Murdering a witness rocks the foundation of the criminal justice system. Corey Miller thinks himself above the law, that killing those who dare to testify against the Rattlesnakes makes him beyond the reach of the police, the courts, and you the jury. Show him he’s wrong. Show him that we as a society do not tolerate murder. Show him that he does not get to dispose of DeShawn Carter simply because he pleases. Hold him accountable for his crime.
That’s my story, more or less. The waiting begins.
***
Awaiting a verdict stresses me out more than the trial itself. A trial allows no time for reflection. It is a manic sprint from one witness to another, one piece of evidence to the next. Days spent in court bleed into nights of feverish preparation. When the hard work ends, nothing is left to do but sit and wait. Stuck in the purgatory of uncertainty, the mind replays the entirety of the trial, creating a list of everything I did wrong. Experience as a trial lawyer does not make the waiting easier. Even today, despite my record of success in the courtroom, jury deliberations mercilessly taunt my confidence in who I am. Jurors not only sit in judgment of the defendant but of me as well.
I am not alone in my neurosis during this dead time. Ella feels it, too. Her routine centers on pacing around the courthouse like a marathon runner to burn off the nervous energy that afflicts her. Millwood used to chain-smoke. Now he plows through packs of gum. I just sit, rocking back and forth in my chair. Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.
Nothing screams failure like a prosecutor losing a murder case. Juries are not eager to release accused murderers back onto the same streets they themselves walk. “Innocent until proven guilty” sounds nice on a postcard, but juries want to convict. Victory requires nothing more than giving the jurors a reason to follow what they are already inclined to do. Losing when the deck already sits stacked in my favor would mean I’m not very good at my job.
***
Five hours and counting now.
Why is the jury taking so long? The universal rule of thumb is that delay favors the defense. I once had to wait five days for a verdict. By day four, I had already journeyed through the five stages of grief—denial that there was a problem, anger at the jury’s intransigence, bargaining that there was a reasonable explanation to explain the delay, depression that I had lost a winnable case, and acceptance of my own inadequacy both as a lawyer and a man. A bemused Amber took her husband’s shifting emotions in good stride. She always believed in me, even during my dark periods of doubt.
When the jury returned to the courtroom, I strained without success to read their faces for any clues. Nothing. I prepared for the worst and felt almost confused when the foreman called out, “Guilty.” Turned out that eleven of the jurors quickly landed on the defendant’s guilt, but it took four days to convince the lone holdout.
Amber and I celebrated by taking a short vacation to Jekyll Island to allow me to recuperate. Sitting outside while enjoying a sunset dinner, her radiance overtook me. She had never looked so beautiful. That trip remains one of my best memories. Try as I might to avoid thinking about Amber since her murder, jury deliberations always remind me of those few precious days. Waiting for the Miller verdict is no different. I see her so clearly. On a bicycle. Eating ice cream. Drinking wine. Splashing in the water. Strolling on Driftwood Beach. Wearing a bathing suit that both revealed and hid much. Happy times.
I flash a look of hatred at the clock. Six hours. Still no word from the jury.
***
The news of a verdict reaches Ella’s phone first. I straighten my tie and put on my jacket. I splash some cold water on my face to ready myself before finding my assigned seat. I analyze Miller for any sign showing a heightened awareness of the moment and again find nothing. The possibility that I’m more nervous about the verdict than Miller strikes me as inconceivable, but that appears to be the truth. The callousness with which he treats the lives of others would make a perverse semblance of sense if he likewise doesn’t put much stock in his own life. Judge Ross enters the room.
“Bring in the jury,” he orders.
I always search the jury for signs of its verdict. This practice is nothing more than alchemy, although it does pass the time. The knot in my stomach tightens.
“Has the jury reached a verdict?”
“We have, Your Honor,” responds the jury foreman.
After inspecting the verdict, Ross addresses the defense table, “Will the defendant please rise?” The words are a command framed as a request. At Joe’s urging, Miller stands up, annoyed at the effort required to get on his feet. Joe stands next to him, the dutiful attorney to the last.
