidence will show? That even control freaks miss things once in a while. As a result, in this case, even though we don't have fingerprints, we do have something just as incriminating—fingernails.”

I explained to the jury how you could test fingernails for drug use, just like you could hair. When we had tested Rikki's fingernails we had learned that the drug ingestion had started in earnest just six months before her death. “They didn't test fingernails in the Van Wyck case, and apparently Caleb Tate didn't realize that could be done.”

For the next half hour, I put together the pieces of the puzzle. Opportunity. Motive. I emphasized Rikki's conversion to Christianity and how that had threatened Caleb's control. Rikki was making up her own mind now, and her husband didn't like it. “He had married a Las Vegas showgirl,” I said, “not Mother Teresa. And he grew tired of living with someone who constantly reminded him of his own sins and shortcomings.”

I showed how Caleb Tate had become financially desperate. I mentioned the life insurance policy. And I ended by describing the night Rikki died. How her husband drugged her with a massive overdose. How he must have stood in the bedroom and watched her suffocate, maybe even kept her from calling 911. He'd waited until she was definitely gone before calling in the paramedics, and then he'd put on the greatest acting performance of his life, even staging the way his wife would be found—lying half-naked on the bedroom floor. “He had married a showgirl,” I said again, “not a nun. And he staged her death to remind the world of that.”

I paused and stared at Caleb Tate. He looked back, impassive, as if my accusations were about someone else. He was being the lawyer now, considering how he should respond during his own opening statement, but I could also see the seething hatred in the eyes. And as I turned back to the jurors, I realized that my own nerves had left a long time ago.

“Caleb Tate is too smart and too cunning to leave a smoking gun. But if you listen closely, Rikki Tate is whispering to you from the grave. She will speak through her psychiatrist, Dr. Aaron Gillespie. She will speak through her friends from church. She will speak through the medical examiner, Dr. O'Leary.”

I waited and soaked in the silence of the courtroom. “And yes, she spoke through her hair. And through her fingernails. And through her blood—coursing with poisons that her husband had been pumping into her system for six months, even as he coddled her, even as he made love to her at night. Poisoning is the crime of cowards. And at the end of this case, we will ask you to put this coward, this murderer, in prison for life.

“Because there are some things that Caleb Tate can't control—and thankfully, one of those is your verdict.”