Justice Denied by Robert Tanenbaum

Author:Robert Tanenbaum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2010-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

11

Nothing improved Karp’s spirits like being in court. It was his gambling, his girls, his heroin. He glanced around at the courtroom. Milton Freeland was at the defense table, along with a young Legal Aid acolyte and the defendant, Hosie Russell. Russell had clipped his hair and was wearing glasses. He looked like a deacon.

The judge, a large, olive-skinned, beetle-browed man, was already seated at his presidium, peering over his half glasses and discussing some business with his clerk. His name was Martino, and Karp was very glad indeed to see him. He could not have asked for a better judge. Martino knew the law; he knew the difference between rights and legal trumpery; and he was ferociously impatient with lawyers who didn’t know what they were doing, into which class Karp thought that Milton Freeland very likely fell.

A pretrial hearing is like a dress rehearsal for a trial, a clearing of decks, a showing of cards, so that the trial proper may proceed expeditiously, if it proceeds at all.

No jury is present, of course. Karp was expected to expose his critical evidence and his official and police witnesses to demonstrate to the judge the veracity of the evidence and the probity of the identification of the defendant, all of which had been challenged by Freeland.

Motion to suppress the Bloomingdale’s VISA slip taken from Russell at the scene: the basis—no probable cause for a search. The judge heard Freeland out and decided that a police officer finding a man answering the description of a fugitive hiding under a boiler in a building where a dozen people had seen him go was probable enough cause. Motion denied.

Motion to suppress the blue shirt and the handbag and the knife. But the knife had human blood on it. The bag was the victim’s bag, the blue shirt had, according to several witnesses, been worn by the perpetrator; the defendant had, in fact, identified it as his own. Motion denied.

Here Freeland raised an objection. “Your Honor,” he said, “I must protest. The testimony that the blue shirt was the defendant’s was elicited after arraignment and in the absence of counsel. It was the product of an illegal interrogation.”

The judge said, “How was it an interrogation, Mr. Freeland? Both Captain Chelham and Detective Cimella have testified that the statement was voluntary on the part of the defendant. He asked about his shirt and they brought it to him and he identified it.”

“It’s still incriminatory,” Freeland shot back.

That was interesting, thought Karp. He’s not reading the judge. He’s bugging him, but he doesn’t care; he’s getting objections on record, trying for a reversible error. Fat chance.

“How is it incriminatory?” asked Martino, his brows twitching. “He says, ‘It’s my blue shirt.’ I have a blue shirt too. You have a blue shirt. Admission that we have them is not incriminatory. Statement of the defendant was not in response to any interrogation connecting defendant with the crime or with any other statement of the defendant. Motion denied.”

Freeland did not seem flustered by this rebuke.

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