A lawyer acts as his own counsel in “The Law of Innocence.”
At the start of Michael Connelly’s “The Law of Innocence,” attorney Mickey Haller has just had a great day in court, having turned a felony battery charge into a case of self-defense and getting his client off. When he retrieves his Lincoln Town Car and exits the underground parking garage known as “the black hole,” he’s pulled over by a uniformed officer for having no rear license plate. Blood is dripping from the trunk, which, when opened, contains the body of a small-time crook whom he had defended years before.
Haller has been set up. He’s taken to Los Angeles’ infamous Twin Towers jail, and a vindictive judge sets prohibitively high bail. Now, the indomitable Lincoln lawyer — so named because he used to run his business from the back seat of his luxury cars — has to defend himself in what is literally the case of his life. Working from a prison cell, he has a team from his firm to help him, as well as his two exwives — one a member of his own business, the other a prosecutor who would normally be working for the other side.
They say a lawyer who defends himself has a fool for a client, but Haller thinks he knows better. “I couldn’t see putting my future in any hands but my own,” he says. “Innocence is not a legal term. … The justice system can only deliver a verdict of guilty or not guilty. … The law of innocence is unwritten.” In other words, the term “not guilty” is not an exoneration, and our hero wants to clear his name, as well as regain his freedom. Not the least of his motives is to clear himself in the eyes of his daughter, a first-year law student herself. And the lawyer has one dubious advantage: When in court, he is permitted to exchange his jailhouse blue scrubs for a Hugo Boss suit, even if it doesn’t fit him after a several-week diet of bologna sandwiches.
Haller manages to get bail reduced, and two unexpected friends put up the money: an ex-con who had been his client and Haller’s half-brother, Harry Bosch, an ex-cop and hero of another popular Connelly series. He gets to go home but only briefly because the prosecutor produces possible evidence he has gained financially from the victim’s demise. This makes it murder under special circumstances, which precludes bail. Back in jail, he can only exonerate himself by finding the real killer. This is made even more difficult because the FBI gets involved, thinking he’s on the trail of a suspect they want for themselves.
The author stacks the deck against Haller in almost every way, so it will be all the more remarkable if he can win his own case. We can predict our protagonist will eventually prevail, but Connelly surprises us with the methods, with Byzantine legal maneuvers from each side and a quite unanticipated (and overly abrupt) turn of circumstance that finally gets him off.
The story is filled with cliches. The expected exigencies and everyday violence of prison life, the need for a “protector” who may or may not be trusted, police surveillance of supposedly confidential phone calls and a caricature vicious female prosecutor are just a few. Several key moments are too predictable. When Haller says the most dangerous place is on the bus between his cell and the courtroom, we can be sure he will be attacked and beaten on that very bus at some point to come. On the other hand, it’s amusing to observe the grudging privileges he gets for being his own lawyer — a cell with enhanced privacy (though he is not allowed to use a pencil) and deferential referral by members of the court. Not least, he can insist the prosecution call him “counsel,” rather than “defendant,” while he pleads his own case.