In a trial during which federal prosecutor Daniel Saunders, despite a miscue or two, has scored points with the jury early and often, his aggressive takedown of defendant Mark Arneson last week had seemed to be a key moment. Now the very rebuttal witness Saunders brought on to seal Arneson in the crypt of the government's racketeering case has been used by Arneson's defense attorney Chad Hummel to potentially let the defendant walk away.

Until Friday's session, what Arneson was selling looked like pretty damaged goods. Insisting that his database searches for co-defendant Anthony Pellicano were some sort of quid pro quo for tips Pellicano would give vice squad supervisor Arneson to use in catching bad guys, he hadn't seemed all that credible. He'd answered a lot of both Hummel and Saunders's questions with a bluff, sometimes--in the latter case-- resentful air, admitting to searches that "crossed the line" into misconduct with a kind of "Mission Accomplished" bluster. The implication, in the face of the government's documenting of his $2,500-month "retainer" (Arneson insisted it was for body guarding and security work) was he did it all to protect and serve.

One of his bigger cases was a bust of some low-level accused bookmakers who apparently hung out in west side pizzerias. (You can't make this stuff up. So maybe he didn't.) Arneson even sought to imply that Anita Busch, who'd passed a miserable and teary time on the stand remembering Pellicano's allegedly successful fear-mongering, was a suspected bettor and somehow a target of his investigation. (Combined with his cheap joke around that time that hers was a funny surname for a female, this tack did little to enhance his credibility.) Pellicano would brag to the brother of one accused bookie that he could fix the case using his magic contacts. When Arneson was arrested during the Pellicano investigation, the accused bookie in his case, Erik Portocarrero, cried foul. Ultimately he served just four days.

The part of the government case that would whip around to bite them in the butt was Arneson's purported filing for bankruptcy in 1998. Seeking to establish a motive for him to undertake illegal moonlighting for Pellicano, Saunders and colleague Kevin Lally used documents projected to the courtroom's array of monitors and large screens to show that he'd seemingly filed for bankruptcy. His helpers in this supposed dodge to save his Rancho Palos Verdes house, the government insisted over the ex-cop's strenuous denials, were financial advisers David and Phyllis Miller. One bone of severe contention was the filing itself, with a signature Arneson stoically denied was his.

By day's end, even as that case was built over far fewer than the customary amount of objections from the skilled Hummel, the government had already stepped into the trap Hummel sprang yesterday. One might ask if they even needed that plank; his co-defendants have been tarred as simply greedy, and as far back as his 1997 divorce filing he declared, "I have repeatedly borrowed money, and have been `robbing Peter to pay Paul' to make this situation work."

What must be costing the U.S. Attorneys and their FBI investigative cohort some lost sleep is that the Millers, as earlier court testimony in this case alludes to, clearly had a murky reputation for preying on cops, among other financially vulnerable parties. David Miller was convicted in January 2002 of forgery and theft of elder property, and is reportedly serving an eleven-year term. A relatively quick and simple, Arneson-style check of criminal databases would have revealed as much, and he government might have steered clear.

Instead came the two-act play of Friday. (Monday will bring the potentially tumultuous third act, as the judge decides whether a mistrial or some lesser remedy is apt.) Act One was Saunders' fairly pro-forma evocation of what Phyllis Miller knew. A woman who looked to be in her mid-sixties, with hair a faded soda color not found in nature and an abstracted air, she weathered that part quite readily. What followed was an appearance by Florida dermatologist Christopher Virtue, who gave a dignified and marginally mournful count of being "terrified" by a phone call from Pellicano that came after his daughter Tarita was known to be "talking to the Feds". He said he'd dissembled with Pellicano at the time "to protect my daughter", and on cross-examination by Pellicano, whom he fixed with a gaze that wavered between neutral and mistrustful admitted to telling a third party to inform Pellicano that Virtue "had him in your prayers". Pellicano's finishing, "And so I card very much for you" as just another bizarre moment in a trial that's been packed with them.

And then shortly after, in what is typically a lulling post-10 a.m. trough as everyone's morning caffeine rush falters, Hummel began Act Two as he planted himself thirty feet from Miller for a cross-examination that was done with a blunt, quiet remorselessness that made it clear this trial was no country for old ladies. Drawing admissions that her Child Technology Institute had its nonprofit status revoked that her husband was doing time in state prison or his crimes, and that the signature of a fraudulent bankruptcy filing (supposedly on behalf of Arneson) was indeed Mr. Miller's, Hummel summed it all up as "a massive fraud scheme".
It was then that Judge Dale Fischer instructed the witness to say nothing further, informed her of her right not to incriminate herself, and added that the still imperturbable Miller could have a Federal Public Defender or any lawyer of her choosing.

The normally vocal Saunders had gone virtually silent as the general shock and awe continued to reverberate, and the Judge made it clear that Hummel had "done a better job of investigating" than the government had, and based on her generally positive responses to Hummel's reiterations that the Miller testimony had been -now wrongly, it seemed clear --heavily prejudicial to Arneson's case.

What happened soon after reinforced that the Majesty of the Law can come in humble guise? A senior member of the Federal Public Defender's office, Angel Navarro, appeared wearing a crisp dark suit and a troubled expression. He looked distinctly seasick as he glanced over at the prosecutors who had landed him there. "I'm coming in at he bottom of the 9th here," he told the judge morosely. "It's even later than he bottom of the 9th," she told him and his quick analysis that his brand new client would be speaking no more in court this day drew an assenting laugh from the room. Next will be a flurry of brief writing by the opposing lawyers, and a judicial take on the motion for a mistrial come Monday. (The judge's pessimistic if not definitive view was, "I suppose I'm going to have to declare a mistrial if this can't be resolved.")
The long-since excused jury wasn't present for the legal discussion of what remedies short of mistrial might apply, and of the possibility that Miller could be immunized and then testify In any event, the consequences for the government case and no just Arneson, but four other defendants, loom large.

Distinctly anticlimactic but not irrelevant was the final skein of testimony, from a career LAPD officer and now senior Internal Affairs captain named Michael Patrick Moriarty (if he'd been born in Queens with that name he would have been sent straight from high school to the police academy). Lally drew him out as the strict unacceptability of much of what Arneson had done. Nonetheless, the two well-acquainted veteran cops gave each other a gesture of greeting as Moriarty departed.

Arneson's normal low boil seemed to be tinged with something mellower at day's end, as he headed out, presumably to his big pickup truck with the license plate frame that reads, "Goin' To The River/To Abuse My Liver". And after a day containing a window of hope such as Hummel had just provided him, who wouldn't?