LAWYER, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE

by

Elissa R. Wellikson

Chapter One

How you can tell when a lawyer is lying?
His lips are moving. 

“Are you calling me a liar?  No junior officer calls a Marine major a liar.”  The major turned to face the judge.  “Can she ask me that, your honor?  She's trying to make me look like a fool.  I refuse to answer that impertinent question.”  Major Turner was clipped and pressed.  He sat ramrod straight on the witness stand and held his chest out so that his three rows of service and combat ribbons were visible below his pistol and rifle Expert medals.
“Actually, Major, that's Lieutenant Goodman’s job.  Please answer her question,” the judge instructed.
“I will not, sir.”
“Then I will not consider your testimony.  You may step down.”  
The major's face turned purple and he sputtered as he left the stand and exited the courtroom, slamming through the gate between counsel tables and the gallery.  I stomped Brown's foot to wipe the smirk off his face and let out a long sigh.
It was my first day in court and things were going great.
I had arrived on a Thursday at my first duty station, the Naval Legal Service Office, Subic Bay, the Philippines.  It was now Wednesday.  I had been on active duty in the Navy for five months, only actually practicing law for last five days.  I joined the Navy while I was still in law school.  When the Navy recruiter came on campus in the middle of my second year and gave a pitch about practicing law in exotic foreign ports I signed up immediately so I didn’t have to spend my third year going through the stress and humiliation of job hunting. Plus the Navy got me out of Philadelphia.  
My client was Marine PFC Brown, who had taken a few days off without permission.  He had been an unauthorized absentee, or UA in Navy parlance.  It wasn't a very serious offense and without an additional charge of resisting arrest, it would have been handled at a lower level than a special court martial.  Pretty straightforward for my first trial, but my heart pounded wildly as I prepared for trial.
“So, Private Brown, tell me about what happened,” I said to him in our first interview.  
“Well, Lieutenant Goodman,…ma’am,” he said, “I got drunk one night and met this girl and didn't make it back to the barracks.  When I woke up the next morning and realized I was already UA I decided I might as well take off a few days and just have some fun with my new friend.”  He paused and looked down at his hands and coughed.  When he looked up, PFC Brown had a smirk on his face.  I gave him a stern look and he continued.  “So I was UA.  But I didn't resist arrest.  I was just walking down the street when these two guys tried to grab me.  I didn't know who they were so I took off running to get away from them.”  
“Did they yell for you to stop?”
“I didn't hear nothing like that.  But I was pretty fast getting away from them.”
“How did they catch you?”
“Well, you see, I came around a corner and there were two PC, you know Philippine Constabulary, pointing M16s at me.  I stopped right away.”  He smirked again.  “They handed me over to my command.  I told my sergeant just what happened and I think he believed me.  But when they charged me with resisting arrest he told me that the major was pissed and he was making an example of me.”
When I went through military legal training at Justice School just before reporting to Subic they warned us that all the clients lie.  It seemed I had the rarest of clients – an honest man.  No hemming, no hawing, no prevaricating.  I flipped through his service record.  Brown was a 19 year-old high school graduate with a couple of minor transgressions and marginally acceptable job performance.  I looked up at Brown.  His uniform was not crisply pressed.  His shoes were scuffed.  He wore pistol and rifle Marksman medals, the minimum level for the Marine Corps.
“Make sure you are squared away for the trial on Thursday,” I said.  “Get a haircut; press your uniform; shine your shoes.”  
He nodded his head and said nothing.
At trial his commanding officer, Major Turner, looked like A. J. Squared Away, the perfect Marine, with everything in place and in order .
“This is a fairly short absence, isn't it, Major?” the trial counsel, representing the government, asked on direct.  
“Yes, it is.  But the whole unit was adversely impacted by the absence of Private Brown.  If Marines are not required to strictly comply with regulations, discipline suffers and the mission of the Corps is compromised.”  A vein pulsed on his forehead and the muscles of his thick neck contracted as he clenched his jaw.  
“Thank you, sir.”  The trial counsel took his seat.  
“Good morning, sir,” I said, as I stood to begin cross examination.
“Hmph,” the major replied.
I asked the major about PFC Brown’s duty and performance.  This was the easy stuff, but I could barely hear his answers over the pounding of my pulse.  Major Turner detailed all of Brown’s alleged shortcomings.  
“If PFC Brown was such a poor performer, sir, why did his short absence cause a hardship?”
“A Marine unit is like a finely tuned machine, Lieutenant.  Even a poor cog serves a function.  When it isn't there, it can bring the whole machine to a halt.”  
I walked back to the defense table and flipped through Brown's service record.  I lifted the prongs and extracted a sheet of paper.  I handed the paper to the major.
“Is this the evaluation for PFC Brown dated two months ago?”  
“It appears to be.”
“Did you sign this evaluation?”
“That's my signature. Major George S. Turner.”
“This evaluation seems to indicate that PFC Brown does his job in an acceptable manner.  Is that correct?”
“That's what the evaluation says.”
“So, sir, which is correct – the evaluation you signed a couple of months ago or your testimony here today?”
After the major refused to answer and was dismissed by the judge, the rest of the trial proceeded smoothly.  The witnesses repeated the story they told me when I interviewed them - that Brown went quietly with the PCs and their guns.  The judge found Brown guilty of an unauthorized absence and not guilty of resisting arrest.  Brown was reduced in rate, from PFC to private, and forfeited two weeks pay.  This was a minimal punishment for his offenses.  
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Brown said, pumping my hand.  “You really pissed off the major.  That was great.”  
“Wrong attitude, Brown.  You better get your act together.  You got lucky this time,” I said, trying to sound stern, but I couldn't keep the smile out of my voice.  
*    *    *
I didn’t always want to be a lawyer.  I went to college to get an MRS degree at Penn State, where there were three men for every woman.  It sounded like good odds.  And I took architecture, since I was good at math and art, and the ratios in that department were even better.  But, I still couldn’t get a date.  No, that’s not right.  I didn’t have a problem getting first dates.  Second dates were the problem.  I refused to pretend to be stupid.  And I was backward sexually.  Guys expected you to put out on the first date.  When I didn’t they thought I was being coy, playing hard to get.  I wasn’t playing.  Anyway, it’s hard to get married if you can’t get a second date.
I went to law school because a guy I was dating was a law professor and he said I had a good mind for the law.  He was trying to get me into bed.  And it worked. Then I told my mother about it. Not the part about getting me into bed, the part where he said I had a good mind for the law. My mother latched right on to that idea. At the time I had a job making metal wall hangings – you know, boat docks, café scenes—and it wasn't the career she had in mind for her nice Jewish daughter. To be honest, I didn't see much of a future there myself.  But then I didn’t really see one in the Navy, either.  At least, not at first.