Blind Justice (22 page)

THERE WAS STILL no connection to my client. The fact that a prominent citizen like a district attorney was at a party with a prominent local winegrower was nothing unusual. But I couldn’t help feeling there must be a thread somewhere. It was all too bizarre.

But I came up with nothing by Monday morning, the day Howie testified.

I met with him briefly before we marched into court, and if anything, he had become more resolute in his conviction that God wanted him to go to jail for a long, long time. He did not want to take the stand. In fact, he told me he wanted to change his plea to guilty.

“No, Howie,” I said firmly.

“Aren’t I allowed to, Jake?”

Of course he was allowed to. A defendant has the right to do whatever he wants in terms of a plea. And, ethically speaking, the lawyer is not to stand in his way. But I didn’t give a rip about ethics at that point. All I wanted to do was beat Benton Tolletson by getting at least a hung jury.

“We’ve come too far, Howie.”

“But I can change my plea. A guy in jail told me I could.”

“What are you listening to him for? Huh? I’m your lawyer. I’m your friend.”

“It’s what God wants me to do.”

“Look, Howie—” I put my hand on his knee as I tried to think of an argument against divine intervention. I found myself saying, “What if
I’m
God’s will?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. Listen to me. What if God put me here to see that justice is done for you? What about
that
?” I didn’t believe a word of this, of course, but at that moment, all I was trying to do was get Howie to change his mind.

“I didn’t think of that, Jake.”

“Well, you’ve got two minutes to think about it now. I’m telling you, don’t do this. Don’t do this to your mom and dad. Your sister. Your son.”

Howie’s eyes went sort of blank. “My son . . .”

“Trust me. Will you, Howie?”

“Do I have to take the stand, Jake?”

“For a little while. Can you do that?”

“I . . . think so. Will he try to trick me, that Mr. Tolletson?”

“I’ll be in there with you, Howie. Don’t worry. And just one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“This is very important.”

“Okay.”

“Do not, under any circumstances, say you did it. You don’t know if you did it. And that’s what the prosecutor has to prove. When we get to the point about talking about what happened, you don’t really know, except that you’re sure someone else attacked you and killed Rae.”

Howie shook his head. “I’m awful foggy on that, Jake.”

“You’ll be fine. Just answer my questions, okay?”

“Can we pray?”

His request was so innocent, like a child asking a parent to kneel down before bedtime, that I was surprised at my hostility. “You pray,” I said. “I’m going inside.”

As I left the lockup, Howie bent his head to his chest.

As always, court was packed. And for the first time in days, Lindsay Patino was sitting with her parents. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but she did not look at me. Fred Patino, however, gave me a thumbs-up sign. The poor guy didn’t have any idea what we were all about to go through.

Judge Wegland took the stand, the members of the jury marched in, and the judge greeted them. I tried to read their faces. They were about as expressive as aluminum siding.

“Call your next witness,” said the judge.

“Call Howard Patino,” I said. Howie didn’t move. It was like he was lost in a daydream. I had to gently prod him out of his chair.

I could sense the whole place watching his every move. Was this a cold-hearted killer about to take the stand? Or just some tragic figure in a farcical soap opera?

After the clerk administered the oath, she asked Howie to state his name for the record and spell his last name.

“Howie Patino,” my client said. “P-A-T-I-N-O.”

“Is it Howard?” the judge asked.

“Everybody calls me Howie.”

“But Howard is your given name?”

“I don’t like Howard.”

Exasperated, Judge Wegland said, “I’m not interested in what you like, Mr. Patino. What is the name on your birth certificate?”

Howie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Apparently sensing this was not worth further effort, Judge Wegland shook her head and motioned for me to ask my questions.

For the first half hour I had Howie testify about his life, letting him tell the jury in his own, distinct way about growing up. I wanted to the jury to see Howie for what he was—a harmless innocent man who would not preplan a murder. And then I wanted them to believe that Howie really saw someone else in that room, someone who was the real killer. Failing that, I at least wanted them to think that if Howie did do the killing, it was in the heat of a delusional passion.

I took Howie to the point where he met Rae Richards for the first time.

“I was here about a job,” Howie said.

“In Hinton?”

“Yeah. At the lumberyard.”

“How did you hear about this job?”

“My dad,” Howie said, and as he did, he looked out at Fred with a mixture of sadness and love. It was almost as if he was apologizing to his father for the mess things were in now.

“Your dad arranged for a job interview?”

“Yeah. He was always doing stuff like that.”

“So then, how did you meet your wife?”

Howie’s eyes got a faraway look, as if searching for a distant memory. “Well, it was a hot day, I remember that. And I wanted to get something to drink. I drove into the town and stopped at a place.”

“What kind of a place?” I interrupted.

“A bar kind of place. It was dark and smoky inside. But I kind of liked that.”

Howie paused, and I asked, “Why did you like it, Howie?”

“Because,” he said slowly, “it made me feel kind of grown up.”

I hoped the significance of that wasn’t lost on the jury. Howie was my age, and the incident he was describing had taken place only a few years ago. That he had a need to feel “grown up” in his twenties was a strong indication of his mental state.

“Go on, Howie.”

“I sat at the bar and ordered a Coke. I don’t drink alcohol, see.”

Unlike your attorney, I thought. “What happened next?”

“Nothing much. I was drinking and listening to some men talk about the Dallas Cowboys”—Howie turned to the jury—“that’s a football team,” he told them, as if he was sharing inside information. “And then somebody tapped me on the shoulder. Like this.”

Howie tapped his right shoulder with his left hand. “And I turned around and saw Rae. She had a tray in her hand with some glasses on it. And she smiled at me. And she asked me if I needed anything like a sandwich or something.”

