The county’s largest courtroom has been set aside for the trial, and it is packed until Judge Tamower announces that in her court prospective jury members in capital murder cases are interviewed in chambers by the judge and lawyers to determine bias. As Judge Tamower, her hands as expressive and lively as a symphony conductor’s, apologizes for the limited parking around the courthouse, I notice that she has had her hair done for the trial. Her usual mass of blond curls, a slightly lighter color today, sits higher than ever on her intelligent head. All is vanity, and why not? We all want to look good for the TV cameras that are parked outside the door. When the elevator doors popped open this morning, the first face I saw was that of Kim Keogh, who, unless I wholly imagined it, winked as if to say that if my fly is unzipped, the cameras will not lie.
I think of Kim, and the picture of Rainey, lying in my bed asleep this morning when I went in to get my clothes, forms an overlay in my mind through which I am still filtering all other thoughts. Yet why should I have been surprised that she would accept my offer to spend the night? The fear etched in her voice when she first called and then gratitude imprinted on her face when she came to the door needed no explanation. Like a eunuch who is uncertain what his job entails, I offered to sleep fully clothed in my bed with her, but perhaps out of deference to Sarah, she asked me to sleep on the couch. No matter. Her face asleep on my pillow when I came in to get my clothes made up for all the sex I’ve never had and may never have with her.
I glance back at Morris, who is seated in the first row behind the defense table. I wish I were defending him instead of his brother. Dressed in the same suit he wore yesterday, which is now rumpled, Morris would at least be some help.
Beside me, Andy, natty as ever in a gray suit and dark tie, seems determined to do some jail time. But after wrestling with it since five o’clock this morning, I have decided his attitude that he is responsible for Pam’s death may play well with the jury, given what I intend to do. He will be furious with me, but I’m not campaigning for his vote.
I catch the eye of my Mississippi expert witness and nod, my heart beginning to sink. If there was ever a witness whose testimony looked bought, Kent Goza has to be right around the top of the list. If the jury can get past his looks, maybe he will do us some good, because the guy is intelligent. Over the telephone Goza sounds authoritative, but in person his words slide out the side of his mouth as if he is trying to give you a deal on some choice Florida swampland. On Dr. Goza a perfectly respectable brown polyester suit looks like the by-product of a chemical used to make plastic explosives.
We should have demanded that the guy send a video of himself, but after five long-distance conversations with him, it never occurred to me that he would come off looking like a door-to-door salesman of child pornography. When a doubt did cross my mind, I dismissed it. How weird could an educated white professional from neighboring Mississippi be?
Well, now I know the answer. Still, this greasy-haired, wormy anorexic from the Magnolia State is convincing about the efficacy of shock in stopping self-abusive behavior in retarded children. Maybe, as Clan suggested yesterday after he had seen him in the men’s room, I should ask the jury to put bags over their heads when he testifies.
It is Olivia who is attracting all the attention. As she waits at the back of the courtroom with her real estate lawyer, heads seem to swivel 180 degrees as the crowd strains to get a look at her. Now cut off from my view at the defense counsel table, I have had a good look at her. It is not as if Olivia is trying to hide from the attention. Wearing a red dress whose color might be more appropriate for Valentine’s Day, she seems amazingly at ease. For all I understand her, she is smiling because she thinks this case may be great for business. By focusing on what is in the human heart and mind, the criminal law seeks to measure what it can never truly know: the intent of the accused at a particular moment in time. We pay a king’s ransom daily to highly trained specialists to understand precisely our motivations in this country. The problem is that “intent,” “heart,” and “mind” are philosophical constructs that for thousands of years have plagued far wiser humans than are gathered in this courtroom today. Science may evolve to the point where future historians will giggle hysterically while they examine judicial artifacts of this period. Given the limitations of our criminal justice system, if Olivia were my client, I would advise her to keep her mouth shut the rest of her life, no matter how innocent she claimed to be. Innocent, of course, she is not. Less than twenty-four hours ago she was lying to my face that she and Andy had not seen each other in weeks. My message to her last night via Karen that if she truly cares about Andy (I do not trust her to tell the truth) she will invoke the Fifth Amendment and not testify seems doomed to be ignored.
However, as a subpoenaed witness, Olivia will not formally be making that decision until she is called to the witness box.
