Mark McBain, the prosecutor, started voir dire, asking perfunctory questions about family backgrounds, run- ins with law enforcement, and whether any of the prospective jurors knew any of the principals. No one knew me, but three were excused because they knew Cimarron, another two because they had formed opinions of my guilt based on newspaper accounts and swore they couldn’t shake those opinions. A few others were sent home for various personal reasons, including sick relatives, sick cattle, or just plain sick of lawyers.
I watched the jurors file in and out of the box for most of the day, and for no rational reason, I started hating them. Who were these people to judge me? They didn’t know me. They weren’t there. They can’t know what happened. How would we ever tell them so that they would know?
I felt out of place. Distant. At times, I listened to the jurors’ answers but never heard a word. I felt I was drifting over the courtroom, looking down at the proceedings. Other times, I wasn’t there at all.
Once in a while, H.T. would ask for my opinion of one of the panel, but I just waved him off. Let him decide who to challenge and to seat. I was in no condition to help.
Just after four o’clock, H. T. Patterson nudged me. We had a jury of shopkeepers, ranchers, homemakers, a bartender, a waitress, a woman schoolteacher, a mechanic, and a student. They sat in a raised box of varnished walnut, seven men, five women, ten Anglos, two of Mexican descent. Just before they took their oath, I studied their faces, and they studied mine.
Who was this man, they seemed to ask, and what has he done?
And for a moment, looking back, I didn’t know the answer to either question.
Mark McBain was a nuts-and-bolts prosecutor. Gray suit, gray eyes with, dark pouches underneath, and a little soft through the middle. He had no desire to be governor, senator, or Santa Claus. He had attained all his goals by dogged persistence and hard work. Unlike Abe Socolow, who bled out his guts to win each case and left a piece of himself on the courtroom floor, with McBain, it was all in a day’s work. No flash, no dash. Paint the jury a picture by the numbers. Nothing unnecessary put into evidence, nothing important left out. No pomp, no pageantry, and no nonsense. No ghastly blunders either, just the plain, unembellished, unsentimental facts. A D.A. from the old school.
A prosecutor is a stolid carpenter who patiently hammers his wood into place as he builds a house, one board at a time. A defense lawyer is a nihilistic vandal who finds the support beam and pulls down the house before it’s complete. Or if you want to get high falutin’ about it, imagine prosecutors and defense lawyers as great painters. The former would be Winslow Homer realists, the latter Man Ray cubists.
At the moment, Mark McBain was leaning on the balustraded railing of the jury box, beginning his opening statement by methodically telling what he expected to prove. “Imagine a trial as a book and opening statement as the table of contents.”
He droned on in a monotone, unfolding his case, witness by witness, using the time-honored phrase, “The evidence will show…”
He talked about my past with Ms. Baroso, my decade-long involvement with her brother, the convicted felon, my position in her brother’s company which I systematically looted of funds advanced by Mr. Cimarron, the decedent. He told the jurors that they would hear from the medical examiner, the investigating detective, an expert on power tools, and from Ms. Baroso herself, the sole eyewitness to the murder. “Ms. Baroso is the only one who can tell us exactly what happened that night. She has no ax to grind. She is a professional woman of impeccable background and credibility, a woman embarrassed by her brother and…”
He turned toward me, all twelve jurors following his gaze.
“…embarrassed by her past involvement with this criminal lawyer from Miami.”
He made “criminal lawyer” sound redundant, and the way he said “Miami” left the impression of Sodom-by- the-Sea.
“ I am not going to steal these witnesses’ thunder,” McBain continued. “You will hear the testimony from each of them, and when you do, I am convinced that you will determine that the state has met its burden of proving beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of murder in the second degree.”
H. T. Patterson smiled, rocked back and forth in his cowboy boots, and told the jurors that it was an honor to stand before them, the people who can put an end to a grave injustice that has befallen his client. He reminded them of their promise this very morning that they would wait until all the evidence was in before reaching any conclusions. He told them that the state’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt was the highest standard of proof known to our system of jurisprudence. Without his nose growing a millimeter, he told the jury that my character was unblemished, and a string of witnesses from Florida, including football coaches, judges, and lawyers would attest to that.
Moving close to the rail, Patterson raised his voice a notch. “Ms. Baroso’s testimony is subject to cross- examination, and it is on cross-examination that you will judge whether the evidence meets this burden of proof. It is not true that she is the only eyewitness. No, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Lassiter was an eyewitness, also, and you shall hear from him. I submit that you will find Ms. Baroso’s story to be ambiguous and improbable, dubious and doubtful, and when you do, the state’s case will fall. It will fall like a house of cards. It will collapse like-”
“ Objection, Your Honor.” McBain slowly got to his feet. It was the quietest objection I’d ever heard.
“ Sustained,” the judge said. “I don’t know how they do it in Mia-muh, but up here, we save closing argument till the evidence is in.”
Patterson thanked the judge with a gracious smile as if he had imparted the wisdom of the Holy Grail. Patterson summed up with the usual platitudes about our by-golly best system of justice in the world. He thanked the jurors in advance for their rapt attention, though two were already looking out the window, and another was catnapping. Then he sat down, and Judge Witherspoon gave the jurors a little speech about not reading the newspapers or discussing the case among themselves.
I leaned over to my lawyer. “H.T., what’s going on? You promised I’d testify. Isn’t it a little early to-”
“ Already decided. You have to.”
“ Okay, but then, why no mention of self-defense? If I’m going to testify, it’s my only way out.”
“ Self-defense admits you killed Cimarron.”
“ Of course it does!” My whisper was a little too loud, and one of the jurors looked over, just as the judge explained he would work them nine-to-six and get them out of here by the end of the week. “Jo Jo will testify I put the stud gun to Cimarron’s head and pulled the trigger.”
“ But you can’t remember that?”
“ Not exactly, no. I mean, I remember pulling the trigger, but I didn’t think it went off.”
“ And Ms. Baroso lied to you about Cimarron beating her?”
“ Yes.”
“ Then lied to Mr. Cimarron about your having assaulted her?”
“ Of course.”
“ And lied to the police about who attacked whom?” I threw up my hands in disgust. “Yes. She fooled me. She fooled Cimarron, and she fooled the police.”
“ Don’t look so glum, Jake,” H. T. Patterson said. “She hasn’t fooled me.”
CHAPTER 22
