'It came out. Nobody volunteered it. There's a difference.' Lightner's voice was down to a near-whisper. 'Listen, please, do you think if I thought it would help Jennifer that I wouldn't have lied? I'm human, I'm even at least a little in love with her.' He shook his head. 'It happens both ways in therapy. A professional recognizes it and controls it.' He seemed to notice the beer for the first time and pulled it toward him. 'Don't you see, she realizes that, it gives her the freedom to feel as she does and not be afraid I will take advantage of it. It's in part why she trusts me.'
'But she stayed with you.'
'She was scared, Mr. Freeman. She wanted to stay with me. I decided to allow it. It may have been bad judgment. As I said, I'm human too. Even though I am a shrink.' He half-smiled.
Now Lightner took a drink. 'That's all of it, Mr. Freeman, and you can believe me or not. I could not turn her out. We draw our own lines. I let her stay in the room with me. Platonically.'
Freeman crossed his hands in front of him again. He sighed. It was not impossible. 'I still say you could have told me this earlier.'
'I didn’t want it to come out at all, don't you understand that? Nothing about it. I was afraid it would hurt Jennifer at this trial. It would seem to say that she had a strong motive – in addition to the money, or whatever else they're saying, to get rid of her husband. Wouldn't it? It would cast her in the role of a cheating wife.'
'And now it has.'
Finally, Lightner seemed to lose his patience. He slapped at the table. 'Well, that was not me. I did not make that happen. And if you want to bring it up again tomorrow and hammer at me, if you think you'll be doing Jennifer any good, then so be it. I'll repeat what I've told you here and you can watch while the jury takes in the fact that Jennifer had a strong emotional reason to kill her husband, maybe even her child, maybe even on purpose… so that she could run away and start a new life with her shrink.' He grimaced. 'If you really think that's going to help her… well, you can't possibly. The best thing you can do for Jennifer, Mr. Freeman, is forget about her and me.'
Sipping his beer, Freeman nodded. 'It also lets you off.'
Lightner shook his head again, as though regretting what he was about to say. 'Mr. Freeman,' he said, 'I was in my office that morning and I can establish that. I'm afraid the jury is going to focus on Jennifer, on her supposed motive, or motives, on the fact that she didn't love her husband anymore, that she wanted out of a terrible marriage.' Lightner drank off half his beer. 'My God,' he said, 'you're the lawyer. Do you think I wanted this to happen? Do I have to draw you a picture?'
His eyes sad, dispirited, Freeman spun his empty bottle between his hands. 'You just did,' he said.
39
'Good morning. I'm not going to take up too much of your time with my defense statement this morning. You probably feel you've been here long enough. I don't want to bore you on the one hand or insult your intelligence on the other.'
'But I do think it will be useful to recap what's happened here in this trial, so far as the evidence is concerned, because evidence is what trials are really all about. Does the evidence prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jennifer Witt killed her husband and son? Well, looking at the evidence, which we've now seen every bit of, the answer, ladies and gentlemen, is no.'
'Let me repeat that: The evidence we've seen so far does not prove that Jennifer Witt killed her husband and her son, and that's what it has to do.'
Freeman, voice low, in his least aggressive tone, spoke in place, gesturing occasionally with his hands, but seemingly content to let his words do their work. He stood before the jury box, directly in front of the table shared by Hardy and Jennifer. He did not so much as glance at Judge Villars, or turn to Powell and Morehouse at the prosecution table. This was his statement to the jury and he was going to play to them.
'The evidence has to prove that Jennifer Witt has done these terrible deeds. It must allow for no other reasonable explanation. It is not enough to say, 'Well, maybe she could have been there and done this.' You must be absolutely convinced. There must be no doubt.'
'Your Honor.' Dean Powell appeared saddened by the need to interrupt. He conveyed how much he just hated to break Mr. Freeman's rhythm, but alas, he really had no choice. He spoke with considerable control. 'This is argument, not an opening statement.'
Surprisingly, Villars overruled Powell. Hardy thought it was the first time in the trial that he'd seen Villars blow a call on the law, Freeman was out of bounds – this was clearly argument. Evidently it was an argument that appealed to the judge.
But Freeman had no cause to gloat. He knew it, and picked right up. 'And what do we, the defense, have to prove? Do we have to prove that Jennifer Witt was not at her house? That she did not use the gun? That she did not have a lover? That, perhaps, she did not know about her husband's insurance policy and the double-indemnity claim? The answer is that we do not have to prove a thing? The burden of proof is on the prosecution and it never goes away from the prosectution. Mr. Powell here' – and Freeman turned slightly – 'his job is to prove Jennifer Witt did those things, and you know what? He just has not done it.'
Hardy had to admire Freeman. The man was a fighter. Freeman held up a finger. 'One – no one – ever – has positively put Jennifer inside the house when the shots were fired. This is a fundamental flaw that, by itself, creates reasonable doubt.'
'Two.' Another finger. 'And this is also crucial. The prosecution has offered no motive, no theory, no reasonable hypothesis at all for the shooting of young Matthew Witt. It is simply asking you to believe that Jennifer Witt, for some unknown reason, shot and killed her only child. There has been no effort to prove that she did, or why.'
Jennifer still took any mention of Matt heavily. Her head went down for an instant and she sucked in a breath, swallowing hard. She reached for her water and drank.
'Three. The first witness to even put Mrs. Witt near the scene at the time of the shooting – that was Mrs. Barbieto, you'll remember – was not even close to being clear on the amount of time that had elapsed between hearing Jennifer next door and the shots. It might have been fifteen minutes. In fact, it quite possibly was.
'Four, Mr. Alvarez says he saw Mrs. Witt running down the street away from him within a minute of the shots. One minute. Let's recall the testimony of Mr. Alvarez on this famous one minute. He said that he walked directly from his wife's bedside to the window at the front of the hallway overlooking Olympia Way, a distance of perhaps twenty feet. And there was Jennifer Witt, already – in that short minute or less – outside the gate to her house, looking back at it.'
This, Hardy thought, was clear by now. And it was a crucial point. Even if she had run, Jennifer could not have made it from her bedroom – where the killings had occurred – down the stairs, across the living room, out the door, down the walkway and out the gate, closing it and turning around in the amount of time it took Alvarez to walk twenty feet.
Freeman paused briefly to let it sink in. More quietly now, confident in his facts. 'Let's go to Mr. Alvarez's identification of Jennifer Witt. Now, I'm not saying he didn't positively identify Mrs. Witt – he did that. I'll ask you, though, to consider how he could be so positive when he admits that he never saw her face. That's a hell of a trick.'
Villars frowned at the mild profanity but – again surprisingly – let Freeman continue uninterrupted.
'Next, since it made such an impression on the prosecution when this came up, let's take a minute to talk about Mrs. Witt's alleged intimate relationship with her psychiatrist. Dr. Lightner, under oath, has denied it. Now you may be skeptical, but remember that Inspector Terrell's opinion that they were having an affair was stricken as speculation. Which means that, as a matter of law, this alleged relationship has not at all been proved. Has anything proved that Mrs. Witt and her psychiatrist were intimate at any time? The answer, again, is no.' He paused, lowering his voice. 'No. Nothing.' And after the interview with Lightner, Freeman could assert this with conviction.
Freeman walked to the defense table and took a sip of water. Raising his eyes for a moment, he briefly took in the gallery, seeing if he still held them, as well. Satisfied, or nodding as if he was, he turned back to the jury box, raising a finger again.
