The Reversal

jury selection preparing the questions I would ask my witnesses. As a defense attorney I am used to cross-examining the state’s witnesses and picking at the testimony brought forward by the prosecutor. It’s a task quite different from direct examination and building the foundation for the introduction of evidence and exhibits. I fully acknowledge that it is easier to knock something down than to build it in the first place. But in this case I would be the builder and I came prepared.
    “The People call William Johnson.”
    I turned to the back of the courtroom. As I had gone to the lectern Bosch had left the courtroom to retrieve Johnson from a witness waiting room. He now returned with the man in tow. Johnson was small and thin with a dark mahogany complexion. He was fifty-nine but his pure white hair made him look older. Bosch walked him through the gate and then pointed him in the direction of the witness stand. He was quickly sworn in by the court clerk.
    I had to admit to myself that I was nervous. I felt what Maggie had tried to describe to me on more than one occasion when we were married. She always called it the burden of proof . Not the legal burden. But the psychic burden of knowing that you stood as representative of all the people. I had always dismissed her explanations as self-serving. The prosecutor was always the overdog. The Man. There was no burden in that, at least nothing compared to the burden of the defense attorney, who stands all alone and holds someone’s freedom in his hands. I never understood what she was trying to tell me.
    Until now.
    Now I got it. I felt it. I was about to question my first witness in front of the jury and I was as nervous as I had been at my first trial out of law school.
    “Good morning, Mr. Johnson,” I said. “How are you, sir?”
    “I am good, yes.”
    “That’s good. Can you tell me, sir, what you do for a living?”
    “Yes, sir. I am head of operations for the El Rey Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard.”
    “ ‘Head of operations,’ what does that mean?”
    “I make sure everything works right and runs—from the stage lights to the toilets, it’s all part of my job. Mind you, I have electricians work on the lights and plumbers work on the toilets.”
    His answer was greeted with polite smiles and modest laughter. He spoke with a slight Caribbean accent but his words were clear and understandable.
    “How long have you worked at the El Rey, Mr. Johnson?”
    “For going on thirty-six years now. I started in nineteen seventy-four.”
    “Wow, that’s an achievement. Congratulations. Have you been head of operations for all that time?”
    “No, I worked my way up. I started as a janitor.”
    “I would like to draw your attention back to nineteen eighty-six. You were working there then, correct?”
    “Yes, sir. I was a janitor back then.”
    “Okay, and do you remember the date of February sixteenth of that year in particular?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “It was a Sunday.”
    “Yes, I remember.”
    “Can you tell the court why?”
    “That was the day I found the body of a little girl in the trash bin out back of the El Rey. That was a terrible day.”
    I checked the jury. All eyes were on my witness. So far so good.
    “I can imagine that being a terrible day, Mr. Johnson. Now, can you tell us what it was that brought you to discover the body of the little girl?”
    “We were working on a project in the theater. We were putting new drywall into the ladies’ room on account of a leak. So I took a wheelbarrow full of the stuff we had demoed—the old wall and some rotting wood and such—and wheeled it out to put in the Dumpster. I opened the top and there this poor little girl was.”
    “She was on top of the debris already in the trash bin?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Was she covered at all with any trash or debris?”
    “No, sir, not at all.”
    “As if whoever threw her in there had been in a hurry and didn’t have time to cover—”
    “Objection!”
    Royce had jumped to his feet. I knew he would object. But I had almost gotten the whole sentence—and its suggestion—to the jury.
    “Mr. Haller is leading the witness and asking for conclusions for which he would have no expertise,” Royce said.
    I withdrew the question before the judge could sustain the objection. There was no sense in having the judge side with the defense in front of the jury.
    “Mr. Johnson, was that the first trip you had made to the trash bin that