I waited while Judge Gold ran through the rest of his calendar. It was a typical day. A man convicted of murder wanted a new trial and a divorce because his wife had an affair with his lawyer sometime between opening statement and closing argument. A Hialeah homeowner faced zoning charges for building a statue of La Virgen de La Caridad in his front yard. The Biting Bandit of Miami Beach was arraigned on charges of stealing two watches and thirty dollars in food stamps, and severing three ears and one index finger. The prosecutor was careful not to stand too close when pointing toward the carnivorous fellow and intoning, “This defendant…”
I waited through several dozen other hearings. The clerk called a number of minor drug cases, all scheduled for pretrial intervention, just one of a number of devices to toss cases out of the courthouse. The criminal justice system does not so much dispense justice as process defendants. The prisons cannot hold the miscreants already there, much less the thousands who should be added each year. So the prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, and various state agencies engage in a gentle conspiracy with judges-real and retired-to spit out the defendants who are swept into the maw of a system that has bitten off more than it can chew.
We think of the courts as slow, unwieldy machines with creaking parts. Not in Miami. Here, what passes for justice takes place with frightening speed, each judge sometimes ruling on a hundred cases a day, hearing motions, taking pleas, dismissing charges, and occasionally even presiding at trial.
The players in the justice game speak their own language. Rapists are treated in a program for MDSO, mentally disordered sex offenders. Sleazy street criminals who rat on their pals are CI, confidential informants. First-time offenders get bounced into PTI, pretrial intervention with CTS, credit for time served.
“Set aside the alias capias, and send him back to PTI,” Judge Gold ordered the clerk, in a case where a drug defendant, a college instructor, finally showed up in court.
“The meter is ticking on the speedy trial rule,” an anxious prosecutor told the judge, pleading for an early court date.
“We’d take a deal,” the public defender offered, “if the state nolle prosses all but one count, agrees to CTS, in-house rehab, five years’ probation, early termination on completion of MDSO.”
“I’m thinking about one year incarceration,” the judge mused, considering a plea bargain.
“Min man is three,” the prosecutor responded, shaking her head, indicating she’d love to help, but the legislature has set minimum mandatory sentences.
Behind the bench, the flag of the state of Florida hung forlornly. The flag itself is a glorious historical fabrication. An Indian woman stands on the beach, greeting an arriving steamship with flower petals. A more appropriate state symbol would be a fat county commissioner taking cash from a condo developer with the skeleton of a rickety high-rise in the background.
Finally, the clerk called out: “State of Florida versus Francisco Crespo. Motion to dismiss.”
I stood, stretched my neck out of its eighteen-inch collar, and approached the lectern in front of the bench. Abe Socolow beat me there. Credit his daily power-walking routine. He hadn’t changed. Lean as a rake, mean as a snake. Black suit, black hair, white shirt, black tie decorated with gold handcuffs and prison bars. A sallow complexion, a sardonic sneer, a brooding intelligence that barely controlled his seething anger at every defendant who crossed his path. He is a rarity in today’s age of get-rich-quick lawyers who pass through the state attorney’s office long enough for a cup of coffee and a smidgen of trial experience before migrating downtown for the big bucks. Abe Socolow is a career prosecutor, and his career was built on being smart, tough, and nasty.
“Your Honor, this motion is frivolous, ludicrous, and utterly beyond the pale,” Socolow said. “It is a misuse of motion practice, outside the bounds of Rule three one-ninety, and should be summarily rejected by the court.”
Good day to you, too, Abe.
I cleared my throat and elbowed Socolow to one side. “There are no material disputed facts, and the undisputed facts do not establish a prima facie case of guilt against Mr. Crespo.”
Socolow snorted in my ear. “Mr. Lassiter is excellent at quoting the rule. Unfortunately, he does not know how to apply it. The evidence of a prima facie case is here.” He stabbed a finger at a stack of pretrial depositions.
Judge Gold took one look and cringed. He didn’t read the newspaper unless the ponies were running at Calder. “Why don’t you fellows summarize it for me?”
“The case is entirely circumstantial,” I began, jostling Socolow with a shoulder and screening him from the judge’s view with my height. “What proof does the state have? That my client was found in proximity to the scene of an alleged homicide.
That he had an altercation with the deceased. Where is the direct evidence of the crime?”
You can get away with that sometimes with juries, ridiculing the state’s case as based on circumstantial evidence, but judges know better. A few even remember Thoreau’s admonition: Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
“Your Honor!” Exasperated now. “Mr. Lassiter sees what he wants and ignores the rest. His client’s latents were all over the steering wheel of the forklift that impaled the victim.”
“Mr. Crespo used that forklift every day,” I replied. “It would be highly suspicious if his fingerprints were not there. What is significant is that the state has no eyewitness to put him on the forklift at the time of the assault. Indeed, the only eyewitness testimony, that of the paramedics, puts Mr. Crespo several aisles away and unconscious when the attack took place. Finally, other than what appears to have been a fistfight between the two men, there is no evidence of an assault at all.”
I sneaked a peek at Socolow. His jaw muscles were doing aerobics. I kept going. “The forklift could have been driven negligently by a third party who simply bolted after he accidentally ran down the deceased. Perhaps there was no driver at all. It could have been a runaway forklift.”
“A runaway forklift!” A touch of crimson crept into Socolow’s sallow complexion. “Why not suicide? Maybe Mr. Smorod-whatever-his-name-is jumped at the moving forklift in order to kill himself. Mr. Lassiter isn’t arguing the undisputed facts. He’s relying on his own vivid imagination. There’s a jury question here…”
In the gallery, I saw Marvin the Maven’s head swivel as the rear door opened and a woman walked in. Marvin doesn’t miss anything. He nudged Saul the Tailor, who nodded his approval as Lourdes Soto took a seat in the second row. Even under the fluorescent lights, the ivory skin was perfect, accented by the jet black hair. She wore a black jersey dress that came to midcalf and gathered itself under a wide matching belt. She carried a woman’s leather briefcase, not the all-purpose aluminum model with camera, lenses, and voice-activated recorder.
Of course, the black onyx necklace might be a wire, for all I knew.
“The autopsy is consistent with an attack by a forklift traveling at maximum speed,” Socolow was saying. He was waving some papers at the judge. It could have been the autopsy report or his laundry list. No matter, the judge wouldn’t read either one.
I didn’t need to read the report, either. It was one of those rare cases when I’d been there, a foot away from the deputy medical examiner when he did his dirty work. Crespo had called me within minutes of being arrested. The autopsy was scheduled twenty-four hours later. I had phoned Doc Charlie Riggs, and calling on an old friend, he got me into the cool crisp confines of the Last Hotel, a place where the guests sleep on wooden pillows.
T he county morgue sits at Number One Bob Hope Road, just north of the intersection with Ed Newman Street. Newman used to play for the Dolphins. So did I, but the only thing they named after me was a missed sack-the Lassiter Leap-for a peculiar habit of leaving my feet at the wrong time on a blitz. As for Bob Hope, I doubt he’s funny enough to wake the dead.