Prime Witness

Chapter Seventeen

Lester Osgood is a judge of marginal abilities. He would have a tough time in any setting were he not king. But this morning Adrian Chambers and I are before him in Osgood’s temporary realm, a dingy chamber in the basement of the county jail.

This place serves as the courtroom of last resort in high security cases in this county. We are here for the arraignment of Andre Iganovich.

The Russian is seated, chained to a metal chair that in turn is fastened to the floor. He wears an orange jail jumper, the word “Prisoner” stenciled in letters eight inches high across his back. He is cuffed, and chained at the waist, his ankles shackled so that he sounds like Santa’s reindeer when he walks. Two beefy jail guards, unarmed, stand behind him.

Chambers has another chair next to his client, at a small table. Between them is a court-appointed interpreter, a woman who will be chattering in undertones into the defendant’s ear once we start.

There’s a gaggle of press and television here, the cameras outside in the hall. They lend a certain circus atmosphere to the proceedings.

Osgood shuffles papers on the table. He is in a hurry, mention of an 8:30 calendar back at the courthouse. He slaps his gavel on the metal surface of the table and a hundred conversations die in mid sentence.

“Mr. Chambers, is your client ready?”

I’m standing alone off to the side, far enough away so as not to invade any whispered confidences between Chambers and the Russian.

“We are, your honor.”

Osgood looks at me.

“The people are ready,” I say.

“You have a copy of the information, Mr. Chambers?”

Adrian holds it up, evidencing that he has received this, the charging document in these cases.

“Can we waive a formal reading?” says the judge.

Chambers is agreeable. This means Osgood can dispense with a voluminous and detailed reading of every word contained in the criminal information. Instead he hits the high points in layman’s terms.

“Mr. Iganovich.”

The Russian looks up at the judge. He does not appear overly disturbed by his circumstances. I would say less concerned than Chambers.

“You are Andre Iganovich?”

The interpreter is in his ear. A brief delay.

“Da.”

“Yes,” says the interpreter.

“Have you ever been called by any other name?”

Again an interpretation, then a dense look by the defendant. Suddenly, a twinkle in the eye.

“Sometimes call me some-of-bitch,” he says. A smile. Some laughing from a few of the reporters. Osgood looks at him sternly.

He tells Iganovich to speak his native tongue, to forget the butchered English and the comedy routine. “It is better for the record,” he says.

“I will ask you one more time. Have you ever been known by any other name?”

Iganovich gives him a leering smile, then the eye, something which in certain countries might be read as an offer of seduction, one man to another. He does not seem terribly intimidated by Osgood’s manner. I think perhaps he has seen more fearsome interrogation, maybe in the place from which he originates.

After interpretation: “Nyet” followed by the interpreter’s “No.” He has no aliases, at least if he is to be believed.

“Andre Iganovich, you are charged with four counts of first-degree murder.” Osgood reads off the dates of the crimes and the names of the victims, the four college students, Julie Park and Jonathan Snider, Sharon Collins and Rodney Slate.

“Do you understand the charges against you?”

A brief conference as the interpreter works the middle ground between Chambers and Iganovich.

“Da,” says Iganovich. It is the last thing I can understand. Suddenly he’s a staccato of unintelligible words, animated expressions, shaking his head, trying to bring his shackled hands up to ward off these slanders. During part of this, toward the end, he is looking at me, venomous little slits. When he is finished, he spits on the floor in my direction.

“Enough of that,” says Osgood.

“Yes. Ah-ah.” The interpreter is playing for time trying to pick through the exuberant language before she speaks.

“Yes, I understand,” she says. “But it is no. . ah. I did not do these things. I did not kill anyone. These are perverse lies.” She searches for the right word. “Swill,” she finally calls them. I think perhaps he used something stronger, a little interpretive license. “It is not true what they say, what that man says. He is a liar, a. . ah. .”

The term “that man” I take to be me.

The interpreter searches the air for the proper adjective. “A fucking liar.” So much for license. She omits the expectoration, only to look at the loogie, floating like some little green egg in its own juice on the concrete floor. There are limits it seems, even to verbatim translation.

“Mr. Iganovich, I will not tolerate foul language in my court. We are here for a reason, to get to the truth of these matters. You need not worry. You will be given a fair trial,” says Osgood. He is a wellspring of calming tones, a picture of composed paternal authority draped in black.

Iganovich looks at him like he is lunch, then another seductive smile. I think the defendant has a penchant for men of power. He would like to get Osgood in this room alone, bent over the table with his gown raised from behind. At least half the members of the bar in this county would vote to give him the chance, if they could.

