“We can move the Court—ask the Court—to charge you on a lesser crime. For example, murder in the third degree. I have the definition right here. Murder in the third degree is when someone kills someone else”—Judy read from her pad—“‘without a lawful justification, but acts with a sudden and intense passion, resulting from serious provocation.’”
“What means voca—?” Pigeon Tony asked. “It’s like when Coluzzi told you he killed your son and his wife. He provoked you.”
“Coluzzi provoke me,
Judy nodded, encouraged. “He did provoke you, and you did kill him with a sudden and intense passion. It fits! Now is the time the Court charges the jury, or tells them what the law is. If we ask the Court to charge the jury on murder in the third degree, I think they won’t convict you on murder in the first degree.”
Frank brightened. “What’s the difference, Judy?”
“One big difference. No death penalty. The mandatory minimum for third-degree murder is ten to twenty years.”
“Hmm.” Frank shook his head. “That might as well be life in prison for him. But at least it’s not death.”
“Exactly,” Judy said, heartened. “It gives the jury a compromise. They want to punish him, they can convict on the lesser crime. It’s not all black and white.”
Frank nodded. “I like it.”
“So do I,” added Bennie, still leaning against the wall.
Judy felt relieved. “It’s your choice, Pigeon Tony, but I advise that you let me do it.” She checked her watch. “I meet with the judge in five minutes to go over the charge, and after that we have our closing arguments. Then he charges the jury and they go out to deliberate. You have to decide now. Say yes.”
Pigeon Tony blinked, his lids slower than usual. “Say again.”
“Say what?”
“Say what you say before.” He motioned at Judy’s legal pad. “What you read.”
Judy looked at her pad. The definition of third-degree murder. “Killing someone without lawful justifi—”
“What means?”
“It means the killing wasn’t legal. There was no legal reason for it.”
Pigeon Tony’s eyes flared open. “Is no murder! No! No! No!”
“Pigeon Tony—”
“No!” he erupted.
It was over. Judy knew she could move Mount Vesuvius sooner. There was no Plan C. And it was time to go.
At the podium, Judy stood for a moment before the jury, thinking of what to say in her closing argument. Events had obviously mooted her neatly outlined reasonable-doubt closing, with Points A through F. She was on her own.
She looked up and eyed the jury, and they looked refreshed and eager. The schoolteacher smiled at her, but Judy had to speak to the back row, which had already decided that Pigeon Tony was guilty. She had thought that once, too. Maybe it was a good starting point.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. You have heard something extraordinary in this courtroom, in Pigeon Tony’s testimony. I heard it for the first time myself, when I met my client. You all heard him tell you, because he insisted on taking the witness stand to talk to you and tell you the truth. He didn’t hide behind me, an expert, or even his rights under the Constitution. But when Pigeon Tony told me that story of what happened in the back room, the same way he told it to you today, I was appalled. I didn’t know if I should represent him. After all, he had killed someone. In my mind then, he was guilty.”
Judy paused, thinking aloud. “But I came to know him, and to hear about his life, much as you did through the stories he told you when he testified today. I began to understand what he had gone through. First, his wife murdered in a stable, on his young son’s birthday, and then his son and his wife burned alive in a truck that went flaming off a highway overpass. Pigeon Tony Lucia is a man who has had his entire family taken from him.” Judy was choosing her words carefully, because Santoro was on the edge of his seat, waiting to object. She couldn’t say Angelo Coluzzi had committed the murders because he hadn’t been convicted, but she didn’t have to, she hoped.
“And as time went on, I began to understand what would happen to a normal person, if pushed to that length. What would happen to me, or to you. And if I, or you, were provoked the way Pigeon Tony was, had lost the people we loved, wouldn’t we behave the same way, in that one instant when we are taunted, teased, and provoked, with the source of our greatest pain? Remember Angelo Coluzzi’s words:
“Objection, irrelevant!” Santoro said, and Judy’s head snapped around. Most lawyers would never interrupt another’s closing, especially with an objection that lame.
“Your Honor,” Judy said. “That was Pigeon Tony’s testimony, and I’m entitled to argue it.”
“Overruled.” Judge Vaughn looked askance at Santoro, who sat down.
Judy paused to collect her thoughts. If Santoro was trying to break her stride, she wouldn’t let him. “And hearing that, Pigeon Tony flew at Angelo Coluzzi and pushed him, breaking his neck. And after that he screamed. At the horror of what he had done. You heard him say he was sorry that Coluzzi was dead. He was, and is, sorry.”
Judy drew herself up. “But you are here to judge Pigeon Tony, and Judge Vaughn will charge you on the law, and he will tell you that you are the ultimate finder of the facts in this case. You alone will decide what is truth. You alone will decide whether Pigeon Tony committed murder when he killed Angelo Coluzzi.”
Judy paused, eyeing each juror. “Your best guide in that deliberations room will be this question: What is justice? Because it is justice that brings the lawyers here, and the court personnel, Judge Vaughn, and the Lucias and the Coluzzis and all of the spectators, the reporters, and most of all, each of you. Juries are convened for one purpose only: to do justice. Justice is the reason for this system, and for objections, and for opening and closing arguments. Justice is, in fact, the entire point of the law.”
Judy thought about it, clarifying her own thoughts as she spoke. “Pigeon Tony has never had justice in his life, and he is seventy-nine years old. He grew up under Fascism, in prewar Italy, and he doesn’t expect justice. He has learned not to expect justice. But he remains hopeful. It is time for him to have justice now.” Judy paused. “Show him what this country was built on. Teach him what we are all about. Grant him, finally, justice. And find him not guilty of murder. In so doing, you will not be ignoring the law. You will be fulfilling its highest and best purpose.”
“Thank you.” Judy nodded at the jury, then made her way to her seat. She didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead as Santoro hurried to the podium and slapped his legal pad on it with a resounding
“I cannot believe what I just heard,” Santoro said angrily, eyeing the jury. “I had expected that the defense would play on your sympathy, but I never thought I would hear her call upon
Is it justice to kill an innocent man, in cold blood, while he is doing nothing but practicing his hobby? How can that possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, be called justice?”
Santoro held up a finger. “Ms. Carrier told you that the point of the law is justice. She is correct. But the law that governs this matter has already been decided and the law on this subject is clear. Please listen while I read it to you.” He picked up his pad. “‘A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing.’” Santoro slapped the pad down again, startling the jurors in the front row. “That is the law of this Commonwealth. And if you follow the law, as you must, you can only find defendant Lucia guilty of murder in the first degree.”
Santoro didn’t break stride. “The defendant