There is no way she and Andy can keep their stories straight, and it will be Andy the jury will punish.
Judge Tamower’s chambers (actually Judge RafFerty’s) are, by way of contrast to the courtroom, rather cramped. Potential jurors, like job applicants, come in one by one and sit at the head of a small conference table. Jill and Kerr Bowman face Andy and me. Judge Tamower, motherly (she has five-year-old twin boys) and businesslike at the same time, presides from the other side of a desk perpendicular to the table, clucking directions at her clerk, a bailiff, and the court reporter who round out our group. Andy and I have reached a compromise of sorts. He agrees with me, as he must to be logically consistent, that any potential juror exhibiting bias, racial or otherwise, should be struck by the judge for “cause,” as the law calls it, or by us using one of our peremptory challenges if we suspect bias but cannot persuade the judge of it. But he is adamant that I also question potential black jurors along with the judge and the prosecutor to determine a bias against whites or in favor of blacks simply based on race. This kind of scrupulousness, in my opinion, is unheard of, and unnecessary in an adversary system. That is the business of the prosecution and the court, not mine.
“My client. Your Honor,” I explain drolly to the judge be fore the first jury panel member is brought before us, “takes, as no client of mine ever has before, the ideal of an impartial jury, as you shall see, very seriously.”
Matters that are essentially trial tactics and strategy are decisions to be made by the attorney, not the client, and while ultimately a client has the theoretical right to fire his lawyer, no judge will permit a defendant to hold the court’s docket hostage to a decision by the accused to fire his attorney in the middle of a trial. Still, I see no harm in humoring Andy’s obsessions at this point. Perhaps he will score some points with Judge Tamower, a liberal, who may be persuaded to see Andy for the unique piece of work he is. At any rate, Andy will be furious with me before this trial is over, if all goes according to plan.
When I ask a young black accountant about Andy’s age whom I would love to have on the jury if he would be any more likely to be sympathetic to Andy because of his race, I get an expected negative reply. Who wants to admit to any bias at all? We’re all one big, happy family. Sure. Though Mr. Bert Williams doesn’t know it, I want him very much.
Actually, it was a safe question, since Jill has worked this area to death, hoping to find a justifiable excuse to strike him. The U.S. Supreme Court has generally hacked away at the rights of criminal defendants for the last twenty-odd years, but it will no longer let a prosecutor get away with striking a black juror just on the mere assumption that the juror will be biased. If Jill tries to use one of her peremptory challenges to strike this guy, who, like Andy, lives in an integrated part of Blackwell County, she knows I will challenge her and put her to the test of offering a racially neutral explanation of her decision. Of course, if he were to admit to racial bias, he would not be allowed to serve, but this guy, whose breezy manner suggests he might swing a little if he got some pot or alcohol in him, says he likes everybody and everything. I doubt it, but since when has saying you’re an optimist been against the law?
It is the matter of interracial love and sex that naturally consumes the most time.
“Are you opposed to whites and African-Americans being involved romantically?” I ask a forty-six-year-old white mother of three who is temporarily at home raising her children.
Mrs. Hyslip, a red-haired woman who could be Rainey’s sister except for her large, rubbery lips, gives Andy an embarrassed glance and says, “Well, I’m from a small town, and that son of thing was frowned on when I was growing up.”
Since Arkansas is practically devoid of urban areas, she hasn’t said much, but she is no different from any other potential juror who has been asked that question. What I would love to know but don’t dare ask is whether she could ever imagine under the right circumstances being involved with a black male. Since the judge won’t strike anyone for cause who answers affirmatively (we couldn’t have a trial within the state), I have to ask if she could be fair and impartial in her deliberations knowing that the defendant and the mother of the dead girl had talked about marriage at one point in their relationship. To their enormous credit, five whites and one black answer that question honestly, and Judge Tamower strikes them for cause, saving me my peremptory challenges.
Mrs. Hyslip hesitates so long before answering and is so tentative before she says, “I’m pretty sure I could,” that I resolve to use one of our strikes.
