“May I be heard?” Haller said.
“You may,” Coelho said.
“This is flat-out wrong,” Haller said, pointing at the screen. “That program proves that Lucinda Sanz did not shoot her ex-husband and now you’re going to take it away from her on a technicality? She has been incarcer—”
“It’s not a technicality,” Morris said. “It’s the law.”
“Mr. Morris, do not interrupt,” the judge said. “Continue,
Mr. Haller.”
“She’s been in prison for five years for something she didn’t do,” Haller said. “That program proves her innocence and everybody in this courtroom knows it. If it’s not approved, then make this the test case. Your Honor, overrule the objection and we move forward and the AG can appeal.”
“Or I could sustain the objection and you could file the appeal,” Coelho said. “Different means to the same end. A higher court would decide this and you would have your test case.”
“And how long is that going to take?” Haller said. “Another three years in prison for my client while we wait to be heard on the matter? The court is behind the times, Judge. AI is here — it’s used in surgery, it’s driving cars, it’s buying stocks, it’s choosing the music we listen to. Your Honor, the applications are endless. Don’t send this woman back to prison because the courts are archaic and lagging behind the technology of the day.”
“Mr. Haller, I understand your concern,” Coelho said. “I truly do. But I am sworn to uphold the laws we currently have and I cannot anticipate the laws of the future.”
“Judge, this hearing is supposed to be about finding the truth,” Haller said. “What does it say about us if we know the truth and throw it away?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Haller, it doesn’t work that way,” Coelho said. “It pains me, but the objection is sustained. The witness’s presentation and testimony is stricken and will have no bearing on the court’s eventual ruling on this matter.”
“Shame on us,” Haller said. “That we can’t bring ourselves to do the right thing when it’s there in front of us.”
“Mr. Haller, you are now on thin ice with this court,” Coelho said.
Haller put his hands down on the table and bowed his head. Bosch felt a deep hollow open up in his chest. Haller turned and looked at Morris, who was staring straight ahead.
“And you, Morris,” Haller said. “How do you sleep at night? You’re supposed to be a guardian, you’re supposed to look for the truth, but you hide behind—”
“Mr. Haller!” the judge barked. “You are out of order. Sit down. Now!”
Haller threw up his hands in a gesture of giving up and sat down. He turned to Lucinda and whispered to her. Bosch could not remember ever seeing an attorney seem so upset by a judge’s ruling. He wondered how much was performance and how much was true anger.
Coelho poured water from a pitcher into a glass. She took her time with it, perhaps believing that moving slowly would restore calm to the courtroom.
“Now,” she finally said, “would you like to call another witness, Mr. Haller?”
Haller did not acknowledge the question. He kept whispering to Lucinda, apparently trying to explain what had just happened to her hopes of freedom.
“Mr. Haller?” the judge prompted. “Do you have another witness?”
Haller broke away from the huddle with Lucinda and stood up. When he spoke, his voice sounded strangled.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “The petitioner calls Harry Bosch.”
With the tension in the room still as thick as the marine layer on the Santa Monica bight, Bosch got up and moved forward through the gate. He was sworn in by the clerk and took the seat on the witness stand. He watched Haller move slowly to the lectern, still reeling from the loss of Arslanian’s testimony. He started with basic questions about Bosch’s pedigree.
“Mr. Bosch, how are you currently employed?” he asked.
“I work part-time as an investigator for you,” Bosch said.
“And what is your experience in investigating criminal matters?”
“I was a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department for forty years, most of them working homicides. After I retired, I worked for a few years as a volunteer cold-case investigator with the town of San Fernando and later back with the LAPD.”
“You know your way around a murder, I guess you could say.”
“You could say that, yes. I’ve worked on more than three hundred homicides as either lead or backup investigator.”
“Is it safe to say you have put a lot of bad people — killers — in prison?”
“Yes.”
“Yet here you are, working to free a person who the State says is a killer. Why is that?”
This was the only question Haller and Bosch had rehearsed. After this, they would be winging it.
“Because I don’t think she did it,” Bosch said. “In reviewing the case, I found inconsistencies in the investigation, contradictions. That’s why I brought it to you.”
“I remember that,” Haller said. “Now, as part of your investigation, did there come a time when you served a subpoena on a company called AT and T?”
“Yes, I did that last week.”
“And what—”
Before Haller could get the question out, Morris interrupted with an objection.
“Your Honor,” he said. “If Mr. Haller is going to ask about cellular data collection, then, again, we are going to have a discovery issue.”
“How so, Mr. Morris?” the judge asked. “I seem to recall this was reported on the most recent discovery inventory Mr. Haller filed with the court.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Morris said. “He turned over a printout of more than nineteen hundred pages of data from six different cell towers, and now, just four days later, he plans to introduce his specific findings in court.”
“Are you asking for a continuance of the hearing so you have additional time to study the material?” Coelho asked.
“No, Your Honor,” Morris said. “The State asks that the petitioner be disqualified from using this material because of bad faith in meeting even basic discovery standards.”
“Well, that is certainly an extreme remedy,” Coelho said. “I am sure the petitioner has something to say about that. Mr. Haller?”
“Your Honor, there is no bad faith here,” Haller said. “And I’m tired of having to defend myself in regard to these matters that Morris brings up like a broken record. The rules of discovery are clear. I was under no obligation to turn this material over to him and his team until I decided that I intended to use it in court. I made that decision when briefed Friday morning by my investigator Mr. Bosch after he reviewed the materials. Please keep in mind, Judge, that I am a solo practitioner with one associate attorney and one full-time and one part-time investigator. Mr. Bosch received the data from AT and T last Tuesday afternoon and reported his findings to me on Friday morning. He is just one man. Morris, on the other hand, has the power and might as well as the personnel of the entire attorney general’s office at his disposal. He is also representing the L.A. County DA’s office in this matter, and last I checked, there are eight hundred prosecutors and two hundred investigators across the street in that office. And he couldn’t get someone to help him look through this material over the weekend?
“Your Honor, that’s where the bad faith is. What happened was that Morris guessed that I was dumping this material on him because it was worthless and he’d be spinning his wheels reviewing it. So he ignored it all weekend and now he finds out that maybe it is not so worthless, that there is actually exculpatory material here, and he wants to cry foul. I’ll say it again, Judge: This is supposed to be a search for truth, but Mr. Morris is not interested in that. He’s only interested in putting up roadblocks to the truth, and that to me is bad faith in its ugliest form.”