False Witness Read online

  Snead had Matlock’s slicked-back gray hair but none of the television lawyer’s good nature or charm. Plus, he outweighed Andy Griffith by at least fifty pounds, causing the loose skin under his chin to jiggle a little as he limped and scowled, limped and scowled, making his way down the steps to his lectern.

  He was rumored to have been a chain-smoker until the day he rustled up enough clients to sue big tobacco for billions. The way Snead told it, he quit cold turkey, though close associates whispered about the daily smell of smoke on his clothes. Snead had a dark complexion, decorated with dark brown liver spots, and a gloomy mood to match.

  Eventually, he settled in at the podium and opened his seating chart. Though she was a third-year student and tried to convince herself she was beyond caring, Jamie’s palms moistened from force of habit. Snead was old-school, famed for his use of the Socratic method. He would call on a maximum of one or two students per class period, grilling them with questions about cases they had read. In Jamie’s opinion, it was an enormous waste of time, an intellectual fencing match in which the teacher had every advantage.

  The problem, from Jamie’s perspective, was that nobody learned anything about the law that way. And she wasn’t alone in her feelings.

  But Snead, universally despised by students because of his Snead-centric view of life, obviously disagreed. He was one of a handful of upper-level professors who tenaciously clung to the method pioneered by a Greek philosopher more than twenty-four hundred years ago. Come to Snead’s class unprepared and risk embarrassment. Come prepared to the hilt and things were only incrementally better. The man was stubborn and cynical. He loved berating students.

  Snead glanced over the seating chart, surveyed the class, and studied the seating chart some more. It was the same routine every day—a former trial lawyer’s sense of the dramatic. “Mr. Haywood,” the professor said in his raspy smoker’s voice, “what was the issue in the case of Novak v. Commonwealth of Virginia?”

  Snead fixed his bloodshot eyes on the middle of Jamie’s row, a seat occupied by an eloquent African American student named Isaiah Haywood. Tradition required Isaiah to rise and state the issue in dispute. Next, Isaiah would be asked to state the facts of the case and answer a series of impossible questions about the opinion. It was a tradition the students had followed, with minor variations, in every Socratic-method class since the very first day of school. Snead adhered to the ritual with an obsessive fervor—barking at any students who began to mumble their answers before rising to their feet.

  Isaiah Haywood did not stand.

  A silent tension spread across the room, stretching the air so taut it was almost hard to breathe. How did Professor Snead know about The Plan? How could he possibly have known it was Isaiah’s plan?

  There has to be a law student snitch.

  From his seat, Isaiah stared back at Snead—two boxers in prefight intimidation mode. “I’ll pass,” Isaiah said.

  “Was the case too difficult for you, Mr. Haywood?”

  “No.”

  “Is the law somehow below you? Is it unworthy of your lofty thoughts and magnificent reasoning?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Then why don’t you humor me, rise to your feet, and state the issue in Novak v. Virginia.”

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  Snead’s jaw tightened, an anger born of betrayal. He shook his head and made a show of scribbling something next to Isaiah’s name. He turned to the young woman seated next to Isaiah—a psychological ploy designed to punish a law student for the sins of her neighbor. “Ms. Wagner?” Snead’s voice carried up the rows and hovered around the head of the small blonde staring at her fat textbook—the words like the blade of a guillotine. “The issue in Novak v. Commonwealth of Virginia, if you please.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  This brought another snarl from Snead, another vigorous scribble on his chart.

  “Mr. Hernandez?” Snead said, working his way toward Jamie’s end of the row.

  “Pass.”

  “Ms. Valencia?”

  “Pass.”

  “Ms. White?”

  “I’m sorry, Professor. I pass.”

  White was only three seats down from Jamie—the plan working precisely the way Isaiah had diagrammed it. It was a move in retaliation for Tuesday’s criminal procedure class when Snead called on an African American student in the second row named Davon Jones. Davon had not prepared for class and caused a collective gasp when he admitted as much. Snead, intent on making an example of the young man, required Davon to stand and read—word for word—the entire statement of facts from the case in question. After Davon mumbled through that process, Snead started drilling him with questions.

