Losing Faith (28 page)

“Thank you, Mr. Rosenthal,” Judge Gruen says. “Any response by the government?”

Donnelly now stands. She’s wearing what must be her best suit for her star turn, a serious black number with a cream-colored blouse poking through. Like Judge Gruen said, seasoned prosecutors normally don’t make bail arguments. Then again, bail arguments normally don’t warrant a courtroom packed with reporters, either.

“Just as the prosecution does not dispute that Mr. Littman has been a lawyer in this city for many years,” Donnelly begins, “the defense cannot dispute that he is not in this courtroom today for that particular reason, but because he has been accused of brutally murdering a member of this court. The proof against him is overwhelming. In addition, the defendant is a man of considerable means, who can easily live out his life abroad and in luxury, and thereby escape being brought to justice for his crimes. As for the supposed family
ties that Mr. Rosenthal mentioned, the evidence in this case will show that Mr. Littman was having an affair with Judge Nichols, and therefore there’s absolutely no reason to believe that his wife is sufficient reason for him to stay within the jurisdiction. And his children can just as easily visit him in Paraguay or Venezuela during school breaks as they could in prison. For these reasons, the government strongly urges this court to remand Mr. Littman to custody without bail, pending trial. He deserves no special treatment and should be treated like any other accused murderer.”

“What a surprise,” Judge Gruen says. “The defense says that Mr. Littman wants nothing more than to have his day in court, and the prosecution says that the moment he walks out this door, he’s on the first flight to any country without an extradition treaty.” Gruen looks at Donnelly and asks, “Is this a capital case?”

Aaron swallows hard. He hasn’t even considered that the prosecution might seek the death penalty.

“We are still considering that issue,” Donnelly says as matter-of-factly as if the issue at hand were what color to wear and not whether to seek to put a man to death.

“Here’s what I’m going to do,” Gruen says. “I think that a cash bail, in any amount, frankly, is too lenient under these very unique circumstances. As the prosecution stated, this is a very serious crime, and therefore the impulse to flee is proportionately strong.”

Aaron sucks the air around him hard. It sounds very much like Judge Gruen is about to deny him bail.

“But I also think that the government is overreaching a bit,” he continues. “So, in my best impression of King Solomon, I’m going to issue a ruling that I’m quite sure will make neither side happy.” He smiles, although he must realize that it’s inappropriate to think anyone is amused, and then says, “It is the order of the court that Mr. Littman shall post ten million dollars’ bail, but thereafter he will be confined to his residence pending trial. During that time, he shall only be permitted to leave for a medical emergency. Visitors shall be restricted to
immediate family members, medical personnel, and counsel who are on a preapproved list. When the trial begins, and subject to the trial judge’s rulings, the terms of the confinement shall be modified to include visits to the defendant’s counsel’s office.”

The air comes back into Aaron’s lungs. He’s being allowed to go home.

Aaron doesn’t care that he won’t be permitted to go anywhere else. There’s no other place he wants to be.

PART THREE

43

S
eventy days.

That’s how much time stands between Aaron and the trial.

Most federal criminal cases take a year, and sometimes longer, to get to trial. The defense is to blame more often than not for the delays, especially when the defendant is out on bail. It’s pretty straightforward logic: every day before trial is a day out of jail, and the passage of time can only help memories to fade or, if you’re lucky, witnesses to die.

Rosenthal, however, decided to buck the conventional wisdom by invoking Aaron’s constitutional right to a speedy trial, which requires that it begin no later than seventy days after the indictment. Rosenthal was convinced that because the prosecution rushed to get an indictment, it wouldn’t have all its ducks in a row. It was more than a little bit of guts ball. The shortened time frame also means that the defense has to get ready in record time too, but as Rosenthal said when Aaron made this point, the defense doesn’t have to prove anything.

The trial judge is the Honorable Jodi Siskind. At thirty-six, she is the youngest member of the bench in the Southern District of New York, and looks like a mom in a children’s aspirin commercial, with her short brown hair cut in a bob and excited-just-to-be-here expression. She’s only been on the bench for four months, and before that, she was a partner at Taylor Beckett, where she specialized in intellectual property matters. As a result, she has no criminal law experience and probably never tried a case in her life.

