Word: foremans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Miami, where he represented Melvin Powers and called signals for a team of defense lawyers, Foreman confronted wholly circumstantial evidence-and the relatively easy job of raising a reasonable doubt in the jurors' minds. According to Prosecutor Richard Gerstein, who had won 24 previous capital cases, Aunt Candy and Nephew Mel had lived and loved together on Financier Mossler's money. Aggrieved over their lurid affair, Mossler allegedly planned a divorce that would have cut off their income and her potential inheritance. To avoid that disaster, argued Gerstein, Mel jetted over from Houston to Miami one June...
...opening statement, Lawyer Foreman depicted Mossler as such a "pirate" tycoon and depraved homosexual that "many times" more than 39 enemies would have been glad to take turns with the knife. But he did little to support the allegations. He had no need to. Arrested in Houston, Powers had been held incommunicado for several days by Texas Rangers. As a result, his only statement, which might have helped to incriminate him, was inadmissible at the Miami trial; the prosecution had to rely on indirect evidence. Witnesses placed Powers aboard a Miami-bound jet the afternoon of the murder...
Tawdry Witnesses. By introducing no witnesses for Powers, Foreman limited the state's opportunities to cross-examine, while he himself went to work to tear down the state's witnesses and make the most of Candy's. Under Florida procedure, Foreman's no-witness tactic also entitled him to the opening and closing arguments...
...master cross-examiner, Foreman made hash of the state's witnesses-a clutch of convicts and others who told in gutter argot of assorted sexual stunts that they said Mel boasted of performing with Candy. Sex, the defense scoffed, does not prove murder. After one Texas thief and drug addict testified that Candy gave him $7,000 to kill Mossler, and an ex-con carnival worker said that Mel offered $10,000 for the same job, the defense produced both men's wives to testify that their husbands were liars. Another con, who claimed that Mel had asked...
Armchair Detectives. Over and over, Foreman alluded to an alleged conspiracy between Miami police and Mossler's other relatives to railroad the defendants and get control of the estate. The jury, well aware that Dade County (Miami) police are currently under fire for various scandals, quickly got the hint. To cap it all, the defense produced 1) an ex-Mossler handyman who said that he had seen the financier cavorting half naked with three youths; 2) an insurance agent who owned a white convertible, and had once lived with Mossler; 3) police testimony that Interior Decorator Fred Weissel...