Homicide - A Year On The Killing Streets Part 49

"Rigor mortis had been fully set and she was coming out of rigor mortis," says the detective. "Also, with the dried bloodstains underneath her head-the blood was thick and coagulated and the outer edges of the blood were dried into the carpet-it seemed to me she had been there probably for twenty-four hours."

Polansky and Doan both look up. Twenty-four hours would put time of death at late afternoon the previous day.

"She had been dead for twenty-four hours?" asks Polansky.

"That's correct," says Garvey.

Doan looks hard at the witness, trying to make Garvey think the answer through.

"So it would have been your conclusion she had to have been killed at least at five P.M P.M. on the twenty-first?" says Polansky.

Garvey realizes. "I take that back. No, I'm sorry. I got confused. I meant at least twelve hours."

"I thought that's what you meant," says Polansky. "Thank you. No further questions."

On redirect, Doan goes back to the recovered hairs, but that only allows Polansky, in his follow-up questions, to suggest again that the detective was not interested in pursuing all the evidence: "If you checked those hairs, you would have been able to determine whether they belonged to Mr. Frazier or Ms. Lucas or someone else. Is that not true?"

"If we did a comparison between their hairs we can tell if they were similar," repeats Garvey wearily.

"Which you had the ability to do, but you didn't do it," says Polansky.

"I felt no need to do it," says Garvey.

"That's a pity, sir. Thank you."

The last comment gets to Doan, who turns in his chair to look at Polansky. "Come on," he says sarcastically. Then Doan looks up at the judge. "I have no further questions."

"You may step down, sir," says Gordy.

The first day ends. In the corridor five minutes later, Garvey encounters Polansky and feigns anger, c.o.c.king a fist as if ready to throw a punch. "You miserable shyster," he says, smiling.

"Hey, now," says Polansky, a little defensive. "Nothing personal, Rich. I'm just doing the job."

"Oh, I know it," says Garvey, hitting the defense attorney's shoulder. "I got no complaint."

But Doan is not so easily mollified. Walking back to his office with Garvey, he issues a few choice epithets for his worthy adversary.

The hairs, the Newports-that was smoke, the raw material of any good defense attorney. Smoke is the theory that says: When you don't want to argue the state's evidence, create your own. No doubt Robert Frazier is ready to take the stand and declare that Vincent Booker buys Newports.

Garvey knows the cigarette pack could be a problem and he apologizes to Doan. "I'm sure I dealt with it out at the scene. I just couldn't remember the specifics, though."

"Don't worry about it," says Doan charitably. "But can we-"

"I'll check with Jackie or Henrietta right away," says Garvey, ahead of him. "Larry, I'm sure it was Lena's cigarettes, but I just don't remember who told me."

"Okay," says Doan. "The bulls.h.i.+t about the hair, I could care less, but he made some points on the cigarettes. We've got to shoot that down."

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20.

On the second day of the trial, Larry Doan moves quickly to make up for lost ground.

"Your honor," says Doan, as court comes to order. "The state at this time will recall Henrietta Lucas for two questions."

Polansky can see what is coming.

"Miss Lucas," asks the prosecutor, "were you aware at the time of the death of your mother whether she smoked?"

"Yes," says Lena's older daughter.

"Do you know, approximately, when she started smoking?"

"Around the beginning of this year."

"And," asks Doan, "whatbrand of cigarettes did she smoke, if you know?"

"Newports."

Polansky, sitting at the defense table, shakes his head. But he is not quite ready to give in. On the cross, he works hard to suggest that Robert Frazier spent more time with his lover than her grown daughter did and that he would be in a better position to know whether Lena was smoking or not. He tries to suggest that it was oddly coincidental that a forty-year-old woman would start smoking two months before her death. He asks the daughter whether she had discussed her testimony in detail with the prosecutor, suggesting to the jury that she may have been led to her answers. It is a good effort; once again, Polansky earns his money. Still, when Henrietta Lucas leaves the stand after five minutes' testimony, the cigarette pack is no longer a real threat.

Doan follows her with John Smialek, who describes the autopsy and the nature of the wounds and brings in as evidence a series of black-and-white photos depicting the injuries in detail. More than the scene photos, the antiseptic shots from the overhead camera on Penn Street catch the excess of violence: three gunshot wounds-one with thick powder burns to the left side of the face, one to the chest, one to the left arm; eleven stab wounds to the back, plus superficial cuts to the neck and lower jaw; defense wounds to the palm of the right hand. In the form of ten graphic pictures, admitted over the continuing objection of Robert Frazier's attorney, Lena Lucas is allowed her day in court.