“So, she was a waitress?”

“The prettiest one there,” Howie said proudly.

“What happened then?”

“Well, I told her I didn’t need anything, and then she asked me if I was new in town because she’d never seen me in there before. And that’s how we sort of got talking.”

“How long did you talk?”

“For hours, it seemed like. She kept on asking me questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Just about what I did and where I grew up and all that. Man, could she ask questions.”

“And when you were finished talking, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. Rae asked me if I’d like it if she showed me around the town sometime. Boy howdy, did I ever say
yes!”

“She was the one who asked to see you?”

“Yep. That was Rae. She was always real outgoing with people. Sometimes that made me mad.”

That was a little addition I hadn’t expected and didn’t want the jury to think about. Quickly, I asked, “How long until you got married?”

“Oh, not too long.”

“Tell us about it.”

As Howie recounted the wedding, his face took on a soft glow, as if he was describing the high point of his life. It was perfect. He finished by saying, “I still don’t know why Rae would choose somebody like me, but I figured it was a gift from God.”

“And you have a son?”

Howie smiled broadly. “Brian Anthony Patino.”

“How old is he?”

“Five.”

“You love him, don’t you?”

Before Howie could answer, Tolletson objected on relevance grounds. Wegland sustained it and asked me to move on. I wasn’t upset by the ruling. Howie’s testimony was powerful, completely lacking the dissembling almost every criminal defendant engages in. It was almost as if Howie seemed incapable of lying, and I was sure the jury picked up on that. Tolletson’s objection merely underscored Howie’s effectiveness as a witness.

But I heeded the judge’s admonition and began moving to the crucial night. As I did, I watched Howie carefully, reading his face. I had to be ready to move quickly if things started getting too far out of hand. The jury could not for a moment think Howie was
trying
to appear crazy.

When we got to the part where Howie went around to the back of his house, his expression began to darken. No, that’s not it.
Depart
is more like it. He was beginning to withdraw himself from what he knew was coming. It was, I realized, a defense mechanism.

“What were your thoughts when you got to the sliding glass door and found it locked?”

“I figured Rae was at a friend’s house or something.”

“And you decided to go inside and wait for her?”

“Yeah.”

“So you broke into your own house?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Cause I wanted to be inside my own home. I wanted to see my wife.”

“What did you see when you got inside? Was there a light on?”

“Um, no. I turned on a light.”

“And what did you see?”

“Not much. It looked like Rae hadn’t cleaned up in awhile.”

“Why did you think that?”

“Because of the clothes on the chairs and stuff.”

“What were you thinking then?”

“Just that I wanted to see Rae.”

That was a good place to shuffle my notes. It’s a little trick when you want the jury to get the full effect of an important answer. I wanted them to see a man who wanted nothing more than to be with his wife, not a man who had murder on his mind. Howie was doing fine.

I returned my notes to the exact order I had before. “What did you do next?”

Howie thought a moment, and it seemed to me he was almost afraid to continue. His voice was even more detached when he began to speak. “I walked down the hall to the bedroom and opened the door.”

“Was the light on?”

“No.”

“Did you turn it on?”

Tolletson stood. “Objection. He’s leading the witness.”

“Sustained,” Judge Wegland said tonelessly.

I cleared my throat. “What was the next thing you did, Howie?”

“I turned on the light.” Someone in the gallery laughed. It sounded like Howie was just repeating the answer I’d already implied in my previous question.

“And what did you see?”

“Rae.”

“Where was she?”

“In bed. She sat up.”

“What, if anything, did she say to you?”

Howie’s eyes narrowed in a mixture of emotion and troubled memory. “I don’t remember exactly. I just remember we started to talk.”

“Can you remember any of the conversation?”

“Only some. She wasn’t very happy to see me, I guess. Maybe because I woke her up.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“Not much. It’s all kind of dark. I’m sorry, Jake.”

He was childlike in that moment, and that’s when I began to feel very confident about my chances. There was no way all twelve jurors would think this man a cold-blooded murderer.

“You just have to tell us what you remember, Howie, that’s all. You just tell this jury what you absolutely remember, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Listen carefully. Did you, at any time, pick up a knife?”

Howie gently shook his head. “No.”

“Did you, at any time, strike your wife?”

“You mean hit her?”

“Yes.”

“No, I didn’t do that. I would never do that. Not to Rae. I loved her.”

I took in a deep breath, then said, “All right. Do you remember anyone else being in that room with you and Rae?”

This was the biggie. I well remembered Howie’s hysterics at the preliminary hearing, when he began to scream about the devil. With an emotional outburst of that magnitude, you just never know what the jury is going to think. But it was a question that had to be asked.

Howie’s eyes became blank screens, and he sat motionless for a long moment. Then, in almost a whisper, he said, “The devil.”

I responded in a quiet tone. “You think you saw the devil, Howie?”

“Yeah.”

“Could it have been a person?”

“The devil can appear as a person.”

“Yes, Howie, but you’re sure you saw someone else in that room?”

“I think so.”

It was perfect. Howie wasn’t ranting and raving, but he was clearly going through an emotional wringer. Even if I’d been able to coach him, I couldn’t have come up with anything better than this.

“And then what do you remember?”

“Pain.”

“What kind of pain.”

“Here.” Howie pointed to his side.

I said, “May the record reflect Mr. Patino is indicating his right side, approximately two inches above his waistline?”

“The record will so reflect,” said Judge Wegland.

“What happened there, Howie?”

“I guess I was cut.”

“With a knife?”

“That’s what the doctors said.”

“You don’t remember being stabbed with a knife?”

“No. I just remember the pain. I think I passed out or something.”

“And what’s the next thing you remember after that?”