Lineup (12 page)
Rosen leaned toward him. “Did someone threaten you?” he whispered, fixing him with his eyes.
Ziv stared back at him. Something had changed in the lawyer’s voice, in the expression on his face. For the first time he felt he was seeing him as a human being, not just a case number or a pawn in a legal game.
“Like I told you last time, anything you tell me is covered by lawyer-client confidentiality. If someone is threatening you, there are steps we can take. We can go to the police, we can tell them . . .”
Ziv shook his head.
“Please don’t be an idiot. Think about what you’re doing. Let’s wait awhile. They’ll issue an indictment in a few days and then we can see what they’ve got. But I’m telling you from experience, if they want to meet with me now, their case is falling apart. Just hold on a few more days, that’s all. Trust me,” Rosen pleaded.
The breakfast Ziv had eaten that morning rose in his throat, threatening to gush out of him. He didn’t want to be there anymore; he had to get out of the room. His fate was sealed and there was nothing he could do about it. The price was too high.
He got up, walked to the door, and banged on it loudly. Silently, Rosen followed him with his eyes.
The guard opened the door. “Is there a problem here?” he asked.
Ziv shook his head. “No problem,” he heard Rosen say behind him.
He turned to look back at him. “Just do what I said and do it right away. When you meet with the ADA, you tell her. No horse trading, no tricks. Everything they’re saying is true. It was me. I raped her.”
WHEN
Assaf Rosen walked into Galit Lavie’s office, he suddenly remembered the erotic dream he’d had about her after they’d faced off in court a few months ago. She’d been a tough adversary that day. In fact, she was known to attack all her cases with flinty determination. But in his dream, their lovemaking was extraordinarily gentle and tender.
The memory disconcerted him. She smiled graciously as he came in. He lowered his eyes, unable to get the picture of her naked body out of his head. She’d prosecuted a number of his cases, and he’d always found himself attracted to her. He wondered how she’d react if he asked her out.
They chatted for a few minutes, gossiping about mutual acquaintances in their professional world. Each of them was well aware that this was merely foreplay, a prelude to the negotiations that would determine Nevo’s fate.
Rosen still had no idea where he was going with the case, what his position would be, and, more to the point, what it should be. Nevo confounded him. He was used to hearing his clients protest their innocence, claim they were being set up, that someone was out to get them. But there was something genuine about Nevo, some poignant quality that resonated with Rosen. Naturally, he kept his feelings to himself. He’d learned long ago that the best way to protect himself was to maintain a certain distance. Whenever he got emotionally involved, he took a loss too much to heart. And if the legal system didn’t let him down, the client did. After the trial was over, it would turn out that his client had been lying to him the whole time or was too much of a sleazebag to have any intention of cleaning up his or her act.
Nevertheless, when he got the call from Galit he was happy for Nevo. He even gave himself a pat on the back for still having sharp enough senses to pick out the one innocent man among all his clients. He hoped this might be the type of case he’d dreamed of, the reason he’d become a defense attorney in the first place: against all odds, he’d procure the release of an innocent man. But then he’d met with Nevo again and everything changed. Now Nevo was saying he’d committed the rape and he wanted to plead guilty.
Who was he supposed to believe, the first Nevo or the second? It doesn’t make a bit of difference, he chided himself. His job was to serve as Nevo’s mouthpiece. If he wanted to fight the charges, he’d fight them, if he wanted to confess, he’d inform the prosecution. He had to follow the client’s wishes. Since when did the truth matter? What role did it really play in his profession? Like every other defense attorney he knew, he never asked clients if they were guilty or not. He was used to pleading cases, arguing passionately and fighting like a tiger, without ever knowing the truth.