Osgood informs the defendant of the smorgasbord of pleas available under law-not guilty, guilty, not guilty by reason of insanity, nolo contendere. He asks Iganovich if he has discussed the matter of a plea with his lawyer.

It comes back from the interpreter that he has. Before she can finish: “No guilty,” he says. He looks arrogantly off to the side, a smug expression as if this is his last word, an end of it, his final statement on the subject. Then he sees me, cracks a grin in my direction, something like a broken picket fence, a toothless map of the Old World. But in his eyes is a look, like he is sizing me up for a coffin.

Nikki would love it. The arraignment, and I am already getting psychic death threats. It is one of the reasons she insisted that I leave my job at the DA’s office in Capital City twelve years ago, the fear that one of my customers would ultimately get my home address, make overt moves on what to me, after a time, seemed like so many idle threats.

“Is your client ready to enter a plea, Mr. Chambers?”

“He is, your honor.”

Very well. Osgood walks the defendant through each count. To each charge of murder in the first degree, the interpreter states for the record “not guilty” after listening to Iganovich butcher the term in Pidgin English. He has discarded Osgood’s earlier admonition. The judge has given up.

“Mr. Chambers, as to each and every count, do you join with your client in the entry of each plea?”

“I do, your honor.”

“Have you had a chance to discuss possible dates for a preliminary hearing?” Osgood addresses this to Chambers and me.

“We haven’t, your honor,” I answer.

“Your honor, at this time, before we get to the issue of a preliminary hearing, the defendant would like to make a motion for bail,” he says. He’s crossing off items on a yellow legal pad as he talks. I can see several other notations below the one just eliminated.

Osgood looks over at me. He seems a little surprised, but not nearly so much as I. Chambers cannot be serious. A suspect who all but fled to Canada and sequestered himself behind the Chinese wall of extradition, and he wants us to put him on the street. I don’t know who would be more dangerous at this point, Iganovich who might kill again, or Kim Park who would have a contract out on the defendant’s life within the hour, were he to be released.

“Your honor, we would object to any thought of bail,” I say. My face is a full smile, like this is some kind of joke. I talk about the problems, the fact that the defendant is a public safety risk, that he himself is a marked man in a community on the edge of hysteria.

“He is not a public safety risk,” says Chambers, “until and unless he is convicted. In this country there is a presumption of innocence. I would have thought Mr. Madriani, so recently of the defense bar, would be the last to forget that.”

He sees me turn a little smirk his way.

“I’m glad Mr. Madriani sees some humor in this motion,” he says. “Perhaps it will be easier for him to find his way to some reasonable middle ground on the issue.”

“Isn’t there some code section?” says Osgood. He’s fumbling through his book on the table.

A state with a law for everything, and we have a judge who knows none of them. Like much of the bench in the rural counties of this state, Osgood was a borderline lawyer with better political instincts, one of three municipal court judges in the county. At local bar meetings he is the cock-of-the-walk, aloof to anyone not seen as his social peer, which includes all humans below the level of superior court. There is not the slightest chance that he would release this defendant on bail. He may not know the law, but he has mastered the theorems of politics in a small county. He will deny it, even if he has to ground his ruling on the schoolboy doctrine of “tough titty.”

I tell Osgood to look at section twelve-sixty-eight of the Penal Code.

He is all thumbs to the bench book, the judge’s bible.

“In capital cases,” I say, “where the proof is evident and the presumption great, the defendant cannot be released on bail. We would argue this is just such a case, your honor.”

“There,” says Osgood, “I knew there was a statute.” Like he gets points for just seeing the issue. Osgood treats every day in court like a new bar exam with lawyers to kibitz him.

“But the proof is not evident,” says Chambers. “And there is certainly no great presumption of guilt here.”

Osgood looks over at me, with a look that says “surely he doesn’t expect me to apply the statute to the facts?” There are little hints of panic in his eyes, a look of what do we do now.

I try to calm him. “It’s not an overly high standard, your honor. The question of whether proof is evident or the presumption great turns on whether there is any substantial evidence to sustain a capital verdict.”

I take him by the hand on a verbal tour of the stakes and the cord found in the defendant’s vehicle, the bloody rag found on the front seat. The fact that forensics has tied these items to the four murders.

By the time I finish, Osgood is a full convert to my line of argument, confident, shaking his head, like certainly this has been clear from the beginning, a judge who’s come to a decision.

“Mr. Chambers, the district attorney makes a persuasive argument,” he says. “I think the section would apply in this case.”

Chambers is up out of his chair, trying to talk.

Osgood’s hand is up cutting him off, like a good traffic cop. He doesn’t want to hear anything that might turn his decision to mush. He would plug his ears, and hum, if he could.

