Copyright 1994(c)

                    THE TRIAL OF B.B.'S LOVER
                         by B. J. Higgs

                                
          "Detective Vanetter, in fact, told the truth about
          everything he testified to."

                                   - Marcia Clark

     Lance Rawlings was a good prosecutor. He knew it. He had the
commendations on the wall to prove it. Lately, he had an ache in
his balls from it.
     He punched up the sound button on the small color television
in his office. The damn make-or-break case had been high profile
since it began, and the Duval County Sheriff's Office hadn't made
his job any easier. Between the time he spent denying rumor leaks,
and that spent trying to unravel (and defend in Court) the myriad
of errors made during investigation of the case, he had damn little
time to give to thought of its prosecution.
     B.B. Rabinowitz. Her televised image pronounced it as though
it were spelled BiBi, with none of the hesitation one inflects when
speaking initials. 
     "B (brief pause) B (again)," her interview subjects would
address her, only to be interrupted with her breathless, rapidly
mouthed correction: "Bibi," the glittering smile belying the
rebuke. Bibi had interrupted his sleep on a Tuesday evening in May,
and been his constant companion ever since. If, that is, a corpse
could be considered company.
     Overnight, in death, she'd been catapulted to the sort of fame
she'd sought in life. Bibi and Bob had not only been the signature
name of their afternoon talk show. The duo that captured local
headlines had hosted the annual fundraisers, monitored local
election returns, and interviewed local politicians and company
owners. In Jacksonville and nearby surrounding smaller cities, her
face had been as familiar to all, more so to some, than that of the
President of the United States. Now, it was equally familiar to the
nation.
     Bibi's posthumous fame was the source of his own current
renown. That, and the unusual circumstances of her death (she'd
been found dressed in a negligee, lying in her backyard with an
arrow neatly through her heart). That, combined with her local
visibility, shot the story out over the AP newswires and made Dan
Rather mouth words about her like 'promising television star' and
'heinous crime' in the same sentence. When Bob Lamay, Bibi's former
live-in lover and co-star, was arrested and charged with the
murder, Rather added 'shocking' to the litany, and soon Lance saw
himself staring back from every channel with a square of print
beneath his name, identifying him as the Assistant State's Attorney
handling the case.
     And 'Good at his job' wasn't going to cut it. The evidence was
all circumstancial, and it was steadily being leaked to the media,
one garbled piece at a time.
     The Judge was furious at the media, at Lance, and Lance's
opponent, the Bobby Sargeant Legal Team for the Defense (BSLTD).
Sargeant and his team (Bullshit, Limited, to Lance) associated
additional, big-name, legal heavy hitters to "of counsel" to the
case, each of whom hollered loud and hard every time some new
tidbit turned up. All were furious at the leaks, and half Lance's
team was assigned the task of plugging the leak. It left him little
time and little staff to mount an effective prosecution.
     He shuffled the papers in front of him and concentrated on a
decision. Each time they focused on one good piece of evidence and
began to prepare a prosecution around it, either it, or something
very like it, had been 'leaked' to the press. What they actually
had would still be presented at trial, but the impact of surprise
for jurors and the public would have effectively been removed.
There was some doubt about the ability to seat an impartial panel
as it was, and every newsbite made it worse.
     Bobby Sargeant's army of investigators, paralegals and
assistant-attorneys pounded away at the fair trial argument while
loudly denouncing every leak, simultaneously denying any knowledge
or involvement.
     With everybody denying them, the leaks continued. One week,
the media pounded away at reports of a violent confrontation
between Bibi and Bob outside a local restaurant just days before
her death. The next, it was a pleading letter from Bibi to Bob that he
stop "stalking" her. After that, there were interviews with the
friends of each and both, some claiming Bibi was pursued by Bob,
others that she was angry he dumped her days before the murder. 
     Lance looked up as his lead investigator entered, followed by
the rest of his staff. "We're going with the feather," he said,
"code name 'milkshake', and I'd better not hear about any straws
on Channel 4." 
     Dozens of strategy sessions follwoing Lamay's arrest had
already covered every scenario, and they began, without further
