Chapter 10b

Matt's preliminary hearing was the following Monday morning, once again before Judge Waters in the Santa Ana Superior Court building. Matt arrived looking much better than he had during his first court appearance. His face was no longer swollen and most of the bruises were fading away. He was dressed in a suit and tie, his long hair hanging over his shoulders.

The accusations against him were read. He was officially charged with: possession of cocaine for sale, possession of marijuana for sale, assaulting a peace officer, resisting arrest, reckless driving, driving under the influence of alcohol, and twenty-three separate traffic offenses related to running stops signs and red lights. "How do you plea?" he was asked by Judge Waters.

"Not guilty," Matt said, repeating what Perceville had advised him to say.

The prosecutor then laid out the basics of his case against Matt. He told about the moving violation that led to the attempt to stop the offending Maserati. He told about the high-speed chase that ensued. He called as a witness the first sheriff's deputy who attempted to stop the Maserati. This officer testified that he was the one to visualize the Maserati's license number, run it, and discover that the car he was chasing was registered to Matthew Norman Tisdale of San Juan Capistrano.

"Do we have to mention my middle name in the court?" Matt said tiredly. "I've always hated my parents for saddling me with that."

"You are out of order, Mr. Tisdale," Waters barked at him. "Do not speak in my courtroom unless you are spoken to or I'll charge you with contempt. Is that clear?"

"Yeah," he said. "It's clear, Your Honor."

The prosecutor then led the court through a chronology of the events of the day in question. When the deputies were forced to call of their pursuit of the Maserati out of concern for the safety of the residents of Lake Forest (Matt opened his mouth at this point to shout out an angry dispute of the claim that they'd "called off" the pursuit, but Perceville managed to silence him by kicking him in the shin) they sent other units to the registered owner's address to ascertain whether or not Mr. Tisdale was home. When the household staff stated that Mr. Tisdale was not, in fact, home at the moment, the deputies requested entry to the house in order to establish this as fact. The servant did consensually allow the deputies to enter the residence where, in plain view, they found large quantities of cocaine and marijuana. This formed the basis for the search warrant, which, in turn, led to the discovery of almost an ounce of cocaine and a pound of high grade marijuana in the defendant's safe.

It was during this portion of the hearing that Perceville proved his worth. This testimony was offered to the court by the patrol officer — a deputy named Michael Worthington — who had made the discovery of the cocaine and the marijuana in the house.

"Tell me something, Officer Worthington," Perceville said on cross-examination of the witness. "What was your purpose in asking for consent to enter Mr. Tisdale's residence on that night?"

"As I told Mr. Sparks on direct," he said. "We were attempting to establish whether or not Mr. Tisdale was at home."

"So your purpose of gaining entry was to find out if Mr. Tisdale was home?"

"Yes," Worthington said.

"And during the course of this examination of the house," Perceville went on, "you noticed a silver bowl sitting on the coffee table in the entertainment room of the house?"

"Yes I did."

"Was the bowl covered with a lid of any sort?"

"There was a lid on it," Worthington agreed.

"And could you see through this lid and determine what the contents of the bowl were?"

"No," Worthington said. "I could not."

"So you had to remove the lid to this bowl in order to visualize the 'fine white powder, resembling cocaine' you testified to earlier?"

"Yes, I did," Worthington said.

"What made you decide to open this bowl, Officer Worthington?" Perceville asked. "You were there to find Mr. Tisdale, were you not? Did you think it possible he might be hiding in that bowl?"

"No," Worthington said, already seeing where this was going. "I did not think he was hiding in the bowl. The reason I opened it is because, in my experience, such bowls are commonly used to store illicit drugs such as cocaine and marijuana. I had reasonable suspicion to believe there might be such a substance inside. As it turned out, I was correct."

"Was there any reason, at this point in the investigation, to believe that illegal drugs played any part in the traffic violations that had brought you to that residence in the first place?"

"Well... no," Worthington admitted. "There wasn't."

Perceville then questioned him about the marijuana bowl, which had been found across the room from the cocaine bowl. He used the same line of inquiry and got the same answers. The bowl was covered with a lid, the contents were not visible while the lid was on, the container was too small for Mr. Tisdale to hide in, and Worthington had to remove the lid in order to discover the contents.

"Thank you, Officer Worthington," Perceville said, nodding at him. "I have no further questions."

The prosecutor could certainly see where Perceville was going with this. He did a redirect examination of Officer Worthington and went into great detail about his training, experience with drugs and drug storage devices, and whether or not Worthington had ever seen such containers used for anything other than drug storage.

The damage, however, had already been done. The prosecutor finished up his presentation by calling two of the deputies who had fought with Matt while taking him into custody. Perceville did not even cross-examine them. The prosecution rested its case and turned the floor over to the defense.

"I request," Perceville told Judge Waters, "an evidentiary hearing on the admissibility of the cocaine and marijuana found in Mr. Tisdale's residence."

"On what grounds?" asked Judge Waters, although she already knew on what grounds.

"Officer Worthington and the other Orange County sheriff's deputies entered Mr. Tisdale's residence under the rule of consensual search. The scope of this search was to ascertain whether or not Mr. Tisdale was in residence at the time. Officer Worthington has testified that he opened sealed containers on Mr. Tisdale's furniture, containers in which he could not determine the contents through visualization and that were too small to reasonably conceal the object of the search — namely Mr. Tisdale himself. The opening of these containers constitutes a blatant Fourth Amendment violation and the contents should therefore be ruled inadmissible under the Exclusionary Rule. Furthermore, the larger amounts of cocaine and marijuana found in Mr. Tisdale's safe should also be ruled inadmissible under the Fruit Of The Poisonous Tree Rule, in that the warrant used to search Mr. Tisdale's house stemmed directly from the illegal search and seizure of the smaller amounts of cocaine in the bowls on his tables."

