The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly [31]
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