He looks at his watch as he’s trying to move around me. “Not now,” he says. “This afternoon we’ll talk about it.”
“You got that, Mr. Tuchio?”
“Got it, Your Honor.”
“I’ll be prepared by then to entertain all arguments. If we need time for points and authorities”-he’s already heading down the hall toward the bench-“it can be arranged. Otherwise I’ll be prepared to enter a ruling on the restaurant video and the contents of the letter at that time. Now, let’s go.”
By ten o’clock, before the midmorning break, you can hear the drumbeat, the resonant pounding like that of Zulu warriors striking spears against their shields on the street outside. Periodically there is the electronic bleep and blare of an emergency vehicle.
Through all this we work with our witness. Fortunately, he is solid.
Robert Stepro is our resident forensics expert, the man who accompanied the envelope and its contents to the crime lab and watched as they processed and examined the bloodied side of the letter and the samples of hair.
This morning Stepro is equipped with enlarged photographs, taken with a macro lens and mounted on poster board, so that minute specks of blood appear the size of a nickel.
I sense that Tuchio has the feeling of a big-league baseball manager, ahead on the scoreboard but with the game about to be called on account of rain.
With the commotion growing outside and the risk that we may have to evacuate the courthouse, Tuchio tells the judge that he’s prepared to stipulate that the bloodied surface of the letter matches the shadow on the leather portfolio and that the letter is in fact the item taken from Scarborough’s hotel room that morning.
I insist on presenting at least the principal evidence, a prima facie case, so that there is no doubt in the minds of jurors when they go in to deliberate.
It’s clear that Tuchio does not intend to contest either this or the hair evidence contained in the envelope. His forensics experts have told him that any dispute over these items is a nonstarter.
It’s also clear that Tuchio has already settled on a changed theory: two killers working in tandem, Carl and a blond compatriot who slipped the envelope under our office door in the middle of the night. He will no doubt embellish this with hints of complicity by our office in order to tip the scales enough that jurors will excuse the inconsistencies in his own case.
In a period of less than two hours, Stepro, using his poster-board photographs on an easel in front of the jury, nails down the comparison evidence of the shadowed leather portfolio and the bloodied letter. The pattern of blood on the back of the letter at the edges where paper meets leather matches perfectly with spots of blood on the portfolio.
You would not have to be a scientist to see that, magnified many times, traces of blood-numerous, minute, oblong ringlets-had been severed by the covering edge of the paper. When the letter was placed back in the shadowed rectangle on the portfolio, these detached ovals were once again complete.
When asked for his opinion, Stepro states, “Better than any fingerprint, the complexity of the pattern and the countless intersecting matches between paper and leather put the issue beyond any possible doubt. The four folded pieces of paper were without question the object that created the shadow on leather.”
Stepro also testifies that examination of the paper reveals that the documents, the four pages, were stapled only one time. Further microscopic inspection of the staple at the folds in the metal where it was bent and closed to bind the pages indicates that it was probably driven in by an electric stapling machine and that, because of the tight closure, it is his opinion that no pages were removed or appear to be missing.
Finally I ask him about fingerprints on the pages and whether any were found.
“We found several fingerprints. I believe there were at least thirty-two full or partial prints on the four pages.”
“Were you able to lift these, and were you able to identify whom they belonged to?”
“We lifted all of them, and they all belonged to the same person, the victim, Terrance Scarborough.”
Ginnis knew exactly what he was doing in the video when he refused to touch the letter over the dinner table in the restaurant. When he finally reached out to dispose of the letter, to get it off the table, he did it with the butter knife, flipping the pages back to Scarborough.
According to Stepro, and included in the police crime lab’s report, is the finding that four small bloody spots on the folded surface of the letter, the spattered side, as well as a single blood spot on the reverse side, show traces of fiber transfer, similar to the spots found on and inside Scarborough’s attache case, evidence of the blood-soaked cotton gloves of the killer.
When I finish with the witness, Tuchio gets up and asks a single question: whether the witness, during the course of his examination of the four pages, examined the writing or read the contents of the communication written on them.
The judge nearly swallows his tongue.
Before I can even object, the witness responds and says, “No. I was instructed by my client not to read the contents of the correspondence for the reason that it was confidential.”
“No further questions.” Tuchio takes his seat.
That he would pop this question in this way tells me two things. One is that Tuchio is as convinced as I am, despite what Quinn may be saying, that the contents of the Jefferson Letter will at some point be admitted into evidence and read to the jury. Second is that if it must come in, Tuchio would prefer that it come in now, before the defense has completed presenting its case. He’s hoping that this might dissipate its effect. Or at least remove it as far as possible from the point of deliberations so that its impact on the jury will be lessened, once they’re sedated a bit by the passage of time, closing arguments, and other evidence.
For the first time I can recall, ever in a trial, the judge has lunch brought in for the lawyers. With the pressure on, he’s not letting any of us out of the courthouse. He tells court staff to stay close, to eat in the cafeteria. The race to a restaurant is not worth the risk of the melee outside, and Quinn wants everybody back in court by one o’clock.
A little past noon, and the rhythmic pounding of demonstrators, the ceaseless chants and yelling, against the pitched wail of electronic sirens outside, has the constancy and power of roiling surf.
It seems to overwhelm, until I realize that there are at least six solid walls of reinforced concrete between those of us in the building and the hell that is happening out on the street. I cannot fathom what the bedlam must sound like there.
Every few minutes Quinn takes reports from one of the senior bailiffs, updating him on the situation on the street in the event that it becomes necessary to evacuate the building. So far there have been no shots fired and no fatalities, but eight officers have been hospitalized and an untold number of civilians have been caught up in the burgeoning battle and injured.
According to the bailiff, a delegation from the local chapter of the NAACP and the National Lawyers Guild have appealed for calm, while another group has appeared at the courthouse’s main entrance and demanded a copy of the Jefferson Letter. One of the deputies, a lieutenant, told them that he would relay their request to the judge, who would take it under advisement.
By one o’clock we’re back in the courtroom. Quinn is running a taut ship at this point, hustling to get the case to the jury before the folks outside can burn the building down. His biggest fear is more revelations regarding the letter. But sooner or later it has to come out.
Our last two witnesses are both educators, one more surprise for Tuchio and, if the letter comes in, what may prove to be a hideous shocker for the nation.
Kathy Lafair is a teacher who also holds a joint degree in clinical and educational psychology and has been tucked into our witness list for months. She has given us nothing in writing that we would have to turn over to the prosecution, though Harry and I know what she will say.
