“Okay, Mr. Torrance, I have placed before you a file in which Mr. Woodson keeps discovery documents provided to him in jail by his attorneys. I ask you once again if you recognize it.”

“I seen a lotta orange files in high-power. It don’t mean I seen that one.”

“You are saying you never saw Mr. Woodson with his file?”

“I don’t rightly remember.”

“Mr. Torrance, you were with Mr. Woodson in the same module for thirty-two days. You testified he confided in you and confessed to you. Are you saying you never saw him with that file?”

He didn’t answer at first. I had backed him into a no-win corner. I waited. If he continued to claim he had never seen the file, then his claim of a confession from Woodson would be suspect in the eyes of the jury. If he finally conceded that he was familiar with the file, then he opened a big door for me.

“What’m saying is that I seen him with his file but I never looked at what was in it.”

Bang. I had him.

“Then, I’ll ask you to open the file and inspect it.”

The witness followed the instruction and looked from side to side at the open file. I went back to the lectern, checking on Vincent on my way. His eyes were downcast and his face was pale.

“What do you see when you open the file, Mr. Torrance?”

“One side’s got photos of two bodies on the ground. They’re stapled in there — the photos, I mean. And the other side is a bunch of documents and reports and such.”

“Could you read from the first document there on the right side? Just read the first line of the summary.”

“No, I can’t read.”

“You can’t read at all?”

“Not really. I didn’t get the schooling.”

“Can you read any of the words that are next to the boxes that are checked at the top of the summary?”

Torrance looked down at the file and his eyebrows came together in concentration. I knew that his reading skills had been tested during his last stint in prison and were determined to be at the lowest measurable level — below second-grade skills.

“Not really,” he said. “I can’t read.”

I quickly walked over to the defense table and grabbed another file and a Sharpie pen out of my briefcase. I went back to the lectern and quickly printed the word CAUCASIAN on the outside of the file in large block letters. I held the file up so that Torrance, as well as the jury, could see it.

“Mr. Torrance, this is one of the words checked on the summary. Can you read this word?”

Vincent immediately stood but Torrance was already shaking his head and looking thoroughly humiliated. Vincent objected to the demonstration without proper foundation and Companioni sustained. I expected him to. I was just laying the groundwork for my next move with the jury and I was sure most of them had seen the witness shake his head.