Chapter 29
I SPENT THE break conferring with Lorna and Jack.
Cisco had left court to take up the watch on Naomi Kitchens and her daughter at the two-bedroom hotel suite we had booked for them at the Huntington in Pasadena.
To throw off Tidalwaiv or the defense team if they were trying to find them, they were booked under pseudonyms, and the hotel was located ten miles from the courthouse in which the case was being tried.
Most witnesses appearing in trials in downtown cases were stashed in nearby hotels so they could be brought to the courtroom on short notice.
Standing at the railing of the gallery, we talked about shuffling the lineup.
My pretrial plan for day one had been to start with Detective Clarke’s testimony and then go to the Coltons, Trisha first, followed by Bruce.
I would end the day with Brenda Randolph touching every juror’s heart with her testimony about her daughter and what her loss had meant.
But a trial is a fluid thing. I’ve never had one that went exactly according to plan.
I could already see that the jury had warmed to Clarke and seemed to be hanging on every word of testimony about his investigation.
This was real life, not TV, and they were eating it up.
I didn’t want to cut him short, but keeping him on would push my trial schedule back.
“The last thing we want is to end the day with Bruce Colton on the stand,” I said. “Even if I tightly control the questions, he’s not going to come off as sympathetic to the jury. I don’t want them going home thinking about him and how he taught his son to shoot a gun.”
“Well, if that’s what happens, you’ll at least be starting off tomorrow with a bang—no pun intended,” McEvoy said. “I mean, Brenda will be very sympathetic, right?”
“She will,” I said. “But it’s better to end each day with a bang. Jurors go home thinking about the last thing they heard. And they’re going to assign some blame to Bruce.”
“That’s for sure,” Lorna chimed in. “So I think you stretch out Clarke and then you go to Brenda and run with her to the bell. Tomorrow you flip the Coltons. You go with Bruce first and get it out of the way while the jury is still waking up in their seats. Then Trisha, and you start building back the sympathy.”
I nodded. Lorna was not a jury consultant by training, but she always seemed to have her finger on the pulse of the jurors, how they were viewing a trial and receiving the testimony as it progressed.
Sometimes I was so deeply entrenched in keeping momentum and focusing on the witness in front of me that I didn’t take that pulse.
That was why I always wanted Lorna in the courtroom when I had a jury case.
“A lot will depend on how much the Mason boys want to do with Clarke,” I said. “They can probably guess how I’m going to lay out our case. I think Marcus will take Clarke, and he might try to stall things with his cross and not let me get to Brenda.”
“How much can he do with Clarke?” Lorna asked. “It’s the investigation. He’s only objected twice so far and both were bullshit.”
“Yeah, well, that’s going to change now,” I said. “When I get to the Clair of it all, he’ll be jumping up like it’s musical chairs.”
I wasn’t far off on that prediction. When the trial reconvened after the break and Douglas Clarke returned to the witness stand, I went right to the post-arrest part of his investigation.
“Detective, did you move on to other cases after Aaron Colton was safely taken into custody?” I asked.
“No, not at all,” Clarke said.
“Do you mean there were other suspects?”
“No, from the witnesses, we knew we had a lone shooter. But we needed to gather all the evidence and understand what had happened and why.”
“And did you make a final determination on what had happened and why?”
Marcus Mason stood and objected.
“Your Honor, the criminal case is still being litigated,” he said. “There can be no final determination until the prosecution of Aaron Colton is concluded.”
“I’m going to sustain that,” the judge said.
I could have argued the ruling but I knew Mason’s objection could not stop me from getting what I wanted from Clarke.
“Detective,” I said. “Why was it important for you to determine what exactly happened and why?”
“Well, the suspect was a juvenile,” Clarke said. “I knew from working juvenile cases in the past that the district attorney’s office was going to need all the physical and psychological evidence available in order to decide how to proceed with the case.”
From the lectern I looked down at Marcus Mason, waiting for him to object. He remained still and quiet.
“What was the key piece of evidence you recovered in your effort to understand what had happened and why?” I then asked.
“Without a doubt,” Clarke said, “it was—”
“Objection,” Mason said. “What Detective Clarke thinks was the key piece of evidence is irrelevant, Judge.”
“Overruled,” Ruhlin said. “You may answer, Detective Clarke.”
When a judge does not explain why an objection is overruled, it is usually because the objection is so specious as to be unworthy of further discussion.
“I considered Aaron Colton’s laptop computer to be very significant in terms of understanding what had happened,” Clarke said.
“What did you find on the laptop, Detective?” I asked.
“That Aaron Colton spent several hours a day on an app that contained an AI companion.”
“Just for the record, when you say ‘AI’ in your testimony, you mean artificial intelligence, correct?”
“Yes, correct.”
“What was the name of the app he was spending so much time on?”
