By Reason of Insanity

by Randy Singer

Annie reached over and placed her hand on top of his. "You did everything you could," she whispered. "Nobody could ask for a better brother than you."

  3

  For what seemed like an eternity, Quinn could feel the eyes of the packed gallery--and the ubiquitous television camera--boring into him and Annie. The proceedings, like a modern Shakespearean tragedy, had captivated the nation's fleeting imagination. Before this case, Quinn had been a rising star in the Las Vegas trial lawyer community, but nothing had prepared him for this. The insanity plea and sibling act had turned an already high-profile murder case into a national media obsession.

  "Ms. Duncan?" Judge Strackman's calming voice seemed to release the hypnotic trance Quinn had beckoned. "Do you have rebuttal?"

  "Yes, Your Honor. Thank you."

  Carla Duncan rose to her full height and stepped confidently in front of her counsel table in the small Vegas courtroom. She was the very picture of credibility--a fifty-year-old career prosecutor who didn't try to hide her age. Tall and thin with hair streaked gray, she conveyed the sort of gravitas that age confers on leading actors and actresses. To Quinn's great regret, she had tried a nearly flawless case, an Oscar-worthy performance.

  "How dare he?" she asked. "I spent my first twelve years as a prosecutor trying child- and spousal-abuse cases. I cried with those moms and daughters. I hated those monsters who did this to them. I've been called every name in the book by bombastic defense lawyers. I've been threatened by defendants. I've had midnight calls from victims, and I've cried myself to sleep after visiting them in the hospital. . . ."

  Quinn had heard enough. "Objection, Your Honor. This case is not about Ms. Duncan and her career as a prosecutor."

  "You're the one who put the system on trial," Carla Duncan shot back. "And I'm part of the system you're so quick to condemn."

  Judge Ronnie Strackman stroked his beard, a mannerism Quinn had grown to detest. A few months from retirement, Strackman had been reluctant to rule throughout the trial--like a referee who swallows his whistle, leaving the competitors to slug it out. When he did rule, he often favored the prosecution, which Quinn found unsurprising given the amount of cash Quinn's firm had thrown at Strackman's opponent in the last judicial election.

  But even Judge Strackman could stumble onto the right ruling once in a while. "This case is about the defendant's mental state at the time of the crime," Strackman said, surprising Quinn. "I will not allow it to degenerate into a referendum on our criminal justice system."

  Carla Duncan thrust out her chin. "With respect, Your Honor, you already have. Mr. Newberg's defense really has very little to do with temporary insanity and much to do with whether his sister was entitled to take the law into her own hands. The system is already standing trial, Your Honor. The only question is whether you'll permit me to defend it."

  When Strackman hesitated, Quinn knew another objection was lost. Sure enough, Strackman ignored Quinn's protests and Carla Duncan spent the next ten minutes lecturing the jury about vigilante justice and the rule of law. Anne Newberg could have called protective services or the prosecutor's office, Carla said. The prosecutor promised the jury that, regardless of how much money an abuser's family might have, no matter how much clout, she was prepared to prosecute him to the full extent of the law. There was no reason, Carla said, for this defendant to take matters into her own hands.

  "Even a victim as despicable as Richard Hofstetter is entitled to his day in court," Carla argued. "Abused women can't just appoint themselves judge, jury, and executioner, shooting a man in cold blood while he begs for his life. Ms. Newberg's attorney and Dr. Mancini claim the defendant was delusional when she pulled the trigger. But the evidence shows a crime carefully planned right down to the smallest details.

  "Ms. Newberg says she used her husband's own handgun to shoot him, a gun he supposedly purchased on the black market and kept unsecured in his closet. Does that not sound a little too convenient to you, a little too contrived? And why did the defendant send her daughter to a friend's house on the night in question, ensuring that she would be the only one there when Richard Hofstetter arrived home? Immediately after the shooting, the defendant called 911 and then her brother. Why call her brother? Because she knew she needed a lawyer. She knew she had done something terribly wrong.

