Whitney and Brand high-fived and low-fived and the video went black.
Yuki submitted the transcript into evidence and returned to the counsel table.
Judge Quirk said, “Ms. Castellano, you have a witness?”
She was getting a jump on Parisi by calling two witnesses who might normally have been called by the defense. In legal terms, they were “adverse witnesses,” and she could deal with them as if she were cross-examining the opposition witnesses.
She hoped she could pull it off.
“Plaintiff calls Inspector Stanley Whitney to the stand.”
CHAPTER 70
NARCOTICS INSPECTOR STAN Whitney wore jeans, a denim shirt, and a striped tie under a navy-blue jacket. He looked very respectable and trustworthy, and the wire-rimmed glasses just frosted the cake.
He swore on the Bible to tell the whole truth and nothing but, and then he took his seat in the witness box.
Yuki spent a few minutes establishing that Whitney had been with the SFPD for eight years, the first five in uniform, the last three in Narcotics.
She asked him to describe his interview with Aaron-Rey.
Whitney said, “Well, he was like a lot of people who are pinched for committing a crime. Young, old, first-time offender or career criminal, no one sits down and says ‘I did it,’ even if you catch them standing over a body with a gun in their hand and blood all over them.”
“I see,” said Yuki. “But since this was a presumed triple homicide, why were detectives from Narcotics interrogating the subject?”
“Mr. Kordell was pulled in for running from a crack house with a gun in his hand. We’ve run into Mr. Kordell before. At first, we figured him to be a witness.”
“While you’ve run into Mr. Kordell before, you never arrested him, correct?”
“Correct.”
“And he’s never before been suspected in a crime, isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
“So what was the context for previously running into Mr. Kordell?”
“He was a hanger-on in the neighborhood. We’d do a bust and sometimes he’d be on the scene.”
“OK. And so you’ve never known him to be violent, have you?”
“Well, he was violent when he took out three men.”
“You don’t have any proof that he shot anyone, do you, Inspector?”
“He had the murder weapon in his possession.”
“And did you test Mr. Kordell’s hands or clothing for gunpowder residue that would show that he’d actually discharged that weapon?”
“No, we did not.”
“And that’s because you knew you wouldn’t find any gunpowder residue, isn’t that right, Inspector?”
“The interview was going well. We were involved in getting answers and we were confident that we would turn up a witness to the shooting.”
Yuki was sweating under her black suit, but she thought she was giving Stan Whitney better than she was taking. She stood at a distance from the witness stand and asked, “The fact is, you didn’t turn up any witnesses to the shooting of those three men, did you?”
“No.”
“And Mr. Kordell maintained for more than fifteen straight hours that he didn’t shoot anyone, didn’t he?”
“I suppose. Yes.”
“But you didn’t accept that.”
“It seemed clear to me that he did it.”
“It’s not clear to me, Inspector. You didn’t have a witness. You didn’t have a gunshot residue test. You had no forensic evidence, and for almost sixteen hours, you didn’t have a confession, either. Isn’t that right?”
“Right.”
Yuki said, “One of the functions of a police officer is to elicit an incriminating response, isn’t that right, Inspector Whitney? Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“And isn’t it true that a teenager, especially one with mental challenges, would try to please the authority in the room who told him he could go home? Isn’t that exactly what you told him, Inspector? Isn’t that how you obtained Mr. Kordell’s false confession?”
Parisi stood up and said, “Objection. Which of those questions does Ms. Castellano want the witness to answer?”
“I withdraw the questions, Your Honor.”
There was a low rumble in the room: people in the gallery whispering to their neighbors. The jury looked at the judge.
Judge Quirk said, “Do you want to cross-examine the witness, Mr. Parisi?”
CHAPTER 71
LEN PARISI, DA of San Francisco and co-counsel with Moorehouse and Rogers, who were paid to defend the City against lawsuits, got up from his seat and walked across the well to the witness, Inspector Stan Whitney.
“Inspector Whitney,” Parisi said. “Did you believe you had grounds to arrest Aaron-Rey Kordell for shooting the three drug dealers?”
“Absolutely.”
“Did you believe Mr. Kordell killed three men?”
“He’s innocent until proven guilty. But he was our number one suspect and I believed he did shoot them. He not only named the dead men, but he was carrying a weapon when he was arrested fleeing from the scene of the crime.”
“Did you hit Mr. Kordell in order to get him to confess?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you physically intimidate him?”
“No.”
“Did you read him his rights?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you get him to sign a waiver of his right to an attorney?”
“Because we just wanted to make it absolutely clear that we gave him every opportunity to have an attorney and he decided he didn’t want a lawyer. His decision.”
“And what about access to his parents?”
“There was a note on the arresting officers’ report not to call the parents.”
“Do you know why?” Parisi asked.
“He told the arresting officers he was eighteen. It’s common for kids not to want their parents to know whatever it is they’ve done.”
“Did you know Aaron-Rey’s age?”
“No. He had no priors and no ID.”
