Overkill

TERESA: I don’t know.

JAYWALKER: You knew him three or four years, yet you never learned his last name?

TERESA: Yeah. It’s like that on the street. You know people by their first names, or maybe their nicknames.

JAYWALKER: I see. What were some of the other first names or nicknames of the members of the gang?

DARCY: Objection to the term “gang.” There’s been absolutely no testimony-

THE COURT: Sustained. Rephrase the question.

JAYWALKER: Sure. Ms. Morales, it’s true that you used to hang out with Victor and Sandro and some other guys, right?

TERESA: Sort of.

JAYWALKER: And that’s what you were doing the day the guys were going like this [demonstrating] outside the barbershop? Not doing anything illegal, just hanging out like a gang of friends. Right?

TERESA: Yes.

DARCY: Objection, again, to the word “gang.”

THE COURT: Well, the witness seems to have agreed with Mr. Jaywalker’s terminology. So your objection is overruled.

JAYWALKER: Was Victor there that day?

TERESA: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Sandro?

TERESA: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Who else?

TERESA: Shorty. Diego. Mousey. Maybe a couple of others. I don’t remember.

JAYWALKER: How many of them were wearing their Raiders jackets that day?

TERESA: Excuse me?

By sneaking the question in unexpectedly, Jaywalker had hoped to camouflage its importance from Teresa and get not only a number out of her, but an acknowledgment that the group referred to themselves as the Raiders. But she hadn’t bitten. He asked her a few innocuous questions before taking another stab at it.

JAYWALKER: Whose idea was it to call the group the Raiders?

Not “Did the group have a name?” or “Was the group called the Raiders?” or even “Wasn’t the group called the Raiders?” Put any of those ways, the question not only telegraphed its own significance but could be answered with a simple “no.” But by phrasing it in such a way as to assume that the group was called the Raiders, asking instead the completely irrelevant question of whose idea that had been, Jaywalker hoped to slide it by Teresa and get her to identify the person. In so doing, of course, she’d be agreeing with the assumption.

He also needed to slide it past Katherine Darcy. A question that contains an assumption not established by the evidence is improper. The oft-cited example is “When did you stop beating your wife?” But Jaywalker had burned Darcy a few minutes earlier over his inclusion of the word gang in several of his questions. Granted, her initial objection had been sustained, but a moment later he’d gotten Teresa to concede that she and her friends had been just that. Darcy had won the skirmish but lost the battle, and Jaywalker guessed that this time she’d be gun-shy and let the question be answered without objecting. And in fact, she did.

But Teresa didn’t.

TERESA: We didn’t call ourselves anything.

JAYWALKER: Well, weren’t you aware that other people called you the Raiders?

TERESA: I wouldn’t know.

JAYWALKER: But members of the gang-I’m sorry, the group-did wear Raiders jackets, didn’t they?

TERESA: Not that I’m aware of.

Twice burned, Jaywalker gave up on the Raiders and got back to Sandro. He asked Teresa if she knew what he did for a living. She said she didn’t, that she hadn’t been aware that he’d had a job of any sort.

JAYWALKER: In all of the three or four years you knew him, he never once went to work?

TERESA: Not that I remember.

JAYWALKER: Never talked about working?

TERESA: No.

JAYWALKER: And that’s because Sandro supported himself by selling drugs, didn’t he?

TERESA: I don’t know.

Jaywalker stared at her, letting her words hang in the air for a few seconds.

JAYWALKER: Were you ever aware of a relationship between Sandro and Miranda, the young woman who was with Jeremy the day of the shooting?

TERESA: Sandro once told me he was seeing her.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever see the two of them together, Sandro and Miranda?

TERESA: What do you mean, together?

JAYWALKER: Well, not when the group was chasing Jeremy, or pretending their fingers were guns and-

DARCY: Objection.

THE COURT: Sustained.

JAYWALKER: I mean “together” like man and woman, like you and Victor. Did you ever see Sandro and Miranda like that?

TERESA: No.

JAYWALKER: Never?

TERESA: Never.

He took her through the barbershop incident, making her repeat some of the names the group had called Jeremy by, and some of the taunts they’d hurled his way. He had her describe how the owner had come out and finally gotten them to leave.

JAYWALKER: Even as they were leaving, they said things to Jeremy, didn’t they?

TERESA: Yes.

JAYWALKER: What did they say?

TERESA: “We’ll get you next time.”

JAYWALKER: Excuse me?

TERESA: “We’ll see you next time.”

JAYWALKER: Well which was it, “We’ll see you” or “We’ll get you”?

TERESA: “We’ll see you.”

Jaywalker had heard her correctly the first time, of course. He just wanted to make sure the jurors had.

JAYWALKER: And that day at the barbershop, that wasn’t the first time the group had chased Jeremy and threatened to get him, was it?

TERESA: No.

JAYWALKER: It had happened a number of times that summer, hadn’t it?

TERESA: A few times.