“Mr. Foreperson, you may read the verdict.”
My heart races abnormally fast for a man simply sitting in a chair. Ella gives my knee a squeeze under the prosecution table, a first for her, and a sign that the nerves are eating at her insides, too.
“We the jury, in the matter of the State of Georgia versus Corey Andrew Miller, on the charge of first-degree murder, find the defendant … guilty.”
The pause before “guilty” throws me a little. Was it a pause or a “not”? I ask Ella, “Did he say guilty?” Ella nods and gives my knee another squeeze. I take a deep breath. Thank God.
***
Judge Ross calls the courtroom to order. Miller slumps back down into his chair. Maybe he does care. The jurors look relieved, but their work is not yet done. Next up is the sentencing phase and the determination whether Miller will be put to death for his crime. But the hour is already late, and Ross sends everyone home for the day.
After the adjournment, Joe meanders over to Ella and me. He wants to make a deal.
“I need to talk with my client, but I was wondering about a trade where we agree to life with no parole in exchange for taking the needle off the table.”
I answer, “That’s the deal I offered you before the trial. Why would we take that deal at this point?”
Joe shrugs his shoulders in response. I pressed him hard before the trial to get Miller to take my offer. I would gladly have traded the death penalty to spare Tasha from testifying. Miller turned it down, and I’m in no mood to negotiate now.
Joe pouts, “You got my client for life. I don’t see why you need him dead, too.”
“He killed a witness, Joe. We need to make an example of him. He had his chance to avoid the needle. He rolled the dice and lost. Now he has to live with it.”
“Whatever,” retorts Joe. He slinks off.
Idiot. The death penalty as a tool of leverage for encouraging pre-trial pleas only works if we actually seek lethal injection once we win a conviction. Rejecting the deal must have consequences. Otherwise every murder defendant would take his chances at trial. Miller should’ve pled.
On our walk back to the office, Ella asks, “Still want to indict Joe?”
“I want to, but I won’t. He wasn’t involved in any conspiracy. Indicting him would only make him a martyr to the cause within the defense bar,” I answer. “But I’ll invite him to Miller’s execution.”
“Ouch,” responds Ella.
“He deserves it.”
“Let’s make sure Miller gets it first.”
Someone bumps hard into me forcing my body into a half-spin.
“Watch where you going,” huffs Q-Bone. The bump is no accident. Q-Bone flares at me with murder in his eyes. Ella hurries away, no doubt to retrieve a deputy. I stand my ground. I’m in the mood for a fight.
“Big lawyer man. What you got against the Rattlesnakes, lawyer man?”
“I grew up in the country, Q-Bone. I’ve never been afraid of snakes. They’re small and they scamper away at the slightest little thing. I bet you’ve never even seen a rattlesnake in the wild, have you? I have. They have a rattle. Big deal. Babies have rattles. Are you afraid of babies, Q-Bone?”
In reality, snakes terrify me, always have, especially rattlers. But Q-Bone doesn’t know that.
“Lawyer man is real funny. Were you laughing when your wife and kid go
t what was coming to them?”
I peer down on him. I’m 6’2 200 pounds. Q-Bone’s lucky if he’s 5’9 in heels and is so thin he’s invisible from the side. Q-Bone gives me his best triple-dog-dare look to encourage me to make the first move. If I respond to his provocation, he wins. But Q-Bone doesn’t get to win.
“Q-Bone, have you ever seen a man die by lethal injection? I have. I’ve sent two men to their death. Your pal Corey is going to be the third. Here’s what happens. Men with masks—we don’t want the condemned to know their executioners for some reason, so they wear masks. These men with masks strap you down to a table so you can’t move. Then they get these big needles—the biggest you’ve ever seen—and they stab them into your arms and legs.”
