“Just a few questions. You couldn’t see this other person, whom the officer was chasing?”
“No, not once he went far enough in the alley.”
She put her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “You can’t identify this young man as the person who was running, can you?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Your view wasn’t sufficient to see his face.”
“My angle wasn’t, no.”
“Sure.” She moved away from Alex now, toward the podium. She didn’t want to discuss this other person while standing next to Alex. “This boy, once he left your line of sight, he never came back into your sight.”
“That’s right.”
“So you couldn’t tell us whether, for example, he had his hands up?”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“You don’t know what kind of a conversation they had.”
“No.”
“Or even if they had a conversation.”
“That’s right.”
“The part of the alley you couldn’t see-you can’t tell us how many people were in that alley, can you?”
Alex’s head whipped around at her. She avoided his stare.
“How many people?” The witness grimaced. “Other than that one boy I saw, no.”
“There could have been more than one person out of your sight line and you wouldn’t know.”
“That’s right. I would have no idea.”
Alex cleared his throat, still directing arrows at her with his eyes.
“Your Honor,” Shelly said, “one quick moment with my client?”
The judge nodded.
Shelly walked over. Alex got out of his chair and put his mouth to her ear. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to show that she doesn’t know anything.”
“No, you’re not. You’re saying it wasn’t me.”
She looked at him for a moment. She moved to his ear. “Alex, you sit down and shut your mouth. Do not ever glare at me like that again with the jury present. Or I swear to God, I’ll go to the prosecutor right now and tell them all about Ronnie.”
She smiled at him, for the jury’s benefit, and tapped him playfully on the shoulder. “Okay?” she said sweetly. “Sorry about that, Ms. Stoddard.” She moved away from the defense table and the podium, into the well of the courtroom. She was trying to stand directly between the jury and Alex. She heard him take his seat behind her.
“Ms. Stoddard, you said that the officer had a radio in one hand, and as for the other hand, I believe you said, you thought he wasn’t holding anything. Isn’t it more accurate to say that you aren’t sure about that?”
“Umm.” The witness looked up at the ceiling, squinted. “I don’t remember seeing a gun in his hand.”
“Let me put it this way, Ms. Stoddard. Can you rule out the possibility that he didn’t have a gun in his hand? You can’t, can you?”
“Rule out the possibility.” She played with that. “I guess it was my understanding that he didn’t have a gun in his hand.”
“Your understanding.” Shelly looked over at the prosecutor. “Do you mean someone told you that?”
“Oh, jeez.” She sighed loudly. “Well-”
“Ms. Stoddard, do you remember when I paid you a visit?”
“Yes.”
“And I brought a gentleman with me.”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t you tell us”-Shelly made a point of retrieving her notes and reading from them verbatim-“didn’t you tell us that ‘he had a walkie-talkie in his hand, but I don’t know about the other hand.’ Isn’t that what you told us?”
She seemed embarrassed by the question. Shelly smiled at her with sympathy. She wasn’t trying to berate the witness.
“I said that?”
“I’m asking you, ma’am. Didn’t you tell us that you didn’t know about that other hand?”
“Well. It was dark.” She threw up her hands. “I don’t really remember that he had a gun, but I don’t have a real specific image in my head of that hand. It was more like-a big picture sort of thing? I saw a police officer chasing a guy. I guess on the specifics of whether that officer had a gun in his hand-I guess I’m not positive one way or the other.”
“You don’t know about that other hand,” Shelly summarized, tying the witness to precisely what she had told Shelly and Joel in her office.
“I guess I don’t, no.”
“Okay. Let’s move on then. You said that the officer ‘jerked’ before the shooting.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you mind, Ms. Stoddard, standing up and showing us exactly what you mean by that?”
The witness shrugged and got up. “Well, I guess it’s hard to replicate.”
“Sure.”
The witness feigned a quick spasm of her upper body. Her body seemed to rotate to the right. “It was like something surprised him or something.”
Ouch. Surprise was not the word she wanted to hear. “Looks like”-Shelly tried to replicate the witness’s movement-“looks like he was pivoting a little.”
“Maybe. It was really quick. I didn’t really analyze it.”
“Of course. You can take your seat, by the way, thank you. So, his upper body sort of twisted or moved or something.”
“Something like that, yes.”
“His feet were planted.”
The witness recoiled, as if she were being asked too much. She thought about it a good long while, moving her body slightly as she tried to reenact the image.
“I mean,” Shelly tried, “he didn’t jump backward or forward, did he?”
“No. He didn’t do that.” The witness sighed, and slowly nodded. “I guess you’re right. His feet didn’t move.”
“Okay, great.” Shelly squinted over the jurors’ heads as if she were trying to get to the bottom of this. “Seems like-you tell me-seems like when you just did that, it was sort of like a shiver that started from the left side of his body and moved to the right.”
“Oh”-she dropped her head back-“that sounds right.” She looked at Shelly. “I mean, ‘shiver’-it would be an awfully bad shiver.”
“Okay, we’ll use your word. ‘Jerk.’ The officer jerked in a way such that he turned slightly to the right. Isn’t that what you showed us?”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“You said, Ms. Stoddard, that the witness had a radio in his hand.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t hear Mr. Morphew ask you which hand was holding the radio. It makes me curious.”
Morphew, at the sound of his name, looked up from his notes at Shelly with an expression that said, I’d object to the cheap shot but it’s not worth it.
“Left hand,” said Ms. Stoddard.
“Left hand. Radio in his left, right hand you’re not sure.” She did the twist again, though slower than the quick jerking motion the witness had described. “He jerked to the right, and his right hand maybe had a gun in it, maybe was free.”
“Correct.”
“You didn’t happen to see what his right hand did, when he jerked to the right?”
Stoddard was following Shelly’s right hand, which moved toward her right hip. She seemed to get the point, too. “No, actually, I didn’t specifically notice that.” She heaved a sigh. “I guess I wish I had taken notes or something.”
Some of the jurors smiled, so Shelly did as well. Shelly patted her right hip with her free right hand. “His holster was on his right side, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, wow. I have no idea about that.”
That was fine. That much could be easily established.
“And one more topic, Ms. Stoddard. The other officer? Do you recall that he was back at the car when the shot was fired? Back at his patrol car?”
“Yes.”
“Now, I assume you weren’t paying much attention to him while these events were taking place.”
“No.”
“When did you next become aware of him?”
“Oh, at some point after that, I saw him jogging down to the alley and he went in. Then he ran to the other officer and he held him.”
“Did you see him do anything else?”
“I think-I was going to the phone to call 911. But then I heard a siren, so I figured they already knew.”
“There was a gap of time there, when you weren’t watching.”
“That’s-that’s right, yes.”