“Even if I were inclined,” he says, “to release your client”-he looks at the press out front which is now getting writer’s cramp-“which I am not.” He says this last sternly, with meaning, shaking his head now, jowls like Richard Nixon, swaying for emphasis. “The law is clear. I cannot release your client on bail. The motion is denied.”

Chambers sits down, talks to his client, a few whispered exchanges, conversation through the interpreter. Iganovich trying to talk with his hands is hampered by more than a foreign tongue. The handcuffs and waist chain are in his way.

“Where were we?” says Osgood.

“A date for the prelim,” I say.

“Oh yes.” He looks at Chambers.

“How long do you think for the defense?”

Chambers doesn’t hear him. He’s still talking to Iganovich.

“Excuse me, Mr. Chambers, if you don’t mind.”

Chambers finally looks at the judge.

“How long do you need for your case in the preliminary hearing? We’re trying to fix a date.”

“It’s academic,” says Chambers.

“Not if you want a date for prelim,” says Osgood.

“We have one,” says Chambers.

Osgood’s getting pissed. He may not know the law, but he certainly knows proper etiquette in his own courtroom. Treatment like this from a lawyer does not cut it.

“Counsel,” he says, “we are trying to fix a date for a preliminary hearing. If you cannot help us, I will assume that your case will take no more than”-he thinks for a moment-“two days.” The price of fucking with the judge. “And we will set it for. .”

“The preliminary hearing will have to be in ten days,” says Chambers. “The defendant refuses to waive time,” he says.

Osgood sits in his chair, his body seeming to smoke, like he’s been hit by lightning. He looks at Chambers, not certain that he’s heard him correctly.

“Your honor.” I move toward the table. “This case cannot possibly be ready in ten days,” I say. “This is a capital case. A man’s life is at stake. Does the defendant understand this?”

“He does,” says Chambers. “If he’s going to remain behind bars pending the preliminary hearing, he refuses to waive time.” He looks at me and smiles.

“Ridiculous,” I say.

Chambers shrugs this off. “The district attorney has a choice, preliminary hearing in ten days or release my client and dismiss the charges.”

Chambers is citing the law. In this state, a defendant who refuses to waive time is entitled to a hearing or indictment within ten days. Otherwise he must be released.

“This is absurd,” I say.

Osgood’s shrugging his shoulders, like what can I do?

“Talk to the defendant, your honor. Ask him if he understands the consequences,” I say. I am worried about appeal later, a trumpeted cause for incompetent counsel.

Osgood makes this point, like an echo with Iganovich through the interpreter. There’s a little sorting out between Chambers and the translator. What is clear. What does not require translation is that Chambers is driving this decision. Iganovich sits passively and nods while his lawyer talks through the interpreter. His expression grows more sober as he contemplates. He utters something, a few words, his tone one of quiet resignation now.

“I understand,” says the translator. “I follow my lawyer. I refuse to waive time.”

“Mr. Chambers, I hope you know what you’re doing,” says Osgood.

“I do,” Chambers smiles at him, a mocking little grin, “know what I am doing, your honor.”

“Your guy’s a real fucking hustle artist,” says Claude. This is how he describes Adrian Chambers.

I have asked Claude to make some subtle inquiries about Chambers, specifically how Adrian came to land the Iganovich defense. I am wondering how he will get paid. But there is not a doubt as to why he wants this case. Besides a shot at my ass, he is getting advertising he could not buy, a case that regardless of outcome could go a long way toward restoring a ruined reputation.

“The Russian’s got an aging aunt down in the valley,” says Claude. “This was his contact to get into the country, and Chambers’s key into the case. She’s ninety-two,” he says, “a few bricks shy of a full load, but still the closest relative.

“Seems her name was in the papers right after we searched the Russian’s apartment. Some enterprising reporter dug it up out of employment records with the security company, Iganovich’s employer. They interviewed her. She gave ’em a lot of babble in print, character references for her nephew.”

“Did you talk to her?”

He flips open his notebook. “Seems Chambers landed on her doorstep with a briefcase full of contracts the morning the story appeared. This man lets no moss grow,” says Claude.

“She signed up?”

He nods. “Didn’t cost her a dime.”

“Generous man,” I say.

“A real prince.”

“What did he tell her?”

“That he could help her nephew. That he was convinced that Iganovich didn’t commit the crimes. That her nephew had an honest face. Russian’s picture was in the paper that morning,” says Chambers, “the one from his licensing file.” Claude’s talking about the agency that licenses private security guards in this state. Photos are required for their application.

