The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,145
he going with this?”
“Your Honor,” I said. “This goes to the veracity of the witness. It is certainly at issue here.”
“Connect the dots, Mr. Haller,” the judge ordered. “In a hurry.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
I picked up the piece of paper and used it as a prop during my final questions of Corliss.
“In nineteen eighty-nine Frederic Bentley was convicted, with your help, of raping a sixteen-year-old girl in her bed in Phoenix. Do you remember this?”
“Barely,” Corliss said. “I’ve done a lot of drugs since then.”
“You testified at his trial that he confessed the crime to you while you were both together in a police station holding cell. Isn’t that correct?”
“Like I said, it’s hard for me to remember back then.”
“The police put you in that holding cell because they knew you were willing to snitch, even if you had to make it up, didn’t they?”
My voice was rising with each question.
“I don’t remember that,” Corliss responded. “But I don’t make things up.”
“Then, eight years later, the man who you testified had told you he did it was exonerated when a DNA test determined that the semen from the girl’s attacker came from another man. Isn’t that correct, sir?”
“I don’t . . . I mean . . . that was a long time ago.”
“Do you remember being questioned by a reporter for the Arizona Star newspaper following the release of Frederic Bentley?”
“Vaguely. I remember somebody calling but I didn’t say anything.”
“He told you that DNA tests exonerated Bentley and asked you whether you fabricated Bentley’s confession, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know.”
I held the paper I was clutching up toward the bench.
“Your Honor, I have an archival story from the Arizona Star newspaper here. It is dated February ninth, nineteen ninety-seven. A member of my staff came across it when she Googled the name D.J. Corliss on her office computer. I ask that it be marked as a defense exhibit and admitted into evidence as a historical document detailing an admission by silence.”
My request set off a brutal clash with Minton about authenticity and proper foundation. Ultimately, the judge ruled in my favor. She was showing some of the same outrage I was manufacturing, and Minton didn’t stand much of a chance.
The bailiff took the computer printout to Corliss, and the judge instructed him to read it.
“I’m not too good at reading, Judge,” he said.
“Try, Mr. Corliss.”
Corliss held the paper up and leaned his face into it as he read.
“Out loud, please,” Fullbright barked.
Corliss cleared his throat and read in a halting voice.
“‘A man wrongly convicted of rape was released Saturday from the Arizona Correctional Institution and vowed to seek justice for other inmates falsely accused. Frederic Bentley, thirty-four, served almost eight years in prison for attacking a sixteen-year-old Tempe girl. The victim of the assault identified Bentley, a neighbor, and blood tests matched his type to semen recovered from the victim after the attack. The case was bolstered at trial by testimony from an informant who said Bentley had confessed the crime to him while they were housed together in a holding cell. Bentley always maintained his innocence during the trial and even after his conviction. Once DNA testing was accepted as valid evidence by courts in the state, Bentley hired attorneys to fight for such testing of semen collected from the victim of the attack. A judge ordered the testing earlier this year, and the resulting analysis proved Bentley was not the attacker.
“‘At a press conference yesterday at the Arizona Biltmore the newly freed Bentley railed against jailhouse informants and called for a state law that would put strict guidelines on police and prosecutors who wish to use them.
“‘The informant who claimed in sworn testimony that Bentley admitted the rape was identified as D.J. Corliss, a Mesa man who had been arrested on drug charges. When told of Bentley’s exoneration and asked whether he fabricated his testimony against Bentley, Corliss declined comment Saturday. At his press conference, Bentley charged that Corliss was well known to the police as a snitch and was used in several cases to get close to suspects. Bentley claimed that Corliss’s practice was to make up confessions if he could not draw them out of the suspects. The case against Bentley —’”
“Okay, Mr. Corliss,” I said. “I think that is enough.”
Corliss put the printout down and looked at me like a child who has opened the door of a crowded closet and sees everything about to fall out on top of him.