The Resurrection File (3 page)

“Now, the prosecution will present its witnesses and evidence. You may then cross-examine those witnesses, but your right to ask questions will be extremely limited. It will be limited by the rules of evidence, of which you may know very little. It will also be limited to the issue of probable cause—not guilt or innocence. And in all likelihood you won't know the difference there either, because you're not lawyers.

“You need not testify on your own behalf—in fact you have a Fifth-Amendment right not to. If you decide to testify today you are running a great risk because, A) You may say just enough to hang yourself, and B) I'm not your lawyer. Don't ask me what you should do. And C) if you start telling me about your pro-life views and beliefs, I don't want to hear them because they have nothing to do with these charges against you as far as the law is concerned. If you violate this rule and start telling me why you are against abortion I will cite you for contempt.

“Now, with that, let's all have a nice day here in the United States District Court.” Judge Ramington capped off his speech with a smile. Though it was not exactly a smile. It was more like the grin that a Doberman pinscher gives you when it pulls its lips back to bare its teeth.

The clerk called Will Chambers' case first, as it was the only one with a defendant who was represented by an attorney.

“Case number 01 CR 657,
United States of America vs. William Tinney Heftland.”

Will Chambers and Heftland approached the bench.

“Are you William Tinney Heftland?” the judge asked.

“Yes, Your Honor—but my friends call me ‘Tiny.'”

“Don't mistake me for one of your friends, Mr. Heftland. That would be a serious error. Are counsel ready?”

Will and the prosecuting attorney both nodded.

“Before you call your first witness,” the judge said to the prosecutor, “does anyone want to make a
short
opening statement?”

But then something caught the eye of the judge. He lunged forward and leaned over the bench to get a better look.

The judge was staring at Will's feet. Will looked down and his heart sank.

“Counsel, approach this bench, and I mean now,” Judge Ramington snapped.

Chambers and the smiling prosecutor approached the bench. Ramington gave a discreet nod to the court reporter and she stopped typing on her steno machine.

“Counsel,” and with that the judge looked down at the file on the desk to remind himself of the name of the defense counsel. “Mr. Chambers. Yes. I've had you in my courtroom before. Would you care to explain your footwear to me?”

Will glanced down at his woven leather sandals. He had forgotten to replace them with the dress shoes that he kept by his desk specifically for court appearances.

“These are imported, hand-tooled leather sandals from Italy, Your Honor.” And then he quickly added, “And I do apologize that in the rush to arrive at court on time—and I know that Your Honor is a keen observer of time—I apparently forgot to put on my dress shoes.”

“You ever come in here again with sandals, looking like a hippie, you're in contempt, sir.”

“It won't happen again.”

“And get a decent haircut, mister,” the judge added.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Chambers replied. And then he added, once he noted that the court reporter was getting everything down on the record again, “And I do appreciate the Court giving me a critique on my hairstyle.”

Judge Ramington shot a steely-eyed look at the court reporter, who then took her fingers off the keys again.

“Don't go there, Mr. Chambers. Don't play games with me. I was doing you a big favor. You want me to put my opinions of you on the record, I will be glad to do that. You want everything on the record, be my guest. You've got some kind of chip on your shoulder, counselor. I really don't care where it came from. You get it off. Now go back to the counsel table and take care of your client's case.”

Will nodded silently. The prosecutor, who had been standing as a mute witness at side-bar during the entire colloquy, was grinning.

Will sat down at the counsel table next to Tiny. His exasperated client only had two words for him.

“Nice opening.”

The prosecutor called, as his only witness, a police officer who had been on duty on the day that several dozen pro-life demonstrators showed up at the abortion clinic and sat down in front of the doors. Will knew that Tiny had been there that day. But he also knew that he didn't block the doors.

In fact, Tiny was there that day to serve a Summons and Complaint on one of the doctors for a medical malpractice lawsuit. In order to get closer to the front door and then to make his way inside to serve the papers, he had pretended to be one of the pro-lifers. That was when he was arrested.

The officer methodically described the scene that day. The blocking of the doors. The fact that women could not get in to get abortions. The arrests.

Then the officer described how one William Tinney Heftland had been there, in the midst of the protestors, and how he had been arrested as he was seated with them in front of the doors.

“Your witness,” the prosecutor announced to Will after concluding direct examination.

Chambers paused for a minute. The courtroom became silent. The officer shifted in his chair. Judge Ramington began tapping his pen on the bench.

Then Will began.

“Are you sure my client was there that day?”

“Sure.”

“How do you know?”

“He's hard to miss.”

The judge chuckled.

“What was he wearing?”

“Red suspenders, I think.”

“How do you know?”

“I remember.”

“You don't remember it just because he's wearing red suspenders now?”

“No, of course not.”

“You are sure my client, Tiny Heftland, was
sitting down in front of the doors
—rather than simply
standing up?”

“I'm fairly sure.”

“Is there some question in your mind about the suspenders, though?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you have pictures in your file there that could refresh your recollection?”

The prosecutor jumped to his feet.

