Mazie looked at her and said, almost dreamily, “You remember that?”
She nodded. “Even Karl was better than that, wasn’t he.”
After a long pause, during which she didn’t blink once, Mazie whispered, “Yeah.”
“So you did better,” Terri said. “You got dealt a terrible hand, but you rose above that and did better by your son.”
A light came on in Mazie’s eyes. Not a strong one, but a new one.
What they were saying was news to me. All I recalled from high school was that Mazie and her stepdad at the time didn’t get along.
“I’ve seen so many women,” Terri said, “dive into drink and drugs to forget things like what you’ve been through. I’ve seen women who love their children fall apart and lose them to the state. You never did that. You raised your boy up right, and you were strong.”
Mazie had a look on her face that I’d never seen. It was like she was thinking, for the first time, that she might’ve accomplished something or might be worthwhile.
“And you know your son is innocent,” Terri said. “You saw him walk out of your house in clean clothes, and you washed those same clothes yourself the next morning before your breakfast shift.”
“Yes, I did,” Mazie said. Her chin was high. “He’d left his jacket somewhere, but he had on that same white T-shirt I gave him, and his light-colored jeans. I washed them on hot because there was not one drop of anything that could’ve been blood.”
I’d seen mothers desperately begging a jury to believe their son was innocent. I’d seen mothers in denial claim that their son’s personality made him incapable of committing the crime. But I’d never seen one testify like Mazie. If she spoke like that on the witness stand, like God’s own truth was on her and she knew it from what she had seen, I thought that might give some jurors reasonable doubt all by itself.
And it only took one juror to set Jackson free.
31
Monday, December 16, Morning
It was eight thirty a.m., and the courtroom was crowded. Ruiz and his assistant, me and Terri, and fifty citizens filling the jury box and half the spectator seats, waiting to be whittled down to twelve jurors and one alternate. To win, I needed to convince all thirteen that Jackson was innocent. In a conservative county, with a cop on the stand, evidence of motive and opportunity, and a defendant from the wrong side of the tracks, that wasn’t much more likely than a lottery win.
So my goal was to get at least a few jurors who seemed like they might distrust the cops. If they did, and if even one of them was stubborn enough to hold out against the tough-on-crime types, we’d get a deadlock and a mistrial. Jackson would go free, for a while at least. Ludlow could still decide to try him again, but the more jurors I could get to vote against conviction, the less likely that was. And if he didn’t, it would be over. Jackson would be free.
To the assembled citizens, Judge Chambliss delivered high-minded remarks about justice and impartiality. Then he asked the usual questions: Had they heard about the case? Did they or a close friend or relative know the victim or the defendant, or Ruiz, or me? His court rules didn’t let us address the jurors directly at this stage. Each side submitted questions to him, and he asked them. While he talked to the jurors, excusing several for social or family connections to the case, Terri and I texted back and forth on our laptops about their responses and their body language.
Excuse #16, she said. 2 cop sons, wld love Blount.
Number 16, a good-looking woman around fifty years old, was sitting in the alternates box. I peeked at the questionnaire she’d filled out; she was a high-school teacher. That, plus her chunky necklace and purple cardigan, made me think she was less likely than average to take what cops said on faith.
I typed back, You sure?
Yes. Saw her arrive. Fraternal Order of Police bumper sticker.
I wrote back, I stand corrected. It occurred to me that I could save a fair amount of time by just not questioning anything Terri thought we should do.
We got ten peremptory challenges, to excuse jurors without having to explain why. After striking the ones we agreed on, out of respect for her abilities I used the last three to strike some who’d seemed fine to me but she didn’t like.
By eleven a.m. the jury was seated. Mostly older, three Black, nine White. Chambliss explained their duties and the schedule: opening statements, lunch, and then the state’s first witness.
Ruiz, as the prosecutor, went first.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “I want to thank you for your service and acknowledge that it is a sacrifice. The Commonwealth of South Carolina would not ask this of you if it weren’t important. And the case you will be asked to decide upon is about the most important thing there is: human life. A man was murdered. And I will show you, step by step through the evidence, that the defendant, his son Jackson Warton, committed that crime.”
He paused while his assistant pressed some keys to bring up a photo of Karl on a large screen on the wall. Karl was on his boat, smiling, holding up a hooked fish.
“This is Karl Warton,” Ruiz said. “On June 6 of this year, he was brutally murdered on board that very boat. Now, over the course of this trial, you’re going to find out that, just like any of us, Karl was not perfect. Matter of fact, he had many flaws. He drank. He sinned. And I will even tell you right up-front that he neglected and abused Jackson, his only child.”
A few jurors shook their heads like that was a damn shame.
“But we have not called you here,” Ruiz said, “to sit in judgment
