“Your Honor?” Berg said. “May I be heard?”
“No, Ms. Berg, there is no need for you to be heard,” Warfield said. “Let me make clear the rules of discovery in this courtroom. Discovery is a two-way street. What comes in must go out. Forthwith. No delay, no undue review. What the state gets, the defense gets. Conversely, what the defense gets, the state gets. Without delay. The penalty for violation is the disallowance of the material at the source of the complaint. Remember that. Now, can we take up the cause that this hearing was scheduled for? The motion in limine filed by Mr. Haller to essentially disallow the body in this case. Ms. Berg, you bear the burden of justifying a warrantless search and seizure. Do you have a witness to call in this matter?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Berg said. “The People call Officer Roy Milton.”
Milton stood in the gallery and walked through the gate and to the witness stand. He raised his hand and was sworn in. After he was seated and the preliminaries of identity were completed, Berg elicited Milton’s version of my arrest.
“You are assigned to Metro Division, correct, Officer Milton?”
“Yes.”
“What is Metro’s jurisdiction?”
“Well, we have the whole city, I guess you could say.”
“But on the night in question, you were working downtown on Second Street, weren’t you?”
“That’s correct.”
“What was your assignment that night, Officer Milton?”
“I was on an SPU assignment and was posted near—”
“Let me stop you right there. What is SPU?”
“Special Problems Unit.”
“And what was the special problem that you were addressing that night?”
“We were encountering spikes in crimes in the civic center. Vandalism mostly. We had spotters in the center and I was in a support car posted just outside the zone. I was at Second and Broadway, with eyelines down both streets.”
“Eyelines for what, Officer Milton?”
“Everything, anything. I saw the defendant pull out of the parking lot on Broadway.”
“You did, didn’t you? Let’s talk about that. You were stationary, correct?”
“Yes, I was parked at the curb at the southeast corner on Second. I had a view up to the tunnel in front of me and down Broadway to my left. That was where I saw the vehicle leaving the pay lot.”
“Were you assigned that position, or did you choose it?”
“I was assigned that general location—the top corner of the box we were putting over the civic center.”
“But didn’t your position put you in a blind? The L.A. Times Building would block any view of the civic center, would it not?”
“Like I said, we had spotters inside—observers on the ground in the civic center. I was containment. I was placed in a position where I could react to anyone leaving the civic center on Broadway. Or I could come into the box if needed.”
Step-by-step she walked him through the pull-over and the discussion with me at the rear of my car. He described my reticence to open the trunk to see if the license plate was there, then his spotting the substance dripping from the car.
“I thought it was blood,” Milton said. “At that point I believed there were exigent circumstances and that I needed to open the trunk to see if someone was hurt inside.”
“Thank you, Officer Milton,” Berg said. “I have nothing further.”
The witness was turned over to me. My goal was to build a record I hoped would be useful at trial. Berg had not bothered to show any video during her questioning, because all she needed to do was establish exigent circumstances.
But we had received the extended versions of both his body-cam and the car-cam video from the prosecution the day before and had studied them during our three o’clock at Twin Towers. Jennifer had the body-cam tape cued up on her laptop and ready to go now if needed.
As I walked to the lectern, I took the rubber band off a rolled printout of an aerial shot of the downtown civic center. I asked permission of the judge to approach the witness, then unrolled the photo in front of him.
“Officer Milton, I see you have a pen in your pocket,” I said.
“Would you mark this photograph with the position you had taken on the night in question?”
Milton did as I requested, and I asked him to add his initials. I then took the photo back, rolled and banded it, and asked the judge to enter it as defense exhibit A. Milton, Berg, and the judge all looked a bit bewildered by what I had just done, but that was okay. I wanted Berg to be puzzled about what the defense was up to.
I returned to the lectern and asked the court’s permission to play both videos turned over to me in discovery. The judge gave her approval and I used Milton to authenticate and introduce the videos. I played them back-to-back without stopping to ask any questions. When they were finished, I asked only two.
“Officer Milton, do you believe those videos were an accurate accounting of your actions during the traffic stop?” I asked.
“Yes, it’s all there on tape,” Milton said.
“You see no indication that the tapes have been altered or edited in any way?”
“No, it’s all there.”
I asked the judge to accept the videos as defense exhibits B and C and Warfield complied.
I moved on, once again leaving the prosecutor and judge puzzled by the record I was building.
“Officer Milton, at what point did you decide to initiate a traffic stop on my car?”
“When you made the turn, I noticed there was no license plate on the vehicle. It’s a common capering move, so I followed and initiated the traffic stop when we were in the Second Street tunnel.”
“ ‘Capering,’ Officer Milton?”
“Sometimes when people are engaged in committing crimes, they take the plates off their car so witnesses can’t get the plate number.”
“I see. But it appeared from the video we just watched that the car in question still had a front plate, did it not?”
“It did.”
“Doesn’t that contradict your capering theory?”
“Not really. Getaway cars are usually seen driving away. It’s the rear plate that would be important to remove.”
“Okay. Did you see me walk down the street from the Redwood and turn right onto Broadway?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Was I doing anything suspicious?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Did you think I was drunk?”
“No.”
“And you saw me walk into the parking lot?”
“I did.”
“Was that suspicious to you?”
“Not really. You were dressed in a suit and I thought you probably had parked a car in the lot.”
“Were you aware that the Redwood is a bar frequented by defense lawyers?”
“I was not.”
“Who was it who told you to pull me over after I drove out of the lot?”
“Uh, no one. I saw the missing plate when you made the turn from Broadway onto Second, and I left my position and initiated the stop.”
“By that, you mean you followed me into the tunnel and then turned your lights on, yes?”
“Yes.”