  "The insanity defense is designed to protect someone so delusional that she cannot appreciate the difference between right and wrong. But it was never intended as a ticket for murder. Or a get-out-of-jail-free card for somebody who has been abused.

  "Find Ms. Newberg guilty of first-degree murder. You know in your hearts it's the right thing to do."

  * * *

  For three days Quinn and Anne Newberg waited for a verdict and took turns encouraging each other. During the first two days, Quinn stayed at the courthouse, talking off the record to reporters and just being there for his sister. On day three, Judge Strackman allowed the lawyers to go back to their offices while the jury deliberated.

  When the third day ended without a verdict, Strackman sent the jury home for the weekend. As usual, the judge admonished the jury not to talk with anyone about the case and to avoid all press coverage. "Try not to even think about the case this weekend. Come in Monday with a fresh and open mind. I'm sure you'll have no problem reaching a verdict."

  Monday came and went without a verdict. On Tuesday, the jury reported they were hopelessly deadlocked, and Strackman gave them a conventional Allen charge, also known as a "dynamite charge." He reminded them how much the trial had cost everyone. He told them that no other jury would be better able to render a verdict than they were. He admonished them to keep an open mind and to reevaluate every piece of evidence. He sent them back for further deliberations.

  Quinn tried to take his mind off the case by returning phone calls and e-mails that had stacked up during the trial. He divided them into four stacks--media, friends, other cases, and potential new clients. The last stack was the thickest. Over the course of his career, Quinn had developed a reputation as a flashy criminal defense attorney for white-collar crooks. But Annie's case had generated so much national publicity that it seemed Quinn was now the go-to guy for insane defendants of all stripes. Apparently there were a lot of crazy people in the world.

  The call he had been waiting for came at ten minutes after three on Wednesday afternoon. "Judge Strackman would like you back in the courtroom," the clerk said. "We have a verdict."

  4

  Catherine O'Rourke felt her Stomach Clench when she heard the news, almost as if she were the one standing trial. She knew firsthand the type of pain that Annie Newberg had experienced and found it hard not to project her own feelings onto the defendant in the Newberg case. In some ways, it felt like the Newbergs were speaking for all abuse victims, for all victims of sexual crimes.

  She tried to maintain a reporter's objectivity as she settled into her third-row seat next to the other beat reporters. Her paper had been randomly selected under a lottery system for one of the coveted media seats inside the courtroom for this latest "trial of the century," a media phenomenon that veteran observers compared to the Scott Peterson trial.

  Courtroom 16D was a small, modern courtroom with only three rows of bucket seats for spectators. Most reporters had to watch via closed-circuit TV.

  Catherine typically wrote for just one paper in Norfolk, Virginia--the Tidewater Times--but on this case her employers had decided to leverage her presence in the courtroom. Her stories on the trial appeared in all four newspapers owned by the McClaren Corporation, and she did stand-up reports "live from Vegas" for the three McClaren television stations as well. The feedback, especially on the television side, was surprisingly positive. "You've got a face for television," a news producer once told her. He'd tried to talk Catherine into using her nickname on air--"like Katie Couric does"--but Cat O'Rourke sounded too informal for a serious reporter.

  Stuart Sheldon, seated on Catherine's left, covered the case for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the
refore had one of the seats reserved for local media. He also ran the reporters' pool. When the jury first retired, Quinn Newberg had been a three-to-one underdog. "It's the insanity defense," Stuart had said, as if no further explanation were needed.

  Most reporters had shared Sheldon's skepticism. Nevada insanity law did not favor defendants. "This state is a little unusual," Catherine had explained during one of her stand-up reports, "in that the jury has the option of returning a verdict of guilty but mentally ill. The defendant gets basically the same punishment, but also gets psychiatric treatment while in jail. Some experts are predicting that type of verdict here."

  But that comment was before Quinn's closing argument and this prolonged stalemate by the jury. Now, Sheldon's pool had the odds at

  fifty-fifty.

  Cat jotted down a few words to describe the moment--tension, fatigue, stress--they all seemed so inadequate.