“The app was called Clair two-point-two. But he customized the AI companion and named it Wren. There’s an option that allows you to build your own avatar and name it.”
“And this was the avatar you saw on Aaron’s laptop screen when you broke into his room and arrested him?”
“Yes, it was.”
“When you say he spent several hours a day on this app, do you mean he was talking with Wren?”
“Yes, they conversed throughout the time he was online. We also learned that he and Wren had communicated by text on his cell phone.”
“A moment, Your Honor.”
I opened a folder I had taken to the lectern with me.
It was thick with paper-clipped sections of printed pages.
I took the first four and asked the judge if I could approach the witness with a document.
Ruhlin approved and I gave one copy to the clerk to give to the judge, one copy to the Masons, and one copy to the detective.
I returned to the lectern, holding the last copy.
“Detective, take a moment to review those three pages to see if you recognize the conversation that is transcribed,” I said.
Marcus Mason immediately stood and objected, holding the paper-clipped packet out to his side with two fingers as if he were holding a rat by its tail.
“Your Honor, what is the foundation for this?” he asked. “This was not in any discovery materials submitted by the plaintiffs.”
“Mr. Haller?” Ruhlin asked, one eyebrow raised above her glasses. “Was this included in plaintiffs’ discovery material?”
“No, Your Honor, it was not,” I said. “This is a transcript of the last conversation Aaron Colton had with Wren, his AI companion. And perhaps the greater question for the court is why it was not in the defendant’s discovery material, since the transcript came from their digital archives and the court was very clear in approving the discovery request from the plaintiffs for all materials related to Aaron Colton. ”
Ruhlin sent a furtive glance to the jury box, which told me she did not want this issue aired in front of the jurors.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she said, “I hate to take a break so soon after we just had a break, but I need to confer with the attorneys in chambers. Please stretch your legs but don’t go too far.
I’m hoping this won’t take long. Deputy Marshal Chacon will round you up when we are ready to proceed again. Stay close.”
Two minutes later we were seated in front of the judge’s desk. She held the transcript in her hand and looked perturbed.
“Mr. Haller,” she said. “This… document is not marked as evidence by the police department or the district attorney’s office, so I assume that it did not come from them.
You just said in front of the jury that it did not come to you in discovery from the defendant in this case either. Where did you get this, sir?”
I nodded. I had known this question would come as soon as I opened the file on the lectern.
“I don’t know, Your Honor,” I said.
Marcus Mason leaned forward and timidly raised his hand. The judge waved as if to brush him away.
“Mr. Haller, that is not an acceptable answer,” she said.
“Judge, it is the truth,” I said. “Someone, I don’t know who, left a digital hard drive in my car one day when I left it unlocked while I ran into a business on a quick errand.
I came out, there it was on the seat, and I did not see who had left it.
I gave the hard drive to members of my team and they discovered that it contained what appeared to be the entire contents of Aaron Colton’s laptop, much of which was not given to the plaintiffs in discovery despite the court’s order.
Now, I know my friend Marcus here is going to make his claim about proprietary and intellectual property protections, but how would chat logs between an AI companion and a sixteen-year-old boy be protected by that leaking umbrella? ”
Ruhlin shifted her eyes to Marcus.
“Do you wish to respond, Mr. Mason?” she asked.
“Your Honor, even if you believe that story about someone just dropping off this drive in his car, it was still his duty under the rules of the court to offer it in discovery,” Mason said. “It should therefore be disallowed.”
The judge smirked.
“Sometimes I’m amazed by the actions and arguments of the attorneys who appear before me,” she said.
“And sometimes I’m appalled. Mr. Mason, I find your argument specious at best. You want me to disallow discovery that the plaintiff should have received from you but didn’t and obtained by other means, whatever they happened to be. ”
“Your Honor,” Marcus said. “Can I—”
“Don’t interrupt me,” Ruhlin said. “Mr. Haller, I assume your plan is to offer additional transcripts in evidence after this?”
“Yes, Your Honor, that is my plan,” I said.
“If Detective Clarke authenticates this transcript, I will allow it,” she said. “He will have to authenticate those that follow.”
“He will, Your Honor,” I said.
“Your Honor, may I speak?” Marcus said.
“You may,” Ruhlin said.
“The defense requests that the trial be paused while the court’s ruling is taken on appeal,” Marcus said.
“You are free to appeal the court’s decision, Mr. Mason,” Ruhlin said. “But we are not going to stop this trial. You may return to the courtroom now. I’ll be bringing the jury back in and we will continue testimony in five minutes.”
We headed back to the courtroom, leaving the judge seated at her desk reading the transcript.
The judge’s ruling was such a stunning rebuke of Mason’s plea that I didn’t have the heart to whisper a taunt in his ear from behind.
There was nothing I could say that would do more damage to him than the judge had just done.
This was a David and Goliath moment. This was when I knew that I might be about to take down a giant.