He described the sheriff's grip on his wrist, the shove of the table, and the rough search outside. His tone did not change noticeably when he explained the pain of his chin striking the hood, though he paused to indicate exactly where it had been injured. He identified the booking form he had been asked to sign and explained which claims in it were untrue. He did not speculate about what Hask was thinking. He described what Hask said and did.
The defense lawyer suggested that Adrien had escalated the encounter by questioning Hask's authority. "You could have simply provided your identification when asked, couldn't you?" the lawyer said. Adrien answered that he understood cooperation could be prudent during an encounter, but that his polite questions did not threaten the sheriff. The lawyer then asked whether identifying himself as a federal judge might have avoided the detention entirely. Adrien looked toward the jury before returning his gaze to counsel.
"Possibly," he said. "But that's not what determines whether the force used against me was lawful. I was a person eating lunch before I was identified as a judge. Those rights did not begin when a deputy opened my briefcase." The lawyer moved to another subject, but the answer remained with several people in the gallery long after the next exhibit appeared.
Nolan was called the following morning. He entered with his shoulders stiff and his eyes fixed on the witness chair. He confirmed that he had accompanied Hask to the diner, that the dispatch note contained no specific allegation of a crime, and that the sheriff had declined to have the traveler's plate checked before ordering the tow. He described seeing Adrien's open hands and hearing him say he was not resisting. He admitted that he had stepped back when the sheriff ordered him to.
"Why?" the prosecutor asked. Nolan looked briefly toward Hask and then away. "Because I was afraid of him," he answered. The room was quiet enough for people to hear the ventilation system cycling above the ceiling panels. "I was afraid he'd end my career and make it impossible for me to work around here. I'd seen other deputies get punished for contradicting him."
The prosecutor asked whether fear explained his continued silence after seeing the date on the prepared report. Nolan said it did, but that it did not excuse it. He told the jury about the evidence room and the words NO INVENTORY REQUIRED appearing on box after box. He explained how he found Adrien's credentials, how Hask refused to verify them, and why he finally brought a telephone to the booking room. His account was unflattering to himself, and he made no attempt to make it otherwise.
On cross-examination, defense counsel pressed him about taking photographs inside the evidence room. "You didn't follow every step of the department's ordinary evidence procedure, did you?" the attorney asked. Nolan admitted that he had not. "And you chose to become a witness after discovering that the detained man was a federal judge?" Nolan said yes, that the credential had forced him to confront what he already knew. Counsel suggested that he had changed his account to protect his own job.