Despite a long list of other questions designed to reveal their racial prejudices (Judge Tamower lets me ask all the clubs and organizations anyone has ever joined, including any groups that espouse the superiority of one race over an other), we move much faster than any of us thought we could;
and by eleven o’clock we have a jury composed of six white women, four white males, and two African-Americans, a man and a woman. Besides Bert Williams, Jill has failed to strike a middle-aged nurse at St. Thomas who squinted at me when the judge asked her if she knew me, but said she didn’t. I am betting she might have known Rosa and liked her and made the connection I was married to her. Still, a black woman on the jury makes me nervous. Will she, like Yettie Lindsey, punish Andy for wanting to marry a white woman? Picking a jury is little more than a crap game. I have used our peremptory challenges to keep off anybody I suspected of being a redneck. My rule of thumb, unscientific and prejudiced, is that if I had absolutely nothing else to go on and other things were equal, I struck whites who lived in the southwest part of the county. That area is considered the most racist, but I am glad I don’t have to offer a public ex planation. The Supreme Court has not as yet gone so far as to require lawyers for black defendants to offer a “racially neutral” explanation of why we choose to strike certain whites from the jury list.
Jill’s opening statement to the jury prepares them for the sermon she will give in her closing argument: the only thing less sacred than the bond between a child and her parents is the relationship between a child and her doctor. I am tempted to pretend I am gagging, but the jurors are instantly captivated by Jill’s manner, which is somehow preachy but effective because of her utter sincerity. As if she is in mourning, she is wearing a black dress, no jewelry, except for plain earrings barely visible underneath the shining, lustrous dark hair that is her only concession to femininity. Unlike some other female attorneys, who withdraw part of their retirement pensions to buy clothes and accessories for a big trial, Jill refuses to call attention to her striking features. Even her shoes, low-heeled black pumps, say to the jury that she is telling them a shocking story that deserves everyone’s respect and full attention. She comes from behind the podium and stands in front of the rail that runs in front of the jury box.
Stooping slightly she reviews the evidence she will present, staying away from a possible motive until just before she sits down.
“Mr. Page will tell you that Pam’s death was a terrible accident, but as you listen to the testimony, I want you to be thinking about what was occurring between Andrew Chap man and Olivia Le Master and what they had to gain by Pam’s death.”
I watch the jury’s faces as they hear her describe the malpractice settlement and Yettie Lindsey’s expected testimony. It is as if the issue of race were the last thing on Jill’s mind. Andy leans over and whispers to me, “She’s really good, isn’t she?”
Concentrating as hard as I can, I do not answer, but I want to tell him that a prosecutor doesn’t have to be great to keep a jury interested in this case. Yet this jury is hoping for the details, and they will be disappointed. There will be no description of any salacious practices that will have the spectators gasping with delight. Not for the first time I consider telling the jury that I, a small-town boy from eastern Arkansas was happily married until her death to a woman whose skin was almost as dark as that of two of its members that under the right conditions any of us might and do choose against all we’ve been taught and believed. Yet, as I study the jury, I lose courage. The risk is too great that some of the whites on the jury (maybe the blacks as well) might decide to punish me for presuming to preach a text few want to hear. It is enough that Andy is on trial; I don’t dare add to his burden. Instead I tell the jury a version some of them might be able to accept.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I say standing at the podium after Jill has taken her seat, “what happened in this case is unfortunately what happens in real life: two people who have no need, desire, or intention of doing so fall in love and, instead of living happily ever after, see their lives become an unintended tragedy. Though I could give you a hundred examples from everything from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the tritest made-for-TV movie, we all know it happens in the most inappropriate of situations: it happens at work; it happens in wartime; it happens between neighbors; it hap pens in institutions for the retarded. The prosecuting attorney has painted a picture for you of a man who is so evil that he would take the life of a child to satisfy his own lust for a sexual relationship and money beyond his wildest dreams.
The truth is a lot less sensational but a lot more lifelike. The accident that I’m about to describe, which resulted in the death of the child of Olivia Le Master, has been emotionally devastating to her and to my client as well.” I come around the podium and grasp the jury rail.
“Because of our culture and our history in the South, some of you may be thinking, “So what?” since they should never have been involved with each other in the first place. But if you are and can’t get beyond this feeling simply to accept it as a reality, you won’t understand what happened in this case, and why my client and Olivia Le Master now feel as they do ” Behind me, Jill interrupts.
“I’m loath to break in. Your Honor,” she says, as I turn to her, “but Mr. Page is making a final argument instead of an opening statement.”
