The Brass Verdict

said.
    “Apparently,” the judge said. “Banglund – the real one – is being interviewed about it now, but when he was in here he didn’t seem to know anything about this. He said he never got a jury summons in the first place.”
    “So his summons was sort of hijacked and used by this unknown person?” I said.
    The judge nodded.
    “So it appears. The question is why, and the sheriff’s department will hopefully get that answered.”
    “What does this do to the trial?” I asked. “Do we have a mistrial?”
    “I don’t think so. I think we bring the jury out, we explain that number seven’s been excused for reasons they don’t need to know about, we drop in the first alternate and go from there. Meantime, the sheriff’s department quietly makes damn sure everybody else in that box is exactly who they are supposed to be. Mr. Golantz?”
    Golantz nodded thoughtfully before speaking.
    “This is all rather shocking,” he said. “But I think the state would be prepared to continue – as long as we find out that this whole thing stops at juror number seven.”
    “Mr. Haller?”
    I nodded my approval. The session had gone as I had hoped.
    “I’ve got witnesses from as far as Paris in town and ready to go. I don’t want a mistrial. My client doesn’t want a mistrial.”
    The judge sealed the deal with a nod.
    “Okay, go on back out there and we’ll get this thing going in ten minutes.”
    On the way down the hall to the courtroom Golantz whispered a threat to me.
    “He’s not the only one who’s going to investigate this, Haller.”
    “Yeah, what’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means when we find this bastard we’re also going to find out what he was doing on the jury. And if there is any tie to the defense, then I’m go-”
    I pushed by him toward the door to the courtroom. I didn’t need to listen to the rest.
    “Good for you, Jeff,” I said as I entered the courtroom.
    I didn’t see Stallworth and hoped the deputy had gone out into the hallway as I had instructed and was waiting. Elliot was all over me when I got to the defense table.
    “What happened? What’s going on?”
    I used my hand to signal him to keep his voice down. I then whispered to him.
    “Juror number seven didn’t show up today and the judge looked into it and found out he was a phony.”
    Elliot stiffened and looked like somebody had just pressed a letter opener two inches into his back.
    “My God, what does this mean?”
    “For us, nothing. The trial continues with an alternate juror in his place. But there will be an investigation of who number seven was, and hopefully, Walter, it doesn’t come to your door.”
    “I don’t see how it could. But we can’t go on now. You have to stop this. Get a mistrial.”
    I looked at the pleading look on my client’s face and realized he’d never had any faith in his own defense. He had been counting solely on the sleeping juror.
    “The judge said no on a mistrial. We go with what we’ve got.”
    Elliot rubbed a shaking hand over his mouth.
    “Don’t worry, Walter. You’re in good hands. We’re going to win this thing fair and square.”
    Just then the clerk called the courtroom to order and the judge bounded up the steps to the bench.
    “Okay, back on the record with
California versus Elliot,
” he said. “Let’s bring in our jury.”

Forty-eight
    The first witness for the defense was Julio Muniz, the freelance videographer from Topanga Canyon who got the jump on the rest of the local media and arrived ahead of the pack at the Elliot house on the day of the murders. I quickly established through my questions how Muniz made his living. He worked for no network or local news channel. He listened to police scanners in his home and car and picked up addresses for crime scenes and active police situations. He responded to these scenes with his video camera and took film he then sold to the local news broadcasts that had not responded. In regard to the Elliot case, it began for him when he heard a call-out for a homicide team on his scanner and went to the address with his camera.
    “Mr. Muniz, what did you do when you arrived there?” I asked.
    “Well, I got my camera out and started shooting. I noticed that they had somebody in the back of the patrol car and I thought that was probably a suspect. So I shot him and then I shot the deputies stringing crime scene tape across the front of the property, things like that.”
    I then introduced the digital