But this one was gnawing at him. Something had obviously happened between his two meetings with Nevo, something that had nothing to do with whether Nevo raped Adi Regev or not. He groused regularly about the high conviction rate in the country, complaining that the cards were stacked against the defense, and now that he had a client who was probably innocent, he didn’t know what to do. What was wrong with him? A few years ago he would’ve gotten his teeth into a case like this and never let go until he’d figured out what was going on. He would even have fought the request to extend Nevo’s remand. He was still young, only thirty-three, but apparently he was already burned out. His job was wearing him down. He couldn’t believe he’d become his father so soon.
“HOW
does your client want to proceed with the case?” Galit asked, putting a serious expression on her face to indicate it was time to get down to business.
“If I’m not mistaken, you called this meeting, not me,” Rosen answered, returning the ball to her court. She might not be willing to admit it, but he was pretty sure the prosecution was in hot water with this case. Why else would Galit ask to see him? If they weren’t in trouble, they’d file an indictment and go straight to court, certainly with someone like Galit in charge.
The ADA merely smiled.
“So what’s going on, Galit. Is there a problem with the evidence? Did the victim change her story? Did some unexpected DNA results come back from the lab?” Rosen decided not to beat around the bush.
“We’re offering two years,” she said, evading the question.
Rosen was confused. Such a light sentence for a rape charge? And he noticed she didn’t answer his question. With any other case, he’d get up and walk out. It was worth the risk. If that was their opening bid, he could expect better offers down the line. As soon as they filed the indictment, they’d have to show him what they had and all their secrets would be out in the open. He’d find out everything they were trying to hide from him. But his client had given him specific instructions. He wanted to confess, and he’d ordered Rosen to tell that to the ADA without any delay.
Galit was watching him intently. With every second he continued to hesitate, her expression grew more incredulous. What did she know? What was missing in order for her to make the case? When he was just starting out, he’d believed that as an officer of the court, the prosecution was a straight shooter, that all that mattered was the truth, not conviction rates. He wasn’t so naive anymore. By now he knew that prosecutors sometimes played dirty, just like defense attorneys. An ADA’s conviction rate mattered very much. No one liked to lose, no one liked to go back to the office and report to their colleagues, and their boss, that they’d been outplayed.
“Six months’ probation.”
“For rape?” Galit replied, raising an eyebrow. “You can’t be serious.”
“Reduce the charge to assault.”
“But he raped her!”
“If you were so sure of that, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
“If your client was so sure he was innocent, you’d tell me where to shove my offer and you’d go to trial, wouldn’t you?” she shot back.
They sat facing each other in silence, like two poker players just before they reveal their hands. But there were no chips or bills on the table. Here they were playing for a man’s freedom.
“You go jogging in the middle of the day?” Rosen asked, gesturing with his head at a pair of red sneakers sitting under a file cabinet. He was hoping to ease the tension in the room.
“No, I’ve been walking to work. I lent my car to my brother. He and his wife flew in for a visit.” She had a captivating smile. He remembered his dream again.
“So what now?” he asked, pulling himself back down to the real world.
“Aggravated assault. Two years’ probation with time served.”
He was right. They were in serious trouble with this case. He debated taking the offer to Nevo but decided there was no need. Even if he was innocent and was being threatened, it wasn’t relevant. His instructions were clear. Rosen had told him it would be a mistake to confess, but Nevo hadn’t budged an inch. On the other hand, he hadn’t forbidden him to strike a deal for a reduced sentence either.
“What do you say, Assaf?” Galit was waiting for an answer.
GALIT
hated what she was being forced to do. If Nevo was guilty, her offer was scandalous. If he wasn’t, she was making an innocent man confess to a crime he hadn’t committed, a crime that would leave a stain on him for the rest of his life. But what choice did she have? The lineup was useless, she didn’t have any hard evidence, and the victim had withdrawn her identification. All she had was the gut feeling of a longtime cop, who might be right and might be wrong.
“Deal, aggravated assault, two years’ probation with time served,” Rosen said finally.
