Feigning confidence and pretending to read my notes, I sat at the defense table, waiting for the teeming crowd of victims’ families, courthouse personnel and other onlookers to flood into courtroom 970 for the first day of jury selection. The fact that a lot was riding on my lawyering wasn't lost on me.
The two rectangular brown tables in front of the judge's bench were for lawyers and defendants only. The prosecutors’ table faced the judge and was at a right angle to the jury box. The defense table was perpendicular to the judge's bench, facing the jury. This layout ensured that Gil would quite literally face a jury of his peers.
Our table remained skirted by the discolored wooden shield, which was designed to hide the shackles Gil and Bert were forced to wear. Judge Tyson continued to allow this skirting over my repeated objections, despite the obvious inference that the defendants must be dangerous.
A pair of swinging doors and a low railing in the same 1970s brown as the tables—along with about 15 deputies—were all that kept the trial spectators separate from the players. Lined up on matching brown pews behind the railing was the anxious crowd. The trial was open to the public, so there was no admission charge. You needed only to be curious. But for those with a dog in the fight, like the Fernandez and Christie families on one side of the room, and the victims’ families on the other, it wasn't curiosity that brought them in; it was a potent mix of fear, love and hate.
I sat alone at the defense table, sandwiched between empty chairs. It was enough to make me feel like the defendant. Louie Vernell was predictably late again; and the marquee players, Gil and Bert, were still in transport from the jail.
Then the defendants arrived and everyone knew it. The lights from the television cameras illuminated the entrance to the courtroom. The cadre of camera-wielding photographers, who had been crouching down between the railing and the first row of spectators, suddenly stood up and turned in unison toward the door, contorting their bodies to angle for the best possible photos of the alleged killer.
In shuffled a very chiseled Mr. Florida, shackled and caged in by deputies. Madly clicking their shutters, the sniper-team of photographers had him in their crosshairs. Despite the handcuffs and leg irons, Fernandez moved with confidence and grace. His piercing eyes were alert as he scanned the crowd. He held his head high as he finessed the gauntlet of deputies and tripod-mounted television cameras.
Bailiff Mike walked in front of Gil, who was followed by Bob Behan, the other bailiff assigned to Tyson. Behind them a few paces was Bert, whose entrance was less interesting to the media. After all, he wasn't a former cop accused of being a killer.
Bringing up the rear was Sergeant Jim Stockdale, the supervisor in charge of inmate transport. Behan and Stockdale, who were big guys, stood tall over Bert Christie but appeared small next to Gil.
The courtroom crowd was hushed. All you could hear was the machine-gun-like clicking of the cameras, along with the tinny sound of the shackles. Most of the faces in the courtroom followed Gil's every movement. Undaunted by all the attention, he casually nodded his head and smiled at Neli and his parents.
As Mike Ruvolo escorted Gil to the defense table, I whined, “Why do you have to put that Houdini contraption on him, Mike? He's not going anywhere.” I wasn't annoyed at Mike, I was just ticked that my motions to remove the shackles had been denied.
“Sheriff's orders, John. You know that.” Mike replied. “Besides, look at this guy,” he said, smiling at Gil. “He's a black belt, and into kick-boxing and everything else. What am I gonna do with this guy? The shackles just make it a fair fight.”
Gil smiled back. You could see these two already liked each other. I'm sure seeing a smiling Gil made the families hate him even more. Whenever Gil smiled, the clicking of the cameras accelerated to warp speed. This had to add to the families’ discomfort.
“What are they looking at?” Gil asked rhetorically.
“They hate you, Gil; like they hate me, only maybe worse. We have to expect that from the victims’ families. Try not to let it bother you.”
Those who hated Gil before the trial hated him even more now. It was a close-up kind of hate, cooked to a boil from being only several feet away from the man they believed to have murdered their brothers, sons, friends, or in the case of Linda Allard, her future husband. The murders were not confined to just the decedents; the surviving family members suffered a different sort of death. They had to have felt their own spirits and even their futures had been murdered that night, right along with their loved ones.
