“Your Honor,” I said, “even in Charleston, that kind of data was at best only accurate to within a few blocks, and there’s a lot more cell towers there than there are down here in Basking Rock. A few blocks here is the difference between the marina and the beach.”
“Okay,” he said. “Mr. Ruiz, unless you can trot an expert in here to show us why that’s reliable, I’m just going to consider that data neutral. So it doesn’t point one way or the other as far as telling us if he was or wasn’t there. What else you got for us, Mr. Ruiz?”
I said, “Thank you, Your Honor.” While Ruiz conferred with his second chair, I scribbled a note to myself to move to exclude that data at trial.
Ruiz then told the court he had some witnesses to present. The first was Karl’s brother Tim. Ruiz had apparently spruced him up; a suit would’ve been too much, but he was wearing a collared shirt that looked brand-new. He testified about the supposed Christmas dinner death threat. It looked like Ruiz was going to paint Jackson as a kid with a grudge and then use Detective Blount’s testimony to show Jackson had finally carried it out. Ruiz needed the grudge to help show it wasn’t manslaughter. A murder charge required malice aforethought.
When my turn came, I said, “Morning, Tim. You mind if I call you by your first name?”
He stared at me like he was noticing me for the first time and said, “I talked to you before!”
“Yessir. Uh, Your Honor, for the record, I spoke to the victim’s brothers as part of my investigation.”
Judge Chambliss said, “Uh-huh. Noted.”
Tim said, “I asked you about the insurance, and you never did get back to me.”
“I’m happy to address your concerns at a different time,” I said, “but for now, we got this whole courtroom full of people waiting to look into your brother’s death.”
“Jackson did it,” he said.
I heard Ruiz sigh.
Judge Chambliss said, “Mr. Warton, we’re not asking for your opinion on the ultimate issue here. I’m gonna ask you to just answer the questions put to you.”
If this was the Warton brother Ruiz chose to put on the stand, I thought, the other one must’ve been even harder to control.
“Okay,” I said, “so back to your name. There’s a number of Mr. Wartons in this case, so to keep things clear, could I just call you by your first name?”
“Everybody else does.”
“Thank you. Now, Tim, at this point I’m not questioning your recollection of what was said, but I do want to ask, was that the only time in your life you ever heard anybody say they wished somebody was dead?”
He laughed. “Oh, hell no.” He glanced at the judge’s young clerk. “Sorry, ma’am. Heck no.”
I felt the mood in the courtroom lighten. I smiled as I said, “People say that a lot, ain’t that true?”
“Well, yeah. But—”
“And you’ve probably said it yourself, right?”
“Sure, but—”
“And did you then go out and murder anybody?”
“No, of course not.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Thank you, Tim. Now, getting back to that Christmas dinner, isn’t it true that Karl nearly died that night? From choking?”
“Yes, it is,” he said. “He turned blue and everything. I thought he was done for.”
“And isn’t it true that Jackson did the Heimlich maneuver on him?”
“The what?”
“The, uh, where you come up behind someone who’s choking and kind of punch them in the gut—”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, he did that.”
“So Jackson did the Heimlich maneuver to save his father. And did it work?”
“Yes, it did.”
“So isn’t it true, then, that—regardless of what he or anyone else may have said—Jackson, watching Karl about to die, chose to save his life?”
“Well, that one time, yes.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I have no further questions.”
As I walked back to my table, Ruiz would not meet my eye. In the front row, Mazie was smiling at me. I gave her a nod.
I sat down, wondering why Ruiz had put Tim on the stand. If he’d done any witness prep at all, I didn’t see how he could’ve not known the Heimlich maneuver story. Why would he put a witness up whose own testimony could blow a hole the size of a 747 in the prosecution’s allegation that Jackson wanted his father dead? I scribbled on my notes to call Tim to the stand myself if Ruiz didn’t put him on his trial witness list.
Next up was the police detective who’d found Jackson’s pothead podcast. At trial, I was going to object the hell out of that, and I expected the judge would exclude it. Ruiz had to know that. I didn’t appreciate his taking advantage of a preliminary hearing, where the rules of evidence didn’t strictly apply, to parade this junk before the assembled crowd.
Next, Ruiz tried to call Mazie. I objected.
“Your Honor,” Ruiz said, “the defendant and the victim were involved in a physical fight on the night of the murder. She was a witness to that.”
“She was inside,” I said. “The fight was mainly outside, on the porch. We’ll stipulate that a fight occurred.” I doubted it would help Jackson’s case to let Ruiz grill his weeping mother. Testimony from emotionally distraught witnesses could go haywire fast.
Judge Chambliss said, “I think that’s sufficient. Or do we need specifics, Mr. Ruiz? A time of day?”
Ruiz said, “About six in the evening, Your Honor. And afterward, the victim left.”
“We’ll stip to that,” I said.
The last witness was Detective Blount. As he took the stand, in uniform, I wished their witness could’ve been almost any other cop. Blount was square-jawed, with ramrod posture and blond hair in a crew cut. He could’ve played an experienced cop who took his job seriously on any TV crime show.
On direct, he told his story well, with the right amount of detail and zero fluff. Ruiz didn’t ask what time he’d seen Jackson,
