Immoral Certainty Read Online Free PDF Page A

know this stuff.”
    Kirsch looked so genuinely miserable that Karp’s ire receded. He perched again on the desk. “Look, Freddie, I’m sorry I have to be a hard-ass with you, but there’s no way around it. You want to be a trial lawyer, you got to worship perfection. That’s the goal. You can’t tell what a jury will do, maybe you’ll lose, but you have the obligation to walk in there with a perfect case, which includes knowing the relevant law.”
    Freddie bit his lip and stared at his desk. “Yeah, I guess I fucked it up royally.”
    “Come on, kid, you got a basically good case. Just call them up and tell them you reconsidered.”
    “I can do that?”
    “Shit, yes. It ain’t over ’til it’s over. Tell them you were suffering from extreme emotional disturbance.”
    Kirsch laughed and the flush left his face. “OK, will do, boss. Say, speaking of emotional disturbance, you seen this yet?” He tapped his finger on the front page of the tabloid, which splashed the news of a murdered child found in a trash bag.
    “Yeah, they picked up the mother. Who’s handling it?”
    “Ciampi.”
    “She is, huh? I better go over and talk to her about it. Let me know when you fix that Stahlmann thing.”
    “Yeah, Christ, these homicides take a lot of time don’t they? How come they don’t have a separate bunch of people that just does homicides? I mean, we spend most of our time just running people through the Criminal Courts on petty shit, and then one of these comes along and it throws everything off kilter. Breaks the rhythm.” Freddie moved his shoulders rhythmically, to illustrate this perception.
    Karp sighed and said, “Well, you got a point there, Fred, but as it happens there did used to be a homicide bureau.”
    “Yeah? What happened to it?”
    “Our D.A. shitcanned it the first year he was here.”
    “No kidding! How come?”
    “The homicide guys were all trial lawyers. Bloom doesn’t have much use for trial lawyers, and they didn’t have much use for him. Also, everything runs on clearances now—a murder’s just another case, nothing special about it, and so if you’re going to plea bargain away everything anyway, why bother having a bureau that specializes in prosecuting and trying murder cases? So he broke it up, and now most homicides come here, to Criminal Courts.”
    “Uh-huh, I always wonder about that, why they didn’t go over to felony bureau.”
    “Oh, that. That’s because of me.”
    “Yeah? What do you mean, because of you?”
    “Well, I guess I’m the closest thing the office has to a homicide expert now, so that’s one reason; and the other reason is, sometimes homicides get a lot of publicity and if I were to lose or otherwise screw up a big important case, then Bloom would have the excuse he needs to get rid of me. I think that’s the real reason.”
    “So how come you’re still here?”
    “Because I haven’t blown one yet.”
    “You won all your cases?”
    “Yeah. So far so good.”
    “Holy shit! How do you do that?”
    “By being perfect, Freddie,” said Karp with a tight smile.
    “And how do you achieve this perfection?” Kirsch asked. Karp shot him a look, suspecting Freddie’s usual light sarcasm, but for once Kirsch appeared to be in the throes of a genuine admiration. Winning, Karp thought, the unimpeachable argument.
    “Like I said, know the law. Know the witnesses. You have to have a mental picture of every one of your witnesses. You have to know what they’ll answer in your direct case, where they’re vulnerable on cross, and how you’re going to compensate for however they screwed up when you get them again on redirect.”
    Kirsch looked dismayed. “I got to do this on what—thirty to fifty cases?”
    “Yeah, you do, and not only that—you have to orchestrate the presentation of each witness so the whole show has the maximum impact on a jury. Like for instance, you have two eyewitnesses. One of them remembers a lot of detail—the day, the