“Gil, they're offering you a life sentence, a pass on the chair, in exchange for your testimony against Bert,” I informed him. My obligation under the law was to communicate every plea offer, however repugnant or unacceptable it might be.
“It's fly or fry, right?” was his shocking yet poetic reply.
Gil rejected this last-ditch offer to snitch on Bert to avoid the death penalty and secure a life prison term. Although he could have ensured his life would be spared, he chose to roll the dice instead. I heard later that the prosecution had extended the same offer to Bert first, receiving the same sort of response. I found it interesting that the prosecutors—who perceived themselves to be on the side of righteousness and truth—would cozy up to whomever was willing to get on the bus first, and then fry the guy who had the temerity to reject their olive branch.
I felt significantly outnumbered by the prosecution team that included three prosecutors: Doug Molloy, who was originally the chief prosecutor; his fellow assistant statewide prosecutor Cynthia Imperato; and Jim Lewis, who was spirited-in at the last minute to act as lead prosecutor for the state. Cora Cisneros was now nowhere to be found.
Doug Molloy was a true gentleman and a worthy opponent. He was sharp, and to his credit, he made juries feel comfortable. Doug had that professorial, Robert Redford look that made people automatically like him. He was just a little under six feet tall, and his hair was dirty blond and longer than Redford's. He wore an earring in one ear—except during court. He was handsome, for sure.
Doug was a smooth trial lawyer who knew how to make things look easy. Everything he did in court seemed to flow like water off a duck's back. In spite of his obvious ability, he almost didn't get to work on the case. His new boss at the Office of Statewide Prosecution, Melanie Hines, had been in head-to-head competition with Doug and another prosecutor, Tony Johnson, for the top job when former Statewide Prosecutor Pete Antonacci was promoted. When she finally got Antonacci's job, Melanie Hines wanted to put as much distance as possible between Doug and her perceived fiefdom. Citing “reorganization” and “administrative changes” to reporters as reasons for his departure, Hines publicly asked Doug to resign his post.
But the victims’ families made a stink when they found out that Doug, who had been their champion since the beginning, was not going to try the case. They made enough noise to cause Hines to set aside her political machinations and request that Doug stay on for the duration of the trial.
Doug had nothing but contempt for me in the beginning. Things started out ugly because I had made life difficult during the bond hearing for Cora Cisneros, whom Doug had married right before the trial. He was her immediate supervisor, which I'm sure made their relationship interesting. It was no secret that Cisneros and I had an acrimonious relationship. It had to be a distraction from what Molloy was trying to accomplish, so he chose to rearrange the prosecutors’ roles. This meant Cora would no longer be in the courtroom with us.
My relationship with assistant statewide prosecutor Cynthia Imperato was a different matter entirely. She had a contagious laugh and a good sense of humor, which were attributes she probably honed during her days as a police officer in Tallahassee. “Cindy,” as she was usually called, also was compassionate. Of all the prosecutors, she was the one who spent the most time with the victims’ families, showing obvious sensitivity to their needs.
In addition to these qualities, Cindy also was attractive. She resembled a brunette Cindy Crawford or Kathy Ireland. Whether she knew it or not, she was somewhat provocative looking, in a classy, professional sort of way. To her credit, however, she always relied more on her intellect than her looks.
Initially, my least favorite member of the prosecution team was Jim Lewis. He didn't seem like a team player, and he came off as arrogant and cocky. Assigned to the case only three weeks before the trial, I discovered later he had his own disdain for the head of the Office of Statewide Prosecution. This gave me some insight into why he came onto the case so late.
Jim had supported Doug for the statewide prosecutor position, so Melanie Hines wasn't one of his fans. In fact, she had previously tried to get rid of him. But she was forced to change her tune when she realized he was the only attorney in the office who had ever tried a murder case. As a result, Hines requested that Jim take control of the trial. Lewis said he would take the helm—but only if Hines agreed that Doug Molloy could stay on the case. This provided further pressure for her to do the right thing by Doug.