Parisi turned so that he was facing the jurors and asked, “Why do you think this was a properly obtained confession, Inspector Whitney?”
Whitney said, “Because we used the tools at our disposal. We wanted a confession, yes, but we didn’t do anything outside the law. Mr. Kordell said he killed those three scumbags, and in my opinion, that was the truth.”
“Thank you, Inspector. I have nothing else for this witness,” said Parisi.
There was some shifting in seats and some murmured conversation as Parisi returned to the defense table.
The judge said, “Quiet.” He banged his gavel, and when the room settled down, he said, “Redirect, Ms. Castellano?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
Yuki stepped out from behind the table, passing Parisi without looking at him on the way to the witness box.
She faced Whitney square on and said, “Inspector Whitney, will you agree that before Aaron-Rey said he shot those ‘scumbags,’ he said he didn’t shoot anyone?”
“Like everyone else we ever had in the box.”
“Please answer the question. In fact, Mr. Kordell said he didn’t shoot anyone, isn’t that correct?”
Whitney said, “Yes, that’s true.”
“And would it surprise you to know that during the course of your interrogation of him, Mr. Kordell said he didn’t shoot anyone on sixty-seven different occasions?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, we counted.”
“OK.”
“And would it also surprise you to know that during the course of your interrogation, he denied owning the gun on twenty-two different occasions?”
“Again, I wasn’t counting.”
“Again, Inspector, we counted. So, adding this up, on sixty-seven different occasions Mr. Kordell denied shooting the gun, and on twenty-two different occasions he denied owning the gun. And Inspector Whitney,
how many times did he say he shot these three drug dealers?”
“Once, I guess.”
“Once. And that was after more than fifteen hours in the box, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Whitney said, showing no emotion at all.
“And you had no witness or evidence to impeach this boy’s statement, did you?”
“No.”
“And so you wore this boy down until he finally said, ‘I did it,’ isn’t that right?” Yuki asked.
Whitney just looked at her.
Yuki said, “You can’t answer, can you?”
She let her question hang in the air, then said, “Nothing further, Your Honor. I have no more questions for this witness.”
CHAPTER 72
NATALIE FUTTERMAN PUSHED her tablet toward Yuki so that she could read the word Awesome in giant letters. Yuki smiled, then got to her feet and called Inspector William Brand.
Brand came in through the swinging doors at the back of the room, walked across the hardwood floor, and pushed through the bar to the witness stand. He put his hand on the Bible, said his name and that he agreed to tell the truth, then sat in the chair in the witness box.
Yuki approached him, seeing the anger coming off his square face, the tension in his muscular form, his collar denting the flesh around his neck.
She got right to it.
“Mr. Brand, were you familiar with Aaron-Rey Kordell before he was your suspect in the murders of three drug dealers?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know him?”
“I’ve seen him in that crack house at Turk and Dodge when we made busts there a couple of times.”
Yuki asked, “And did you ever search him for drugs or weapons?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Twice, I think.”
“And you never found drugs or weapons on his person, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Was he belligerent?”
“No.”
“How would you characterize his personality?”
“He was a big dumb kid in a crack house. I didn’t give him a personality evaluation. And I didn’t think about him too much.”
“He had no criminal record prior to his arrest for carrying a weapon, isn’t that right?”
“Correct.”
“Was he belligerent when you interrogated him in conjunction with the shootings on February sixteenth of this year?”
“Not really.”
“Could you describe his demeanor in a few words?”
Brand sighed, shrugged, and then said, “He cried. He denied having anything to do with the crimes.”
Yuki said, “So just to make sure I understand this: You’d seen Mr. Kordell before. You didn’t know him to be a drug user or to carry a weapon, and he had no prior record, isn’t that right?”
“Right.”
“But in this instance, you pushed him to confess to a crime that he denied committing, isn’t that true?”
“He had the smoking gun, miss. Those guys were shot in the chest at close range. Only a dummy could get close enough with a gun to kill A. Biggy and his crew. Understand what I’m saying? They weren’t afraid of the shooter, of A-Rey. Anyone else, they woulda defended themselves.”
Brand had just told Yuki something she hadn’t heard before. If he had made a mistake, she might be able to capitalize on it and destroy his credibility.
On the other hand, she could be about to make a big mistake of her own.
CHAPTER 73
THE FIRST RULE of cross-examination was never to ask a witness a question if you didn’t know the answer.
Sometimes, though, you had to gamble.
“Inspector Brand, you just stated that Aaron-Rey Kordell, a ‘dummy,’ was the only person who could have gotten close enough to the drug dealers to shoot them at close range, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right.”
“But you didn’t know that the shots that killed those three men were fired at close range, did you?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“I’ll rephrase it. Mr. Kordell was arrested for carrying a gun at around noon on February sixteenth. He was brought to your station, and almost immediately thereafter, you interrogated him until the morning of the seventeenth. When did you see the bodies of the dead drug dealers?”
“Couple days after,” said Brand.