With the Constitution telling her she had little choice, Judge Siskind set down the trial for June 4—seventy days after the indictment was filed.

Seventy days.

Not very much time in the big scheme of things, but when it’s all the time there is before you stand trial for murder, the entire concept of time takes on a very different significance.

AS THEY WAIT FOR
Aaron’s day of reckoning, the other Littmans try to hew to their normal routines. Cynthia sees her patients and makes her rounds, and the twins continue to go to school and out with their friends.

But try as they might to feign normalcy, Aaron knows that a sea change has occurred in his family. The girls can barely make eye contact with him, and when they do, their disappointment in him is so glaring that it makes Aaron wish they hadn’t.

The change in Cynthia runs in the opposite direction. She has seemingly decided that seventy days is too little time to spend even a moment of it angry, and so she has turned her emotions on a dime. Aaron has been permitted back into the bedroom, and there is barely mention of Faith Nichols at all—not an easy feat when the trial hangs over them like the sword of Damocles.

While his wife and daughters have their daily grind to shroud their upheaval, Aaron’s day-to-day existence is completely foreign from the life he once led. He wakes up and has absolutely nothing to do. No client calls. No court deadlines. No firm administration matters. Nothing. He spends the day reading, watching old movies, and trying not to think too much about the future.

Of course, time has not stood still. Eric Matthews has sought a new trial, citing Aaron’s misconduct, and filed a one-hundred-million-dollar malpractice suit against Cromwell Altman. Rosenthal told Aaron not to worry about it. With a shrug, he said, “Matthews will get convicted again when his lawyer isn’t sleeping with the judge,
and so where’s the harm? Besides, this is why the firm carries a billion dollars in malpractice insurance. So we can all sleep easy when something like this comes along.”

Aaron appreciates the words of comfort, but he cannot sleep easy. In fact, it’s worst of all at night. When the lights go out, Aaron’s mind reels with the horrors that await him in prison.

Nearly all of Aaron’s clients who had the misfortune to become involuntary guests of the federal government were sent to minimum-security facilities. Even the few who weren’t so lucky served their time in medium-security.

But that’s not where Aaron would do his life sentence. A judge killer spends the rest of his years in a place worse than hell.

Which is why the impulse to run is so overwhelming.

Everything Victoria Donnelly said during the bail hearing is true: Aaron Littman is a man of means, and so living his life abroad wouldn’t be too much of a hardship. Although Cynthia tells him at every opportunity that they’re in this together, Aaron can’t help but think she would be secretly relieved to be released from that obligation. And if by some stroke of the imagination Cynthia really wants only death to part them, she could always leave the country with him.

Lindsay and Samantha are a far different matter, however. He can’t expect them to live their lives in hiding. And while visiting him as a fugitive might not make them criminals, he couldn’t guarantee that the prosecutors wouldn’t present them with the Hobson’s choice of giving up their father’s location or committing perjury. On the other hand, how often will he see them if he’s spending the rest of his life in maximum security in another part of the country?

Even though the smart move is to flee, Aaron is determined to stand trial. It’s not because he believes he will be acquitted, however. Having spent most of his adult life navigating the criminal justice system, Aaron knows that beating the prosecution in a criminal trial is like winning in Vegas—possible, but not very likely. He’s going to
place his fate in the hands of the jury for the least noble reason there is: he doubts he could get away with jumping bail. He doesn’t know the first thing about false identification, or accessing funds without leaving a trace, or blending into a country where he doesn’t speak the language, and he doesn’t know anyone he trusts enough to teach him. And when he thinks about it, life on the run, cut off from his family, is just a different kind of prison.

At times, he likens his predicament to a cancer diagnosis. Thinking about percentages of survival, trying to enjoy the little time he has left.