From the barrier separating me from the jury, I tell Judge Tamower, “I should be able to tell the jury why some of the witnesses will be testifying a certain way, Your Honor. This alleged crime is all about intent. If I’m wrong, I’ll be contradicted by them.”
Judge Tamower shrugs, as if this is no big deal.
“I don’t see that Mr. Page is out of line, Mrs. Marymount. Your objection is denied.”
I turn to the jury and waste no time in getting specific.
“An interracial relationship in the South makes us all uneasy, ladies and gentlemen, whether we say we are liberals or conservatives. Even the most accepting of us knows the difficulties of such a union and the reactions that occur in some quarters. It comes as no surprise when I tell you that sustained love between two people with everything going for them has a fifty-fifty chance, and sustained love between people of different races, especially in the South, to most of us is a matter of hope over reality. When you add to it the accidental death of a child, you get at least two, and actually more, very conflicted people, as you shall see when they testify….”
As I sit down, Andy leans over and whispers, his voice scratchy with disapproval, “I never told you I felt conflicted
For the jury I place my hand on his sleeve as if I am thanking him for complimenting me on a fine opening statement This guy is one in a million.
After lunch the courtroom fills up again. Most of the crowd had expected voir dire to take at least the entire morning. Jill calls as her first witness Dr. Warren Holditch, who had been her expert witness at the probably cause hearing. Knowing the municipal court would send Andy to trial and since I was not really prepared to do so, I didn’t crossexamine him.
Now I have my chance. Holditch, a behavioral psychologist who seems even more emaciated than he was a couple of months ago (I am tempted to ask him if he is treating himself for anorexia), essentially repeats his opinion that shock is dangerous and Andy should never have used a cattle prod and should have gotten the consent of a human rights committee
Since I have heard this before, it is difficult to gauge the effect on the jury, but since he is only the first witness and they are not tired yet (though I see one lunch-induced yawn), they pay close attention to his explanation of the different behavior-modification procedures he says Andy should have tried before he attempted shock. In a new wrinkle, Jill intro duces as exhibits two commercial shock sticks as well as a remote-control device complete with a helmet. She is protecting her manslaughter charge in case the jury won’t go for murder. As these are passed around the jury, the male jurors barely resist poking each other with them while the women pass them quickly on as if they were hot to the touch.
On cross, I get Holditch to admit that one of the most widely published researchers in the field has reported using a cattle prod to suppress self-abusive behavior. Though I know Jill will come back on redirect and reinforce his testimony that safety considerations have made this research obsolete, except for the point that shock can work, I want the jury to know it is something that a man, with many more credentials than Warren Holditch, has employed success fully.
Before I sit down, I ask Holditch, “Isn’t it a fact that if Leon Robinson had not loosened his grip on Pam she would be alive today?”
Jill objects loudly that Dr. Holditch isn’t qualified to answer this speculative question, and I don’t fight it, having made my point.
Jill ends my own speculation by calling Olivia next. De spite everything Olivia has said, there is the possibility she will invoke her Fifth Amendment right not to testify, now that the moment of truth is at hand. Led in from the witness room by a black female bailiff, Olivia, smiling as she walks through the door at the back of the courtroom, seems as confident as a reigning heavyweight fighting out of his division But as she passes by our table, I see that it is all an act.
Her smile looks soldered into place. She is scared to death, and I don’t blame her. With a single slip she can cook her own goose, and everybody in the courtroom knows it. I glance at Andy to see how he is reacting to her presence, and like a small child who is afraid his playmate is about to tattle on him, he seems to be holding his breath.
As Jill leads her through some preliminary questions, it is hard not to think about Olivia’s manner at the probably cause hearing. Then she was the grieving mother, a difficult witness for both Jill and me. Today, she is a murder suspect, and Jill will show her no mercy. I presume anything Olivia says that is favorable to Andy will be made by Jill to seem like a cover-up when she makes her closing argument either the story of a woman concealing her own role in the murder of her child or the words of a woman who was duped by a man who wanted her money badly enough to kill her child for it. If Jill knows about the child who lives in Ohio, I have no indication of it.
Olivia begins to cry at Jill’s first hostile question.
“When I questioned you at Dr. Chapman’s hearing a couple of months ago,” Jill asks, holding a volume that contains her testimony, “you didn’t mention you were having an affair with him at the time he applied electric shock to your child, did you?”
