The moment I literally smacked into Judge Kate Marsh, I started to worry that luck wasn’t going to be on my side.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I stepped back from full-body contact with the jurist.
“It’s always crowded.” A brief smile flickered over her face. “No harm, no foul.”
“Justin McPhee.” I put out my right hand for the appropriate amount of contact. “I have a pretrial hearing upstairs with you in half an hour.”
“Kate Marsh.” She shook. “But I guess you already know that. So see you in a few. Nice to meet you.”
Once the judge moved past me, I craned my neck, looking for a woman with messy dirty-blond hair. I was sure I’d seen Casey behind something that looked like a moon rover, but had to be the modern interpretation of the classic stroller. The jolt of recognition had been so strong, I’d lost all sense of direction, then had stopped moving with the crowd and had hit the judge. Now that the path was clear again, I tried to spy my ex-lover.
More than anything, I wanted to see that baby. I’d heard through the grapevine that she’d given birth to a little boy two months ago. It made sense that she’d be out of the house even if it didn’t make sense for her to be at the justice center. I couldn’t imagine what case would be so important as to bring a mother of a newborn down to the bowels of the justice system.
“Justin?”
My head snapped around at the sound of my name in a woman’s voice.
“Casey?” I asked before I looked. When I did see clearly, it was obvious I wasn’t looking at the attorney. My client’s frown was curious.
“Tyisha Cooley,” she said coolly. “I thought I was early enough.” She eyed the large crowd in front of the small elevators. “How long will it take to get upstairs? It’s the twenty-fifth floor. No chance of using the stairs, right?”
The people were ten deep. If I hadn’t been distracted, I’d have made it upstairs well before the after lunch crowd had formed.
“The judge made it up ahead of us,” was my non sequitur.
“You okay?”
“Thought I saw a ghost is all,” I demurred. “Let’s get to Marsh’s courtroom.”
Ten minutes later, we were on the twenty-fifth floor in the courtroom waiting area, a duplicate of some five floors above and below. Only the tiny placards for courtrooms A through D signaled location.
“What happens this afternoon?” Cooley asked.
“What happens is hopefully your first and last visit to this part of the building.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I’m going to lay out for Judge Marsh the prosecutor’s overreach and the dismissal of my other client’s case by Judge Cox in April.”
“Then what? I walk away?”
“That’s the hope. The prosecutor probably doesn’t want to go to trial on this. They only want to go to trial on sure winners most days. But even if they don’t dismiss entirely, I’d work on getting them down to a misdemeanor like we discussed.”
“No jail time?”
“Not on a majority of them. No promises, of course. It hardly ever happens outside of DWI cases.” At her curious expression, I clarified. “Driving while intoxicated.”
“Right. Of course. This system loves to put users in jail rather than treat the addiction.”
I didn’t do political debates about the criminal justice system with clients. Everyone thought it was broken even if we couldn’t agree on how. No matter, it wasn’t going to be fixed in time for whatever case I was handling.
“Let’s go in. You can sit in the courtroom gallery. I’ll go back to chambers and see what the plan is for the day.”
Once Cooley got as comfortable as anyone could on a hard wooden bench, I walked behind the witness chair and high bench until I was in the area where the real work of court was done. Told the bailiff I was on the State of Ohio versus Cooley matter, then turned to find an empty seat in the narrow hall. Before my butt could hit the chair, I heard my name from a different woman’s lips this time.
“Justin McPhee. You’re representing Cooley?” It was Nicole Long.
“How’s Major Crimes?” I asked, both surprised and not to see her here. I looked around wondering if there was some newsworthy rape or murder going on here that I’d missed. Department heads only came out for the big cases. Cooley’s certainly wasn’t one.
“Yes. What are you here on?”
“Cooley.”
“Oh, I thought…” I trailed off, sure what I’d thought shouldn’t be repeated. I shifted in my tasseled loafers, starting to feel a tiny bit discomfited, like I’d missed something.
“Special request from the big boss,” Long explained.
“Are you aware of a Libby Saldana?” I didn’t need to talk politics. I’d come here ready to make a deal. “Same charges about two or three months back?”
“Dismissed those. Judge Cox was not on board. Pope agreed and pled it to a misdemeanor,” Long rattled off.
I nearly sighed in relief. This wasn’t going to be that hard. I could give my client what I’d promised.
“So what are we doing here? Is this some kind of vendetta? Did Pope mention the victim was her sister?”
“Cooley,” the bailiff called. “Judge is ready for you.”
“Sorry. Elevator got stuck,” an out of breath Valerie Dodds huffed as she ran down the back hallway toward us and the judge’s chambers.
“Marsh just called us in,” Long said to her colleague. “Take a deep breath. Let’s go.”
I’d thought I’d have more time to hash out something. Didn’t have any choice but to walk into chambers blind.