  Unfamiliar with the case, Davon would volunteer a feeble answer that would draw a sharp retort from Snead. “No! No, no, no! A first-year student would know better.”

  After fifteen of the most painful minutes in Jamie’s law school career, Snead finally put the class out of its collective misery. “It’s obvious to me, Mr. Jones, that you are so woefully unprepared, we are wasting everyone’s time.” Snead closed his textbook and folded his seating chart. “Perhaps by Thursday you could do us the favor of reading the cases.”

  Without further ado, Snead tucked his criminal procedure textbook under his arm and limped disgustedly out of the room. Instead of the usual hum of conversation that accompanied the end of class, the students packed in stunned silence. Jamie felt at once embarrassed for Davon and angry at a professor who treated second- and third-years like children.

  That day, Isaiah Haywood broke the silence, saying what everyone else was feeling.

  “That guy’s a pompous jerk,” Isaiah said, loud enough for the entire class to hear. “We ought to be embarrassed for letting him humiliate us like this.”

  A few students ignored Isaiah and continued packing their computers and books. Most stopped to listen.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Davon said without turning to look at Isaiah. He spoke with his head down, focused on the books he was placing in his backpack. “I should have been prepared.”

  But Isaiah wasn’t buying it. “You’ve got your reasons. You’re a human being. You deserve to be treated like one.”

  Davon shrugged and mumbled something that Jamie couldn’t hear four rows back.

  “We study these civil rights cases, we worship the opinions of Thurgood Marshall, and then we let the man treat a brother this way?” Isaiah asked.

  Great, Jamie thought, now it’s a race issue.

  “Not me,” Isaiah said. He raised his voice as a trickle of students started leaving the room. “I think it’s time we initiate the Rosa Parks plan.”

  Isaiah proposed that everybody whom Snead called on the next time the class met should pass. A sit-down strike of sorts. This would force Snead to either teach the class without the Socratic method or cancel class for the second time that week. If he chose the latter, Isaiah and a few others would petition the administration and write an article for the student paper.

  “Let’s make the teachers teach,” Isaiah exhorted. “The Socratic method is junk.”

  Though nobody took a vote, Isaiah spent the next two days lobbying students to abide by the plan. He talked Davon into skipping class so that he wouldn’t have to pass for the second time in a row. But somehow, Snead must have caught wind of the plan because he called on Isaiah first. And now, working his way down the row, he was only two seats away from calling on Jamie.

  She had read the case. Though she didn’t appreciate Snead’s style of teaching, neither did she like the Rosa Parks plan. She couldn’t really put a finger on why. Part of it was the fact that she was a lone wolf and didn’t like peer pressure—the Law Student Union, as she derogatorily referred to it. Guys like Isaiah would poke fun at students who tried too hard, so that the cool thing in law school was to get good grades without looking like you were even trying.

  What was wrong with giving 100 percent? The whole thing was chi
ldish. Jamie was tired of it.

  “Ms. Gallagher-Stargill?”

  The woman sitting two seats down, who carried a chip the size of a redwood on her shoulder, made her announcement with glee. “Ms. Gallagher-Stargill passes, Professor Snead.”

  Snead stared for an extra second or two before he made another notation on his chart. “Mr. Farnsworth,” he said without looking up.

  The student sitting next to Jamie, a nineteen-year-old whiz kid named Wellington Farnsworth, jumped to attention. Wellington’s classmates called him “Casper,” a tribute to Wellington’s doughy white complexion; soft, pudgy build; and squeaky adolescent voice. Wellington had accepted the nickname with characteristic good nature.

  “Yes, sir,” Wellington said, looking straight ahead so he could ignore the icy stares from fellow students.

  “What is the issue in Novak v. Commonwealth of Virginia?”

