tried twice. His name was Willie Mays, his parents doubtless hoping he'd become a baseball star instead of a drug dealer with a homicidal streak. Mays was the last murder defendant to walk out of Judge Solomon's courtroom a free man, the last person acquitted before Luber's famous hot streak. A year later, Luber had a second shot at him. Charged in a new case-killing his ex-girlfriend and her infant child-Mays was convicted and sentenced to death. And no wonder, Steve thought, studying the man's hefty rap sheet. Willie Mays had been arrested exactly twenty-four times, equaling his namesake's uniform number. The Florida Supreme Court unanimously affirmed both the conviction and Judge Solomon's sentence.
The second Mays trial had been televised back when that was still a rarity. The local public station had broadcast the trial with expert commentary from various lawyers eager for TV exposure. In the era before Court TV and twenty-four-hour cable stations, this was pretty hot stuff, at least in the legal world.
Now Steve riffled through the appeals papers. One of the public defender's appellate arguments was that the cameras deprived his client of a fair trial. Jurors are intimidated; there's more pressure to convict; the courtroom is turned into a theater. All routine arguments in the 1980's and all routinely denied by Florida's courts.
Steve looked through the exhibits attached to the PD's appellate brief. A bunch of courtroom photos. Several showed TV technicians setting up their equipment. In others, the lawyers were smiling, either for the jury or the cameras. One photo taken just before the trial began caught Steve's attention. The entire jury panel, ninety strong, sitting in the gallery, waiting to be called to answer questions. It struck him then.
He counted five apparent African-Americans. Way underrepresented.
In a capital case in which a black defendant was accused of killing his white ex-girlfriend and their infant daughter, the defense lawyer would crave black jurors.
Steve found a photo of the panel actually seated. Twelve jurors plus two alternates. Two of the African- Americans made it onto the panel, and a third was an alternate. Okay, that seemed to cure the problem, evening out the statistics somewhat.
A nice trick, getting three of five black jurors on the panel, Steve thought. He turned back to the transcript of voir dire. Hank Adornowitz, the defense lawyer, was a veteran of the PD's office. He'd long since retired, but at the time, Adornowitz was considered the top capital crimes defense lawyer on the public payroll.
Steve dug deeper into the transcript and matched up jurors' names with faces in the photos from their position in the jury box. Juror Two, an African-American man wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a tie, without a jacket, turned out to be Leonard Jackson. He owned his own home, worked security at a downtown department store, and served in the military as an MP.
Unless you had an immediate family member killed by violence. Juror Seven, Martha Patterson, an African- American cook in a North Miami restaurant, lost a teenage sister to a drive-by shooting. And the alternate, Charlene Morris, worked as a paramedic and dated a cop.
So, what gives? Why did Adornowitz leave them on? Steve could think of only one answer. With the sea of white faces he had to work with, the PD must have been happy to get any blacks seated.
Still, there was something haunting about that first picture. Steve wished he could study the racial composition of all seventeen trials in Luber's winning streak. But the photos were in the Mays file only to bolster the argument about the prejudicial effect of cameras in the courtroom. Lacking the same appellate issue, the later cases would have no photographs. And there's no way to determine each juror's race from the bare transcripts.
Miami was among the most segregated of cities. Twenty years ago, if you lived in Liberty City or Over-town or the Grand Avenue section of Coconut Grove, there was a high probability you were African-American. Bobby, the little statistician, could easily put the numbers together for him.
And there was one more thing to examine. The videotape of the second Mays trial. Gavel to gavel on the public TV station. An eerie look into the past. A chance to stare through the knothole at his father two decades earlier. That gave Steve a moment of pause.
Sure, he wanted to get his father's Bar license back. Partly to rehabilitate the old man's reputation. Let people call him 'Judge' again without irony or footnotes.
And partly just to prove to his father that he could. It didn't take a shrink to figure out what a son will do to seek his father's approval. But there was something else, too.
If his father was dirty, Steve wanted to know.
If there was to be a wedge between them, he'd prefer it deep enough and wide enough that there'd be no way to bridge the distance.
Thirty-nine
Richard Waddle propped an elbow on the rail of the jury box. 'This is a story about greed and corruption, bribery and murder.'
A strong start, Victoria thought, sitting with perfect posture at the defense table, taking notes. Using the rule of primacy.
The four horsemen of a murder trial. Waddle would drill the jury with the phrase every chance he got. Some lawyers believed in the rule of recency.
'What I'm about to tell you is not evidence,' Richard Waddle said. 'It's a preview of what the evidence will be. It's a shorthand version of the story you are about to hear.'
Opening statement. What lawyers like to call the 'curtain raiser.' They had their twelve jurors plus two alternates, all of whom had just raised their hands and promised to follow the law and the evidence and render a verdict just and true.
'And what's that story about?' Waddle asked rhetorically.
Victoria thought she knew the answer.
'Greed and corruption, bribery and murder,' he answered himself.
'It's a story about a wealthy man with no links to the Keys and no respect for our beautiful string of islands, this emerald necklace reaching into the sea. You folks who live here know we've got to protect the beaches and the mangroves, the turquoise waters and the fragile life beneath the sea. But this defendant came here for another purpose. He's a big man with big plans and he doesn't let anything get in his way. Environmental laws? He'll find a way around them. Bribery laws? He'll violate them with impunity. It's the way he's always done business.'
Victoria had never heard an opening statement quite like it. Waddle hadn't even gotten to the alleged murder and he'd already crossed way over the line into character assassination. She could object, but Steve's advice rang in her ears.
Waddle approached the defense table and pointed at her client. 'That's him, Harold Griffin, sitting with his Miami lawyer.'
Ordering up some home cooking from a dozen local chefs.
'The defendant roared into town like a wave of napalm hitting a row of shotgun shacks. Shock and awe.
That's Harold Griffin. He blasted into the Keys with his private planes and his fancy boats and all that money and he says, 'The rules don't apply to me. I'm Harold Griffin. I do what I want. I bribe public employees, seduce
