“I was excited about coming back to work but I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” said Haller, the 42-year-old son of the late Michael Haller Sr., one of Los Angeles’s storied defense attorneys in the 50’s and 60’s. “Jerry Vincent was a friend and colleague and, of course, I would gladly go back to having no cases if he could be alive today.”
The investigation of Vincent’s murder is ongoing. There have been no arrests, and detectives say there are no suspects. He was shot twice in the head while sitting in his car in the garage next to the building where he kept his office, in the 200 block of Broadway.
Following Vincent’s death, the fallen attorney’s entire law practice was turned over to Haller. His job was to cooperate with investigators within the bounds of attorney-client protections, inventory the cases, and make contact with all active clients. There was an immediate surprise. One of Vincent’s clients was due in court the day after the murder.
“My staff and I were just beginning to put all the cases together when we saw that Jerry—and now, of course, I—had a sentencing with a client,” Haller said. “I had to drop all of that, race over to the Criminal Courts Building, and be there for the client.”
That was one down and 30 other active cases to go. Every client on that list had to be quickly contacted, informed of Vincent’s death, and given the option of hiring a new lawyer or continuing with Haller handling the case.
A handful of clients decided to seek other representation but the vast majority of cases remain with Haller. By far the biggest of these is the “Murder in Malibu” case. It has drawn wide public attention. Portions of the trial are scheduled to be broadcast live nationally on Court TV. Dominick Dunne, the premier chronicler of courts and crime for Vanity Fair, is among members of the media who have requested seats in the courtroom.
The case came to Haller with one big condition. Elliot would agree to keep Haller as his attorney only if Haller agreed not to delay the trial.
“Walter is innocent and has insisted on his innocence since day one,” Haller told the Times in his first interview since taking on the case. “There were early delays in the case and he has waited six months for his day in court and the opportunity to clear his name. He wasn’t interested in another delay in justice and I agreed with him. If you’re innocent, why wait? We’ve been working almost around the clock to be ready and I think we are.”
It wasn’t easy to be ready. Whoever killed Vincent also stole his briefcase from his car. It contained Vincent’s laptop computer and his calendar.
“It was not too difficult to rebuild the calendar but the laptop was a big loss,” Haller said. “It was really the central storage point for case information and strategy. The hard files we found in the office were incomplete. We needed the laptop and at first I thought we were dead in the water.”
But then Haller found something the killer had not taken. Vincent backed his computer up on a digital flash drive attached to his key chain. Wading through the megabytes of data, Haller began to find bits and pieces of strategy for the Elliot trial. Jury selection took place last week and when the testimony begins today, he said he will be fully prepared.
“I don’t think Mr. Elliot is going to have any drop-off in his defense whatsoever,” Haller said. “We’re locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Elliot did not return calls for comment for this story and has avoided speaking to the media, except for one press conference after his arrest, in which he vehemently denied involvement in the murders and mourned the loss of his wife.
Prosecutors and investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Elliot killed his wife, Mitzi, 39, and Johan Rilz, 35, in a fit of rage after finding them together at a weekend home owned by the Elliots on the beach in Malibu. Elliot called deputies to the scene and was arrested following the crime scene investigation. Though the murder weapon has never been found, forensic tests determined that Elliot had recently fired a weapon. Investigators said he also gave inconsistent statements while initially interviewed at the crime scene and afterwards. Other evidence against the movie mogul is expected to be revealed at trial.
Elliot remains free on $20 million bail, the highest amount ever ordered for a suspect in a crime in Los Angeles County history.
Legal experts and courthouse observers say it is expected that the defense will attack the handling of evidence in the investigation and the testing procedures that determined that Elliot had fired a gun.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Golantz, who is prosecuting the case, declined comment for this story. Golantz has never lost a case as a prosecutor and this will be his eleventh murder case.
Thirty-six
The jury came out in a single-file line like the Lakers taking the basketball court. They weren’t all wearing the same uniform but the same feeling of anticipation was in the air. The game was about to begin. They split into two lines and moved down the two rows of the jury box. They carried steno pads and pens. They took the same seats they were in on Friday when the jury was completed and sworn in.
It was almost ten a.m. Monday and a later-than-expected start. But earlier, Judge Stanton had had the lawyers and the defendant back in chambers for almost forty minutes while he went over last-minute ground rules and took the time to give me the squint and express his displeasure over the story published on the front page of the morning’s Los Angeles Times. His chief concern was that the story was weighted heavily on the defense side and cast me as a sympathetic underdog. Though on Friday afternoon he had admonished the new jury not to read or watch any news reports on the case or trial, the judge was concerned that the story might have slipped through.
In my own defense, I told the judge that I had given the interview ten days earlier for a story I had been told would run at least a week before the trial started. Golantz smirked and said my explanation suggested I was trying to affect jury selection by giving the interview earlier but was now tainting the trial instead. I countered by pointing out that the story clearly stated that the prosecution had been contacted but refused to comment. If the story was one-sided, that was why.
