Defending Jacob(87)

Giannetto stopped, removed the earbuds of her iPod, and looked down at the boy from the trail above. From just a few feet away, she saw the bottoms of his sneakers, his body foreshortened. She said, “Are you okay? Do you need help?” When she got no response, she went down to check on him, sidestepping carefully down the hill because of the slippery leaves. She was a mother, she said, and she could not imagine not checking on the boy, as she would expect others to do for her kids. She had it in her head that the boy had passed out, maybe from some sickness or allergy, maybe even from drugs or who knew what. So she got down on her knees beside him and jostled his shoulder, then jostled both shoulders, then rolled him over by his shoulders.

That is when she saw the blood that soaked his chest and the reddened leaves under him and all around him, still wet and glistening, draining out of the three vent-holes in his chest. The boy’s skin was gray but there were small splotches of pink on his face, she said. She had a vague recollection that his skin was cold to the touch but she had no specific memory of touching it. Perhaps the body had shifted in her hands so that its skin brushed her hand. The head fell back heavily, the mouth gawped open.

It took her a moment to process the surreal fact that the boy in her arms was dead. She dropped the body, which she had been holding under the shoulders. She screamed. She slid away from it on her butt, then turned and managed to scramble over the leaves on all fours back up the hill to the trail.

For a moment, she said, nothing happened. She stood there, alone in the woods, staring at the body. She could hear the music still playing faintly in her earbuds, still playing “This Is the Day.” The whole thing had not even lasted the three minutes it takes to get through a pop song.

It took a ludicrously long time to bring out this simple story. After such a lengthy direct examination, Jonathan’s cross was brief almost to the point of comedy.

“You never saw the defendant, Jacob Barber, in the park that morning, did you?”

“No.”

“No further questions.”


With the next witness, Logiudice misstepped. No, more than that. He stepped in shit. The witness was the Newton P. D. detective who had headed up the investigation for the local department. This was a standard, pro forma sort of witness. Logiudice had to begin by running a few witnesses up there to establish the essential facts and the timetable of that first day, when the murder was discovered. The first-responding cop is often called to testify about the state of the murder scene and the critical early moments of the investigation, before the case is joined—and taken over—by the State Police CPAC unit. So this was a witness Logiudice had to call, really. He was just following the playbook. I’d have done the same thing. The trouble was, he did not know his witness as well as I did.

Lieutenant Detective Nils Peterson joined the force in Newton just a few years before I started at the DA’s office, fresh out of law school. Which is to say, I had known Nils since 1984—when Neal Logiudice was in high school struggling to maintain a busy schedule of A.P. classes, band, and compulsive masturbation. (I am speculating. I cannot say for sure that he was in the band.) Nils had been handsome when we were younger. He had the sandy blond hair you might imagine based on his name. Now, in his early fifties, his hair had darkened, his back was a little stooped, his belly thickened. But he had an attractive soft-spoken demeanor on the stand, with none of the abrasive, cocksure bluster some cops exude. Juries swooned for him.

Logiudice took him through the basic facts. The body had been found lying on its back, face up to the sky, having been flipped over by the jogger who discovered it. The pattern of the three stab wounds. The lack of obvious motive or suspects. No signs of struggle or defensive wounds, suggesting a sudden or surprise attack. Photos of the body and the surrounding area were entered into evidence. In the first minutes and hours of the investigation, the park had been sealed and searched, with no results. Several footprints were found in the park but none in the immediate area of the body and none that were ever matched to a suspect. In any case it was a public park—there were probably thousands of footprint traces, if you cared to look for them.

And then this.

Logiudice: “Is it the usual procedure that an assistant district attorney is assigned to direct homicide investigations right away?”

“Yes.”

“Who was the assistant district attorney assigned to the case that day?”

“Objection!”

Judge French: “I’ll see counsel at sidebar.”

Logiudice and Jonathan went to the far side of the judge’s bench where they talked in low murmurs. Judge French stood tall above them, as was his habit. Most judges wheeled their chairs over to the rail or leaned in close, the better to whisper with the lawyers. Not Burt French.

The sidebar conference took place out of the jury’s hearing and mine. The next few paragraphs I have cut and pasted from the trial transcript.

The judge: “Where are you going with this?”

Logiudice: “Your Honor, the jury is entitled to know the defendant’s own father was in charge of the early stages of the investigation, particularly if the defense is going to suggest anything was handled improperly, as I suspect they will have to.”

“Counselor?”

Jonathan: “Well, our objection is twofold. First, it is irrelevant. It is guilt by association. Even if the defendant’s father should not have taken the case and even if he mishandled it in some way—and I’m not suggesting that either is true—it still doesn’t say a damn thing about the defendant himself. Unless Mr. Logiudice means to suggest the son was involved in a conspiracy with his father to cover up evidence of the crime, then there is no way to construe evidence against the father as having anything to do with the son’s guilt or innocence. If Mr. Logiudice wants to indict the father for obstruction of justice or some such thing, then he should go ahead and do it and we’ll all come back here someday and we’ll have a trial on that. But that’s not the case we’re trying here today.