In spite of this, I felt Jim Lewis couldn't be trusted because he surfaced at the last minute with a toolbox full of “new evidence,” which was coincidentally disclosed after he came on the case. This new evidence—or fecal matter as I preferred to call it—was questionable at best. It centered on the curious testimony of drug dealer Paul Combs.
Combs, who was supposedly a friend of the victims, was scheduled to testify about his role in providing eight kilos of cocaine for a drug rip-off that was an integral part of the murders. Instead of being charged for drug trafficking, which would have been punishable by a 15-year mandatory prison sentence, Combs got the gift of complete immunity. His purchased testimony was just as suspect as Michael Carbone's, maybe even more so.
Combs planned to testify that the victims implicated Fernandez before they were murdered. The defense had been informed through the state's amended discovery response, which coincidentally had been amended after Jim Lewis came onboard, that Paul Combs would testify that the victims told him they were “going to meet two bodybuilders from Hollywood, named Gil and Tommy.” The Tommy to whom he referred was murder victim Tommy “No Fingers” Felts, who was no longer alive to refute Combs’ assertions. And since we already made the decision that Gil wasn't going to testify for tactical reasons, he couldn't refute it either.
None of this passed the sniff test, not by a long shot. Legally, it was considered rank hearsay because there were no witnesses to confirm it. Hearsay is defined as “an out-of-court statement made by a declarant offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.” In this case, the “declarants” were dead, and their “statement”—“going to meet two bodybuilders from Hollywood, named Gil and Tommy”—was obviously made “out of court.” And, of course, they were offering the “out-of-court statement” for no other reason but “to prove the truth of the matter asserted.”
The use of this sort of dead man's hearsay talk would make it easy for anyone like Paul Combs to conveniently invent a story that would simultaneously save his hide and be impossible to refute on cross-examination. I often wondered, “Why would Paul Combs admit to being a serious drug trafficker like this?” At times, I was convinced that Lewis had purchased Combs’ testimony by granting him complete immunity and extending him other benefits. Then there were other times I was just as convinced that Combs was actually making up this drug trafficking story without Lewis’ help, just to advance his own agenda and get Gil convicted.
Paul believed—along with a lot of other people—that Gil was the killer. So, it wasn't much of a stretch for me to think he made up the story about being the victims’ cocaine source. It would have been the perfect retaliation for the murder of his friends. But then again, if he really had been the cocaine source as he was prepared to testify, his desire for retaliation may have actually derived not only from losing his friend, but also from being out over a half-million dollars, which was the street value of the eight kilos of cocaine he claimed to have lost.
Lewis swore to me he would never be complicit in any subornation of perjury, which is the felony he could have been charged with if he had had anything to do with Combs lying on the stand. Later, Lewis told me that Combs originally told his story to Cindy and Doug, before Jim was even on the case. And, of course, Combs had never wavered from swearing that his story was the unadulterated truth.
This so-called evidence—if Tyson were moronic enough to allow it—would be incredibly damaging to the defense because I didn't have anyone who could prove that Combs was lying. I obviously couldn't control how the judge was going to rule. Without witnesses to refute Combs’ story, all I could do was my level best to convince the jury that he was just another felon bartering his soul in exchange for freedom from federal indictment.
This damning and poisonous dead men's testimony implicating “two bodybuilders from Hollywood, named Gil and Tommy,” would absolutely stack the deck against us, leaving less chance for acquittal. If allowed, it would make the mountainous road ahead of us even more insurmountable. And it didn't do much to make me like Jim Lewis. In spite of what he had said about Cindy and Doug having heard Combs’ story before he arrived on the scene, I couldn't shake the feeling that Lewis was the one who had brought this excrement into the trial. This caused me to doubt Jim's integrity and professionalism before I even got a chance to know him.