The Lincoln Lawyer

Mick wakes up the next morning in Maggie’s bed, with their daughter asleep between them. Mick remembers the babysitter leaving and the second bottle of wine, but he can’t remember what happened after that. He is disappointed that after four years apart he can’t remember if he and Maggie had sex.

Maggie wakes up and asks Mick to leave so that Hayley doesn’t see them together in this way. Mick asks how often Maggie lets Hayley sleep in her bed and they end up having an argument about parenting. Mick notices that Maggie is treating him differently than last night, and figures it was the alcohol making her sweet. Mick offers to take Maggie back to her car and to drive Haley to school. Maggie starts arguing with him and accusing him of using her last night to get information on the case. Mick admits that he could never win a verbal argument with Maggie, and that he was always relieved when he didn’t have to go up against her in court. Maggie tells him to leave and to call her later to arrange a time to see Hayley.

Mick finds his Lincoln parked poorly a block away from Maggie’s, with a parking ticket on the windshield. He makes a note to pay it, unlike Roulet who lets his tickets go. Mick sits down to breakfast in a diner and calls Levin. He asks him to run a background check on Corliss. As Mick eats, he reviews the evidence. He is looking at photos of the injuries to Reggie’s face when he suddenly realizes that the undamaged side of Reggie’s face looks just like Martha Renteria, the murder victim in Jesus Menendez’s case. He heads to the warehouse where he stores his files. He places the photos of Martha Renteria and Reggie Campo, folded so their injuries are hidden, side-by-side. The two women are so similar they could be sisters.

The Jesus Menendez case was difficult for Mick. Martha Renteria had been raped and murdered in her apartment, and the only DNA present at the crime scene belonged to Mick’s client, Jesus Menendez. Jesus claimed that had nothing to do with her subsequent murder: He had hired Martha for sex, wiped his penis on a towel in her bathroom, and left. Mick explained to Jesus that there was no chance of convincing a jury that he was innocent. Afraid of getting his brother, a heroin dealer, in trouble with the police, Jesus fibbed and said that he had paid Martha with a small lottery win. In fact, drug money from Jesus’s brother paid for Martha’s services. This lie, in addition to the DNA at the crime scene, seemed insurmountable. Still, Jesus never relented; he said he was innocent until Mick convinced him to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. Jesus, who had no money to pay Mick and didn’t speak much English, was sentenced to 15 years in San Quentin.

Mick goes over the evidence from Jesus’s case and finds that the murder weapon (a short blade folding knife) bears a striking resemblance to Roulet’s knife. Martha was stabbed to death with this knife over 50 times. Both Martha and Reggie have matching puncture wounds to their necks, presumably the result of someone holding a knife to their necks to control them while alive. Mick is overcome by the similarities between the two cases. He realizes that he sent an innocent man, Jesus Menendez, to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. 

Mick flies to San Francisco and rents a car to visit Jesus at San Quentin. When Jesus enters the visitation room Mick notices that he has aged prematurely and looks dead in the eyes. Mick explains that he wants to go over what happened on the night of the crime one more time. Jesus is angry that Mick wants to talk now, when he is already serving his sentence, but grudgingly agrees to go over the details again. He went to a strip club, met Martha Renteria, and asked to hire her for sex later in the evening. He had to outbid another man who was also interested. Mick is interested in this man, and shows Jesus a series of six photos, asking if any of them are the competing bidder. Jesus positively identifies the last photo, saying that he is sure that’s the guy.

Mick assures Jesus that he is working to get him out of jail, but Jesus spits on the window when Mick raises his hand to it, angry that Mick never asked him if he was innocent, never shook his hand, and never took his case as seriously as he should have. Mick leaves the prison thinking about the fact that he has “one client who was guilty of the murder another client was serving a life sentence for” (221). It is the lowest point of his life. 

When Mick arrives back in LA, he immediately calls Levin and sets up a dinner meeting. He also listens to a voicemail from Maggie, apologizing for treating him so poorly after their night together. His next message is from Levin, letting him know that Corliss, the surprise witness for the prosecution, is a confirmed addict and snitch. Corliss is providing false testimony to get a reduced sentence and treatment in the same rehab facility as Mick’s client, Gloria Dayton. Mick realizes he can use Gloria to pass information to Corliss in order to work the surprise witness to his advantage.

Levin and Mick meet at a steak house for dinner. They both order full meals and Mick is drinking martinis as fast as possible. He tells Levin that Roulet is guilty of both the crime he’s currently charged with, and the murder of Martha Renteria. Mick goes over the details of Jesus’s case once more, with the new theory explaining confusing details in the evidence.

Jesus met Martha, drove to her apartment for sex, flushed his condom, used a towel to wipe his penis, and then left. Then the killer knocked on her door, punched, raped, and stabbed Martha to death. Afterward, the killer thoroughly wiped the apartment and crime scene clean of any fingerprints. That’s why detectives never found Jesus’s fingerprints in the apartment and assumed he must have worn gloves. Concerned that the police didn’t believe him, Jesus tossed his knife into the river—something his roommates witnessed. All of these elements made Jesus look very guilty to the prosecution.

Drunkenly, Mick confesses that he just assumed Jesus was guilty from the start, without ever asking Jesus. Mick and Levin are both so distraught that they cannot touch their food. Levin tries in vain to console Mick, who explains that Jesus identified Roulet’s photo in San Quentin earlier that day. He also tells Levin about the similarity between Reggie and Martha’s battered faces. They realize that in the footage from the bar, Roulet was closely observing Reggie’s first client, Mr. X, studying him to make it look like Mr. X was the perpetrator. Roulet noticed that Mr. X was left-handed, so he assaulted Reggie with his left hand to set Mr. X up as a suspect.

Mick believes that Roulet has probably committed other murders like this, but can’t go to the police. For one thing, Roulet is protected under attorney-client privilege. Also, if Mick goes against a client, he will probably lose most of his other clients, since he works for mostly guilty people. Finally, much of the evidence that could help Jesus will not be admissible. Mick now assumes that Roulet chose him for his attorney for exactly this reason: So that if Mick saw the similarities between Martha and Reggie, he would be bound to protect Roulet. Mick decides to continue defending Roulet and playing dumb. Before they leave the restaurant, Mick asks Levin to look further into Roulet, particularly into the story of his mother’s rape.