  The Hofstetter family had settled into their usual seats in the first two rows on the other side of the courtroom, behind the prosecution table. They had been outspoken in their criticism of both Quinn Newberg and Carla Duncan. Newberg because he was trying to spring their son's killer. Duncan because she had painted an unflattering but truthful figure of Hofstetter as a womanizer and abuser, just one step above plankton in the prosecutor's view of the world.

  Richard Hofstetter Sr. had taken to the airwaves in an effort to rehabilitate his son's name. Richard Jr. was an exemplary businessman. He gave to charity. He provided for his wife, giving her every material thing she craved--no small feat for a man married to someone as extravagant and greedy as Anne Newberg. Yes, he should have sought help in controlling his anger. But the arguments went both ways. Anne was no saint either.

  It was enough to make Catherine O'Rourke sick. Smear the victim. She knew how that game was played.

  The air hummed with tension when Quinn and Anne Newberg entered the courtroom looking grim, their eyes straight ahead. Resolve, Catherine jotted down as the Newbergs took their seats. Anne Newberg seems resigned to her fate.

  The young woman had already lost both parents--her estranged father in a single car accident when he was forty; her mom to a heart attack nearly ten years later. Now she faced the potential loss of her freedom and, along with it, the opportunity to raise her only child.

  The trial had exacted its toll on Quinn, too. His face looked drawn, and his expensive suit seemed to hang a little looser on his frame. Quinn was just over six feet, angular and lean, with the fluid movements of an athlete, though Cat's research did not reveal any sports background. He had this mysterious look, not unlike a Vegas illusionist, with straight black hair and a trim beard that covered only the tip of his chin. Dark eyebrows shaded the man's best feature--the expressive almond eyes that seemed to dance and spark in ways that made Cat feel like nodding her head when he spoke.

  Quinn's sister reflected his dark allure in her own feminine features. In Cat's view, this accounted for much of the nation's fascination with the case. The Menendez brothers. Scott and Lacie Peterson. The Simpson case. They all had one thing in common--the leading players were easy on the eyes.

  Would anybody have cared, Catherine wondered, if the Newbergs had been poor, rural, and not quite so dashing?

  * * *

  Quinn felt his stomach corkscrew while his heart slammed against his chest. On the inside, turmoil. But on the outside, another day at the office. He leaned back in his chair, left leg crossed over right, and kept an eye on the door behind the judge's dais.

  "How can you stay so calm?" Annie whispered. "Feel this." She touched Quinn's cheek with the back of an ice-cold hand.

  "It's out of our control," Quinn said, though he knew this wasn't entirely true. He still had one more ace to play, something that would keep the legal commentators wagging their tongues for a long time. If he had the guts to lay it down.

  Quinn placed a blank yellow legal pad on the table and wrote "Verdict:" at the top of the page, drawing a line next to the word. He checked under the last page of the legal pad just to make certain his ace was still there--a single sheet of paper, folded in half and signed under oath.

  "All rise! This honorable court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Ronald Strackman presiding."

  Strackman took his place on the bench. "Be seated." He paused, took a sip of coffee, and surveyed the courtroom.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, it appears we have a verdict in this case. I'm going to say this only once. I will not tolerate any outbursts when the verdict is read. I have full contempt powers to control this court, and I will not hesitate to use them."

  Under the counsel table, Annie put a trembling hand on Quinn's leg.

  He reached down and held it. "Remember," he whispered, "all that stuff about whether or not the jurors look at the defendant as a way to determine their verdict is meaningless. On a case like this, they'll have their poker faces on."

  Annie nodded bravely and squeezed Quinn's hand.

  "Bailiff," Judge Strackman said, "bring in the jury."

  * * *

  Catherine O'Rourke watched the jury members file in--eyes downcast, a mask of solemn duty on every face. Juror five, the single mother of two, had been crying again.

  "Is it too late to put twenty bucks on the prosecution?" Catherine asked.

  When Stuart Sheldon shrugged, she slipped a twenty into his greasy hand and made another note on her legal pad. The pain she felt as she did so reflected her own assessment of the case.

