certain values we have said are important in this country. Now, that’s all well and good, and defense lawyers like myself at this stage in a criminal trial routinely launch into a speech about how the prosecutor hasn’t made it over the bar, and therefore you, the jury, are required to acquit the defendant.”
I come around from the podium, and feeling the eyes of the women on the jury, resist an urge to check my fly.
“You may have observed,” I say dryly, “that Dr. Chapman has not always been happy with me during this trial. At one point, as you saw much to my embarrassment, he asked the judge to allow him to represent himself. While I, as a defense lawyer, have been thinking I would play this game out ac cording to the ordinary strategy that usually prevails in criminal cases, my client has insisted on playing the game differently. He thinks lawyers’ games get in the way of the truth, and whether we have liked it or not, he has insisted on telling us the truth, and quite honestly, many of us don’t like it, because it involves a white woman and a black man. He has insisted on telling you that he continues to love Olivia Le Master, and that the physical expression of this love has persisted through last week. Now, this makes us all uncomfortable, because there is a little moralistic voice in the back of our brains saying to us: for God’s sake, shouldn’t a child’s tragic death in which they were involved put a screeching halt to all of that? Human nature doesn’t work that way.
Though it can be made to seem sordid examined clinically, we know we comfort each other in our grief through the act of sex just as we make love out of joy.”
I pause, hoping at least a couple of the jurors will have experienced this need. Though nobody is nodding, a few seem sympathetic. It is not something to dwell on, but I needed to make sure I touched this base. I come up to the railing, putting as much distance as I can between me and Andy.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Andy Chapman sincerely believes Olivia Le Master is a wonderful human being who has been the victim of one tragedy after another.
Love has a way of turning worry lines into signs of character: a birthmark becomes a beauty spot in our eyes; and so on. When I first stood in front of you yesterday, I still accepted my client’s picture of Olivia Le Master. But having heard her in this courtroom yesterday and comparing her testimony with my client’s,
“No man likes to be thought of as a fool, but I’m afraid that is what my client is in this case. I think Olivia from the beginning played him like a violin and suggested a procedure she already knew was dangerous. She was around the Human Development Center enough to have entered Andy’s office and removed much of the insulation tape. She could have worked out some kind of plan with Leon Robinson, and I’ll talk more about him in a moment. But the prosecutor has just told you how much Olivia had to gain….”I want to leave them with the option of accepting my original opening statement, and it will do no good to get so far out on a limb I can’t climb back down. Moments later, as I begin on Leon, I sense some reluctance on the jury’s part to switch gears. This is for the blacks on the jury, I want to interrupt myself and tell them, but of course, I can’t.
“Leon Robinson, by virtue of his membership in the Trackers, despises Andy Chapman. He didn’t have the guts to admit it, and I had to bring in his ex-wife to prove to you he has been a member. I think it is significant during this trial that it has become apparent that Olivia Le Master and Leon Robinson have told you lies, and Andy Chapman has not told you a single one. How can you be sure that Leon didn’t let go of Pam deliberately either in a moment of blind racial hatred or perhaps for a promise of cash from Olivia Le Master? Because when all is said and done, Pam would be alive today if he had merely done what he was told to do by my client, and nobody has denied that.”
Finally, before I sit down I leave the jury with the possibility that it was, as I told them at the beginning, an accident. “The fact is that after this case is over and you return to your everyday lives, you cannot be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that despite all inferences to the contrary, Olivia Le Master is as manipulative as she seems. Granted, it seems clear she has lied to you, but I can’t stand up here and swear to you that she is a cold- blooded murderer or that she isn’t telling you the truth about everything else.” I turn to Andy who is staring down at the table, refusing to even acknowledge my presence. For a moment I wish I had let him make his own closing argument. Truly, he might have convinced them.
“The one thing I am one hundred percent confident of is that my client has not lied to you. At a cost few, if any of us, would prefer to pay, I am certain he has told you what he believes to be the truth, and this is no small thing to take back with you to the jury room. He is simply not like anybody else I know. It is not that he is an innocent who got in over his head. What happened to Andy Chapman could have happened to any of us, but particulariy to a man who insists that society must become color-blind. It is my hope you will not punish him because he has the courage to live his life in a way that many of us, if we dare to admit, envy….”
Jill finishes strong. Preaching in her usual manner, she storms up and down in front of the jury.
“This case is not a love story; it is about responsibility for the death of a child.
Mr. Page wants to confuse you. And if he can’t do that he wants you to forgive and forget what his client stood to gain;
he wants you to forgive and forget his client’s total lapse of his professional responsibilities as a psychologist; he wants you to forgive and forget he used a cattle prod when the first rule of any professional is to do no harm. What is easy to forget is that it doesn’t matter how Dr. Chapman says he rationalized his behavior. He can say he did it in the name of love; his lawyer can argue racism to blame someone else;
it doesn’t matter a hill of beans. It’s your job to fix responsibility, and you’re under no obligation to accept one word either of them says….”
It is not an easy wait for the verdict. Tunkie, Frank, and Clan drift in and out of the courtroom all afternoon to see if there is any word from the jury. Clan, whose conviction, so the rumor goes, is going to draw him only a reprimand from the state ethics people, hangs around much of the time.
As soon as the trial is over and the jury has trooped out to begin its deliberations, Andy drops all pretense of civility and leans over to inform me that my services will no longer be needed for an appeal once the verdict comes back. Since then, he and Morris have been sitting together in a corner of the courthouse chatting off and on with a group of blacks, none of whom I recognize. It is a little late for group support, I think sourly. The case was too messy for the local NAACP to unite around. Morris, true to form, comes over to shake hands and to give me the rest of what I’m owed. I’m grateful I’m getting it before the verdict. I’m intensely curious about how he brought Andy around.
“How’d you get him to show up this morning?” I ask as we talk in the empty jury box.
“Guilt,” Morris says, poker-faced and unsmiling. It is obvious he fears the worst.
“If he spends his life in prison,” Morris says, looking past me at the American flag by the door to the judge’s chambers, “how can he save the world?”
I think of Morris’s impassioned plea to Andy and realize it worked. Maybe I should have asked if Morris could make the closing.
Later, Clan, who has brought a bag of popcorn into the courtroom with him, nods at Andy and his group.
“That’s gratitude for you,” he says loyally as I tell him Andy’s words to me after the trial.
“Not your average dope dealer from Needle Park,” I say, looking over at the group of rednecks sitting near the middle of the courtroom. If there aren’t some Trackers waiting with us, I’d be real surprised.
Clan understands just enough about the case to sound like an idiot.
“Looks like he wants to play both ends against the middle,” he says, nodding at Andy and his all black group.
His lawyer maybe.
“Not Andy,” I say, wondering if the jury will have to come back Monday. It has been just over two hours. Jill and I have agreed that we jointly will move to sequester the jury this weekend if they can’t reach a verdict tonight. They could get a few anonymous calls from somebody in this group, “I could be wrong,” I whisper, “but Andy may be one of those one in a million people who mean what they say.”
“Sure,” Clan says, leering at Kim Keogh, who is waiting by the double doors to the courtroom.