“Justin McPhee, long time no see,” Judge Marsh said, then laughed heartily. She stood and shook my hand again. A bracelet heavy with charms jingled below the cuff of her powder blue suit jacket, which looked like a dead ringer for the outfit Hillary Clinton had danced her way through Puerto Rico in.
“Nice to meet you formally,” I replied.
“No one’s on the pleadings.” She turned to the women. “Please introduce yourselves.”
“Nicole Long, deputy prosecutor and head of Major Crimes. This is Valerie Dodds. She’ll be on the case as well. She’s an assistant prosecutor in the office.”
Judge Marsh shook both of their right hands in turn. She sat back down and scooted her office chair forward. Flipped open the file. I could tell that she was just glancing at the indictment and other pleadings. Something in my gut told me she’d already familiarized herself with the case.
“So what are we doing here?” Judge Marsh started. “Your client’s not in jail. Low bail, too. Her time runs out on the first of February of next year. I believe strongly swift adjudication is fairer to everyone. So how about a trial date sixty days out? That puts us at August twenty-fifth. That’s a Monday. Work for everyone?”
I hadn’t been addressed, so I kept mute and pulled my trial calendar from my briefcase.
“Yes, your honor, that works for me.”
Long nodded, her agreement going for Dodds as well, I imagined.
“Pretrial motions and jury instructions are due August eleven. Any arguments will be scheduled for the fifteenth.”
I scribbled furiously in my calendar.
“Great. That was easy.” Marsh flipped the court’s file closed. “I look forward to working with all of you to have a speedy and orderly trial. Should you need anything resolved before August, my door is open.” Judge Marsh stood again. Shook all our hands. Dismissed, Marsh’s bailiff came in to usher us out of chambers. Marsh wasn’t a “knock attorneys’ heads together until they reach a deal” type of jurist. For once I was disappointed by something I found downright annoying from most other judges.
“Can I talk to you?” I asked the prosecutors. They were walking away as if a plea wasn’t on the table. In all my years of practice, a plea was always on the table.
“What do you need, Justin?” Long asked. At least she wasn’t pretending not to know me. Especially after Long’d really had her ass handed to her when we’d gotten murder charges dismissed against our wrongly accused client. Sometimes when you beat a prosecutor on a case, they actively forgot about you.
While I’d have preferred to have this discussion in an attorney room or even the jury room if it were empty, they weren’t budging. This talking in the hall in front of all our peers and colleagues lacked the discretion I was looking for. When I stepped forward, though, neither Long nor Dodds moved. Semi-public it was, then.
“I was hoping to plea Cooley down, like Saldana. Same charges, same overreach. Cooley is a solid citizen. No drugs. No convictions. Not even any arrests.”
I wasn’t exactly throwing Saldana under the bus, but not all defendants were created equal. In the back here, behind the courtroom, we didn’t need to pretend they were.
“Not going to happen,” Long responded.
“What? Why not? Cooley isn’t any more guilty than Saldana was.”
“This was Pope’s sister.” Long’s voice was lower now. “You didn’t think it was somehow going to be the same, right?”
“Equal justice under the law and all that.”
“You want to make that argument, you can take it up with our boss. I have no room to negotiate. I’ll see you at trial.”
Long pivoted on her heel. Dodds quickly followed behind, and in less than the time it took to lift my jaw off the floor, they were gone.
“Tough going counselor,” the bailiff said in sympathy. He shook his head, then went back to typing whatever he’d been working on. I looked at everyone else, but no one made eye contact. There was no sympathy to be had. I took a very deep breath because I was about to disappoint my client. My entire job was managing expectations, and I’d done a piss-poor job of it.
“That was quick,” Cooley said when I walked through the courtroom door. “Do we need to go outside or will the judge be okay with us being in here? Do we need to sit at one of the tables?”
Clearly my client had been watching late-night reruns of Law and Order over the last few weeks.
“There’s no hearing today. I talked to the judge and the prosecutors on the case while I was in back, in the judge’s chambers.”
“So what did they agree to? The misdemeanor? Are they insisting on something more?”
“The judge set the case for trial.” I sighed. “In the last week of August.”
“What does that mean? Set it for trial. Like a judge and a jury?”
“Yes, a judge and a jury.”
“What…what about a plea?” For the first time, Cooley looked uncertain.
“The prosecutor’s office is unwilling to make a deal.”
“Any deal?”
“Any deal.”
“Why? Why a deal for that other client and not me?”
“Best I can figure, either it’s because of who the victim is or because of who you are.”
“Can she do that…Rainey…Lori…Lorraine Pope? Can she prosecute me, put me in jail, out of revenge? Out of spite?”
“She can, and it looks like she will try.”
“How is that legal? How is that just? Rainey was always a monster.” Cooley lowered her head, shook it. “I just thought I’d stayed far enough out of her grasp.”
“It’s not over until it’s over. Between now and the moment a jury deliberates, we need to fight like hell.” I only wished I knew exactly what that meant.