But the morning's testimony is merely prelude to the real battle-a war of credibility that begins later in the day when a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl, obviously terrified, walks past Robert Frazier and takes the stand.

Romaine Jackson is literally shaking as she takes the oath; the jurors can see that. She sits demurely, hands in her lap, face locked on Doan, eyes unwilling to acknowledge the tall, dark man at the defendant's table. In Doan's worst nightmare, he sees this witness-this essential witness-collapsing from fear. He sees her unable to answer, unable to tell the truth about what she saw from her window on Gilmor Street that night, unable to recall the things that they had talked about in the pretrial interviews. All of which would be understandable, even forgivable: The state of Maryland will not allow her to cast a vote or buy a beer, but the state's attorney will nonetheless ask her to identify a murder suspect in open court.

"My name is Romaine Jackson," she says softly, responding to the clerk's questions. "I live at Sixteen-o-six West Pratt Street."

"Miss Jackson," says Doan soothingly, "try to keep your voice up so the ladies and gentlemen of the jury can hear you."

"Yes, sir."

As slowly, as calmly as possible, Doan takes her through the foundation questions and back to that night on Gilmor Street, back to the moment when she happened to be looking out of that third-floor window before falling off to sleep. The girl's answers are close to monosyllabic; the court clerk reminds her once again to speak into the microphone.

"At some point, did you have an occasion to see your neighbor Charlene Lucas outside of your apartment?" asks Doan.

"Yes."

"Would you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury approximately what time it was when you saw her?"

"Eleven o'clock going onto twelve."

"Was she by herself or with someone else?"

"Yes," says the girl. "A man."

"Do you see that individual in court today?"

"Yes, sir," says the girl.

"Would you point that individual out?"

Romaine Jackson's eyes break from the prosecutor for half a second, just long enough to follow her right hand in the direction of Robert Frazier.

"Him," she says quietly, her eyes once again riveted on Doan.

The prosecutor moves forward slowly. "Would you describe what the defendant looked like on that evening?"

"Tall, dark and slim," she says.

"What was he wearing that evening?"

"A black coat. A black jacket like this one."

"Was he wearing anything on his head?"

"A hat."

"What color was it?"

"A white hat," she says, a hand to her forehead, "with a snap on it."

She is crying now, just enough for it to show, not enough for Doan to think of stopping. Following the prosecutor's lead, she tells the court about how Lena and the tall man walked toward Lena's rowhouse next door and then disappeared from her view, how she fell asleep to the sound of an argument coming from a lower floor of the adjacent house, how she later heard about the murder.

"Miss Jackson," asks Doan, "after you discovered or learned that Charlene Lucas had been murdered, did you go to the police with the information you had?"

"No," she says, crying again.

"Why was that, ma'am?"

Polansky objects.

"Overruled," says Gordy.

"Scared," the girl says. "I didn't want to get involved."

"Are you still scared?"

"Yes," she says, her voice little more than a whisper.

Frightened but firm, Romaine Jackson holds to her testimony throughout Polansky's cross. The defense attorney works the edges of her story: the lighting on the street that night; the time that she was looking out the window; her reasons for looking out the window; her ability to hear the argument in the house next door. Polansky can't run roughshod over this young girl; even if harsh tactics could rattle her story, the jury would resent such treatment. Instead, he can only suggest that she is mistaken, that perhaps she cannot be sure she saw Robert Frazier when she says she saw him. Polansky works the corners of the girl's testimony for half an hour, prolonging her agony but doing little to change the essentials of her story. By the time she leaves the stand in the late afternoon, Romaine Jackson's quiet embrace of the truth is a powerful force.

"Whoa ... Romaine, honey," says Garvey, catching her as she races out the rear doors of the courtroom. "Hey, now, tell the truth. That wasn't all that bad now, was it?"

"Yes," she says, now crying and laughing in the same breath. "It was."

"Oh, come on," says the detective, wrapping an arm around her. "I'll bet you got to like it a little at the end, didn't you?"

"No," she says, laughing. "No, I did not."

Half an hour later, when Doan emerges from the courtroom, Garvey b.u.t.tonholes him in the third-floor corridor: "How'd my girl do in there?"

"She was great," says Doan without exaggeration. "Scared, but great."

