It’s a rule of thumb to leave a crying man alone. There usually isn’t anything to be gained from cross-examining a victim’s loved one, but Freeman had opened a door and I decided to step through it. The risk I ran was that jurors might view me as cruel if I went too far in questioning the bereaved family member.
“Mr. Bondurant, I am sorry for your family’s loss. I have only a few quick questions. You mentioned that you and your brother went to the Lakers game a week before this horrible crime occurred. What did you talk about during that outing?”
“Uh, we talked about a lot of things. It would be hard to remember everything right now.”
“Only sports and Lakers?”
“No, of course not. We were brothers. We talked about a lot of things. He asked about my kids. I asked if he was seeing anyone. Things like that.”
“Was he seeing anyone?”
“No, not at the time. He said he was too busy with work.”
“What else did he say about work?”
“He just said it was busy. He was in charge of home loans and it was a bad time. A lot of foreclosures and all of that sort of stuff. He didn’t really get into it.”
“Did he talk about his own real estate holdings and what was happening with them?”
Freeman objected on relevance. I asked for a sidebar and it was granted. At the bench I argued that I had already put the jury on notice that I would not only be debunking the state’s case but putting forward a defense case that included evidence of an alternate theory of the crime.
“This is that alternate theory, Judge. That Bondurant was in trouble financially and his efforts to get out of the hole brought about his demise. I should be given the latitude to pursue this with any witness the prosecution puts before the jury.”
“Judge,” Freeman countered, “just because counsel says something is relevant doesn’t mean it is. The victim’s brother has no direct knowledge of Mitchell Bondurant’s financial or investment situation.”
“If that’s the case, Judge, Nathan Bondurant can say so and I’ll move on.”
“Very well, overruled. Ask your question, Mr. Haller.”
Back at the lectern I asked the witness the question again.
“He spoke very briefly and without going into detail about it,” the witness replied.
“What exactly did he say?”
“He just said that he was upside-down on his investment properties. He didn’t say how many that was or how much was involved. That was all he said.”
“What did that mean to you when he said he was upside-down?”
“That he owed more on his properties than they were worth.”
“Did he say he was trying to sell them?”
“He said he couldn’t sell them without taking a bath.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bondurant. I have no further questions.”
Freeman completed her tour of minor players by calling a witness named Gladys Pickett, who identified herself on the stand as the head teller at WestLand National’s main branch in Sherman Oaks. After eliciting from Pickett what her duties were at the bank Freeman got right down to the salient testimony.
“As the person in charge of the tellers at the bank, you have how many people reporting to you, Mrs. Pickett?”
“About forty altogether.”
“Is one of those people a teller named Margo Schafer?”
“Yes, Margo is one of my tellers.”
“I would like to draw your attention back to the morning of Mitchell Bondurant’s murder. Did Margo Schafer come to you with a particular concern?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Can you please tell the jury what Ms. Schafer was concerned about?”
“She came to me and reported that she had seen Lisa Trammel just a half block from the bank, walking down the sidewalk and moving in a direction away from the bank.”
“Why was this a concern?”
“Well, we have Lisa Trammel’s photograph up in the employees’ lounge and inside our vault and we have been instructed to report any sighting of Lisa Trammel to our supervisors.”
“Do you know why this instruction was put in place?”
“Yes, the bank has a restraining order keeping her away from the property.”
“Can you tell the jury what time it was when Margo Schafer told you about seeing Ms. Trammel near the bank?”
“Yes, it was as soon as she came into work that day. It was the first thing she did.”
“Now do you keep a record of when tellers arrive at work?”
“I keep a checkout list in the vault on which the time is posted.”
“This is when tellers come into the vault and get their money boxes to take to their stations?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“On the day in question, at what time do you show Margo Schafer’s name being checked off?”
“It was nine oh-nine. She was the last one checked in. She was late.”
“And would that have been when she told you about seeing Lisa Trammel?”
“Yes, precisely.”
“Now, at that time, did you know that Mitchell Bondurant had been murdered in the bank’s garage?”
“No, no one knew that yet because Riki Sanchez had stayed in the garage until the police came and then they kept her there for questioning. We didn’t know what was going on.”
“So the idea that Margo Schafer would have concocted the story about seeing Lisa Trammel after hearing about Mr. Bondurant’s murder is not possible, correct?”
“Correct. She told me about seeing her before she or I or anybody in the bank knew about Mr. Bondurant.”
“So at what point did you learn of Mr. Bondurant’s murder in the garage and offer the information you had received from Margo Schafer?”
“That was about a half hour later. That’s when we heard and I obviously thought the police needed to know that this woman had been seen nearby.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Pickett. I have no further questions.”
It was Freeman’s biggest hit so far. Pickett had successfully undone much of what I had been able to accomplish with Schafer on the stand. Now I had to decide whether to leave it alone or risk making things worse.
I decided to cut my losses and move on. They say never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. The rule applied here. Pickett had refused to talk to my investigator. Freeman could be setting a trap, leaving her up there with one more piece of information I might stumble into with an ill-advised question.
“I have no questions for this witness,” I said from my place at the defense table.
Judge Perry excused Pickett and called for the afternoon break of fifteen minutes. As people stood to leave the courtroom, my client leaned into me at the table.
“Why didn’t you go after her?” she whispered.
“Who? Pickett? I didn’t want to make it worse by asking the wrong thing.”
“Are you kidding me? You needed to destroy her like you did Schafer.”
“The difference was I had something to work with on Schafer. I didn’t have it on Pickett and going after somebody with nothing to go after her with is potential disaster. I left it alone.”
I could see anger darkening her eyes.
“Well, you should’ve gotten something on her.”
It came out as a hiss through what I believed were clenched teeth.
“Look, Lisa, I’m your attorney and I decide-”
“Never mind. I have to go.”
She stood up and hurried through the gate and toward the courtroom exit. I glanced over to Freeman to see if she had caught the display of attorney-client disagreement. She gave me a knowing smile, indicating she had.
I decided to go out into the hall to see why my client had so abruptly needed to leave. I stepped out and was immediately drawn by the cameras to one of the benches that ran along the hallway between courtroom doors. The focus was on Lisa, who was sitting on the bench hugging her son, Tyler. The boy looked extremely uncomfortable in the camera lights.