riding in a car but I thought looking at the small screen of Levin’s player while bumping along south county streets might give me a dose of motion sickness.
Levin started the DVD and gave a running commentary to go with the visuals.
On the small screen was a downward view of the rectangular-shaped bar at Morgan’s. There were two bartenders on patrol, both women in black jeans and white shirts tied off to show flat stomachs, pierced navels and tattoos creeping up out of their rear belt lines. As Levin had explained, the camera was angled toward the back of the bar area and cash register but the mirror that covered the wall behind the register displayed the line of customers sitting at the bar. I saw Louis Roulet sit down by himself in the dead center of the frame. There was a frame counter in the bottom left corner and a time and date code in the right corner. It said that it was 8:11 P.M. on March 6.
“There’s Louis showing up,” Levin said. “And over here is Reggie Campo.”
He manipulated buttons on the player and froze the image. He then shifted it, bringing the right margin into the center. On the short side of the bar to the right a woman and a man sat next to each other. Levin zoomed in on them.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
I had only seen pictures of the woman with her face badly bruised and swollen.
“Yeah, it’s her. And that’s our Mr. X.”
“Okay.”
“Now watch.”
He started the film moving again and widened the picture back to full frame. He then started moving it in fast- forward mode.
“Louis drinks his martini, he talks with the bartenders and nothing much happens for almost an hour,” Levin said.
He checked a notebook page that had notes attributed to specific frame numbers. He slowed the image to normal speed at the right moment and shifted the frame again so that Reggie Campo and Mr. X were in the center of the screen. I noticed that we had advanced to 8:43 on the time code.
On the screen Mr. X took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter off the bar and slid off his stool. He then walked out of camera range to the right.
“He’s heading to the front door,” Levin said. “They have a smoking porch in the front.”
Reggie Campo appeared to watch Mr. X go and then she slid off her stool and started walking along the front of the bar, just behind the patrons on stools. As she passed by Roulet she appeared to drag the fingers of her left hand across his shoulders, almost in a tickling gesture. This made Roulet turn and watch her as she kept going.
“She just gave him a little flirt there,” Levin said. “She’s heading to the bathroom.”
“That’s not how Roulet said it went down,” I said. “He claimed she came on to him, gave him her -”
“Just hold your horses,” Levin said. “She’s got to come back from the can, you know.”
I waited and watched Roulet at the bar. I checked my watch. I was doing okay for the time being but I couldn’t miss the calendar call at the CCB. I had already pushed the judge’s patience to the max by not showing up the day before.
“Here she comes,” Levin said.
Leaning closer to the screen I watched as Reggie Campo came back along the bar line. This time when she got to Roulet she squeezed up to the bar between him and a man on the next stool to the right. She had to move into the space sideways and her breasts were clearly pushed against Roulet’s right arm. It was a come-on if I had ever seen one. She said something and Roulet bent over closer to her lips to hear. After a few moments he nodded and then I saw her put what looked like a crumpled cocktail napkin into his hand. They had one more verbal exchange and then Reggie Campo kissed Louis Roulet on the cheek and pulled backwards away from the bar. She headed back to her stool.
“You’re beautiful, Mish,” I said, using the name I gave him after he told me of his mishmash of Jewish and Mexican descent.
“And you say the cops don’t have this?” I added.
“They didn’t know about it last week when I got it and I still have the tape. So, no, they don’t have it and probably don’t know about it yet.”
Under the rules of discovery, I would need to turn it over to the prosecution after Roulet was formally arraigned. But there was still some play in that. I didn’t technically have to turn over anything until I was sure I planned to use it in trial. That gave me a lot of leeway and time.
I knew that what was on the DVD was important and no doubt would be used in trial. All by itself it could be cause for reasonable doubt. It seemed to show a familiarity between victim and alleged attacker that was not included in the state’s case. More important, it also caught the victim in a position in which her behavior could be interpreted as being at least partially responsible for drawing the action that followed. This was not to suggest that what followed was acceptable or not criminal, but juries are always interested in the causal relationships of crime and the individuals involved. What the video did was move a crime that might have been viewed through a black- and-white prism into the gray area. As a defense attorney I lived in the gray areas.
The flip side of that was that the DVD was so good it might be too good. It directly contradicted the victim’s statement to police about not knowing the man who attacked her. It impeached her, showed her in a lie. It only took one lie to knock a case down. The tape was what I called “walking proof.” It would end the case before it even got to trial. My client would simply walk away.
And with him would go the big franchise payday.
Levin was fast-forwarding the image again.
“Now watch this,” he said. “She and Mr. X split at nine. But watch when he gets up.”
Levin had shifted the frame to focus on Campo and the unknown man. When the time code hit 8:59 he put the playback in slow motion.
“Okay, they’re getting ready to leave,” he said. “Watch the guy’s hands.”
I watched. The man took a final draw on his drink, tilting his head far back and emptying the glass. He then slipped off his stool, helped Campo off hers and they walked out of the camera frame to the right.
“What?” I said. “What did I miss?”
Levin moved the image backwards until he got to the moment the unknown man was finishing his drink. He then froze the image and pointed to the screen. The man had his left hand down flat on the bar for balance as he reared back to drink.
“He drinks with his right hand,” he said. “And on his left you can see a watch on his wrist. So it looks like the guy is right-handed, right?”
“Yeah, so? What does that get us? The injuries to the victim came from blows from the left.”
“Think about what I’ve told you.”
I did. And after a few moments I got it.
“The mirror. Everything’s backwards. He’s left-handed.”
Levin nodded and made a punching motion with his left fist.
“This could be the whole case right here,” I said, not sure that was a good thing.
“Happy Saint Paddy’s Day, lad,” Levin said in his brogue again, not realizing I might be staring at the end of the gravy train.
I took a long drink of hot coffee and tried to think about a strategy for the video. I didn’t see any way to hold it for trial. The cops would eventually get around to the follow-up investigations and they would find out about it. If I held on to it, it could blow up in my face.
“I don’t know how I’m going to use it yet,” I said. “But I think it’s safe to say Mr. Roulet and his mother and Cecil Dobbs are going to be very happy with you.”
“Tell them they can always express their thanks financially.”
“All right, anything else on the tape?”
Levin started to fast-forward the playback.
“Not really. Roulet reads the napkin and memorizes the address. He then hangs around another twenty minutes and splits, leaving a fresh drink on the bar.”
He slowed the image down at the point Roulet was leaving. Roulet took one sip out of his fresh martini and put