Everyone, me included, seems to creep to the edge of our seats. Her voice trembling, Olivia says, “No, but I wasn’t asked.”
Jill, reminding me more and more of one of those old peasant women in Zorba the Greek in her black dress (all she needs is a black shawl for her head) booms from behind the podium, “And you didn’t mention that you were to receive at the time of your child’s death approximately two million dollars as a result of a malpractice settlement against your child’s doctor, did you?”
Olivia wipes her eyes with a tissue she has balled up in her right fist.
“No, I did not.”
Jill backs slightly away from the podium and says softly, “And you didn’t mention at the hearing that you had told your lover. Dr. Chapman, that there would be more than enough money for him to go back to school, did you?”
“We were talking about getting married and I was considering selling my business,” Olivia says, her voice becoming more defensive with each question.
Jill pauses for a moment to allow these answers to sink in on the jury. She makes a great show of thumbing through the transcript and then asks, “Mrs. Le Master, isn’t it true that you suggested to your lover that he use shock to try to stop your daughter’s self-abusive behavior?”
Seeing Jill turn to a specific page in the transcript, Olivia answers, “No other doctor had helped her.”
Coming around from behind the lectern as if to challenge Olivia to a fight, Jill says vehemently, “Your child died as a result of your lover’s help, didn’t she, Mrs. Le Master?”
Before Olivia can answer, I am on my feet objecting.
“She’s not qualified to answer that.”
“Sustained,” Judge Tamower says.
I sit down, knowing I could object to the form of all of these questions, since they amount to crossexamination, but I know Judge Tamower will allow Jill to treat Olivia as a hostile witness and ask leading questions, and I don’t want the jury to be any more aware of the distinction than they already are. I will have an opportunity to allow Olivia to explain her actions as much as she is able, but the damage has already been done. Anything that Olivia says will be filtered by the jury through her admissions. Now that she has whetted the jury’s appetite, Jill takes Olivia through her story from the beginning. It all sounds sordid now, each action suspect. Olivia comes across as though she had planned her daughter’s death for months. Against the backdrop of her initial admissions, her story that she fell in love with Andy rings hollow. Instead of a poignant and ultimately tragic interracial love story, the jury hears monosyllabic responses directed by Jill. I had hoped to convince the jury that Olivia seems ambivalent now because of Pam death. Instead, she is unconvincing because of what she has admitted she stood to gain.
“How do you plan to spend the money,” Jill asks sarcastically, now that she has taken Olivia through her story, ‘that you expect to receive from your daughter’s death?”
I am on my feet objecting, “She hasn’t received any money. Your Honor.”
“Sustained,” Judge Tamower says, her first words in twenty minutes.
“No more questions,” Jill says, sitting down with a grim smile on her face. It was the question she wanted to leave the jury with, not Olivia’s answer.
As I think about where to begin, it occurs to me that Jill has made the same erroneous assumption I had that Olivia and Andy are no longer sexually involved and has failed to follow up. But perhaps she hasn’t asked this question for a reason: she would be delighted to leave the jury with the impression that the affair is over. Olivia, I decide as I sit down, can’t be allowed to have it both ways. Either she must be shown to have manipulated Andy into helping her through an act of seduction or she still loves him, and as repugnant as that may be to a Southern jury, it will be consistent with Andy’s feelings when he testifies.
“Your witness, Mr. Page,” Judge Tarnower clucks impatiently from the bench. I get up again and begin the arduous chore of trying to rehabilitate Olivia’s answers, but, as I have feared, there is little I can ask Olivia that hasn’t already been compromised by her admissions. No matter what spin I give my questions, Andy still seems to be either a conspirator with her or a grossly incompetent professional. Maybe she doesn’t know how she feels about him, but I will point out to the jury that maybe after all this time she should. If Andy won’t turn on her, I sure as hell can when it comes to my closing argument.
“Mrs. Le Master, did I hear you say that you are uncertain,” I ask, feigning a genuine air of puzzlement, “about your present feelings for Dr. Chapman?”
If she has a clue where I am going, Olivia doesn’t act like it. Calmly, she recrosses her legs as if I had asked her what she had for breakfast.
“Although I know Pam’s death was an accident,” Olivia says calmly, “I can’t help but feel very confused about the way it happened. As I have said, I no longer think Dr. Chapman should have used shock.”
