“I’ve been assigned personally to slightly over fifty cases.”
“And,” says Doan, leading, “I assume you have been involved in one way or another in parts of other cases.”
“Numerous investigations,” says Garvey., Doan begins to take the detective through the crime scene at 17 North Gilmor. Garvey describes the apartment, giving special attention to the security features, including the burglar alarm that had been turned off. He provides a detailed description of the scene, and the jury again hears about the lack of forced entry, the nested pile of clothes, the scratches on the headboard suggesting that she was stabbed while lying in bed. Then, at Doan’s direction, Garvey walks over to the jury box, where Doan takes him through the crime scene photos already admitted to evidence.photos themselves are always the source of considerable courtroom conflict, with defense attorneys arguing that the depiction of the bloodied victim is unnecessarily prejudicial and prosecutors arguing that the photos have probative value for a jury. Prosecutors usually win the argument, as Doan has in this case. Thus Lena Lucas and her wounds are displayed for the jurors in glossy splendor from a variety of camera angles over Polansky’s continuing objection. The jurors seem impressed.is at the jury box for ten minutes before returning to the witness stand, where Doan takes him through the search of the crime scene and the interviews with neighbors. The prosecutor makes a point of asking about street lighting outside the Gilmor Street rowhouse and Garvey describes the sodium vapor light in the middle of the block-an essential foundation for the coming testimony from Romaine Jackson.
“At this time, I have no further questions of Detective Garvey,” says Doan after twenty-five minutes of testimony. “However, I wish to recall him later.”
“You may,” says Gordy. “Cross-examination, Mr. Polansky.”
“For the same reasons, I will restrict my cross-examination to the testimony elicited on direct.”with me, thinks Garvey, calm and collected on the stand. With just the boilerplate of the crime scene to worry about, he reasons, there won’t be much in the way of controversy this afternoon.goes into some detail on the pattern of wounds, prompting the detective to agree that the stab wounds came before the gunshot wound to the head; the defense wounds to the hands prove as much. The defense attorney also spends some time dealing with the empty purse, the broken bag of rice and the empty gelatin capsules on the bedroom floor. “So it would appear, would it not, sir, that whatever assailants attacked and killed Ms. Lucas probably took whatever drugs she had in that pocketbook?”
“Objection,” says Doan.judge agrees that the defense attorney’s question is too speculative, but the image of Vincent Booker hovers over the courtroom. Why, after all, would Frazier murder someone to take drugs that were already his? No reason unless, of course, he wanted to make the killing seem like a drug robbery.moves forward, chronicling the drug paraphernalia scattered around the crime scene in an effort to make his point another way. He brings Garvey back to the nested clothes. The apartment was very tidy, was it not? Very neat, Garvey agrees.
“The kind of individual who would not take off her clothes and throw them on the floor but would take them off, fold them up and put them away. Would you agree?”my, thinks Garvey, you tricky bastard, you. “No,” says the detective. “I would not agree.”leaves that seeming contradiction with the jury and moves on to state’s exhibit 2U, a photograph of the bedroom floor after the bed had been lifted. The defense attorney points out a soft pack of Newport cigarettes visible on the floor.
“And there is an ashtray?” he adds.
“Yes, sir,” says Garvey.
“Did you ever determine Ms. Lucas was a smoker?”shit, thinks Garvey. He’s going to run wild with this crap. “I can’t recall if I did or not.”
“Do you think that might have been of some significance?”
“I’m sure the question came up during the investigation,” says Garvey, trying to tiptoe around the minefield. “Obviously, the answer didn’t have any significance.”
“Did you ask her daughters or anyone close to her whether she was a smoker?”
“I don’t recall specifically doing that.”
“If she wasn’t a smoker, do you agree that finding a pack of cigarettes would have been worth looking into?”
“I would agree the cigarette pack would have been,” says Garvey, his voice clipped.
“To find out who was close to her and was a smoker,” Polansky continues. “Because you assumed someone close to her was in there because there was no forced entry, correct?”
“That is correct,” says Garvey.
“So it might be significant to find out if anyone close to her or any of the possible suspects which we’ll talk about at some later time may have been a smoker and specifically a smoker of Newports.”