“The old lady signed on all the dotted lines,” he says, “gave Chambers a full authorization to deal in the case with the only proviso that Iganovich accept him, ratify the contracts.”

“Which of course he did,” I say.

“Of course. Oh-and one other little piece of paper.” He takes a folded sheet of letter-size paper out of his pocket and hands it to me. I open it and read. It’s a contract, signed by Chambers and the Russian’s aunt, conferring on Adrian Chambers all film and literary rights pertaining to the Putah Creek murders and the trial of Andre Iganovich.

“Well, at least now we know how he’s gonna get paid,” says Claude.

“Ten days?” she says. “Get real. I figured we’d have at least ninety. I’ve got a full plate.”

Lenore Goya is in my office, through the open door. She’s looking for some papers, something she laid down in the commotion on my return from the Russian’s arraignment. She turns and is back out again, searching, mumbling to herself, under her breath. Lenore will bear much of the burden of preparation in the next nine days, this along with her other duties, some disorder already created by Roland Overroy who is now in over his head on several of Goya’s old cases.

“So had I,” I say, “figured we had more time.”

I humor her, tell her that in refusing to waive time, Chambers shows all the signs of a man operating with less than a full deck.

“Wonderful,” she says. “It’ll give new meaning to the term incompetent counsel. Another grounds for the defendant to appeal.”

We both know this is garbage. Chambers is crazy like a fox.

“He knows exactly what he’s doing,” she says. “He’s jamming us. Balls to the wall.” Lenore is of course correct. There is method to his madness.

“Anybody who would do this in a death case.” She shakes her head. “When they circumcised him they threw away the wrong part.” Her assessment of Chambers as a lawyer.

She settles into a chair on the other side of my desk, and begins to come down, out of the stratosphere. It is what saves her as a trial lawyer. While she has flashes of anger, she has learned to control these quickly, and to mask it in court.

She smiles finally, lightens up. “Tell me,” she says, “I’ll bet Lester Osgood was a real help this morning?”

I roll my eyes as if to confirm her suspicions that the judge was worse than useless. “I had to coach him,” I say, “to even get it on the record that Iganovich understood the risks involved in shortening time. The judge was willing to walk away and leave it unstated.”

Now that Osgood has touched this case, he will no doubt draw the preliminary hearing. It will be his penance from the presiding judge for allowing Chambers to screw up the court’s calendar.

We talk about this prospect, Lenore and I.

“If he gets it, he’ll be in over his head,” she says. “And the first sign of fear is hostility. He’ll turn his wrath on us.”

She is right. I have visions of Osgood playing to the press, a judicial sonata designed to cover his ass, with an oft-repeated theme-the prosecution served up this case, brought these charges, and now they are not ready. In the chorus he will sing the travails of the overworked and unsung judge.

“Every time he reaches for his gavel and it turns to shit,” she says, “he will blame us.”

She looks at me cold and stark for a moment. “Osgood might just cut him loose,” she says.

I disagree. “It is the one thing he will not do. Even if he has to issue a grudging holding order to bind Iganovich over for trial, and blame us for the defects, he will do it. He will blame us for the plight that the court is in, pillory us at every turn, but he will without fail ship this case to the superior court for trial.”

What scares me is that it may be a defective holding order, based on marginal evidence we cannot defend on appeal, something that might be overturned two years from now after a costly trial, and conviction.

Lenore and I talk about the probable defenses that Chambers will raise in the preliminary hearing. We agree that he will not trot out his best horses for this show. Any surprises that might be fatal for our side, a potentially credible alibi witness, a notable forensic expert reading persuasive tea leaves, these he will save for the trial jury. The state’s burden of proof in a preliminary hearing is not sufficient to risk everything at this level. If he shoots his wad and misses, he will have tipped his hand for trial, given us valuable information on his case. Instead, he will push us to reveal our own, to produce our best evidence, which given the shortness of time we may now be forced to do. With only nine days to prepare, finesse is not our first strategy.

“He’ll kick us hard with Scofield,” she says.

I agree.

“It’s a golden opportunity to confuse an already hapless judge,” I say. If he is deft, Chambers will have Osgood asking more questions about these unsolved murders than we have answers. The press will have a field day.

“We will look like shit,” says Goya.

I raise my gaze, look directly at her. “Unless,” I say.

She looks up. “Unless what?”

“Unless we don’t take him to a preliminary hearing,” I say.

Puzzlement on her face for a brief instant, then like sonar plumbing the depths, she reads my mind. “A grand jury,” she says.

I smile and nod.