I lean my arms against the lectern as if I am suddenly wearied by her testimony. Dr. Chapman? She is talking about Andy as if she only met him a couple of times.
“Isn’t it a a fact you told me that it was you who seduced Dr. Chapman and not the other way around?”
Taken off guard, Olivia draws back in the chair as if I have tried to strike her.
“I don’t recall saying that,” she says, frowning. Her face colors slightly, and if I can see it, so can the jury. I am glad I can’t see Andy without turning my head, because I know if I do, I will see him going through the roof.
“Isn’t it a fact, Mrs. Le Master,” I say slowly, now clearer in my own mind about the effect Olivia wants to create,” ‘that you’ve had sex with my client as recently as last week?”
There are titillated gasps behind me. Olivia, visibly angry, can’t resist a look at Andy before saying, “That’s not true!”
To heighten the effect, I, too, turn and look at Andy, who seems as stricken as a father who has caught his teenaged daughter in her first act of deception. I turn back to Olivia and keep up the pressure.
“Is it your testimony that you haven’t had sexual intercourse with my client on five different occasions since he was originally charged in this case?”
Olivia knows she can’t retreat, and tears again well in her eyes as she cries in a choked, almost guttural, voice, “Of course not! I’ve talked to him on the telephone several times, but that’s all!”
I pause, wishing her steadily reddening face would burst into flames.
“Now isn’t it a fact that approximately fifteen years ago the Department of Human Services substantiated child abuse involving your son, whom you no longer have custody of?”
Prepared for this question, Olivia, as if on cue, bursts into tears again and recites the story she gave me yesterday. The jury seems more shocked than moved, a reaction I’ll take anytime. I sit down, and while Jill confers furiously with Kerr Bowman, Andy whispers furiously, “Why did you ask her all of that?”
When Jill tells Judge Tamower finally that she has no more questions, every eye in the courtroom watches Olivia leave the stand. I hedge my answer.
“You don’t think the jury should hear the truth?”
“You humiliated her!” he rages.
I try to keep from reacting in front of the jury. Only a man in love could worry about such a thing.
“Why should she be humiliated,” I ask, disingenuously, “if she’s telling the truth?”
Unwilling to respond, now that Yettie Lindsey is about to begin her testimony, Andy pulls back and sits rigidly in his chair. He knows what is coming. Even if he could talk me out of asking him what he has admitted as recently as last night, Jill Marymount will have to bring it up, and Andy is one criminal defendant I will not give the benefit of the doubt if he tries to lie on the witness stand. I will not let him lie to protect Olivia. If I were on the jury, I’d be mulling over at least two possibilities. If Andy testifies under oath the affair is still going on, I’d be asking myself whether she is still screwing him because she still loves him, or she is manipulating him so he won’t turn on her. At least now, if I judge this correctly, the case will turn on Andy’s credibility and not Olivia’s.
Bristling with the dignity that only rejection can give a person, Yettie makes the kind of witness lawyers drool over in their sleep. She is wearing a beige knit suit that seems enameled upon her chocolate frame, and her strange, speckled yellow eyes seem to burn with the pleasure of the knowledge that at long last some chickens are coming home to roost. The men on the jury have to be wondering what in hell would possess a black man to kiss off this voluptuous and obviously passionate young woman for a milky bread stick like Olivia-unless, it was, of course, a fortune and a chance to get into a white woman’s pants. Tearfully, she acknowledges she was in love with Andy, and you can see the female jurors loving her for admitting it and loving her for eavesdropping outside his office. That son of a bitch, we’ll punish him if for nothing else than breaking this girl’s heart. Sure, she spied on him, but we wouldn’t have cared if she’d set up a hidden camera and microphone under their beds.
Yet despite the visual impact Yettie has on the jury-indeed on all of us except perhaps Andy her testimony re ally adds nothing, since Olivia has admitted at least part of it just minutes before. And she doesn’t say the one additional thing that could hurt Olivia (and by extension Andy), and that is her comment to me in her office that Olivia said on more than one occasion that she thought Pam would be better off dead. If she went to Jill with what she had overheard, why didn’t she volunteer this as well? Why didn’t Jill ask her what else she had heard Olivia say? Perhaps Yettie believes that those comments could have been made by anyone with a self-abusive child, and that it wouldn’t, after all is said and done, be fair to mention. I don’t know the answer, but now is not the time to find out. Unwilling to give Jill a second bite at this juicy plum, I say, “I have no questions of this witness. Your Honor.”