Galit detested most of the defense attorneys she had to bargain with. They were unprincipled liars who’d use any dirty trick to get their clients off. But she had a fondness for Assaf Rosen, and not just because he was good-looking (a fact all the women in the office agreed on). She had the feeling he liked her too. Several times she’d been tempted to see if their relationship could go beyond the professional, but she decided it wouldn’t be proper. She was a good girl who always did the right thing. If Alon hadn’t announced just before the wedding, after they’d been together for ten years, that he wanted a different life that didn’t include her, she’d probably be married by now. She might even be a mother.
“We’re going to have to sell it to the press. The case got a lot of media attention. To the man in the street, probation is the same as acquittal. And the local paper’s been running a story about it every week,” Rosen said, merely stating out loud what she already knew. In fact, she was much more worried about how she’d sell it to the press than about how she’d sell it to her boss.
“No problem. We’ll just explain that Nevo had this ace lawyer who made the DA’s Office look like a bunch of clowns,” she said with a smile. Seeing he wasn’t amused, she added seriously, “The victim and her family agreed to the deal. There won’t be any human interest stories about how the DA sold her down the river, didn’t believe her, didn’t take it seriously. No op-eds about lack of consideration for the victim’s feelings.”
At Nachum’s request, she’d met with Adi yesterday. What she saw was a girl who was confused, hurt, and angry, and immediately agreed with Nachum’s assessment that she’d changed her story for reasons that had nothing to do with whether or not she could honestly ID Nevo. Even if she could coax Adi to change her mind, there was no telling what she’d say under cross-examination. It’d be better for her to close the case with a plea bargain that was hard to swallow than to hear the victim testify on the stand that the police and the prosecution had forced her to point the finger at the defendant against her will.
Rosen was staring at her in silence. She knew exactly what he was thinking. How come the DA was willing to reduce the charges from rape to assault? What were they hiding from him? He was smart enough to know that something was going on. But Galit was no fool herself, and she sensed there was a reason Rosen didn’t want the case to go to court either. She’d come up against him before and she knew he didn’t scare easily. The smart thing for him to do would be to wait for the indictment when he could see the holes in their case. But here he was, ready to plead out.
“You’ll still have to explain what happened to the rape charge, why you only indicted him for assault with no mention of any indecent acts,” he insisted.
“We’re used to getting fried by the press. We can take it. It isn’t pleasant, but we’ll get over it,” Galit said, getting up to put an end to the discussion. The deeper he dug, the more questions he asked, the harder it would be for her to close the deal. In the end, he might back out and she’d lose the little she’d managed to salvage.
Rosen rose and held out his hand. She noted how firm and warm his grip was. She nearly suggested they go out for coffee but stopped herself in time.
“You’ll send me a draft of the indictment?” he asked, without letting go of her hand. It seemed to her he was holding on to it a little longer than necessary.
“Naturally,” she replied with a smile, withdrawing her hand. “Tomorrow. Maybe even later today.”
Neither of them mentioned that they still had to go before a judge. Plea bargains in criminal cases weren’t the same as settlement agreements in civil suits. The judge didn’t have to sign off on them. But they’d been doing this for quite a few years, and they both anticipated the same scenario: the court would grant its approval. The judge might raise an eyebrow, ask a question or two. Some liked to make background noise first, to bully the prosecution and the defense and remind them that the judge wasn’t just a rubber stamp. But in the end they all accepted what was placed in front of them.
A large percentage of criminal cases ended in plea bargains. No witnesses ever testified, no defendants ever told their story, no juries ever got to deliver a verdict on the basis of the evidence. Galit found it depressing. She was infuriated by the statistics her office gave out showing their high conviction rate. Most of those convictions were achieved through plea bargains, which meant negotiating and handing out reduced sentences. As a result, most offenders got a lot less than was coming to them.
But that was life. Without plea bargains, the system would collapse. The court would sign off on her deal with Rosen without any complications and no one would ever know what had gone on here today. To be honest, no one would even care.
In a little while, Nevo would be a free man. She remembered what Nachum had said to her: “At least get probation for when he rapes the next woman.” Had she just helped to put a rapist back on the street?
