The Reversal

Jessup today on the drive down. Got me thinking and it crossed my mind that if we jam this guy into a deal, the lawsuit against the city and county goes away because a guy who admits to murder isn’t going to be able to sue and claim he was railroaded. So I guess what I want to know is what we’re really doing here. Are we trying to put a murder suspect on trial or are we just trying to save the city and county a few million bucks?”
    I noticed Maggie’s posture straighten as she considered the same thing.
    “You gotta be kidding me,” she said. “If that—”
    “Hold on, hold on,” I interjected. “Let’s be cool about this. I don’t think that’s the case here, okay? It’s not that I haven’t thought about it but Williams didn’t say one word about going for a dispo on this case. He told me to take it to trial. In fact, he assumes it will go to trial for the same reason you just mentioned. Jessup will never take a dispo for time served or anything else because there is no pot of gold in that. No book, no movie, no payout from the city. If he wants the money, he’s got to go to trial and win.”
    Maggie nodded slowly as if weighing a valid supposition. Bosch didn’t seem appeased at all.
    “But how would you know what Williams is up to?” he asked. “You’re an outsider. They could’ve brought you in, wound you up and pointed you in the right direction and then sat back to watch you go.”
    “He’s right,” Maggie added. “Jessup doesn’t even have a defense attorney. As soon as he does he’ll start talking deal.”
    I raised my hands in a calming gesture.
    “Look, at the press conference today. I threw out that we were going for the death penalty. I just did that to see how Williams would react. He didn’t expect it and afterward he pressed me in the hallway. He told me that it wasn’t a decision I got to make. I told him it was just strategy, that I wanted Jessup to start thinking about a deal. And it gave Williams pause. He didn’t see it. If he was thinking of a deal just to blow up the civil action, I would have been able to read it. I’m good at reading people.”
    I could tell I still hadn’t quite won Bosch over.
    “Remember last year, with the two men from Hong Kong who wanted your ass on the next plane to China? I read them right and I played them right.”
    In his eyes I saw Bosch relent. That China story was a reminder that he owed me one and I was collecting.
    “Okay,” he said. “So what do we do?”
    “We assume Jessup’s going to go to trial. As soon as he lawyers up, we’ll know for sure. But we start preparing for it now, because if I was going to represent him, I would refuse to waive speedy trial. I would try to jam the prosecution on time to prepare and make the people put up or shut up.”
    I checked the date on my watch.
    “If I’m right, that gives us forty-eight days till trial. We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then.”
    We looked at one another and sat in silence for a few moments before I threw the lead to Maggie.
    “Maggie has spent the better part of the last week with the prosecution file on this. Harry, I know what you just brought in will have a lot of overlap. But why don’t we start here by having Mags go through the case as presented at trial in ’eighty-six? I think that will give us a good starting point of looking at what we need to do this time out.”
    Bosch nodded his approval and I signaled for Maggie to begin. She pulled her laptop over in front of her.
    “Okay, a couple of basics first. Because it was a death penalty case, jury selection was the longest part of the trial. Almost three weeks. The trial itself lasted seven days and then there were three days of deliberation on the initial verdicts, then the death penalty phase went another two weeks. But seven days of testimony and arguments—that to me is fast for a capital murder case. It was pretty cut-and-dried. And the defense… well, there wasn’t much of a defense.”
    She looked at me as if I were responsible for the poor defense of the accused, even though I hadn’t even gotten out of law school by ’eighty-six.
    “Who was his lawyer?” I asked.
    “Charles Barnard,” she said. “I checked with the California bar. He won’t be handling the retrial. He’s listed as deceased as of ’ninety-four. The prosecutor, Gary Lintz, is also long gone.”
    “Don’t remember either of them. Who was the judge?”
    “Walter Sackville. He’s long retired