Service agents that had accompanied her sat in the front row directly behind her. Nothing like having your client make a grand entrance accompanied by an armed guard just before the conclusion of jury selection.
Hackett nodded to the judge.
'Are you ready to proceed, Mr. Hackett?'
'Yes, Your Honor.'
'Mr. Nolan?'
'Yes, Your Honor.'
'Mr. Hackett, any challenges for cause?'
'No, Your Honor.'
'Mr. Nolan?'
'No, Your Honor.'
'Mr. Hackett, your first peremptory.'
Hackett stood. 'Your Honor, plaintiff accepts the jury as impaneled.'
I looked up in complete shock. I turned around to look at the jury consultant, who encouraged me with an immediate clenched face to challenge the first person I had listed on my notepad. I glanced down at the notepad, then over at Rachel, who was frozen. I looked up at the judge. 'Your Honor, defendants accept the jury as impaneled.'
The judge was surprised but pleased. 'Will the jurors in the box please stand and be sworn?'
The jurors looked at each other and smiled with a pleased, surprised look, then stood. The clerk stood up, told them to raise their right hands, recited the oath, which they all repeated, and then they sat down. Several picked up the pads that had been on the floor next to their chairs, took out their pencils, and opened them to begin writing. The judge said to the rest of the jury panel, 'Thank you very much for your willingness to sit on this jury. Your services will not be needed, and you may now return to the jury room.'
They left the courtroom quickly, after which additional spectators were allowed to fill their vacant seats. The courtroom was once again full and humming. No one had expected the trial to get under way on its merits at one forty-five on the afternoon of the first day.
Judge Betancourt waited until there was quiet. Her face was so stern she didn't need to say anything to the newcomers. They knew that they were lucky, and that if they weren't quiet, they would be very unlucky very fast. When the room was completely silent, she said, 'Mr. Hackett, your opening statement.'
28
HACKETT STOOD, ADJUSTED his suit coat and cuff links, and said, 'Thank you, Your Honor.' He moved to the lectern and began without notes. 'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as I told you earlier, my name is Tom Hackett.' He paused and waited for each juror to look at him. 'I'm here on behalf of Mrs. Adams, the former first lady, and the other wives who are now widows of those men killed when Marine One crashed on March seventeeth. I also represent their children. On the other side of this case is WorldCopter, a European consortium that is essentially a French corporation, and its American subsidiary. The evidence will be very clear, ladies and gentlemen. The reason that the president of the United States died, the reason all the men aboard that helicopter were killed, is because of WorldCopter.
'The president was on his way to Camp David for an extremely important meeting. It was so important that it is classified as top secret and we have not been allowed to learn the reason for that meeting. Even the first lady doesn't know the reason for the meeting.' Hackett looked into the jurors' eyes. 'But it was so important President Adams chose to take off late at night in the middle of a terrible thunderstorm to fly to Camp David.
'Was it safe for him to take off in the middle of that storm? Not only did he have what was supposed to be the strongest helicopter ever built, but he had perhaps the best pilot who ever flew a helicopter. What for you or me might be dangerous was well within the range of what was reasonable for this helicopter and this pilot.
'But that assumes the helicopter was built properly. The specifications had been approved by the Department of Defense to build the strongest helicopter ever made, one that could handle this storm. It was bought by the Marine Corps to be its primary helicopter for the next twenty years.
'But the evidence will be that this helicopter was
'It started back when WorldCopter submitted its bid to be selected to build the next Marine One. The evidence will show how they rigged the game so they would appear to the government to be an American corporation. How this European company entered into a joint venture with an American company to deceive everyone into believing that this could be called an American helicopter, because that was the requirement for building Marine One.
'They won the bid. They got the contract. But the Department of Defense required that those working on the helicopter, those building the parts for Marine One, get appropriate clearances. It was mandatory. No helicopter was to be used for Marine One at all unless everybody involved in the construction of that helicopter had the required clearance. And guess what? They didn't. Of the two hundred and fifty people who touched the parts that went onto this helicopter, forty-seven of them did not have their clearances. Forty-seven. And guess where three of those people worked? They worked in the room with the Golden Blade.
'So what is this Golden Blade?'
Hackett lowered his voice. 'In Paris, France, there is a separate room in the factory where these helicopters are built. In that room is a blade that is never touched, and against which all other blades are balanced. They complete the balance of each new blade with small, washerlike pieces of metal-tip weights-that slide onto a bolt and are tightened down with a nut. Once the new blade balances, it is ready to go.