But it is far from over. The next day's testimony brings the end of the state's case, with both attorneys skirmis.h.i.+ng over the ballistic evidence and the .38 ammunition recovered in the case. With Dave Brown on the witness stand, Doan tries to limit the testimony to the .38 bullets recovered from Frazier's car after his arrest; Polansky, laboring hard not to violate the pretrial motions prohibiting any mention of the Purnell Booker slaying, probes Brown on cross about the issue of the earlier search warrant, when the detectives recovered the .38 wadcutter ammo and knives from beneath Vincent Booker's bed. It is a sensitive issue-neither attorney wants to cross the line that brings the Booker murder into testimony-and it requires four bench conferences with Gordy before Brown's testimony is successfully negotiated. On redirect, Doan makes sure to have Brown testify that the knives recovered from Vincent Booker were tested and found to be free of blood, but still Polansky has managed once again, with a few questions, to raise the specter of an alternate suspect.

He does so yet again when Joe Kopera, from the firearms unit, follows Brown to the stand. Doan leads Kopera through the examination of bullets used to kill the victim, as well as the .38 cartridges found in Frazier's car after his arrest. The bullets are all of the same caliber, Kopera agrees. But that testimony, although limited, opens the door to Polansky, who follows up by noting that the bullets that killed Lena Lucas are .38 wadcutters, and the bullets recovered from his client's car are .38 round-noses.

"So what you are saying," says Polansky, "is that while the bullets that came from Robert Frazier's car are indeed thirty-eights, they weren't the same kind of thirty-eights that were recovered from the crime scene."

"Yes, sir, that is correct."

"And some of the bullets-twelve of the bullets recovered from Vincent Booker's residence-were not only thirty-eight caliber but were also wadcutter. Is that correct?"

"Yes," says Kopera.

If Rich Garvey could hear this, if he could hear Polansky propping up the shadowy figure of Vincent Booker in front of the jury, he might be inclined to wring Doan's neck. The only way to counter Polansky is to make the link between the bullets taken from Vincent Booker and Robert Frazier, and the only way to do that is to put Vincent Booker on the stand. Booker himself could testify that he gave the wadcutters to Frazier on the night of the murder; that Frazier had told him they were going to get the drugs back from his father and had asked him for ammunition. But that kind of testimony might raise more questions than it would answer; in Doan's mind, the only reasoned alternative is to cut bait.

As the state nears the end of its presentation, the courtroom observers are divided in their opinion about which side is winning. Doan has laid his foundation and guided Romaine Jackson successfully through her precious testimony. But Polansky has done well at points, too, and his deft use of Vincent Booker may be enough to sway the jury. But Doan isn't quite finished. He surprises Polansky with one last witness, a witness the defense attorney did not expect to see used against his client.

"Your honor," says Doan, after the jurors have been dismissed for the day's lunch hour, "I would request that Sharon Denise Henson, once she is called, be called as a court's witness."

"Objection!" says Polansky, almost shouting.

"Your reasons for saying, Mr. Doan," asks Gordy, "in light of the objection?"

The prosecutor recounts Robert Frazier's attempt to use his second girlfriend as an alibi in the murder of his first, as well as the detectives' subsequent interrogation of Nee-Cee Henson, in which she admitted that Frazier had left her dinner party early and then failed to return until morning. Henson signed a written statement to that effect and then gave similar testimony to the grand jury; now, with Frazier looking at the possibility of life without parole, she is backing up, telling Doan that she remembers the dinner party more clearly now. Frazier, she says, left for only a few moments early in the evening and then stayed with her until morning.

The woman began backing away from her testimony weeks ago, when she first signed a written statement for a private investigator employed by Polansky. Her behavior does not surprise Doan, who has learned that she has repeatedly visited Frazier at the city jail. Now he asks Gordy to call her to the stand as a hostile witness. To the prosecutor, Sharon Henson is valuable precisely because her testimony will not be credible.

"It would be an injustice for this jury to be deprived of seeing her and hearing from her," says Doan, "and it would put the state in an impossible position to actually call her as its own witness."

"Mr. Polansky?" asks Gordy.

"Your honor, would it be possible to respond ... to respond to Mr. Doan's argument after the break so I can have an opportunity to absorb this?"

"Denied."

"Can I have a minute to look at this?" he says, scanning a copy of the state's motion.

"You may," says Gordy, the very picture of bored irritation. "While Mr. Polansky is looking at that, I will note for the record this issue has been antic.i.p.ated in this trial, according to conversations between counsel and the court, since the beginning of this trial."

Polansky takes a few more minutes, then attempts a response, arguing that Miss Henson's current version of events doesn't differ dramatically from her earlier testimony. It doesn't seem, Polansky argues, that the statements are so inconsistent as to justify calling her as a court's witness.

"Do you intend to call her as a witness in the defense case?"

"Well, I don't know," says Polansky. "I can't make that commitment at this point, your honor."

"Because if you were, these questions would be moot."