  “The issue, Professor Snead, is whether the confession of a sixteen-year-old boy should be thrown out because the police lied to him about the evidence.”

  The hissing started almost immediately. It was the law students’ way of venting. A time-honored method of showing displeasure at Southeastern Law School.

  Snead wrapped his knuckles on the podium. “Let’s show a little respect.” He glared around the classroom, but the students knew the individual sources of the hissing would go undetected. That’s why the ritual was so popular—no one could tell where it was coming from.

  “Did the court permit the prosecutors to use deception?”

  “Yes. In particular, the court held that a lie on the part of an interrogating police officer does not necessarily mean that the resulting confession is untrue or involuntary. The court more or less applied a totality-of-the-circumstances test.”

  There was more hissing as Professor Snead followed up. “Do you agree?”

  “No, sir. I disagree. It seems to me, Professor, that police and prosecutors ought to be held to at least the same standards as criminal defendants. If a defendant lies during a police investigation, he can be charged with obstruction of justice. Why should the police be able to lie and get away with it?”

  Jamie almost raised her hand to speak against such lunacy—and probably would have on any other day. Jamie knew that Wellington was smart. U.S. News & World Report ranked Southeastern among the top twenty law schools in the country. Only one out of fifty applicants was accepted. And Wellington, now a second-year student, had been admitted at age eighteen. But he was only book smart. And his child-prodigy brain apparently had a hard time wrapping itself around the realities of the criminal justice system.

  In Jamie’s world, the prosecutors wore white hats and all other lawyers wore black. Jamie believed in law and order for very personal reasons. Novak, the defendant in this case, was an animal who had slaughtered two neighbors: a seven-year-old boy and a nine-year-old boy. According to the facts in the court’s opinion, Novak nearly decapitated the seven-year-old. Why should the courts do backflips to protect defendants like him? What about the victims?

  Jamie would dedicate her career to avenging the victims. She had promised that much on her mother’s grave.

  Snead apparently wasn’t buying it either, creating one of those rare occasions where Jamie actually agreed with her professor. He snorted at the answer. “What about wiretaps, Mr. Farnsworth? Or confidential inside informants? Or undercover police officers? Aren’t half the investigative tools available to police based on some kind of misdirection or deception?”

  Wellington Farnsworth could not have looked more uncomfortable. By answering, he had alienated his classmates. Now Professor Snead had turned on him as well. A bead of sweat broke out on Wellington’s lip as he shifted around a little, his round baby face wearing the expression of a man who had just been exposed on Cheaters. “There’s no doubt that a lot of investigative tools are based on deception, Professor. But the question is whether they should be. I would assert that some of these programs blur the lines between investigative techniques and criminal activities, between police officers and criminals.”

  Snead smiled condescendingly. “So you’re saying, Mr. Wellington, that there’s no difference between the police officers in this case, who used deception to obtain a confession, and the sixteen-year-old defendant, who stabbed two of his neighbors to death?”

  “I’m not saying that. It just seems to me that we outlaw fraud and deception in every transaction in our society except for the most important ones—transactions where citizens are being interrogated and accused of crimes.”

  This time the hissing turned into groans of disapproval. For Jamie, it took everything she had not to join them.

  Jamie followed Wellington into the second-floor hallway after class. She saw Isaiah, hands flying in animated conversation with his friends. He stopped midsentence as Wellington walked past.

  “Impressive,” Isaiah said, loud enough for Wellington to hear. “Book-award material.” It was a reference, Jamie knew, to the award the law school gave for the top grade in each class. It was rumored that Wellington already had seven.

  To his credit, Wellington ignored the comment and kept walking toward the stairwell.

  “One guy takes the whole class down,” Isaiah said.

  Wellington shrugged, never looking back.

  Isaiah shook his head. “Suck-up.”

  That did it. Jamie stopped walking and turned toward Isaiah. “Why don’t you leave him alone?”

  The surrounding students grew quiet; the flow of students shuffling toward the stairwell slowed considerably.