“Couple of days after you interrogated Mr. Kordell?”
“That’s right.”
“So, just to make sure I understand: When you saw their bodies, they were in the morgue, isn’t that right?”
Brand looked confused. Like he was double-thinking what he’d said, trying to follow her, maybe realizing his mistake. “Right.”
“And so, to be clear, your testimony a few moments ago was untrue, wasn’t it? You only saw the bodies several days after you’d extracted a confession from Mr. Kordell, correct?”
“I got mixed up about the times, that’s all.”
“So you didn’t know how close or how far away the shooter was to the victims when you interrogated Mr. Kordell, right?”
“I said, I got my timeline wrong.”
Yuki pushed on.
“And so, as I understand it, you were interrogating a ‘dummy’ without representation and you decided to make a case against him without a witness, without forensic evidence, without even a theory—you came up with that later. But first, you sweated this poor kid until you finally got a confession, which is all you wanted, isn’t that right, Inspector Brand?”
“That’s your way of putting it,” said Brand.
“Yes, it is,” said Yuki. “I have no other questions, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Parisi?” the judge asked. “Do you want to cross-examine this witness?”
Parisi spoke from his seat behind the defense table. He looked unfazed, like a man with all the right answers.
“Inspector Brand, did you have friendships with or loyalty to the drug dealers who were killed?”
“What? No.”
“Did you have anything against Mr. Kordell?”
“No. Not at all.”
“So, regarding your vigorous interrogation of Mr. Kordell: That’s what you do when you have a primary suspect, isn’t that right?”
“Correct.”
“Do you stand by the confession you obtained from this suspect?”
“Absolutely,” said Brand. “He said he did it. We saw him say it. We believed him.”
Parisi said, “Thank you, Inspector Brand. I have nothing else for this witness.”
“If Ms. Castellano has no further questions,” said the judge, “the witness may stand down.”
CHAPTER 74
COURT HAD BEEN adjourned for the day when Yuki got a text from Brady saying, Tony Willis was beaten. He’s in the prison ward at SF Gen. Asked for you.
Yuki ran to her car, got into the crush of traffic, and headed toward San Francisco General, where inmates requiring hospitalization were housed.
Tony Willis, aka Li’l Tony, had been a suspect in the jailhouse murder of Aaron-Rey Kordell. He’d denied that he’d been the doer, but when she’d talked to him last, he’d given her a sense that he knew who had killed Aaron-Rey.
Maybe he would tell her now.
If he lived.
The traffic was thick, and Yuki was determined not to have an accident or even a fit of temper. Leaving the parking garage, she took a left on Polk and crossed through the Mission. It took close to half an hour to drive two and a half miles to reach Twenty-Third Street and another twenty minutes to park the car and gain access to the hospital.
When she arrived at ward 7D, the surgical unit, Tony Willis was alive and breathing oxygen through a cannula. Leads came off his chest, and fluids were dripping through tubes to his veins.
The doctor told Yuki, “That young man lost a lot of blood. He has several puncture wounds in major organs. He’s on pain medication. I can
’t promise he’ll know who you are.”
“He asked for me.”
“I understand. Keep it to five minutes, OK?”
Yuki walked down the aisle running the length of the ward. All of the eleven beds were occupied. Willis was at the far end on the left. She reached the bed, pulled the stall curtain around it, and moved a chair up to the bed.
Five-foot-tall Tony Willis had looked young before. Now he looked smaller and younger, with his defiant little hair twists and his thin cotton blanket pulled up to his underarms, monitors reporting on his vital signs.
“Tony? It’s me. Ms. Castellano.”
Tony Willis cracked open his eyes, winced, and put a bandaged hand on his blanketed chest. “Yo,” he said. “You came.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“Like a lotta white dudes beat the crap out of me and then stuck me with shanks everywhere.”
“That’s what I heard. You stay strong, OK?”
“Right,” he said. “I have something to say.”
“OK.”
“I need you to be my lawyer so I got confidentiality.”
“You want me to represent you, Tony? There’s more to it than that. I have to look at your case. I don’t know what charges there are against you. And it’s not my decision. I don’t work for myself.”
“Mrs. Cassielandro, you got to listen. I need lawyer-patient confidentiality. Right now. You hear me?”
He was wheezing. He was clearly in pain. He could die.
“OK. OK, Tony. I’ll be your lawyer. What do you have to tell me?”
“Officially?”
She picked up his bandaged hand and shook it gently.
“It’s official,” she said.
“OK. I got a confession. I killed A-Rey.”
Yuki gasped. “You killed him?”
“I was told ‘Put Kordell down quick.’ After that, I was supposed get a transfer to Corcoran, and you can see, that didn’t happen.”
“I’m not getting this,” Yuki said.
She was trying to get it, but the pieces had very weird shapes and didn’t totally fit. Whoever got Li’l Tony to kill Aaron-Rey had also promised him protection. Who the hell would do that? Furthermore, as he said, they clearly hadn’t delivered it.