Stanton grumpily seemed to accept my story but cautioned us about talking to the media. I knew then that I had to cancel my agreement to give commentary to Court TV at the end of each day’s trial session. The publicity would’ve been nice but I didn’t want to be on the wrong side of the judge.
We moved on to other things. Stanton was very interested in budgeting time for the trial. Like any judge, he had to keep things moving. He had a backlog of cases, and a long trial only backed things up further. He wanted to know how much time each side expected to take putting forth his case. Golantz said he would take a minimum of a week and I said I needed the same, though realistically I knew I would probably take much less time. Most of the defense case would be made, or at least set up, during the prosecution phase.
Stanton frowned at the time estimates and suggested that both the prosecution and defense think hard about streamlining. He said he wanted to get the case to the jury while their attention was still high.
I studied the jurors as they took their seats and looked for indications of biases or anything else. I was still happy with the jury, especially with juror three, the lawyer. A few others were questionable but I had decided over the weekend that I would make my case to the lawyer and hope that he would pull and push the others along with him when he voted for acquittal.
The jurors all kept their eyes to themselves or looked up at the judge, the alpha dog of the courtroom. As far as I could tell, no juror even glanced at the prosecution or defense table.
I turned and looked back at the gallery. The courtroom once again was packed with members of the media and the public, as well as those with a blood link to the case.
Directly behind the prosecution’s table sat Mitzi Elliot’s mother, who had flown in from New York. Next to her sat Johan Rilz’s father and two brothers, who had traveled all the way from Berlin. I noticed that Golantz had posit
ioned the grieving mother on the end of the aisle, where she and her constant flow of tears would be fully visible to the jury.
The defense had five seats on reserve in the first row behind me. Sitting there were Lorna, Cisco, Patrick, and Julie Favreau—the last on hand because I had hired her to ride through the trial and observe the jury for me. I couldn’t watch the jurors at all times, and sometimes they revealed themselves when they thought none of the lawyers were watching.
The empty fifth seat had been reserved for my daughter. My hope had been that over the weekend I would convince my ex-wife to allow me to take Hayley out of school for the day so she could go with me to court. She had never seen me at work before and I thought opening statements would be the perfect time. I felt very confident in my case. I felt bulletproof and I wanted my daughter to see her father this way. The plan was for her to sit with Lorna, whom she knew and liked, and watch me operate in front of the jury. In my argument I had even employed the Margaret Mead line about taking her out of school so that she could get an education. But it was a case I ultimately couldn’t win. My ex-wife refused to allow it. My daughter went to school and the reserved seat went unused.
Walter Elliot had no one in the gallery. He had no children and no relatives he was close to. Nina Albrecht had asked me if she would be allowed to sit in the gallery to show her support, but because she was listed on both the prosecution and defense witness lists, she was excluded from watching the trial until her testimony was completed. Otherwise, my client had no one. And this was by design. He had plenty of associates, well-wishers, and hangers-on who wanted to be there for him. He even had A-list movie actors willing to sit behind him and show their support. But I told him that if he had a Hollywood entourage or his corporate lawyers in the seats behind him, he would be broadcasting the wrong message and image to the jury. It is all about the jury, I told him. Every move that is made—from the choice of tie you wear to the witnesses you put on the stand—is made in deference to the jury. Our anonymous jury.
After the jurors were seated and comfortable, Judge Stanton went on the record and began the proceedings by asking if any jurors had seen the story in the morning’s Times. None raised their hands and Stanton responded with another reminder about not reading or watching reports on the trial in the media.
He then told jurors that the trial would begin with opening statements from the opposing attorneys.
“Ladies and gentlemen, remember,” he said, “these are statements. They are not evidence. It’s up to each side to present the evidence that backs the statements up. And you will be the ones at the end of the trial who decide if they have done that.”
With that, he gestured to Golantz and said the prosecution would go first. As outlined in a pretrial conference, each side would have an hour for its opening statement. I didn’t know about Golantz but I wouldn’t take close to that.
Handsome and impressive-looking in a black suit, white shirt and maroon tie, Golantz stood up and addressed the jury from the prosecution table. For the trial he had a second chair, an attractive young lawyer named Denise Dabney. She sat next to him and kept her eyes on the jury the whole time he spoke. It was a way of double-teaming, two pairs of eyes constantly sweeping across the faces of the jurors, doubly conveying the seriousness and gravity of the task at hand.
After introducing himself and his second, Golantz got down to it.
“Ladies and gentleman of the jury, we are here today because of unchecked greed and anger. Plain and simple. The defendant, Walter Elliot, is a man of great power, money, and standing in our community. But that was not enough for him. He did not want to divide his money and power. He did not want to turn the cheek on betrayal. Instead, he lashed out in the most extreme way possible. He took not just one life, but two. In a moment of high anger and humiliation, he raised a gun and killed both his wife, Mitzi Elliot, and Johan Rilz. He believed his money and power would place him above the law and save him from punishment for these heinous crimes. But that will not be the case. The state will prove to you beyond any reasonable doubt that Walter Elliot pulled the trigger and is responsible for the deaths of two innocent human beings.”