  Isaiah tilted his head back, analyzing Jamie as if she were a lab specimen. “Another defender of Snead and his revered Socratic method?” Isaiah scoffed. “Let’s be good sheep in there. Don’t bleat too loud at the slaughter.”

  “You’re a real jerk sometimes,” Jamie countered, shaking her head. She turned and walked away.

  She usually got along fine with Isaiah, but she had seen a different side of him today. Mean-spirited. Arrogant. Okay, so maybe she had seen him arrogant a time or two before. Still, his comments had been way over-the-top this morning.

  At least he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut as she stalked away and took the stairs.

  33

  Friday, March 21

  Jamie showed up at the legal aid clinic fifteen minutes late for her 1:00 p.m. shift. It was the first time all semester she had not been on time, and she had her reasons. Primary among them was the self-absorbed Isaiah Haywood, whose shift, along with a few others’, was supposed to end at one. Surely he would be gone by now.

  She climbed the steps of the legal aid clinic, a converted brick house located in the run-down Techwood area of Atlanta, a stone’s throw from Georgia Tech. She twisted the large doorknob and yanked hard on the door, a habit she had developed because the door tended to swell and stick after a hard rain.

  She stepped into the entry hall with its worn wooden floors and took a left into the former dining room that now served as an office. It had two metal desks with cracked pleather high-back chairs, a few plastic chairs for clients, and expanding folders full of client files that occupied every square inch of shelf space on the interior wall and a good portion of the floor. There was an old desktop unit and monitor on each of the desks, but the students all brought their own laptops. Jamie had never even seen the desktops turned on.

  One of the desks was occupied by a third-year student named Lars Schrader, who shared the Friday afternoon shift with Jamie. Lars was a blond Swede who practically lived in the gym and had the grades to prove it. He gave Jamie his patented “Whazup?” and she muttered some lame excuse for being late. When she didn’t see Isaiah still hanging around, she felt her neck muscles relax. She didn’t need another confrontation.

  She had been second-guessing her decision to call him out yesterday in the hallway, alternating between increased anger at the way Isaiah had acted and a nagging feeling that she should have just kept her nose out of it. She wanted t
o put the whole affair behind her, but that wasn’t going to be easy. She, Isaiah, and Wellington had become the talk of the school. Along with Professor Snead, of course, whose name was always on the tips of the chatty students’ tongues, generally preceded by a curse word.

  The phone interrupted her thoughts, and Lars let it ring four times. Both he and Jamie knew the phone call would probably mean another client file, and they both already had enough to keep them busy through graduation. Snead, as a relatively new faculty member, had been assigned oversight of the legal aid clinic. Jamie couldn’t imagine that there was another legal aid clinic in the entire country whose faculty sponsor had less enthusiasm for the job.

  “I’ll get it,” Lars announced loudly, shooting Jamie a perturbed look. He talked to the client for a few minutes about some kind of landlord-tenant problem while Jamie settled in and fired up her laptop. She checked the legal aid calendar. Her first appointment wasn’t until two. She pulled out her Uniform Commercial Code book and hunkered down for forty-five minutes of studying.

  Lars hit the Mute button and turned to Jamie. “It’s an eviction case,” he said. “Your specialty. Should I transfer the call?”

  Jamie already had five eviction files and, by her estimation, at least ten more active cases than Lars. “You ought to learn how to handle them too,” she said.

  “Why? I’m going to be a personal-injury lawyer. I’ll never handle another eviction case in my life. Besides, she should pay her rent if she wants to stay in the apartment.”

  “Maybe she can’t pay her rent,” Isaiah Haywood said. He had slipped into the room and leaned against the entry door. Jamie stiffened, then buried her nose in her book. But Isaiah was undeterred. “Maybe she’s a single working mom with three little kids. Maybe her employer just outsourced her job. Maybe her mother just got diagnosed with cancer and doesn’t have medical insurance.”