The case had been assigned to Superior Court Judge Dario Morales for arraignment and preliminary hearing. The latter would be a perfunctory rubber-stamping of the charges. Lisa would undoubtedly be held to answer and the case would then be assigned to another judge for the main event, the trial.
Though I had talked to her on the phone almost daily since her arrest, I had not seen Lisa in more than a week. She had declined my invitations to meet in person and now I knew why. She looked like a different woman when she showed up in court. Her hair had been cut into a stylish wave and her face looked both excessively pink and smooth. Whispers in the courtroom hinted that Lisa had had a Botox facial treatment in order to become more visually appealing.
I believed these physical changes, as well as the smart new suit Lisa was wearing, were the work of Herb Dahl. He and Lisa seemed inseparable and Dahl’s involvement was becoming more and more troubling. He had begun incessantly referring producers and screenwriters to my office number. This left Lorna constantly deflecting their attempts to secure a piece of the Lisa Trammel story. Quick checks of the Internet Movie Database usually revealed these Herb Dahl referrals to be Hollywood hacks and bottom-feeders of the lowest caliber. It wasn’t that we couldn’t use a nice big infusion of Hollywood cash to defray our mounting costs, but these were all deal-now-pay-later people and that wouldn’t do. Meantime, my own agent was out there trying to sew up a deal with an up-front fee that would cover a few salaries and the rent on an office and still leave enough to pay back Dahl and make him go away.
With almost any court hearing, the most important information and actions are not what ends up on the record. So, too, with Lisa’s arraignment. After her plea was routinely put on record and Morales scheduled a status hearing for two weeks later, I told the judge that the defense had a number of motions to submit to the court for consideration. He welcomed them and I stepped forward and handed his clerk five separate motions. I gave Andrea Freeman copies as well.
The first three motions had been prepared by Aronson after her in-depth review of the LAPD’s search-warrant application, the video of Detective Kurlen interviewing Lisa Trammel, and the questions regarding Miranda and when Lisa was actually placed under arrest. Aronson had found inconsistencies, procedural errors and exaggerations of fact. She drew up motions to suppress, asking that the taped interview be disallowed in the case and that all evidence gathered from the search of the defendant’s home be excluded as well.
The motions were well thought out and cogently written. I was proud of Aronson and pleased with myself for seeing her as a diamond in the rough when her résumé had crossed my desk. But the truth was I knew her motions didn’t stand much of a chance. No judge elected to the bench wants to throw out the evidence in a murder case. Not if he wants the voting public to keep him on the bench. So the jurist will look for ways to maintain status quo and get the decisions on evidence before a jury.
Nevertheless, Aronson’s motions played an important role in the defense strategy. Because accompanying them were two other motions. One sought to jump-start the discovery process by requesting defense access to all records and internal memoranda pertaining to Lisa Trammel and Mitchell Bondurant held by WestLand Financial. The other was a motion compelling the prosecution to allow the defense to examine Trammel’s laptop computer, cell phone and all personal documents seized in the search of her home.
Since Morales would want to act equitably toward both defense and prosecution, my strategy was to push the judge toward a Solomonic solution. Split the baby. Dismiss the motions to suppress but give the defense the access requested in the other two motions.
Of course, both Morales and Freeman had been around the block a few times and would see this strategy coming from a mile away. Still, just because they knew what I was doing didn’t mean they could stop it. Besides that, I had a sixth motion in my pocket that I had not yet filed with the court and it was going to be my ace in the hole.
Morales gave Freeman ten days to respond to the motions and adjourned the hearing, quickly moving on to his next case. A good judge always keeps the cases moving. I turned to Lisa and told her to wait for me in the hallway because I was going to speak to the prosecutor. I noticed Dahl waiting for her at the gate. He would be more than happy to escort her out. I decided to deal with him later and went over to the prosecution table. Freeman had her head down and was writing a note on a legal pad.
“Hey, Andy?”
She looked up at me. She had just begun to smile, expecting to see some friend who typically called her Andy. When she saw it was me the smile disappeared in an instant. I placed the sixth motion down on the table in front of her.
“Take a look at that when you have a minute. I’m going to file it tomorrow morning. Didn’t want to inundate the court with a blizzard of paper today, you know? Tomorrow morning should be fine but I thought I’d give you a heads-up since it involves you.”
“Me? What are you talking about?”
I didn’t answer. I left her there and made my way through the gate and out of the courtroom. As I stepped through the double doors I saw my client and Herb Dahl already holding court in front of a deep semicircle of reporters and cameras. I quickly walked up behind Lisa, took her by the arm and pulled her away while she was in midsentence.
“Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!” I said in my best Porky Pig.
Lisa struggled against my pull but I still managed to get her away from the pack and start walking her down the hallway.
“What are you doing?” she protested. “You are embarrassing me!”
“Embarrassing you? Lisa, you are embarrassing yourself with that guy. I told you to drop him. Now, look at you, all done up like you’re some kind of movie star. This is a trial, Lisa, not Entertainment Tonight.”
“I was telling them my story.”
I stopped walking when we were far enough away from the crowd not to be overheard.
“Lisa, you can’t talk openly to the media like that. It can come back to bite you on the ass.”
“What are you talking about? It was a perfect opportunity to give my side of this. I’m being railroaded here and it’s time to speak out. I told you, it’s guilty people who don’t speak.”
“The problem is the DA has a media unit and they copy and record every story about you that is printed and aired. Everything you say, they have a copy of it. And if you ever change your story even slightly from one statement to the next then they’ve got you. They’ll crucify you with it in front of a jury. What I’m trying to say is it’s not worth the risk, Lisa. You should let me do the talking for you. But if you can’t do that and really want to put out your story yourself then we’ll prepare and rehearse you and plan it with strategic hits in the media.”
“But that’s where Herb comes in. He was making sure I didn’t-”
“Let me explain it again to you, Lisa. Herb Dahl is not your attorney and does not have your best interests as his priority. He has Herb Dahl’s. Okay? I can’t seem to get the message through to you. You have to cut him loose. He-”
“No! I can’t! I won’t! He’s the only one who truly cares.”
“Oh, that’s really breaking my heart, Lisa. If he’s the only one who cares about you what’s he doing still talking to those people?”
I pointed to the knot of reporters and photographers. Sure enough, Dahl was still holding forth, feeding them whatever they needed.
“What is he saying to them, Lisa? Do you know? Because I sure as shit don’t and that’s sort of funny because you’re the defendant and I’m the defense attorney. Who’s he?”
“He can speak for me,” Lisa said.
As we watched Dahl pointing his finger to call on reporters, I saw the door to the courtroom we had just left swing open. Andrea Freeman strode out, holding my sixth motion in her hand, her eyes scanning the hallway. At first she zeroed in on the media knot but then she saw it was not me at the center of it. When her radar picked me up, she corrected her course and made a beeline right toward me. A few of the reporters called to her but she sharply waved them off with the document.