44

S
am Rosenthal served a comprehensive discovery demand on the prosecution the day after Aaron’s arraignment. The request sought all documents, video footage, audiotapes, and electronic data in any way relevant to the murder of Faith Nichols, the investigation of the crime, and the evidence against Aaron Littman, as well as any exculpatory evidence.

The prosecution has still not handed over a scrap of paper or a single e-mail, however. Weekly requests demanding compliance are met with the standard U.S. Attorney’s Office reply that the government understands its discovery obligations and will fully comply in a timely manner.

When or how they will do that is always unstated, but Rosenthal can read between the lines. Those sons of bitches would comply at the last possible moment, and the extent of that compliance would be the least amount they could get away with.

The day before the last pretrial conference, which is a week before trial is scheduled to begin, Rosenthal’s executive assistant of more than forty years, a frail woman named Dotty—an unfortunate diminution of
Dorothy
because nowadays she does seem more than a little bit out of it at times—knocks on his door.

“This just arrived for you, Mr. Rosenthal,” she says.

Dotty hands Rosenthal a light gray, legal-sized envelope. The return address indicates it’s from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The lack of heft confirms Rosenthal’s suspicion that the government’s discovery response would be paltry at best.

After thanking Dotty and giving her time to leave and shut the door behind her, Rosenthal opens the envelope and removes its contents. The top two pages are Victoria Donnelly’s cover letter, in which she objects to the discovery request as overly broad, unduly burdensome, vague and ambiguous (as if they were two different things), and not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. Then she reserves her rights with regard to admissibility, relevance, and privilege, and whatever other rights she possesses but hasn’t listed.

Behind the letter are Faith Nichols’s cell phone bills. The first one contains the calls during August, a month before Aaron’s affair with Judge Nichols began, and they continue month after month until the day she died.

Rosenthal skims the first few pages. A week into September, the calls began. Every day. From the same number. Usually at the same times, 8:15 p.m. and 7:45 a.m. Every so often, one number vanishes from the bill, replaced by another that makes and receives calls with equal frequency, at the same two times. That pattern continues the next four months, until the calls abruptly stop two days after Faith handed down the Eric Matthews sentence.

The last calls were all incoming, and each a minute in duration. After the sentence, Aaron was undoubtedly trying to reach her and she was ignoring his calls. The final page of the phone records contains the two calls Aaron told him about on the day Faith died: a one-minute call at 8:03 p.m., and after that, the return call from Judge Nichols, which was made at 8:36 p.m. There’s also a call at 8:04 p.m. from Aaron to Judge Nichols’s phone, again one minute in duration. Aaron didn’t mention this one, but Rosenthal assumes it was an oversight; the 8:03 call must have been dropped and so Aaron simply tried again. Easy enough to have forgotten.

The phone bill shows one more call on that last day. The last call to or from Faith Nichols. Three minutes and three seconds in duration, to Aaron’s office number. It was placed at 9:48 p.m.

Damn.

The prosecution might not be able to link the burner calls to Aaron, but the final entry is indisputable evidence of contact between Judge Nichols and Aaron, smack in the middle of the window in which she was murdered.

Rosenthal stares at the page the way you might focus your attention on a child who’s disappointed you. And like that child, the page offers nothing back.

The next document is a text message that Aaron sent Judge Nichols at 8:05:
Faith, please call me at this number
as soon as you can. Very important.

Alone on the white page, the text looks more threatening than it likely did on Judge Nichols’s phone screen. Still, like the calls from the burner phone, it’s far from a smoking gun. It could have been sent by anyone and could be referencing anything.

Behind the text message are multiple copies of Aaron’s driver’s license on Ritz-Carlton letterhead, each bearing a different date. They follow roughly the same pattern as the phone calls—beginning on September 6 and ending January 12. Behind the driver’s license papers are the invoices for the room, indicating that Aaron always paid in cash.

This will be more than enough to prove the affair. Aaron Littman, a married man, checking into a hotel once a week that is less than a mile from his home, and paying cash so there’s no record of the event. There’s no other explanation to sell to the jury.