My cross of Hazlid was an exercise in damage control. I picked around the edges, the only point of any import, the missing temple screw. On this Hazlid threw me a bone, acknowledging that based on the condition of the screw hole, the lack of torque and twisting around it, it is probable that the screw was missing before the glasses were trampled in Hall’s apartment. Forensics never found the screw, and Hazlid testified that it would be difficult if not impossible to use the glasses without it.
From this I drew conjecture, that the witness could not discount entirely, that it was possible that the glasses had been discarded by their owner, perhaps tossed aside where anyone could have found them. The inference is clear; somebody planted them. Whether the jury will buy this is another matter.
Nichols presents a different set of problems. From a strategic point the difficulty is the relationship between the two men. It goes back twenty years. Everyone in the courthouse knew they were tight. If there was one person on a professional plane that Acosta would have confided in, it was Oscar Nichols. It is this friendship, and the notion that Nichols has now been persuaded that Acosta is guilty, that is the most damaging aspect-a friend, a judge, who has made his own judgment. Coming on top of the glasses, this is certain to have an insidious effect on the jury.
Kline stumbles on the social proprieties starting off. He calls him “Your Honor” and then corrects himself, referring to Nichols instead as “Judge.” This seems to run contrary to his earlier insistence that there should be only one judge in the courtroom using the title. But Kline is not one to be shackled by consistency.
“Judge Nichols, would you tell the jury how long you have known the defendant?”
“More than twenty years,” he says.
“Would you consider yourself a friend?”
Nichols looks over at Acosta and issues a deep sigh, something painful that could be read in many ways. “Yes. I would.” Then adds: “I hope so.”
If his voice were analyzed for stress at this moment, it would send the dial off the meter, pencil marks skittering over the edges of the graph paper.
Kline disarms and inveigles, floating up marshmallow questions about the cloistered nature of the judicial branch, the loneliness of judging, and the need to confide, like gods, only among themselves.
“I suppose this would spawn an element of trust among colleagues?” says Kline. “To share things?” He means their darkest secrets.
“I suppose, on professional matters over the years,” says Nichols, “you would develop confidants. People you could talk to.”
This is not exactly what Kline had in mind.
“And on personal matters. I suppose you would discuss those, too?”
“It happens,” says Nichols.
“Would you say that in the past you’ve had such a relationship with the defendant?”
“At times.”
“And is it fair to say that at times he’s had the same kind of confidential relationship with you? He would talk, share things?” Kline is animated, filled with gestures of good faith to show he has no cards up his sleeves.
“Yes.”
“So you shared things back and forth?”
“At times.”
“Judge Nichols, are you familiar with the Silver Street Diner, just down the street from the courthouse?”
“Yes.”
“Do you sometimes have coffee there?”
“On occasion.”
“Is it one of those places where judges sometimes go to get away from the courthouse?”
Nichols weighs this. Then concedes. “At times.”
“Where you can have a private conversation without a lot of lawyers, or maybe the media looking on?”
“Leading and suggestive,” I tell Radovich. The diner is not after all the village confessional.
“Sustained.”
“Anyway you can go there and get away from the courthouse?” Kline is back to where he started.
“Yes.”
He draws the witness to the twenty-fifth of June last year and asks him if he remembers a conversation with the defendant at the diner.
“Yes. I remember.” Nichols’s voice goes up an octave, anxiety registering as pitch. He takes a drink of water from the glass on the railing in front of him, and has trouble looking at Acosta as he does this.
“Do you recall who suggested having coffee that day, whether it was you or the defendant?”
“I think it was Judge Acosta,” says Nichols. For a moment he looks over as if perhaps he is going to ask, “Armando, do you remember?” But then he realizes where he is.
“Did the defendant come and get you in your office in the courthouse?”
“I think he called.”
“Why didn’t he just come downstairs and get you?” Kline knows the answer. By that time Acosta had been suspended from the bench following the prostitution arrest. He wants the witness to say this.
“He wasn’t there that day,” says Nichols.
“Why not?”
“Because of the difficulties a few nights before.” This is Oscar’s shorthand for saying that his buddy had been busted seeking party favors.
When Nichols tries to cut the corner, taking this edge off, Kline brings him back, reminding him of this ugly incident, the prostitution sting.
“Yes. That’s right,” Nichols says. “He’d stepped down from the bench.”
“Stepped down or suspended?” It’s clear Kline’s not getting a lot of help from Nichols. Perhaps the witness is having second thoughts.
“I suppose ‘suspended’ is the proper term,” says Nichols.
“Good,” says Kline, “so that we get it right for the record.”
Nichols is back at the glass of water, wiping sweat from his forehead, shooting a glance at Acosta, who by now is stone-faced, issuing only an occasional shrug when it comes to the facts he cannot deny, a kind of dispensation offered to a friend.
“I take it this is uncomfortable for you?” says Kline.
A long deep sigh from Nichols. “It’s not fun,” he says.
Kline knows that the more painful this is, the more likely the jury is to accept Nichols’s testimony as truthful.
“Was there anyone else present other than yourself and the defendant during this conversation over coffee?”
“You mean at the diner?”
“Yes. At the diner.”
“No. Just the two of us.”
“And do you recall what the conversation was about?”
“He was. .”
“The defendant?” says Kline.
“Yes. The defendant was. .”
Kline manages to put the word in Nichols’s mouth while the witness is busy searching for a term that will lessen the impact of what he has to say. Nichols finally settles on “upset.”
“And what was he upset about?” says Kline.
“The arrest,” he says.
“This would have been the prostitution arrest?”
“Yes.”
“Now, upset can mean a lot of things to different people,” says Kline. “When you say upset, what exactly do you mean?”
“I mean he was upset.” Nichols is not going to offer synonyms and allow Kline to take his pick of the most damning.
“Do you mean he was sick?” says Kline.
Nichols mentally chews on this, knowing it is not what he means at all, but then finally says: “In a way he was sick.”
“Or was he mad? Angry?” Clearly Kline would prefer one of these.
“That, too,” says Nichols.
Kline concentrates on the portion reflecting anger and asks whether this was directed at anyone in particular.
“At the police generally,” says Nichols.
What is happening here is clear. Kline is trying as much as possible to skirt the issue of a frame-up, the assertion that Acosta believed he was set up by the cops in the prostitution case. He would play it straight up that he was angry solely because he got caught.