Overkill

by Joseph Teller

  13

  I HAD A SON

  The sixteen jurors—twelve regulars and four alternates—were led into the courtroom and seated in the order they’d been selected. Judge Wexler addressed them for twenty minutes, outlining what they should expect over the coming week or two, instructing them on several basic principles of law, and describing both his role in the trial and theirs. Then he called upon Katherine Darcy to open on behalf of the People.

  As Jaywalker had by that time fully expected she would, Darcy delivered a coherent, competent opening statement. Barely glancing at her notes, she demonstrated a comfortable command of the facts. She made the obligatory comparison between her opening and the table of contents of a book. She read the indictment, word for word. She outlined what witnesses she would call and, in broad strokes, what each of them would say. Then she told them that once all the evidence was in, she would have another opportunity to address them, at which time she would ask them to find the defendant guilty of murder. With that she sat down, barely fifteen minutes after she’d begun. It was an effective, if understated, opening.

  Jaywalker’s would be different.

  “It is May,” he began.

  Years ago, he’d decided to dispense with the traditional “May it please the court.” And not too long after that, he’d gotten rid of “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.” The last to go had been “Good morning” and “Good afternoon.” By the time Jeremy Estrada’s trial came around, Jaywalker had settled on launching directly into what had happened from his client’s perspective. What he liked to think of as the narrative opening.

  The story.

  He began the telling of it with those three little words, “It is May,” speaking them so softly that the jurors were not only forced into immediate and total silence, but were literally compelled to lean forward in their seats in order to hear him. And by standing directly in front of them, without so much as an index card in his hands, he demanded their visual attention, as well. Katherine Darcy had delivered her opening statement behind a lectern, a podium with a slanted top, perfect for placing documents or concealing notes. She’d ventured out from behind it once or twice, but had each time quickly retreated to its safety.

  Jaywalker’s distaste for tradition was matched by his disdain of safety. He was about to tell the jurors a story, a story that he knew so well by then that he could have recited it backwards, had he been called upon to do so. He needed no notes, and he wanted no barrier.

  Perhaps it was his ego at work, but Jaywalker was convinced that he could tell Jeremy’s story better even than Jeremy himself could. Jeremy’s turn would come, but it wouldn’t come for the better part of two weeks, after all the other witnesses for both sides had had their say. And when it came, it would come in Jeremy’s halting, hesitant way, constantly interrupted by objections and exceptions, sidebar conferences, rulings and recesses. Jaywalker simply couldn’t afford to wait that long for what might prove to be a fractured, fragmented account of the events. He’d decided instead to tell the story from start to finish now, in his own voice. That way, when the jurors eventually heard Jeremy’s account, they would not only have a framework, an overview of what had happened, they’d even be able to fill in the blanks Jeremy would invariably leave with details Jaywalker had already provided them.

  “It is May. Perhaps it is even two years ago to this very day. Jeremy Estrada wakes up and gets ready for school. He’s all of seventeen years old. Seventeen. He’s a student, though not a very good one. Part of that is because Jeremy has learning disabilities, and things don’t come easily to him. And part of it is because he also works several part-time jobs after school and on weekends, as he has since the age of fourteen, in order to help out his mother and his sister. There is no father in the home.

  “It’s a bright, sun-drenched morning as Jeremy walks down the avenue, his book bag slung over one shoulder. The stores on the avenue are just beginning to open for business. As he passes one of them, a flower shop, some slight movement off to his right catches his attention, and he glances inside. There he sees a young lady, a girl, really, also seventeen years old. And in that moment, in that split second, their eyes meet. And this case begins.”

  Right at that point, Jaywalker suddenly and unexpectedly felt the full impact of the case come crashing down on him. For the first time he could feel—truly feel, way down deep in his gut—the terrible, undeserved plight of this boy, this child, sitting behind him in a huge courtroom built for and filled up with grown-ups. A boy whose only sin had been the unpardonable act of falling in love.

  Jaywalker’s voice had cracked on the second syllable of the word begins, and his lower lip had begun to quiver uncontrollably. He knew better than to continue, realizing that whatever he might try to say next would bring him to tears. Even as he turned away from the jury to hide his embarrassment from them, he knew they couldn’t have missed it; he’d made it impossible for them to miss anything. Yet all he could do was to stand there, his back to the jurors, and breathe in and out deeply, deliberately. Once, twice, a third time. He was a wuss by nature, Jaywalker was, a grown man easily brought to tears by a bad movie or a good commercial. But never before had anything quite like this happened to him in front of a jury.

  After what seemed to him like minutes but was no doubt only seconds, he forced himself to turn back to the jury box, telling himself he could continue, telling himself he had to continue. And somehow he managed. Each word he spoke got him to the next one, and to the one after that, and gradually he regained control. And as he did, he became aware that something had changed. If possible, the jurors were paying even more attention now. It was as if his succumbing to his emotions, and his obvious embarrassment at doing so, had opened a window for them, a window into just how deeply Jeremy’s story had come to affect him.