'So what caused Marine One to crash? The tip weights that were put on one of the blades came off. When the tip weights came off, the aircraft began vibrating and shaking and ultimately shook itself to death. The blade ultimately came off and the helicopter plummeted to the ground and burst into flames.
'Why did the tip weights come off? Because the three men who work in the room with the Golden Blade, the three men who put the tip weights on the blade that came off of Marine One, were three of the forty-seven that didn't have their clearance. But there must be records you might say.
'There have to be. Right? If you're going to balance a blade that will be on Marine One, you're careful about the records, right? Wrong. We went to France and I asked to see the records that show the balancing process for the blade that was found on the ground next to Marine One where it crashed. I wanted to know the serial numbers on those tip weights. But the records are gone. And WorldCopter has no answer. They don't know if the records ever existed, if the record keeping was sloppy, if the records have been lost, or if somebody destroyed them after the crash of Marine One. WorldCopter is unable to answer that question. Isn't that curious?
'Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence will be that the brave men who were aboard that helicopter didn't die from the crash. They died from the burns. Imagine the suffering, imagine the pain of knowing that your helicopter is going down. One of the blades came through the fuel tank and covered the occupants with burning fuel. As the helicopter plummeted to the ground, the president and the other occupants were burning to death.
'The helicopter then slammed into the ground, destroying some of the evidence, but not so much that we couldn't figure out what happened. So you can know exactly what did happen, I'm going to play the cockpit voice recording after the helicopter took off from Washington, flew towards Maryland, and crashed. Unfortunately, the recording stops just before the impact. But I think you can feel, you can hear in the pilot's voice, that something was going wrong. It's the last recording we have of Colonel Collins. Let's listen.' Hackett crossed to the digital recorder sitting on his counsel table with a court microphone bent down toward its small speaker and hit PLAY. The room filled with Collins's voice as everyone sat mesmerized. It was the first time anyone had heard the recording played outside the NTSB room. This had been one of my motions, to preclude the playing of the tape. Too emotionally charged. My motion had been rejected after Judge Betancourt heard the tape herself.
After the CVR recording was finished, Hackett turned off the recorder and continued quietly, 'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is pretty simple. WorldCopter did not do background checks on its employees, and they didn't have the clearances that they were required to have in order to build Marine One. Yet, they assured the Department of Defense that they were in compliance. Then when building the rotor blade that killed the president and all aboard his helicopter, they can't even tell you that it was balanced, what tip weights were put on, how much weight was put on, or the serial numbers for those tip weights. Whatever they did, they did wrong. The tip weights came off. That is their fault, plainly. So what do they say? They can't tell you because they've lost the records, or they never existed, or they've been destroyed.'
Hackett paced. 'There is more to this than simple negligence on the part of WorldCopter. We have reckless disregard for the safety of others, particularly the president of the United States and his crew on Marine One. It might even be more than reckless. There could be malice here. We may even find intentional conduct. We'll have to see how this evidence comes in, but you listen carefully.' He paused, glancing up and down the rows. 'You listen to what these witnesses say. You wait and see who shows up to tell us what happened from WorldCopter.'
Hackett took a deep breath. 'At the end of this trial, I'm going to ask you to award a substantial amount of damages to my clients. And by damages, I mean money. It's the only thing we have that we can force WorldCopter to do. We can't bring back President Adams and put him back in charge of this country. We can't bring back my clients' husbands and fathers or take the pain of the fire away. But we can ask you to compensate them for the loss that WorldCopter has caused. There will be a lot of evidence over the economic value of these cases, as well as the losses suffered through their loss of consortium-sexual relations-the loss of care and comfort, the loss of society. Losing the relationship. These cases have enormous value. I will be asking you for damages in excess of one billion dollars.' Several jurors frowned at the number. 'So listen for the evidence which will support that, which you will see very clearly. Thank you very much for your attention, ladies and gentlemen. I will speak to you again at the conclusion of the evidence, in my closing argument, and I'll tell you what you need to do to award my clients what they're entitled to in your verdict.'
Hackett sat down and the first lady put her hand on top of his hand in gratitude. It was very touching.
At that moment the judge looked at me and said, 'Mr. Nolan, your opening.'
