The Lincoln Lawyer

On the second day of trial, the judge calls Mick and Minton into her chambers. She asks Mick whether there is anything she needs to know, trying to find out (without giving it away to Minton) whether Mick will be able to finish this case before being arrested for the murder of Levin. She does not want to start over with a new defense attorney. Mick reassures her.

Roulet wants to know what was said in chambers, and Mick tells him that the judge wanted to make sure he would treat Reggie like a victim. Roulet gets upset and demands that Mick “rip her to shreds” (371). Mick tells Roulet that he is willing to let go of his legal career to avoid falling into the gun trap that Roulet set. The bailiff interrupts their heated conversation.

The first witness is Detective Booker. The detective describes Reggie’s apartment as filled with sex toys, pornography, and lingerie. He describes the crime as reported by Reggie. In his cross-examination, Mick makes the detective look bad and calls into question the foundation of the case by pointing out that the police only ever looked at Roulet as the suspect because Campo accused him. Mick makes it clear that the detective did not take many notes, look deeply into Reggie’s apartment, or interview Louis Roulet. Although Reggie’s face had many injuries, the detective did not document Roulet’s hands. Moreover, the detective did not look for Talbot or investigate Talbot’s hand to look for injuries consistent with Reggie’s wounds. The detective admits that the whole case rests on Reggie Campo’s word, which means the jury now has reasonable doubt.

Mick meets Detective Booker in the hall, where Booker insults Mick for being a liar. He then repeats the catfish and lawyer joke, proving that Lankford and Booker have been speaking to one another. Mick is happy to know this because it will help him with his plan.  

Finally, Regina Campo, “a young, attractive woman coming to Hollywood from Indiana” (384) is called to the stand. The trial hinges on her testimony and the way that the jury responds to her. Mick is surprised to see that she is small and timid, nothing like the predator he had described. Campo gives an account of what happened to her on the night of the crime, and points to Louis Roulet at the defense table as her attacker. She explains that she didn’t tell the police that she had arranged to meet Roulet at 10 pm because she was afraid they wouldn’t take her seriously once they knew she was a sex worker.

Cross-examining, Mick forces Reggie to admit that she has already spoken with a lawyer about suing Roulet for damages. This bolsters Mick’s defense that she set Roulet up to bilk him for money. She also admits that while she met Talbot at the bar to size him up for safety, she did no such safety check with Roulet before giving him her address: She assumed Roulet was a regular because she’d seen other women leave in his car, and she has never heard from them that he is dangerous. Finally, Mick asks Campo how the jury could believe that she, a very petite woman, was able to overpower Roulet, a large man, attacking her in her apartment. Mick ends his questioning there, feeling sure that he has made “a lot of wounds. The state’s case was bleeding” (394).

During the lunch recess, Minton offers Mick a deal, which means the prosecution no longer feels they can convince this jury: Minton will drop the charges to aggravated assault with four years prison time. Mick says no. 

The prosecution rests. The judge is clearly surprised, as is Mick. Mick calls Roulet’s mother to the stand. Mick has arranged her testimony perfectly so that Minton will fall into a trap when he cross-examines her. Mick shows her the knife in question, and she recognizes it as her son’s knife. She explains that Roulet has had the knife for four years; he started carrying it after knowing someone who was attacked while showing real estate property.

Minton questions Mary, wondering how she could possibly know so much about the exact date of this supposed attack, and she dramatically reveals that she “will never forget the day I was attacked” (402). She describes in detail her son finding her tied up after her violent attack and rape. Surprised by her answer, Minton does not know how to proceed. He asks if she would lie to help her son avoid prison, and she responds that she would never lie about being raped. Mick calls a detective to the stand to provide information on a serial rapist preying on women during the time that Mary Windsor’s attack happened. In response, Minton asks the detective whether someone in the real estate industry could have heard enough about this serial rapist to concoct a fabricated story. The detective answers yes. Mick checks with Roulet one final time: Roulet is the next witness, and he still wants to testify. 

Roulet testifies like a man eager to “defend himself” (407), telling his version of what happened on the night of the crime. When he arrived at Reggie’s apartment, she only opened the door a crack, concealing the right side of her face—if she had already sustained the injuries, he would not have seen them. He claims that as soon as he moved through the entryway, she struck him over his head and he blacked out. When he came to, two men were pinning him down. They told him they had his knife and would use it against him if he tried to move. Then the police arrived and handcuffed him. Someone must have put the blood on him, and, in any case, he is not left-handed. Roulet explodes emotionally, angry to be falsely accused.

Minton begins his cross-examination by incredulously asking whether Roulet really believes Reggie set him up for only $400. Minton holds up the photo of Regina’s beaten face and asks Roulet whether this victim is a liar who had this damage done to herself on purpose. Roulet responds with a line that Mick asked him to purposely insert into his testimony: “no woman deserves that” (413). Minton latches onto this phrase, flipping it back on Roulet: “What do you mean by deserves? Do you think crimes of violence come down to a matter of whether a victim gets what they deserve?” (413).