  One of the most valuable assets a successful trial lawyer can possess is his credibility in the eyes of the jury. Believe me, he urges them in a thousand tiny ways, and it follows from there that you’ll believe what I believe. Now, by the pure accident of having being blindsided by the sudden recognition of his own feelings, Jaywalker had stumbled upon an equally authentic corollary to that proposition. Trust me, his meltdown had invited the jurors, and it follows from there that you’ll come to feel as I feel. And though he hadn’t meant for the incident to occur in the first place, he now fully intended to take advantage of it.

  By the time he sat down, he’d been on his feet for exactly an hour, making the opening statement his longest ever. Hell, he’d summed up in less time than that in plenty of cases. And during that hour, not once had he lost his train of thought or looked at a note. Although he’d planned on spending the entire time standing directly in front of the jurors, he hadn’t. Several times, as he’d described Jeremy’s torment at the hands of the Raiders, he’d made his way over to the defense table. There he’d taken up a position directly behind his seated client, placed his hands on Jeremy’s shoulders and continued to face the jurors as he spoke. These are my words, he’d been telling them, but this is what this young man actually lived through.

  He’d described for them the fateful events that had left Victor Quinones dead and Jeremy himself thinking he’d been shot, as well. He’d told them about Jeremy’s fear of retaliation at the hands of Sandro and his gang, his panic that they could reach out and get him even in prison, especially in prison. He’d described Jeremy’s flight from the scene to his home, from his home to the Bronx, and from the Bronx all the way to the hills of Puerto Rico.

  He’d paused, much as Jeremy must have paused at the notion of staying in those hills forever. But he’d chosen not to stay there, Jaywalker had told them. He’d made the conscious, deliberate decision to come back and face whatever awaited him.

  “The day after his return to New York, he walks into the police station. He holds out his wrists so that handcuffs may be placed around them and locked shut. He goes to jail. He learns to call Rikers Island his home, and to surrender his nam
e for a ten-digit inmate number. He’s brought to this building, where he listens as he’s charged with murder. He speaks the words Not guilty and asks for a trial, a trial in front of twelve ordinary men and women plucked from all walks of life. Twelve men and women who’ve set aside their jobs, their families—indeed, their very lives. Twelve men and women who’ve promised to be fair, to be impartial, to be open-minded. And all he asks of them is that they to listen to his story.

  “Because this isn’t my story or Ms. Darcy’s story or Judge Wexler’s story. This isn’t even Victor Quinones’s story. Yes, he’s the victim. But as much as we mourn for him and feel for his family, and we do, this story isn’t really about him or his family.

  “This is Jeremy’s story.”

  With that, he’d turned from them, walked to the defense table and sat down. Just as he’d forgone opening pleasantries when he’d begun speaking to the jurors, so did he bypass thanking them for their attention or asking them—as Ms. Darcy had made a point of doing—to deliver a particular verdict at the end of the trial.

  Harold Wexler immediately declared a recess.

  To be sure, they were by that time two hours into the morning session, and judges tend to be mindful of jurors’ limited attention spans and bladders. But Jaywalker strongly suspected that Wexler’s real interest was in breaking the spell that Jaywalker had created. For in the sixty minutes he’d been on his feet, he’d succeeded in turning the trial completely on its head, taking Jeremy Estrada from a prohibitive long shot to an odds-on favorite. And as Jaywalker sat at the defense table watching the jurors file out of the courtroom, he knew that he’d never been better and might never be. And he knew also that there was only one thing that could possibly undo the magic he’d just performed.

  Unfortunately, that one thing was the evidence, and it would begin as soon as the recess ended.

  “The People call César Quinones,” Katherine Darcy announced when they resumed, adding that the witness would need the assistance of an English-Spanish interpreter. César was the father of Victor Quinones. The ostensible purpose for which he was called was to tell the jury that he’d identified his son’s body at the medical examiner’s office the day after the shooting. Jaywalker had offered to stipulate to his testimony, to concede that it was indeed Victor Quinones who’d been killed. But Darcy wanted this little bit of drama played out in front of the jury, and he was powerless to prevent it. Knowing that, he’d brought it up during jury selection, warning the jurors that they would see and hear from a distraught member of the deceased’s family, in spite of the fact that the identity of the victim wasn’t in issue. Then, in order to avoid an objection, he’d turned the matter into a question, asking the jurors if they could remain fair and impartial nonetheless. For what it was worth, they’d assured him they could.

  Now, as he watched this frail, broken man limp to the witness stand, Jaywalker had no way of knowing just how powerful his appearance would be to the jurors. Would they recognize it for what it was, a shameless theatrical stunt intended to prejudice them, right down to the black clothes the man wore, almost two full years after his son’s death? Or would they instead adopt the father’s grief as their own and hate Jeremy all the more for having caused it?

  DARCY: Do you have children?

  QUINONES: I used to. I had a son.