“Objection,” says Doan, trying for a broken field tackle. “Is there a question?”
“Yes,” says Polansky. “Would you agree it is significant?”
“No,” says Garvey, regrouping. “Because we don’t know when the cigarette pack was placed there. It was beneath the bed. It certainly would have been something to look into, but it would have been something I wouldn’t base an investigation on.”
“Well,” says Polansky, “except for the fact, sir, wouldn’t you agree that Ms. Lucas was a very neat person and not likely to have left a pack of cigarettes on the floor for some long period of time?”
“Objection,” says Doan.
“Isn’t it much more likely the pack was left there the night of the murder?”
“Objection.”intervenes. “Can you answer that question to a reasonable degree of certainty? Yes or no?”the prosecution table, Doan is staring at the detective, his head moving back and forth in a slight, barely discernible shaking motion. Take the out, he wants to say. Take the out.
“I can answer,” says Garvey.
“Overruled,” says Gordy.
“Underneath the bed there appeared to be a fair amount of debris. The overall visible areas in the house were neat and tidy, but underneath the bed I would not characterize it as being neat and tidy.”
“Was the phone under the bed?” asks Polansky.
“Yes,” says Garvey, looking at the photo. “We moved that back to take the photograph.”
“It is fair to say the phone wasn’t lying there a long period of time?”
“I don’t know when the phone was placed there,” says Garvey.partial save by a veteran detective. Polansky counts his winnings and moves on, asking about the human hairs that were recovered from the sheet by the lab tech and sent to the trace section. Were they ever compared to anyone?
“You can’t tell from a hair who it belongs to,” says Garvey, now on his guard.
“They can’t tell you anything more than that about hair. There is no scientific test that is at all helpful in a homicide investigation?”
“There is no way they can tell you that a particular hair can come from a particular person.”
“Can they narrow it down to a white man’s or black man’s?” asks Polansky.grants the point: “But they can’t go too much farther.”detective and defense attorney circle each other for several more questions until Polansky’s point is clear: The hair recovered at the scene was never compared to anyone else’s hair. Even though such a comparison would be pointless, Polansky leaves the impression that Garvey’s investigation was less than thorough.far Polansky has earned his money. Garvey proves as much at the end of the cross-examination, when the defense attorney asks him about time-of-death.
“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.”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.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. on the twenty-first?” says Polansky.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.”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.”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.first day ends. In the corridor five minutes later, Garvey encounters Polansky and feigns anger, cocking 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.”Doan is not so easily mollified. Walking back to his office with Garvey, he issues a few choice epithets for his worthy adversary.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.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 bullshit about the hair, I could care less, but he made some points on the cigarettes. We’ve got to shoot that down.”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.”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.”, 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.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.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.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.”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?”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.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.”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?”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.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.”an hour later, when Doan emerges from the courtroom, Garvey buttonholes him in the third-floor corridor: “How’d my girl do in there?”
“She was great,” says Doan without exaggeration. “Scared, but great.”it is far from over. The next day’s testimony brings the end of the state’s case, with both attorneys skirmishing 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.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.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.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?”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.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 anticipated in this trial, according to conversations between counsel and the court, since the beginning of this trial.”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.”
“I agree,” says the defense attorney. “I think the likelihood is I will not call her.”then announces his decision: Although she is lying to save her man, Sharon Henson will testify against him. The woman takes the stand after the lunch break and begins an ordeal that lasts well over an hour. If a man’s freedom wasn’t at issue, if a family wasn’t seated in the gallery, praying for vengeance, Henson’s performance in service of her boyfriend might count as comedy. Black velvet evening dress, pillbox hat, fur wrap-her appearance alone makes it difficult to take her testimony seriously. Conscious of her big moment in this drama, she takes the oath and crosses her legs in the witness box as if to mimic the femme fatales of every Grade B film noir. Even the jury begins to giggle.
“How old are you, ma’am?” asks Doan.
“Twenty-five.”
“Do you know an individual by the name of Robert Frazier?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you see that individual in the courtroom today?”
“Yes.”