Jill has sandwiched Leon Robinson between Yettie and her other witnesses. As he struts to the witness stand, I feel my heart kick into overdrive. My tongue goes to my false tooth, on which I will be paying for the next six months. My body was sore for three days. If Leon has told Jill that his friends and I got acquainted that night in the parking lot, I haven’t heard it.
Judging by the way Leon is sashaying to the front of the courtroom, someone must have told him he is the star witness in this case. In his red cowboy shirt with its requisite whorls, buttoned-down pockets, and fancy stitching and new, starched Lee jeans that slide down over brown cowboy boots that gleam with a military spit shine, Leon, his pompadour waved even higher on his head than at the probably cause hearing, looks cocky instead of nervous. Surely, like Olivia, he must be pretending confidence he can’t be feeling. Unless Leon has had a vastly different life from most Arkansans, he hasn’t appeared before this many people since the night he graduated from high school.
Jill has him well rehearsed, however, and he testifies in an arresting country voice that for the first time has a little twang in it, like George Jones singing, “I stopped lovin’ her today.”
After reviewing his length of employment (three years, not a record, but unusual given the turnover at the Blackwell County HDC) and training, Jill asks him to describe what happened when Pam was electrocuted.
I follow his testimony in the transcript from the probable cause hearing. He repeats it almost verbatim.
“If Dr. Chapman had of jus’ told me how bad it was really gonna hurt, I’d of known to holt her a lot tighter,” he says earnestly.
“I didn’t want to hurt her by squeezin’ too hard. I liked Pam a lot.”
He gets through his testimony this time without tears, though, as last time, his voice becomes hoarse with emotion.
Jill has left me as little as possible. As I stand up to crossexamine him, Leon shoots me a look of pure hatred, which I interpret as fear. We are on my turf now.
“How much do you weigh, Leon?” I ask as if we are old friends comparing diets.
“About one-seventy,” he says, his voice sullen.
“How old are you?”
Not understanding where I’m going, he volunteers, “I’ll be twenty-five in October.”
“Would you say you’re in pretty good shape?”
Too macho to admit he doesn’t lift more than a pool stick and a can of beer when he finishes his shift, he says in his George Jones voice, “I’m all right.”
“Despite being a hundred-and-seventy-pound, twenty-four year old in good condition, you couldn’t hold on to Pam’s hands when she pulled away?”
Leon’s lower lip puffs out as if a bee had stung it.
“I said every way I know how,” he huffs, “I would have kept aholt of her if I had been told she was gonna kick like a mule.”
Leon’s whining cuts through the room like a power saw being revved up. I ask, “How long have you known Dr.
Chapman?”
He is wary now, but he has no choice about answering my questions.
“It hadn’t been a year, I guess.”
“Would you say you and he were friends?” I ask, turning as I finish to look back over my shoulder. In the courtroom I have noticed a couple of men whose knuckles look familiar.
Unable to restrain a dry chuckle, Leon looks into the audience.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“But you don’t have anything against him?”
No genius, Leon has started going on smell. He sniffs, “He don’ give me no trouble, an’ I don’t give him any.”
I am in no hurry.
“So you know of no reason why you wouldn’t try to do exactly what he said when it came to holding on to Pam.”
I can’t resist looking at Jill. She is on the edge of her seat and she knows something is coming.
“Have you ever heard of a group that has the reputation of hating African-Americans and goes by the name of the Trackers?”
Jill shoots out of her chair like a Roman candle. “I object, Your Honor. This isn’t relevant.”
Judge Tamower looks at Jill and then at me. I’d rather not have to telegraph it all to Leon, though right now the question is like a neon sign blinking on and off. “Of course it is. Your Honor,” I say.
“Every one of the jury answered this question This isn’t precisely true, but it’s close.
The judge, bless her liberal heart, helps me out.
“I’ll allow it. Answer the question, Mr. Robinson.”
Thinking he’s about to be trapped, Leon says nonchalantly, “Sure, I heard of it.”
I have been waiting to ask this question for weeks, and I don’t waste any time.
“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Trackers, Leon?”
