Jaywalker had long ago lost count of how many jury trials he'd had, but the number had to be up in the hundreds. Never before, though, had he seen a jury so white, so devoid of minorities of any sort, and so openly hostile toward him and his client. 'I'm half-Jewish, ' he wanted to jump up and tell them. 'I'm one of you!'
Justice Hinkley introduced the participants, asking all four lawyers and the defendant to stand in turn, so that the jurors could get a good look at them and see if they knew any of them. As Carter Drake rose from his seat, the room fell absolutely quiet. Drake had rejected Jaywalker's advice and overdressed in a gray suit, white shirt and red tie. A power tie, they used to call it. Not smart.
Eventually seventeen people acknowledged that they knew or were related to Abe Firestone, another two knew David Kaminsky, and one was engaged to Julie Napolitano. When a list of likely prosecution witnesses was read off, three jurors admitted knowing Alan Templeton, and one worked or had worked with Concepcion Testigo. Every single one of them, however, insisted that he or she could be absolutely fair, and the judge excused only one of them for cause. 'Being engaged to one of the lawyers could be a problem,' she allowed. The young man rose and stormed out of the courtroom, obviously upset that his objectivity had been called into question. At the prosecution table, Miss Napolitano thrust her lower lip forward and pouted cutely, to warm laughter.
No one said they knew Jaywalker, or Carter Drake.
Justice Hinkley spent the morning describing her own function and that of the jury, explaining basic principles of law, and excusing those jurors who claimed they couldn't serve because of one hardship or another. Jaywalker thought he'd heard just about every excuse there was, from the young child at home to the bedridden elderly parent to the dog that needed walking or the cat that needed feeding. He'd learned about longplanned vacations and short-interval bladders. He'd seen letters from doctors, dentists, priests, astrologists and drug counselors. He'd listened to people who couldn't be locked up during deliberations, feared retaliation at the hands of the mafia, and took instructions only from God. He'd heard native-born New Yorkers with names like Smith and Jones swear they couldn't understand English.
But this day he heard none of these things.
Everyone, it seemed, was willing to endure whatever hardship jury service might entail, for however long the trial might last. Had civic duty, a virtue nearly extinct everywhere else, somehow managed to flourish and thrive in Rockland County? Jaywalker had his doubts. What he was witnessing, he knew full well, was just another manifestation of the community's outrage. For once, those called to jury duty weren't just willing 'to set all other business aside,' as the court clerk had asked them to repeat in their preliminary oaths. They wanted to serve. They couldn't wait to serve.
Something else to worry about.
It was midafternoon by the time the judge turned the questioning over to the lawyers. Abe Firestone took the stage. He soon showed that he was capable of checking his combativeness at the door. He talked to the jurors with a folksy, good-humored ease. They listened to his concerns, followed his analogies, laughed at his corny jokes, and promised to convict the defendant if the evidence established his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. 'As I'm confident it will,' Firestone added.
'Objection,' said Jaywalker.
'Yes,' said the judge. 'Sustained. The jurors will disregard it.'
As if.
'Sorry,' said Firestone.
Right.
Five o'clock came, and Jaywalker still hadn't had a turn at questioning the panel. The judge broke for the evening, directing everyone to return at nine-thirty the following morning, and wishing them a safe trip home.
'How does it look?' Amanda asked him on their way to the parking lot.
How does it look? The evidence wouldn't begin until the following week, most likely. So far they hadn't picked a single juror. Jaywalker had yet to ask a question. Yet here was Amanda, wanting to know how things looked. What bothered Jaywalker wasn't the fact that her question was at worst stupid and at best premature. What bothered him was that he could answer it anyway.
'Terrible,' he said. 'It looks terrible.'
Jaywalker got his turn the next morning, although an overnight snowfall made for a delayed start. January was a dumb month to be driving the Mercury back and forth to Rockland County. It had rear-wheel drive, bald tires and a heater/defroster that was temperamental, if one wanted to be charitable. He should have tried the case back in September, he told himself, as his client had wanted him to. Sure, he'd done a lot of preparing since then, and a lot of obsessing. But nothing he couldn't have crammed into three weeks' worth of forced labor. And as far as defusing the passions of the community, it now appeared that the additional time had only solidified the outrage. He read that in the morning newspaper, heard it on his AM radio and saw it in the set faces of the jurors as he rose to question them.
It had long been Jaywalker's practice-and it was a practice that set him apart from just about every one of his colleagues-to settle on a game plan early, and then to stick to it. Other lawyers approached a trial with a let's- see-what-shakes-loose attitude. They played things close to the vest, asserting little, conceding nothing and waiting for weak spots to appear in the prosecution's case. In other words, they played conservatively, defensively, careful to keep their options open.
Jaywalker subscribed to that old overworked sports adage, the best defense is a good offense. He prepared as hard and as thoroughly as he could, so that even before the trial began, he knew what was going to happen. He knew the strong spots, the weak spots, and everything else there was to know about the prosecution's case. On the basis of that knowledge, he committed to a single, cohesive view of the case, a unified strategy he'd stick to, come hell or high water. And so far, precious few of his clients had either burned or drowned. In a business where other defense lawyers were forced to boast about partial acquittals, hung juries and even lengthy deliberations, Jaywalker never boasted. He never had to. Almost without exception, after the verdict sheet had been read and filed, his client would stand up and walk out of the courthouse with him, through the public entranceway. It was all the boasting he needed.
A natural extension of committing to a unified strategy was sharing it with the jurors early on. That meant telling them about it at the first available opportunity. That meant during jury selection. That meant now.
'A terrible, terrible thing happened back in May of last year,' he began. 'Eight innocent little children died, and one equally innocent adult. The man whose actions led to those deaths, the man whose actions caused their van to swerve and go off the road, sits here in this courtroom, right over there. He will tell you that, when the time comes.' And at that point Jaywalker moved from the lectern to stand over his client, placing his hands on Drake's shoulders while still facing the sixteen people who filled the jury box. 'What's more,' he said, 'my client had been drinking that day. He will tell you that, too.'
There's an expression that goes, So quiet you could hear a pin drop. At that moment, the courtroom was so quiet you could have heard a pin rusting. You could have heard a pin thinking about rusting.
'Okay,' said Jaywalker, back at the lectern. 'Who's heard all they need to hear? Who's ready to convict my client right now?'
Silence.
'Come on, folks. Remember that oath you took yesterday, to answer all questions to the best of your ability? These are the questions. Forget about what you do for a living, how many kids you have, what magazines you read, and all those other softballs Mr. Firestone lobbed at you. That was the easy part. Now comes the tough stuff. You've just heard the defense lawyer concede that this defendant was indeed the driver of the Audi. That he did in fact cause the van to go off the road, leading directly to nine deaths. And that he'd been drinking. Be honest with me. Raise your hand if, as far as you're concerned, that's all you need to know.'
It took about ten seconds, which might as well have been ten minutes. But finally a woman in the second of the two rows tentatively raised her hand, though no higher than her shoulder. Just in case anyone had missed it, Jaywalker pointed to her and asked her why.
'I mean, if that's all there is,' she said uncertainly. 'Unless he's going to tell us something else.'
By that time, several of the jurors in the front row had turned their heads to see the woman who'd dared to speak their own thoughts. They seemed to be waiting for Jaywalker to bite her head off, or worse. Instead, all he did was smile, thank her, and say, 'Of course.'
The effect was almost comical. Before long another hand was raised, and another after that, until five of the eight jurors in the second row looked as though they were ready to pledge allegiance.
