Free Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 01 - TRIAL - a Legal Thriller by Clifford Irving

be a trial by jury. Twelve men and women. Your peers. Plain people."
    "Can I speak to the jury?"
    "You have that right. It will be testimony under oath."
    "Then I will tell the jury that it's not true, that this woman makes a mistake, and that I doan ever know this man and doan kill him."
    Warren cleared his throat to hold back his impatience, leaning forward to the mesh. "If there's a trial," he said quietly, "and you testify and they find you guilty, the jury will sentence you either to death by cyanide injection or to life in the penitentiary. That's the law. The jury can't deviate."
    "But I will tell them, and they will believe me even if you don't. I will tell them," Quintana repeated desperately.
    ===OO=OOO=OO===
    Warren walked at a slow pace through the twisting underground tunnel that connected the Harris County Jail with the courthouse, where he bumped into Myron Moore, a burly fifty-year-old lawyer who always reminded him of Idi Amin. Around the courthouse Moore was called Dr. Doom. He made heavy contributions each year to the campaign funds of nearly all the judges, and if there was a capital murder involving an indigent defendant, Moore was at the top of nearly every judge's list — he would plead anyone guilty and if he was forced to go before a jury he guaranteed the quickest trial possible. The lawyers joked that the Texas Department of Corrections was considering opening a Myron Moore Unit just to house his clients.
    Moore stopped him in the tunnel. "I hear you cut me out of a capital in Lou Parker's court. You need any help over there?"
    "Not yet, Myron."
    "Who's prosecuting?"
    "Nancy Goodpaster."
    "Play her tough," Moore said. "Don't give her nothing. She's just another dumb ole Texas nigger gal."
    Warren frowned but decided not to comment. "What's Scoot Shepard doing in the 181st, Myron?"
    "A DWI trial. The mighty have fallen."
    "I doubt it. Must be a good fee."
    Continuing through the tunnel to the courthouse, thinking about Hector Quintana, Warren felt a barbed pain in the upper part of his back. No fucking wonder. It was a hopeless case. The judge had been clear:
"Don't waste my time. I expect you to plead it out for whatever you can get."
This sorry Mexican is giving me a hard time, Warren thought. And I like the man. I don't want him to die.
    It occurred to him then that Hector Quintana had never asked what would happen if he were willing to plead guilty.
    Warren would have said, "I can plea-bargain, Hector. The charge that the murder was committed during the course of a robbery is what turns it into capital murder. The prosecutor's not particularly vicious — believe me, there are worse. If you wanted to plead guilty, I could try to get her to reduce the charge to plain murder. Vanilla murder. She'd probably go for it — she knows the judge doesn't want to tie up the court with a long trial. You can get hit with five years probation up to life in prison. The prosecutor will make a recommendation and the judge will buy it. That's the system, that's how it works. I'd try for thirty years. The prisons upstate are crowded, they're fighting for space. You could be out in fifteen years."
    If Quintana agreed, that would be a minor blessing for everybody. Warren would be in Lou Parker's good graces. Word would spread. A small start, but still a start. And Quintana would stay alive and one day see his Francisca again.
    But if Warren took the case to a jury and they gave his man death, which
seemed an excellent possibility, he would be worse off than when he started.
They would say he had thrown away a defendant's life for the chance to play to
the crowd. Not easy to live with. A lawyer's responsibility in a capital case with powerful state's evidence was to see that the client came out of it alive.
    And I can't take it to trial, he thought, reaching the end of the gloomily lit tunnel, pausing at the door to the courthouse. That's the deal with Lou Parker.
     
     
     
    He took the elevator up to the 181st