instruction and based on previous discussion, to build yet another
presentation.
     They would each come up with their most persuasive argument,
mounted against any supporting evidence. The feather on Lamay's
stock of arrows was rare -- not your average arrow feather. It was
no match with the one on the arrow that killed Bibi, but the oil
used to clean it was. The defense would beat them up on the
commonality of the oil, a favorite in arrow maintenance and
cleaning, but they would counter with the rarity of the sport and
the fact that few, if any people, stocked this or any other arrow-
feather oil in their pantry.
     The feather wasn't as good as some of the evidence they had,
but Lance thought it was the best piece they had that hadn't yet
been revealed as a key strategy. 
     Even as the staff filed out to begin building the case, Lance
Rawlings began to second-guess his decision, and wished he had the
free press by their sensitive privates.
                               ***
     Two days of review of the presentations later, Lance and team
his members settled on implementation of parts of two separate
proposals. They applied all their attention to formulating an
opening presentation focusing on milkshake, further investigating
arrows, feathers and the skill or archery. They interviewed experts
on callous formation; they reviewed detailed weather reports and
studied the elements on the date of death as well as the effect
weather could have on the flight of an arrow. 
     They ran down small plane and helicopter pilots on the off-
chance something might have been observed from the air in the
Rabinowitz backyard on the day of the murder. Lamay admitted to
weekly cleaning of his equipment, and flight tests of his personal
bow and arrows showed a tendency to drift left. Bibi Rabinowitz,
according to the medical examiner, died from an arrow piercing her
heart at a slightly leftward slant.
     Two weeks of continuing defense motions to dismiss, quash,
reverse, and halt trail preparation later, The National Enquirer
headline blew milkshake out of the water. The Judge ruled against
television coverage. 
     The faces on the evening news changed from those of trial
participants to those of expert-heads, opining ad nauseum, and
courthouse neighboring business operators and employees who
glimpsed Lamay in his transport from jail to court every day. What
didn't come from the sequestered jury, and that was nothing, was
made up, hyped up and talked up by the television heads.
     The leaks continued. Slowly, every bit of evidence was
reported, albeit some of it distorted. Nonetheless, Lance was
certain of a conviction. Then, halfway through the defense
presentation, Bob Lamay stood up and announced, "I am guilty."
     The courtroom was in bedlam. Newspapers put out special
editions and Dan Rather interrupted As the World Turns with a
special bulletin on the confession. The news was on the air while
the Judge was still breathing hard and glaring at Attorneys
Rawlings and Sargeant in his Chambers.  
     "This is a mistrial," said the Judge in a voice that sounded
like he didn't quite believe it, himself.
     "Judge, you can't do that..." Lance began, his words
intermingling with those of Sargeant.
     "My client is entitled to have his name cleared, your Honor,"
Sargeant was saying.
     "Your client," said the Judge, leaning forward, "was entitled
to keep his mouth shut. This is not tape," he snorted. "This is
real life. And death."
     Sargeant began to apologize. He had no idea his client
intended to do or say anything, he insisted. He believed the poor
man, who'd been under a psychiatric doctor's care from the moment
of the crime, had 'gone over the edge.'
     "Whether he has or has not, he may as well have," snapped the
Judge. "I'm ordering a psychiatric examination, but this jury must
be dismissed and the case retried with a new panel."
     "But,... your Honor...," Lance had an argument prepared.
     "Save it, counselor," said the Judge, holding up his hand.
"It's done. I'm not any happier than you are about it," he added,
effectively disqualifying himself from any retrial by the 
statement.
     The prosecution spent months seating another panel of jurors,
presented the same evidence, and came up with a hung jury. Higher-
ups weighed the cost of further prosecution versus public opinion,
and abandoned the field of justice, announcing the state was
dropping charges. Lamay walked -- with the stigma of a murderer,
but he walked.
     Lance Rawlings did not make State's Attorney. Within months of
the conclusion of the case, his top investigator and two associate
attorneys left to join the Bob Sargeant Legal Defense Team. It was
only natural.
     One of them had originally come from there in the first place.
                               END