Life for Waggy is never boring.
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“IS THE DEFENSE READY?” is Hatchet’s question for me. The presiding judge asks that at the opening of every trial, and I have answered “yes” every time. And every single one of those times I have been lying.
No defense team, at least when I’ve been in charge of it, has ever been ready. I always want more time, more information, and more exculpatory evidence. But I never have it, so I just always answer “yes.”
I have coached and prepared Steven as well as I can for what is about to take place, and he claims to be ready. But he isn’t. He’s going to watch and listen as the state of New Jersey, using all its power, attempts to take his life and liberty away. No sane person can be fully ready for that.
“This is really a very simple case. Murder cases are not always like that. They can often be very complicated, with a lot of cross-currents, and conflicting motivations, and evidence that is not always clear-cut. But that’s not what we have here.”
This is how Richard Wallace begins his opening statement to the jury. Richard is not a powerful or particularly eloquent speaker, but he brings an authenticity to the process that makes juries want to believe him.
“Steven Timmerman had a falling-out with his father, Walter Timmerman. That can happen between fathers and their sons, and usually differences can be worked out, but sometimes not. There was a unique economic component to these differences, though. You see, Walter Timmerman was worth almost half a billion dollars, and he was threatening to take Steven out of his will.
“Now, Steven’s job was making furniture, making it by hand, and while that may be a noble enterprise, one would have to make a lot of tables and chairs to earn half a billion dollars.
“So the evidence will show that Steven arranged a meeting with his father in downtown Paterson, an area that was foreign to both of them. We don’t know what he said to get his father to go there, but we do know that once they arrived, he killed him with one bullet through the head. Evidence will place Steven there, and will show that Walter’s blood was found in Steven’s car.
“But that didn’t accomplish what Steven wanted, because he was to find out that the will had already been changed. And the way it was structured, the only way Steven would get the money is if he outlived his stepmother, a stepmother whom the evidence will show he hated.
“Well, that was no problem for Steven. He argued with his stepmother at her house, and fifteen minutes after he left the house it blew up in a massive explosion and killed her. And the evidence will further show that Steven was an expert in the type of explosive that was used.
“So that left nothing standing between Steven and his father’s fortune. Nothing except you.”
When Richard finishes, it becomes my job to convince the jury that there are two sides to the story, that their natural instinct to call a vote and send Steven to prison for life is somewhat premature.
I’ve never quite been in this position before. My financial situation allows me to take only cases in which I think the client is worth defending, which means I think he or she is innocent. But it is always simply my belief that my cause is just; I could never be positive about it.
This time I am positive. I know Steven didn’t kill his father, because I know who did. Yet there is no way for me to tell this jury what I know; it is unlikely they will ever hear the name Jimmy Childs. Even if I revealed the circumstances behind Marcus’s encounter with Childs, it would not be admissible at trial, because it would correctly be ruled hearsay.
My allowing Childs to be killed that night altered this trial in a way I never dreamed possible, and in the process seriously imperiled my client. It is tremendously frustrating, and dramatically increases the pressure I feel to successfully defend Steven.
“Steven Timmerman has not killed anyone,” is how I start. “He has also never assaulted anyone, or robbed anyone, or defrauded anyone, or cheated on his tax returns, or gotten a speeding ticket. There is absolutely nothing in his background, nothing whatsoever, that makes it remotely conceivable that he could have done the horrible things that he is accused of.
“Money has never been important to Steven. He has never taken a dime of his father’s money, though he was given many an opportunity to do so. He declined a lucrative offer to work in his father’s company, choosing instead to follow his artistic instincts and make furniture.
“The truth is, Steven’s lack of interest in his fortune drove Walter Timmerman a bit crazy, and he kept taking Steven out of his will in a futile effort to control his son. Yes, Steven was taken out of his father’s will nine times, but it never worked, and each time he was put back in. It makes absolutely no sense to believe that this particular time he was driven to murder.
“Walter Timmerman was an extraordinary scientist, and his work has had an enormously beneficial effect on the state of our health, and the state of our justice system. It brought him wealth and acclaim, and all of it was well deserved.
“For much of the last year of his life, Walter Timmerman worked in secret, worked on a project so significant that he kept it from everyone around him. It is reasonable to assume that the work was of tremendous importance, and the evidence will show that the FBI was monitoring him closely.
“It is in that work that deadly dangers lurked, not in the supposed resentment of a son who never displayed any resentment whatsoever. Walter Timmerman feared for his life, and sought to protect himself. But the forces aligned against him were ultimately too great, and those forces had nothing to do with his son.
“Steven Timmerman has been made to look like a villain, and stands accused as a murderer. He has lost his father, and his stepmother, and he is in danger of losing his freedom. I hope and believe that after you hear all the facts of this case, and consider them carefully, you will make sure that does not happen. Thank you.”
As his first witness, Richard calls Alex Durant, the guard who was on duty the day the house exploded. He is as large as I remember him, and seems about to burst through the buttons of his suit. My guess is that it’s the suit he wore to his senior prom, minus the corsage.
Richard painstakingly takes Durant through the events of the morning, making him detail the procedures he and his associates went through to make sure no one dangerous made it to the house. He has logs that he refers to that show when various people arrived, including me.
“Once Steven went into the house, did you hear any conversations that he might have had?” Richard asks.
“Yes. I could hear him arguing with Mrs. Timmerman. He was screaming at her, and she was screaming back at him.”
“Do you know what it was about?”
Durant shakes his head. “No.”
“Had you ever heard them argue before?”
“Yes,” Durant says, “it happened pretty often.”
Finally, Richard leads him to the moment of the explosion, and Durant says that he was in the guardhouse at the main gate at the time.
“How long after Steven Timmerman left did the explosion take place?” Richard asks.
“Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes,” Durant says.
“Did you have any conversation with him as he was leaving?”
Durant nods. “Yes. I had noticed that his right front tire was low, and I asked him if he wanted to wait a minute. We had a pump and could fill it for him.”
“And did he want to wait for that?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Did he say why?”
“He said he was in a hurry, and that he’d deal with it later when he had more time.”
“Thank you. No further questions.”
Durant has done us considerable damage, and he unfortunately has done so by telling the truth. It makes my job of shaking him that much harder. There is no sense going after him on the facts of the day as he’s described them, because he did so accurately.
“Mr. Durant,” I start, “how long did you work for Walter Timmerman?”