  Guilty, she wrote.

  * * *

  "Ladies and gentlemen, do you have a verdict?"

  "We do," answered the forewoman. She was a schoolteacher with four grown kids. Quinn had found her impossible to read.

  She handed the verdict form to the bailiff, who handed it to the judge. Strackman looked over the form, his face expressionless. He took another swig of coffee and handed the form to the court clerk.

  "Will the defendant please rise?" the clerk said.

  Quinn and Annie stood shoulder to shoulder, like two prisoners facing the firing squad, as the clerk read the verdict aloud.

  "On the count of murder in the first degree, we the jury find the defendant, Anne Newberg . . ." The clerk paused for what seemed like an inhumane length of time. ". . . guilty as charged."

  Gasps came from the gallery. Somebody in the Hofstetter section said, "Yesss!" Quinn's knees nearly buckled, but he managed to stand tall and keep his chin up. He glanced at his sister and saw a look of uncomprehending shock.

  He couldn't believe it had come to this.

  Quinn reached down and picked up his legal pad, removing and unfolding the single sheet of paper. The reporters were probably too busy scribbling down their reactions to even notice. If only they knew. Juries delivered verdicts every day. But if Quinn followed through on this next move, it would be unprecedented.

  "I have a motion to make, Your Honor."

  "Yes, of course," Strackman said, undoubtedly expecting a routine motion for a new trial based on an assortment of evidentiary rulings. "But before you make that motion, would you like me to poll the jury?"

  "Sure," Quinn said, gladly taking his seat. He needed another minute to think. Once he launched his grenade, there would be no taking it back.

  5

  As Strackman polled the jury members, asking them one by one if this represented their verdict, Quinn tried to sort through his jumbled emotions. Anger. Despair. Heartbreak for his sister, sitting next to him in shell-shocked silence. Apprehension about whether to make this next move--a self-destructive bombshell, but one that might gain his sister's freedom.

  "Juror number three, is this your verdict?"

  "Yes."

  "Juror number four, is this your verdict?"

  "Yes."

  Quinn stared at each juror, trying to shame them into changing their minds. But like every other case he had ever lost, they ignored him and looked straight at the judge, affirming the verdict like good little soldiers.

  "Juror n
umber five, is this your verdict?"

  The woman swallowed hard and hesitated. Tears rimmed her eyes, and a brief flicker of hope stirred in Quinn. C'mon. . . . C'mon. . . . I know you didn't want this.

  "Yes."

  Another gut punch--the cruelty of hope created and shattered.

  "Juror number six, is this your verdict?"

  "Yes."

  "Juror number seven--" Judge Strackman stopped midsentence, his face twisted with concern. Juror five had her hand in the air. "Yes?" Strackman asked.

  "It's not my verdict," the woman blurted out. She stole a glance at Quinn, who quickly nodded his encouragement. "I'm sorry, Your Honor. I only agreed to the verdict so I could get this ordeal over with--to get these people off my back. It's not my verdict. I think she's innocent."

  A few of the other jurors shook their heads in disapproval; the Hofstetters let loose with a few muted curses. The entire courtroom buzzed with excitement. This was better than Cirque du Soleil!

  Energized, Quinn jumped to his feet, demanding a mistrial. Carla Duncan stood as well, but the look on her face said it all. Juror five had just blown this trial right out of the water.

  "Order!" Strackman barked, banging his gavel with uncharacteristic force. "Order in the court!"

  He glared at the juror, and Quinn knew what was coming. "Ms. Richards," the judge began, taking the unusual step of calling the juror by name, "you have just nullified this entire trial, causing this court a tremendous amount of frustration, wasted tax dollars, and wasted time. If you had reservations, I wish you would have stayed in the jury room and tried to work them out. As it is, I have no choice but to declare a mistrial."

  Julia Richards, juror five, nodded solemnly. But she held her head up, as if she might actually be proud of what she had just accomplished. Though she wasn't really his type, Quinn wanted to walk over to the jury box and kiss the woman.