I play-act the injection of the needles into his body. He steps back and says, “Man, what the—”
“Wait, I’m not done yet. The prisoner is strapped there with big needles digging into his skin, and he starts reacting to the poison. Except the poison hasn’t started yet! Both times I’ve seen it, the dudes are crying out in pain before the bad stuff even begins. That’s how freaked out they were.”
“Man—”
“Still not done. And then it starts. For real. The poison begins its destructive march through the body. It’s crazy, Q-Bone. The civilized world has banned chemical weapons because they’re too inhumane, yet the State of Georgia uses chemicals to kill a man from the inside out.”
I shake my head in disbelief at this dichotomy.
“Where was I? The poison starts doing its work, and the soon-to-be dead man’s eyes start to bug out. The face turns purple, and there is foaming at the mouth. People watching in the observation room start to throw up. It’s that disgusting. I’m told the man’s genitals—that’s your boy parts, Q-Bone—the genitals feel like they’re on fire as the poison reaches the veins down there. It’s a terrible way to die.”
I pause to let the images sink in for a second or two.
“That’s going to happen to Corey. You can come watch if you want, you and me ringside seats. Of course, I kinda have a feeling—call it a lawyer man hunch—that you’re going to meet the same fate.”
His strut is gone. He lost it sometime around the first mention of the big needles. He’s too ignorant to recognize that my entire description of lethal injection is make believe. During my monologue, Ella returned with a deputy. A shake of my head kept them from interrupting. I wanted Q-Bone to hear every single word.
The performance scared him, and he knows I know it. In an attempt to save face, he works to re-establish his tough guy credibility in my eyes.
“I don’t care what you say, man. That little girl is still going to get got.”
“Tasha Favors?”
“Hell yeah, Tasha Favors.”
I turn to the deputy, Deputy Besh according to his badge. I ask, “Did you hear him say that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ella, did you hear it?”
“I heard it.”
“I heard it, too,” I say to round things out.
A confused Q-Bone fails to appreciate the criminal significance of his words. He knows something is wrong, but he doesn’t know what, and he doesn’t like it.
He spits out, “What?”
I answer, “Deputy Besh, can you please arrest Anthony Wayne, alias Q-Bone, for making terroristic threats against Tasha Favors?”
“Yes, sir.”
Besh takes out his handcuffs and tells Q-Bone to turn around with his hands behind his back. Q-Bone does neither.
“What’s this, man?”
People start to gather around. I see an ACLU lawyer I casually know looking at us warily with a phone in her hand. She’s not filming yet, but it would only take a couple of seconds for her to start. I don’t want this situation to escalate to the point where Besh has to forcefully subdue Q-Bone. I need to talk Q-Bone down off the ledge.
“Q-Bone, you just threatened to kill somebody.”
“Nah, I didn’t.”
“Close enough. We need to take you in. You’ll be bonded out and back home tomorrow if everything goes smoothly. But if you resist and everything goes to hell, I will bring the wrath of God down on your head. Okay? Now turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
Despite the antagonism between Q-Bone and me, or perhaps because of it, we have a rough understanding of each other. Besh takes him into custody, and a potential crisis is averted. Before Q-Bone is led away, I warn him, “And forget about that little girl.” He slumps and gives me a half-nod.
The crowd begins to disperse. Toward the back I see a familiar, unwelcome face—Bernard Barton. We make eye contact, and he flashes his trademark smirk before stalking away. I turn to Ella and announce, “God, I hate that guy.”
19
The death penalty phase of the Miller trial starts on a morning brimming with white sunlight. I wear the same purple tie I wore when I convinced the Willie Joe Sawyer and Harry Fleming juries to sentence those men to death. A weird thumping sound repeats on a loop when I enter my garage. The noise originates from an orange and black butterfly flying into a window, trying to reach the fresh air. Over and over again, the scene repeats itself. I shake my head at the futility.