Judge Waters nodded thoughtfully. She looked at the prosecutor. "Counselor?" she asked. "I assume you have objection to Mr. Maywood's request?"

"Yes I do, Your Honor," he said. "Officer Worthington and the other deputies entered Mr. Tisdale's residence by consent of the housekeeping staff. It is true that their purpose inside there was to determine whether or not Mr. Tisdale was home and not to look for evidence of narcotic possession. However, Officer Worthington, being an experienced law enforcement professional, was able to recognize that the small silver bowls on Mr. Tisdale's tables were of the type commonly used to store drugs and drug paraphernalia. Officer Worthington has, in fact, testified that he has never seen such bowls used for anything but the storage of drugs and drug paraphernalia. It was therefore quite reasonable for him to open the bowls and examine the contents. He had reasonable suspicion that those bowls, which were in plain view and therefore covered under The Plain View doctrine, would contain illicit substances."

"Rebuttal, Mr. Maywood?" asked Waters.

"Indeed," Perceville said. "I will return to the fact that Officer Worthington was in Mr. Tisdale's house for the sole purpose of determining whether or not Mr. Tisdale was there. Despite what Officer Worthington's training and experience dictate, there was absolutely no reason for him to go opening sealed containers that were too small to harbor the five-foot eleven, one hundred and eighty-three pound man they were searching for. It doesn't matter that, in Officer Worthington's experience, such bowls typically contain drugs. As a California peace officer and representative of the government, he had no right to start opening Mr. Tisdale's belongings."

"All right then," Waters said after hearing this. "I find there is enough question about this matter for me to schedule an evidentiary hearing. We'll reconvene in two weeks and hash this all out then."

With a pound of her gavel, the preliminary hearing was put on hold.

Despite the legal troubles hanging over Matt and the distinct possibility that he might be incarcerated or pending trial on January 15, the day the tour was supposed to kick off, the band continued to put the production together as if they would be going ahead with it. They formulated a play list for the concert and began to put together what little choreography they imbibed in as far as lighting and stage set-up went. The production crew designed and built the stage and lighting sets they would be using and then went about the process of training the roadies to set it up and tear it down. Jake was set up with several language experts who would teach him to deliver his between song banter in whatever the native language of the venue happened to be. It was planned for Jake to learn several different phrases in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, German, French, Dutch, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, and Swedish.

"Those foreigners love that crap," Crow assured him when the plan was announced. "They'll eat it up."

"Right," Jake said, thinking that his accent was going to sound horrible and that there was a distinct possibility he'd screw up at some point and either mix up his phrases, misspeak a word, or, worst of all, use the wrong language in one of the countries. He could imagine telling his Amsterdam audience how great it was to be there in Norwegian or Swedish. Nevertheless, he agreed to the language lessons and vowed to do his best.

On November 22, the day after Matt's preliminary hearing, the entire touring stage and lighting set was assembled for the first time in Intemperance's rehearsal warehouse. It looked familiar to them and that was for good reason. With only a few minor changes and upgrades, it was the same stage they played on during the recent It's In The Book tour. The roadies set up all of the band's equipment, amplifiers, effects pedals, and instruments and wired them into a soundboard. That was when Nerdly took over command of the operation. He was the one who dialed in their sound for each venue. His now-constant companion, Sharon Cohen, was at his side as he directed each band member to play this or that on their respective instrument or to sing into their microphone.

"He seems in a better mood today, doesn't he?" Jake asked Matt while Nerdly worked on Coop's drum set.

"Yeah," Matt said, puffing on a cigarette and taking an occasional sip from a glass of iced tea. "He actually had a conversation with me when we got here. And I haven't heard him whine a single time about having to go traipsing around the Eastern Hemisphere for four intercoursing months."

"You think he just learned to accept it?" Jake asked.

"No," Matt said. "I think that one of two things is going on here. He either thinks I'm going to be convicted and thrown in the joint so he won't have to go..."

"That's possible," Jake said. "It doesn't sound quite right though. Remember, he was still being a little bitch to us the last week or so, and that's when it really looked like you were gonna end up in the slam."

"Exactly," Matt said. "Which is why I think it's the second possibility that's actually going on."

"What's the second possibility?" Jake asked.

"Matt!" shouted Sharon from over at the soundboard. She was wearing a pair of baggy jeans and an extra-large sweater. A UCLA baseball cap was perched on her head.

"What?" Matt yelled back.

"Bill wants you to play a few riffs through the number one effects pedal."

"Aye aye," Matt said, snapping a mock salute at her. He snuffed out his cigarette and picked up a guitar pick. With his left foot, he stomped down on the first of the four effects pedals that were arrayed beneath his microphone stand. His chair was situated so he didn't even have to get out of it. "Coming at you!" he yelled at the direction of the soundboard. He then played a few repetitions of the main riff for Living By The Law, which utilized that particular effect primarily. The sound blasted out of the amplifiers, filling the small warehouse with heavy metal sound.

Sharon made a throat-cutting gesture and Matt stopped mid-riff, restoring silence after the briefest feedback whine.

"Hold there for a second," Sharon yelled at him. "He's gonna adjust the treble and tune down the volume a little bit."

"Fuckin' A," Matt said, setting the guitar back down in his lap. He looked at Jake. "The second possibility," he told him, "is standing over there next to Nerdly on the soundboard. I think he's playing hide the Vienna sausage with her now."