“Your Honor, I think we know where this is going. Mr. Chambers is trying to go on a fishing expedition here. He is using the preliminary hearing simply to get discovery about the prosecution's case. He just wants a look at the police photos.”

“Oh, so you do have photos,” Will snapped at the prosecutor sarcastically.

“Where are you going, Mr. Chambers? You're wasting our time,” the judge barked out.

“Your Honor,” Will replied, “the federal rules of evidence permit me to have a witness refresh his recollection with anything that can revive his memory on a material point.”

“How is this ‘red suspenders' thing material? I'm not going to let you endlessly test the credibility of the witness—that's not what you do at a preliminary hearing.”

“It is material,” Will continued, “if we can show that a large man—and I think that we can all agree that Mr. Heftland is large—that a large man wearing red suspenders who was a private investigator and a process server—and who matches my client's description—was not seated on the ground obstructing the clinic doors, but was in fact trying to
get into the doors
to serve lawsuit papers on one of the doctors when he was arrested.”

Judge Ramington stared at Chambers. Then he pulled out the charging document from the court file and started reading out loud.

“Alright. The violation here is that the act was done with obstruction… or that he intimidated or interfered with someone trying to get reproductive health services…
because that person
…who is obstructed is trying to get those services. In other words, a process server…may or may not be part of an obstruction—and I suppose he would not be there
because
people are trying to get in to get abortions done. He would be there for some other reason. Objection overruled. Officer, answer the question.”

“Yes, the police photos would probably refresh my memory.”

The officer glanced through the pack of photos in his file.

“I can't tell.”

“Why not?”

“Because your client—Mr. Heftland—is not in any of these photos.”

“Your Honor, I would like to see those photos.”

The judge glanced over at the prosecutor.

“At this point I guess I don't have an objection,” the prosecutor deadpanned, “if Mr. Chambers wants to help prove the government's case by identifying his own client in the photographs and placing him at the scene of the offense.”

Will took the pack of photos and quickly spread them out over the counsel's table. He began staring at several of them, but none showed his client.

“Okay, counsel, proceed,” the judge said.

But one of the photos had caught Will's eye, and he lifted it up to look at it more closely.

“
Now,
Mr. Chambers,” the judge said.

Will did not flinch, but stared at the photo—transfixed by something he thought he saw.

“I will be terminating your cross-examination, Mr. Chambers,” the judge said, his voice rising.

Now Will was holding only one photograph in his hand as he turned to face the witness.

He looked the officer directly in the eye. The officer shifted a little in the witness chair.

“Is it a fact, officer, that my client—rather than sitting down in front of the doors of the clinic and obstructing patients from getting in—was actually standing up, in his bright-red suspenders, and waving the lawsuit papers that he was trying to serve on one of the doctors inside the clinic—in fact, waving those papers over his head?”

“No, I don't believe so. I would have remembered.”

“Would it refresh your memory to look at a picture that shows
that very thing?”

“No. Because I just looked at those pictures. They don't show that.”

The photo in Will's hand was taken to the clerk and marked as an exhibit and handed to the officer on the stand.

“Look at the picture. Look very closely. Look through what is on the surface and look deep into the picture…deep into the photograph,” Will said.

“I'm sorry, but this is absurd, Your Honor,” the prosecutor blurted out. “This is starting to sound like some kind of cheap parlor trick—maybe defense counsel would like to hypnotize the officer into seeing something that isn't in that picture.”

But the judge was not looking at the lawyers, he was looking at the witness. And the officer had changed his expression as he was looking at the photo.

“Does that photo portray something different than your recollection, officer?” the judge asked.

“Not exactly, but…” the officer responded.

The prosecutor was on his feet again, but before he could say anything the judge reached over and grabbed the photograph from the witness and looked at it himself.

“There's nothing here, Mr. Chambers,” the judge said, “that shows your client at all. All I see is a group of the other protestors sitting in front of the doors of the clinic.”

“Your Honor,” Will said, and now his voice was calm and deliberate, “look at the glass—the reflection in the plate-glass window of the clinic—not at the people sitting in the foreground of the photo, but into the glass…”

The judge stared at the photo, and then silently passed it back to the witness. The officer's shoulders slightly slumped. There was a little turning-up at one corner of his mouth, as if he were trying not to smile nervously.

“Officer,” Will continued, “an overcast day that day?”

“Yes.”

“A lot of reflection on the glass—almost like a mirror?”

“Yes, counselor, that would be one way to describe it.”

“And that reflection in the glass of the window shows—faintly perhaps, but clearly enough—it shows my client, red suspenders and all, standing off in the distance with his hands held over his head, and papers in them?”

“Yes.”

“And there is someone else in the reflection of that glass, approaching him?”

“Yes, counselor, there is.”

“Who is that?”

“That's me, I think, in that reflection, coming up behind him…I guess to arrest him. While he was standing up.”

“And certainly not
obstructing
the doorway?”

“No. To be honest, I guess not.”

The prosecutor wisely decided not to attempt the hopeless task of trying to rehabilitate his witness. He waived any redirect examination.