The garage door rises, and the natural light of the day floods even the darkest corners of the space. Yet the butterfly fails to understand the freedom offered by the new light. Instead, he keeps crashing into that window, over and over again. Sigh. I grab one of his spastic wings and hold on for dear life against the power of the furious flaps. I transport the butterfly outside the garage to release him. He flies away and disappears into nature’s welcoming arms.
The butterfly’s flight into freedom is humbling in its beautiful simplicity. I smile for almost the entire drive to the courthouse. When I realize that saving that butterfly was the first thing I’ve done in a long time completely free from self-interest, the smile fades, and I feel the emptiness of a life with myself at its center.
***
Twelve hours later, the deputies lead Corey Miller back to his cell as a man condemned to death. The result was inevitable the moment Miller yelled, “That little bitch be lying!” Maybe it was inevitable the day he was born.
The whole proceeding felt perfunctory, like an inconsequential misdemeanor traffic trial as opposed to a hearing to decide on a man’s life. Ever his worst enemy, Miller glared angrily at the jurors the entire time. No character witnesses spoke on his behalf, and Joe’s efforts for his client were lukewarm, if that. I said what needed to be said, and the jury did what needed to be done. Corey Miller now officially sits on Georgia’s death row.
***
Ella and I decompress in my office in the wake of Miller’s condemnation by a jury of his peers. Lara remains in California, and I have nowhere else to go. Ella sits before me in a wing-backed chair with her legs pulled under her—shoes and hose off, blouse untucked, beer in her hand. I nurse a bottle of Coke with a gravity it doesn’t deserve.
She asks, “What now?”
“All Barton all the time.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I feign ignorance but know she’s talking about us. I stare down hard at my Coke, as if the secret to all of the world’s problems rests at the bottom of the glass.
“What are you afraid of?”
Ella’s question pulls me back to the here and now. I drag my eyes away from the bottle and look at her with a confused mask, pretending to be stupid. The audience isn’t buying the act.
“Don’t. You’re much too smart to play dumb like this.”
I decide to lie.
“We work together. It would be too complicated.”
“You don’t believe that.”
She’s right. I could see myself loving Ella under different circumstances. That we’ve grown close is no surprise. Office romances in the legal profession are as widespread as pollen in the spring. Late nights at work, stressful deadlines that never abate, too much alcohol—the working condit
ions of the modern lawyer breed intimate familiarity among those who are near. A quarter of the lawyers in town have a former junior associate as a second wife. Don’t even get me started on the judges.
“I’m your boss. It’s bad policy, sexual harassment even.”
Ella laughs, unfurls her long, brown legs from the seat, and stands as a woman on a mission. She glides toward me with much mischief. I couldn’t be stiller if a lion stood there eyeing me as its next meal—or more afraid. When she reaches me, she plops down into my lap.
“To hell with policy.”
Her lips descend and latch onto my mouth. I don’t push her away. She tastes as good as I’ve imagined. She disengages from the kiss, and we hold each other, forehead resting on forehead, hot breaths hanging in the air between us.
“Spend the night with me.”
She feels good. Too good. I close my eyes and remember Lara. I wriggle out from under Ella to gain my feet. She slides into the space I just vacated, startled and amazed by the sudden movement.
“I can’t.”
“Is it another woman?”
“God, no.”
The immediacy of the answer doesn’t quell her doubts. Hard, skeptical eyes probe my face searching for signs of deceit. Finding nothing, she tries another tack.
“What is it then?”
“Amber. Cale. Everything. I’m not ready for this. I’ll probably never be ready for it. Forget about me.”
The lies flow so easily. I amaze myself. The scary part is that I don’t really care.
“It’s been two years, Chance,” Ella argues.
“I gotta go.”
“Is it because I’m black?”
That leaves a mark. I stand there with my mouth open, stunned into a long silence. The race issue has never once infected our relationship. Ella’s willingness to play that card hurts.
“How could you say such a thing?”
“Well, you are a white guy of a certain age from rural Georgia. I doubt your momma would approve.”
The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1) Page 11
