Jennifer seemed to come out of the shock of the moment and focus for the first time on what I had just said.
“You mean—”
“I was told he was in critical condition. I don’t know if that means he’s going to live or die. But either way I doubt he’s going to court in the foreseeable future. The default setting on that is to go to mistrial and start over when he’s recovered. If Leggoe doesn’t come to that on her own, then Forsythe will make the motion because he saw his case start to go sideways today. We have to stop it. We’re about to win this case. Let’s proceed with the trial.”
Jennifer pulled a pad and pen up from her bag that was on the floor.
“So we want to continue the trial with Andre in absentia? I’m not sure that will fly.”
“They proceed with cases when defendants escape during trial. Why not here? There’s got to be a precedent. If not, we need to make one.”
Jennifer shook her head.
“In those escape cases, the defendants forfeit the right to be present by their own actions in escaping. This is different.”
Not interested in the legal discussion, Cisco stepped out into the loft space so he could start working his phone.
“No, it’s different but the same,” I said. “It’s just going to come down to the judge and judicial discretion.”
“Judicial discretion is a big fucking tent,” Legal said.
I nodded and pointed at him.
“He’s right, and we have to find space in that tent.”
“Well, I would say that at the very least we are going to need a waiver from Andre,” Jennifer said. “The judge won’t even consider it if Andre hasn’t signed off, and we don’t know if he’s in a condition to sign or understand any of this.”
“Pull out your computer and let’s write up the waiver right now.”
There was a printer on the counter beneath our whiteboard. We had set things up for printing in the loft after my car was wrecked and the printer I had was destroyed.
“You’re sure he’ll be able to knowingly sign?” Jennifer asked.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You write it up, I’ll get it signed.”
I spent six hours in a family waiting room on the lockdown floor at County/USC. For the first four hours I was repeatedly told that my client was in surgery. I was then told he was in recovery but that I could not see him because he had not regained consciousness. During the whole time, I never lost my cool with anyone. I did not complain and I did not yell.
But by two o’clock in the morning I had reached the limits of my patience and started demanding to see my client at ten-minute intervals. I pulled out the full arsenal, threatening legal action, media attention, even FBI intervention. It got me nowhere.
By then I had received two updates from Cisco on his investigation of the investigation. In his first call, he confirmed much of what we had suspected; that a fellow inmate who had been in the courthouse for his own trial had attacked Andre, using a shiv fashioned from a piece of metal. Though shackled at the waist like all the men waiting in lines to load onto jail buses, the suspect dropped to the ground and managed to slip the waist chain down over his feet, freeing his movements enough to attack Andre and stab him seven times in the chest and abdomen before he was overpowered by jail deputies.
In his second call, Cisco added the name of the suspect — Patrick Sewell — and said he had found no connection so far by case or other means to either DEA agent James Marco or DA investigator Lee Lankford. The name of the assailant was familiar to me, and then I remembered that Sewell was the defendant in the death-penalty case my half brother was in trial with. I recalled that Harry had said Sewell was brought down from San Quentin, where he was already serving a life sentence. This told me Sewell was the perfect hit man. He had nothing to lose.
I told Cisco to keep working it. If he came up with even a slim connection between Sewell and Marco or Lankford, then I’d be able to create enough smoke to make Judge Leggoe think twice about calling a mistrial.
“I’m on it,” Cisco said.
I expected nothing less.
At three ten in the morning, I was finally allowed to see my client. I was escorted by a nurse and a detention deputy into the high-dependency unit of the medical wing. I had to gown up because of the risk of infection to Andre, and then I was able to enter a surgery recovery room where Andre’s frail body lay attached to a concert of machines, tubes, and hanging plastic bags.
I stood at the end of the bed and just watched as the nurse checked the machines and then lifted the blanket over him to look at the bandages that wrapped Andre’s entire torso. His upper body was propped at a low angle on the bed, and I noticed that next to his right hand was a remote for setting the bed’s incline. His left wrist was handcuffed to a thick metal eyelet attached to the bed’s side frame. Though the prisoner was barely clinging to life, no chances were being taken with the possibility of escape.
Andre’s eyes were puffy and half open, but he wasn’t seeing anything.
“So… is he going to make it?” I asked.
“I’m not supposed to tell you anything,” the nurse said.
“But you could.”
“The first twenty-four hours will tell the tale.”
At least it was something.
“Thank you.”
She patted my arm and left the room, leaving the deputy standing in the doorway. I walked over to the door and started to close it.
“You can’t close that,” the deputy said.
“Sure I can. This is an attorney-client conference.”
“He’s not even conscious.”
“Right now he isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. He’s my client and we are entitled by the U.S. Constitution to private consultation. You want to stand in front of a judge tomorrow and explain why you failed to provide this man — who is now the victim of a vicious crime — his inalienable right to confer with his attorney?”
In the Sheriff’s Department, all academy graduates are transferred directly into the detention division for their first two years on the job. The deputy in front of me looked like he was twenty-four at the most and maybe even still on probation. I knew he would back down and he did.
“All right,” he said. “You have ten minutes. After that, you’re out of here. Doctor’s orders.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll be standing right out here.”
“Good. I feel safer already.”
I closed the door.
40
Judge Leggoe brought the attorneys into chambers first thing the next morning. Lankford was invited in with Forsythe so he could brief the judge on what was known in regard to the stabbing of Andre La Cosse. Lankford, of course, couched it in terms of the kind of random violence that happens often between incarcerated men.
“Most likely it will be determined to be a hate crime,” he said. “Mr. La Cosse is a homosexual. The suspect is already convicted of one murder and is on trial for another.”
The judge nodded thoughtfully. I could not counter Lankford’s insinuations because so far Cisco had not come up with any link between Patrick Sewell — La Cosse’s suspected assailant — and Marco and Lankford. My response was weak at best.
“There’s still a long way to go in the investigation,” I said. “I would not jump to any conclusions yet.”
“I’m sure they won’t,” Lankford said.
He didn’t have the judgmental smirk that was customary on his face. I read that as an early indication of something changing in Lankford. Maybe it was the weight of knowing he wasn’t in the clear. If the attack on La Cosse was, as I believed, an attempt to end the case by eliminating the defendant, then it had failed. The question now was how badly it had failed.