The grand jury has been an unused vestige of the criminal courts process in this state for the better part of two decades, ever since a liberal-leaning state supreme court ruled that every defendant was entitled to a hearing before an objective magistrate-a preliminary hearing-even those indicted by a grand jury. Two years ago angry voters showed the liberals on the court the door, and their predecessors the light, when they voted by initiative to restore the criminal grand jury to its prior eminence.

As I look at her, I see a sparkle in Lenore’s eye.

“It’s perfect,” she says. “We lock out Chambers, make him wait outside in the hall.”

Criminal defendants, while they have a right to testify before a grand jury, have no right to counsel there. Like the star chambers of yore, grand jury hearings are closed, secret, not only to defense attorneys, but to the press and the public as well.

“And,” she says, “we dump Osgood.” There’s a satisfied smile on her face with this thought. There is no judge to sit in hearings, to preside over a grand jury.

“Thank Providence for little favors,” I say.

Suddenly her mood is lighter, there is some cheer in her face, a way out of a tedious and sure to be punishing public hearing.

“I don’t want to be greedy,” I say, “but there’s one more thing.”

She looks at me.

“At the moment you’re closer to the evidence than I am,” I tell her.

I get a wary look, like she thinks maybe I’m on the verge of asking her to take on something more.

“Do you think there is any chance. .” I study her for a short moment before going on, thinking. “Do you think there is any way that we could get the Scofield evidence before a grand jury?”

She stares at me, a picture of puzzlement.

“You mean charge the Russian with those crimes?” she says.

I shake my head. “No. I mean can you think of any argument, any theory that would permit us to play out the details, the physical evidence in the Scofield murders before this grand jury, without charging Iganovich with the actual murders?”

She looks perplexed, like she can’t figure why I would want to do this.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Not off the top of my head. We control the proceedings, but that’s a far reach. Some appellate panel looking at the transcript later might question the relevance,” she says. “Might even find prejudice if they believe we used the stuff to further incriminate Iganovich without charging him with the murders.”

“You wouldn’t recommend it then,” I say.

She shakes her head, still a bit puzzled. “Why do you ask?” she says.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just a thought.”

We end. She leaves me musing in my office.

It’s what professional prosecutors call “a cop shop.” Buried two floors beneath the Davenport County Sheriff’s Department, down a long corridor marked by outdated and faded civil defense signs, is a single door of solid wood, with no glass panels or windows, and no sign. We open it and step inside.

Lenore’s behind me. I look at her. “What do you think?”

She makes a face. “For the kind of party we’re throwing, it looks about right. How many cops upstairs?” she asks Claude.

“During the day shift, in the office, maybe ten, twelve.”

It seems we have found our grand jury room. It’s a problem in this state. With the high court decision fifteen years ago, grand jury rooms with their windowless facades, designed for secrecy, fell into disuse, and over the years were commandeered for courtrooms, or consumed by other burgeoning bureaucracies.

I have decided to convene the grand jury here in the basement of the sheriff’s office for reasons of security. Since Iganovich was delivered back to Davenport County we have received more than a dozen threats on his life.

We lock the doors and head back upstairs. Behind the public counter Emil Johnson is waiting for us.

“Counselor. You got a minute?” He wags at me with his finger, then turns and heads for his office.

I nudge Lenore to join us, and the two of us follow Emil’s big haunches toward his office.

Inside he closes the door and asks us to take a seat.

“What’s this I hear about a special grand jury?” he says. “What’s wrong with the one we got?”

“The key man system?”

He nods.

“Key man” is the selection process that permits a few powerful judges and elected politicians to put their friends and, in some cases, family members on the county grand jury.

“It won’t work, Emil.”

“Why not?”

“Because the defendant has a right to a representative grand jury, a cross section of the population,” I tell him. “Have you taken a look at your grand jury lately? It’s whiter than snow. It has only two women.” I don’t mention that one of these is the concubine of a county supervisor. “There are no Hispanics or blacks.”

“Two thirds of that jury was appointed by the superior court judges. You’re telling me that ain’t good enough?”

“The white friends of white judges don’t cut it,” I say.

This sets him back on his heels. By the look on his face I can tell that my words will be passed along, chewed on over stale sourdough rolls and wilted lettuce at the next meeting of the Lincoln Club with all the county pillars.

“Politics has nothing to do with it, Emil. Read Smith v. Texas and Alexander v. Louisiana,” I tell him. “U.S. Supreme Court decisions. They give the defendant the right to question the composition of the grand jury that indicts him. He can file a motion to discover the demographics of the jury as well as the method that was used to impanel it. If it’s not representative, any indictment would be quashed. I assume you don’t want to do this more than once?”

He shakes his head. “We’ll do it your way.” In the final analysis, Emil is a pragmatist.