I was turned in my seat, half to obscure the jury’s view of my client and half to keep a view of Golantz and the gallery rows behind him. Before his first paragraph was completed, the tears were flowing from Mitzi Elliot’s mother, and that was something I would need to bring up with the judge out of earshot of the jury. The theatrics were prejudicial and I would ask the judge to move the victim’s mother to a seat that was less of a focal point for the jury.
I looked past the crying woman and saw hard grimaces on the faces of the men from Germany. I was very interested in them and how they would appear to the jury. I wanted to see how they handled emotion and the surroundings of an American courtroom. I wanted to see how threatening they could be made to look. The grimmer and more menacing they looked, the better the defense strategy would work when I focused on Johan Rilz. Looking at them now, I knew I was off to a good start. They looked angry and mean.
Golantz laid his case out to the jurors, telling them what he would be presenting in testimony and evidence and what he believed it meant. There were no surprises. At one point I got a one-line text from Favreau, which I read below the table.
Favreau: They are eating this up. You better be good.
Right, I thought. Tell me something I don’t know.
There was an unfair advantage to the prosecution built into every trial. The state has the power and the might on its side. It comes with an assumption of honesty and integrity and fairness. An assumption in every juror’s and onlooker’s mind that we wouldn’t be here if smoke didn’t lead to a fire.
It is that assumption that every defense has to overcome. The person on trial is supposed to be presumed innocent. But anybody who has ever stepped foot into a courtroom as a lawyer or defendant knows that presumed innocence is just one of the idealistic notions they teach in law school. There was no doubt in my mind or anybody else’s that I started this trial with a defendant who was presumed guilty. I had to find a way to either prove him innocent or prove the state guilty of malfeasance, ineptitude, or corruption in its preparation of the case.
Golantz lasted his entire allotted hour, seemingly leaving no secrets about his case hidden. He showed typical prosecutorial arrogance; put it all out there and dare the defense to try to contradict it. The prosecution was always the six-hundred-pound gorilla, so big and strong it didn’t have to worry about finesse. When it painted its picture, it used a six-inch brush and hung it on the wall with a sledgehammer and spike.
The judge had told us in the pretrial session that we would be required to remain at our tables or to use the lectern placed between them while addressing witnesses during testimony. But opening statements and closing arguments were an exception to this rule. During these bookend moments of the trial, we would be free to use the space in front of the jury box—a spot the veterans of the defense bar called the “proving grounds” because it was the only time during a trial when the lawyers spoke directly to the jury and either made their case or didn’t.
Golantz finally moved from the prosecution table to the proving grounds when it was time for his big finish. He stood directly in front of the midpoint of the box and held his hands wide, like a preacher in front of his flock.
“I’m out of time here, folks,” he said. “So in closing, I urge you to take great care as you listen to the evidence and the testimony. Common sense will lead you. I urge you not to get confused or sidetracked by the roadblocks to justice the defense will put before you. Keep your eyes on the prize. Remember, two people had their lives stolen from them. Their future was ripped away. That is why we are here today. For them. Thank you very much.”
The old keep-your-eyes-on-the-prize opener. That one had been kicking around the courthouse since I was a public defender. Nevertheless, it was a solid beginning from Golantz. He wouldn’t win any orator-of-the-year trophie
s but he had made his points. He’d also addressed the jurors as “folks” at least four times by my count, and that was a word I would never use with a jury.
Favreau had texted me twice more during the last half hour of his delivery with reports of declining jury interest. They might have been eating it up at the start but now they were apparently full. Sometimes you can go on too long. Golantz had trudged through a full fifteen rounds like a heavyweight boxer. I was going to be a welter-weight. I was interested in quick jabs. I was going to get in and get out, make a few points, plant a few seeds, and raise a few questions. I was going to make them like me. That was the main thing. If they liked me, they would like my case.
Once the judge gave me the nod, I stood up and immediately moved into the proving grounds. I wanted nothing between me and the jury. I was also aware that this put me right in front and in focus of the Court TV camera mounted on the wall above the jury box.
I faced the jury without physical gesture except for a slight nod of my head.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I know the judge already introduced me but I would like to introduce myself and my client. I am Michael Haller, the attorney representing Walter Elliot, whom you see here sitting at the table by himself.”
I pointed to Elliot and by prior design he nodded somberly, not offering any form of a smile that would appear as falsely ingratiating as calling the jurors folks.
“Now, I am not going to take a lot of time here, because I want to get to the testimony and the evidence—what little there is of it—and get this show on the road. Enough talk. It’s time to put up or shut up. Mr. Golantz wove a big and complicated picture for you. It took him a whole hour just to get it out. But I am here to tell you that this case is not that complicated. What the prosecution’s case amounts to is a labyrinth of smoke and mirrors. And when we blow away the smoke and get through the labyrinth, you will understand that. You will find that there is no fire, that there is no case against Walter Elliot. That there is more than reasonable doubt here, that there is outrage that this case was ever brought against Walter Elliot in the first place.”