On her feet again, Jill says, “I object again. Your Honor!”
her voice anxious for the first time all day.
“I have no idea how Mr. Robinson is going to answer, but all Mr. Page is trying to accomplish is to prejudice this jury.”
“On the contrary. Your Honor,” I say, “if Mr. Robinson let go of Pam when she was shocked because he hates black people and he thought in a moment of anger she would attack Dr. Chapman, the jury, in deciding what my client’s own state of mind was, should be allowed to take this into ac count. ” Shaking her head angrily, Jill says, “That’s guilt by association, Your Honor. Just because Mr. Robinson may have been in some kind of club doesn’t prove he did anything.”
“The Trackers is not just some kind of club, Your Honor. It’s…”
Cutting me off. Judge Tamower says, “Sit down, Mr.
Page. You’re not testifying. Answer the question, Mr. Robinson
I plop down, trying not to look too relieved, thinking this entire case (unless Andy is lying) is about guilt by association.
Leon, righteously indignant, yelps, “I’ve never joined them or nothin’ like them.”
After a few more questions, I sit down, thinking that with a little luck, we’ll know about that tomorrow.
As I return to my seat, Andy, without even a glance at me, rises suddenly and says in a loud voice to the judge, “Your Honor, I want to fire Mr. Page and represent myself!”
Staring at Andy as if he has suddenly gone crazy. Judge Tamower stands up, too, and says, “I want the lawyers and Dr. Chapman back in my chambers immediately. The court will be in recess for fifteen minutes.” With that, she flees the bench through a side door.
I turn to Andy and snarl in a low whisper, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
In front of the jury, Andy grabs my arm and says, “You broke your word! I warned you not to do this!”
“Come on!” I say, furious.
“She’s not going to let you.”
Shaking with rage, I look into the stunned faces of Jill and her young assistant as they hurry past our table.
In chambers, the judge has taken off her robe as if she is through for the day. Underneath it, she is wearing a red dress almost identical to Olivia Le Master’s.
“What is your client’s problem, Mr. Page?” she yelps at me. Whatever sympathy she may have had for our case seems a distant memory.
Judges do not like surprises, nor do they like defendants to represent themselves.
For an instant I consider trying to explain what I believe is in Andy’s mind. The truth that Andy thinks I have wrongly injected the issue of race into this case, when, in fact, that is what it is primarily about as far as I’m concerned is too bizarre, too threatening. Instead, I say, “We are having a disagreement over trial tactics. Your Honor.”
“Your …” Andy begins.
The judge loses her temper.
“I don’t want to hear from you, Dr. Chapman,” she yells, pointing a finger at him.
“If you didn’t want a lawyer, you should have thought about that a long time before today. I’m not allowing you to represent yourself; I’m not allowing Mr. Page to quit as your attorney, and I don’t want you to speak here or in my courtroom again until you’re spoken to! Is that clear?”
Andy shakes his head.
“Then I refuse to participate in this trial any further.”
Judge Tamower looks at me and then back at Andy as if she wants to make pressed meat of both of us. Lawyers are supposed to be able to control their clients, and defendants dressed as nicely as Andy are supposed to behave themselves and go to prison, if not with smiles on their faces, at least with stoic calm. It is not as if I am back at the Public Defender representing some dope-crazed space cadet.
“That’s fine with me,” she says grimly.
“You can spend it in a holding cell.”
Great! I can hear the talk on the street: Page can’t even keep his clients out of jail during their trials. I look at Jill and send her a silent prayer: we’re both lawyers, even if we hate each other’s guts right now. There is a smirk on her face as if she is daring me to keep Andy company. Desperately, I look over at the huge bailiff, who seems more than willing and able to take each of us under one arm, and notice the clock. It is after four.
“Judge, it’s getting late. Why don’t we quit for the day, so I can have a chance to talk to Dr. Chapman?
This is a capital case, after all.”
I have said the magic words without ever having mentioned the dreaded word: appeal. It could go on forever if she screws up. No judge likes to be reversed, especially this woman. A thin, bloodless smile comes to the judge’s lips.
“That’s the first good idea,” she says firmly, “you’ve had all day, Mr. Page.”
Oh yeah, Clan, this woman has the hots for me all right. I nod, grateful beyond words I don’t have to go back out there to the defense table alone.