  DARCY: What was his name?

  QUINONES: Victor.

  The witness removed a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at his eyes. Jaywalker took the opportunity to rise and once again offer to stipulate to the identity of the deceased. Doing so in front of the jury, after his offer had already been refused, was highly improper, and Judge Wexler angrily overruled him and told him to sit down. Still, he’d made his point.

  DARCY: How old was Victor when he died?

  QUINONES: Twenty.

  The absolute silence of the courtroom told Jaywalker all he needed to know about the impact the witness was having upon the jury. When it came his turn for cross-examination, he said he had no questions. He tried to say it in a tone and with a shrug that implied “Why would I?” without being too heavy-handed about it, but it was a fine line to dance.

  At one point he’d thought about asking Mr. Quinones a series of questions about his son, like whether he’d known he belonged to a gang, had half a dozen arrests and got a special kick out of terrorizing people. He’d given the idea some serious consideration for about five seconds before abandoning it. He could see Darcy jumping to her feet, Wexler not only sustaining her objection before she could make it but also warning Jaywalker he was seriously out of line, and the jurors nodding in agreement.

  Quite apart from having no legitimate questions to ask César Quinones, Jaywalker wanted him out of there as quickly as possible. But the man wouldn’t go away. Instead of leaving, he made his way from the witness stand to the spectator section, where he took a seat next to his wife. Together they would sit there for the remainder of the trial, these two destroyed people, dressed all in black. Their English was virtually nonexistent, and they would understand little of the proceedings. But their silent vigil would continue, their very presence a powerful witness for the prosecution.

  The jurors, having followed Mr. Quinones’s every step as he limped to his seat, now tried to look away from him and back to the judge, but Jaywalker could see they were finding it almost impossible. At the table next to him, he felt Jeremy slip away from him just an inch, just that much closer to spending the rest of his life in prison. He wondered if Jeremy felt it, too.

  Katherine Darcy hadn’t counted on Jaywalker’s summation to eat up an entire hour. She’d let him know in advance that she intended to call one of the eyewitnesses to the shooting next. But with only fifteen minutes left to the one-o’clock lunch recess, she decided to shift gears and put on a short witness, in more ways than one.

  Adalberto Garcia was the detective who’d originally been assigned to the investigation into the death of Victor Quinones. He stood barely five feet, a height that once would have disqualified him from becoming a police officer. And his entire testimony, direct and cross, would take barely five minutes.

  DARCY: Did there come a time when you identified a suspect in connection with the shooting?

  GARCIA: Yes, there did.

  DARCY: Can you tell us the name of that suspect?

  GARCIA: Jeremy Estrada.

  DARCY: And what, if anything, did you do with respect to him?

  GARCIA: I began to look for him, to arrest him.

  DARCY: Do you happen to know when he was eventually arrested?

  GARCIA: [Referring to notes] Yes. That was on May 14th of last year.

  Jaywalker’s only interest on cross-examination was in amplifying the term arrest for the jurors.

  JAYWALKER: Did you ever find Jeremy Estrada?

  GARCIA: No.

  JAYWALKER: Ever arrest him?

  GARCIA: Me personally? No.

  JAYWALKER: In fact, the arrest in this case was an arrest only in the technical sense. Correct?

  GARCIA: I’m not sure what you mean.

  JAYWALKER: What I mean is, on May 14th of last year, Jeremy Estrada walked into a police station voluntarily and gave himself up, knowing full well he’d be arrested. And he was. Isn’t that in fact what happened?

  GARCIA: Yes.

  It was a much better note to go to lunch on than César Quinones’s testimony. Not that Jaywalker had any plans of going to lunch; he never did when he was on trial. Which didn’t sit well with Jeremy’s mother.

  “Jew gotta eat,” said Carmen. “Jew gotta be strong.”

  Jaywalker tried explaining that habits were habits, and that he needed to spend the hour preparing for the afternoon’s witnesses. Never mind that he’d been prepared for them for months now.

  “That’s no good,” Carmen told him, shaking her head sadly, like the concerned mother she was. But she let it go, walking off with her daughter, Julie, in tow. Both had been in the audience all morning, but on the defen
dant’s side of the courtroom, as opposed to prosecution’s side, where the parents of Victor Quinones had sat. Trials are a little like weddings in that respect, where guests of the bride often sit across the aisle from those of the groom.

  It had actually taken some doing on Jaywalker’s part, as well as some generosity on Katherine Darcy’s, to seat Carmen and Julie Estrada anywhere in the courtroom. Either side may ask that potential witnesses be excluded prior to testifying, and such requests are routinely granted. But Jaywalker had felt that the rule worked a special hardship in this case. Though he intended to call both Jeremy’s mother and sister, neither of them would be testifying to the same events the prosecution’s witnesses would be describing—the fistfight and the shooting—and their presence during the testimony of those witnesses would give them no advantage. Jaywalker had taken his concern to Darcy, who’d agreed to give it some thought.