“Point him out, please.”woman points to the defense table, then, for just a moment, smiles softly at the defendant. Frazier looks back impassively.establishes Sharon Henson’s relationship with Frazier for the jury’s benefit, then takes her back to the night of her party and the murder. In her statements to Garvey and the grand jury, Henson acknowledged that she had been drinking and using drugs, but she had unequivocally stated that Frazier had left the party late that evening and not returned until morning. Now, she is remembering something altogether different.
“Do you still consider yourself Mr. Frazier’s girlfriend today?” asks Doan.
“Do I really have to answer that?”
“Yes,” says Gordy. “Answer the question.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And during the time that Mr. Frazier has been incarcerated you have visited him at the jail, have you not?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Now, how many times have you visited him there?”
“Three times.”heaps it on, asking Henson to list the Valentine’s Day gifts she received from Frazier before the murder. Then he turns abruptly to the issue of the.38 revolver that Frazier had given her to hold after the killing, the weapon that Frazier had taken back from her four days before Garvey and Kincaid showed up to interview her.
“And when he asked you for the weapon,” says Doan, his voice even, “did he tell you why he wanted it?”
“Yes, he did.”
“What did he say, ma’am?”
“That the police would be coming to talk to me, and he told them that I had the gun for him, but he didn’t ask me for it.”
“And?” asks Doan, looking up from his notes.Henson glowers at the prosecutor before answering. “Not to give it to them,” she says, then glances apologetically toward her boyfriend.
“He told you that the police would be coming looking for it. He didn’t want you to give it to them?” asks Doan.
“I remember that, yeah.”far, so good. Doan pushes on to the night of the party. He has the woman recite the guest list and the menu, and when she claims poor memory, Doan reminds her that they spoke only ten days earlier in his office.
“At that time, did you tell me that you had ham and cheese, collard greens, corn on the cob, lobster and wine?”
“Yes,” she says, unperturbed.leads her into the events of the party: Frazier’s arrival, his departure to pick up the lobster, his wardrobe on the night of the party.
“What was Mr. Frazier wearing?”
“Beige.”
“Beige?”
“Beige,” she repeats.
“He had beige slacks on?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Beige shirt?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did he have a jacket that he was wearing?”
“Coat,” she says.
“What kind of coat?” asks Doan.
“Beige,” she says.
“Was he wearing anything else beige?”jury laughs. Henson glares at them.
“His hat?” asks Doan.
“It’s like a golf cap.”
“The kind with a brim around the front?” asks Doan.
“Snaps on it,” she says, nodding in agreement., Larry Doan turns the corner on Sharon Henson. He brings out her statement to the detectives as well as her grand jury statement.
“When you spoke to police, didn’t you tell them he was wearing a black waist-length jacket?”
“I spoke to the police,” she says, the change in Doan’s voice making her wary.
“Ma’am, is the answer yes or no?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“Do you remember telling the grand jury what he was wearing?”
“Objection, your honor,” says Polansky.overrules him. “Yes or no?” says the judge.
“They might have asked me,” she says bitterly. “I don’t remember.”so it goes for half an hour, with Doan reading from the transcripts and Sharon Henson claiming to remember nothing.
“Isn’t it true, ma’am, that during the course of the party you had an argument with Mr. Frazier?”
“Yes.”
“And after the argument he left your apartment?”
“No.”
“He never left your apartment?”
“He left for about twenty minutes, yes.”
“And when he came back, what did he do?”
“He continued to mingle with the guests.”
“And he stayed the whole night. This is what you are telling the ladies and gentlemen of the jury?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“And you want them to believe that, right?”is on his feet with the objection.
“Overruled,” says Gordy.which point Sharon Henson looks across the courtroom at Larry Doan and smiles sweetly. It’s as if she actually believes she’s destroying the state’s case; in fact, she is turning all of Paul Polansky’s lawyering to dust.
“Is that right, ma’am?” asks Doan. “You want them to believe that he stayed the whole night with you. Is that right?”
“Well he did.”
“Is your memory of the events of the twenty-second of February clearer today than it would have been on March seventeenth or March tenth of this year?”
“March? No. Yes.”
“Is it clearer today?” says Doan, showing his irritation.
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