The Neon Lawyer

by Victor Methos

  The first sob came like a jolt. Her shoulders slumped forward and she put her hands over her face. “I couldn’t save her. Oh, Lord. Lord . . . please, make it stop.” She was weeping now and Brigham let her. He bought time by getting some tissues from the clerk’s desk and bringing them to her. Then he stood by the jury as though he was one of them.

  “Make what stop?” he said softly.

  “I couldn’t save her. This was my fault . . . I couldn’t save her. I just see her crying out for me. She must’ve been so scared. She was crying out for me and I wasn’t there. She was crying for me . . .”

  “This is not your fault.”

  Amanda buried her face in her hands. She sobbed for a long time. Brigham observed the jury. The man in the Levi’s jacket had tears in his eyes again.

  When Brigham thought it’d been long enough, he said, “Were you ever evaluated by a psychiatrist for this case?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “Objection!” Vince was on his feet. “This is a ploy to get in Dr. Connors’s testimony without having me cross-examine her.”

  Brigham looked to the judge. “I didn’t hear a specific objection, Judge.”

  “Me neither. Overruled.”

  The judge glared at Vince as he sat back down, the prosecutor’s face red as an apple.

  “What did the doctor tell you, Amanda?”

  “She said that I’d had a psychotic break, and that I couldn’t tell the difference between right and wrong, and that’s why I did what I did.”

  Brigham stepped closer to her. “Do you remember the day you shot Tyler Moore?”

  “I remember pieces of it,” she said, wiping her eyes with tissues. “I remember getting up and I remember standing in front of my gun safe. And then it was like I was in a movie watching what was happening, you know? I didn’t feel like I had control over it.”

  “So you don’t actually remember shooting him?”

  “No, not the shooting. I remember before, when I parked and went up to him. And after, when I was holding the gun and the deputies took me down. I remember just being in shock and thinking, ‘What did I do?’ I don’t remember anything else.”

  “Has any memory come back to you?”

  “No. The doctor said that during a psychotic break, the memory part of your brain doesn’t work. So you don’t remember anything.”

  Brigham turned back to the jury. “If you could tell this jury anything, Amanda, what would it be?”

  Dabbing at her eyes with tissues, she managed to calm herself enough to speak clearly. “I want them to imagine my little girl. I want them to think what the last moments of her life were like . . . what she was thinking. What she felt.” She looked up to the ceiling, and the tears began flowing again. She was sobbing uncontrollably. “And then I want them to imagine being me, and hearing what she went through.”

  Brigham felt the warmth of tears on his own cheeks. He didn’t wipe them away as he sat down at the defense table.

  Vince stood up. He buttoned the top button on his suit coat and glided to the podium as though he were skating.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “Now—”

  “If you were sorry, you would’ve met with me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I came to your office after Tabitha was killed. I wanted to tell you not to make deals with that monster. Your secretary said you were out, but I heard you in your office. You just didn’t want to talk to me.”

  Vince’s face flushed red again, but not from anger. Brigham had to suppress a grin.

  “You shot Tyler Moore five times, didn’t you?”

  “That’s what they told me.”

  “And he wasn’t hit in the arm or the legs or the shoulders, was he?”

  “No,” she said.

  “He was hit in the head and in the throat. Vital areas.”

  “I guess so.”

  “For some robot on automatic pilot, those seem like pretty specific targets, don’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Now, I’ve gone shooting, Ms. Pierce, my whole life, and I can barely hit the target. How was it you shot Tyler Moore standing between two deputies without getting a scratch on them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You received marksman training in the army, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, you were given a commendation for your skills as a marksman.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were trained to shoot and to kill.”

  “I was.”

  “And that’s exactly what you did with Tyler Moore, isn’t it? You used your training and you killed the man.”

  “He wasn’t a man.”

  “Do you even regret it? He had a mother, too. Do you regret taking his life?”

  “No!”

  The courtroom sat silent. Now it was Vince’s turn to let that sit with the jury. He ruffled a few papers and said, “No further questions.”

  The judge looked to Brigham. He shook his head.

  “Does the defense have anything further?”

  Brigham rose. “The defense rests, Your Honor.”

  Thirty-one

  Closing arguments was the part of the trial Brigham had always been most nervous about. It was the last thing the jury would hear from either of the attorneys. He had never felt himself to be a charismatic public speaker. Vince, on the other hand, was larger than life—a born politician.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the judge said, “we will now hear closing arguments from the attorneys.”

  Vince got up. He strolled over to the jury like a teacher about to give a lesson to some confused students.

  “This wasn’t a mercy killing. This wasn’t a psychotic break. This was murder. Plain old murder. For the oldest reason that human beings have been killing each other since the Old Testament: revenge. Amanda Pierce was hurt, she was hurt real bad, and she couldn’t live with that hurt. And I don’t mean to trivialize it. What happened to her is the worst thing that can happen to any parent.” He leaned in close, placing his hands on the banister in front of the jury again. “But it does happen. All the time, to hundreds of parents a year. How many of them go out and murder the men responsible? Not many. The vast majority of them leave it in the hands of the law.

  “I, you, Ms. Pierce, we’re all part of this society. We’ve agreed to live in harmony with each other rather than in a state of nature where we’re constantly fighting and killing each other over resources. And part of this social contract between us is that we have agreed that the law governs justice, not each individual person—that’s what truly separates us from the animals.

  “You ever wondered why the West grew in prominence so quickly? Why India and China from fifteen hundred on couldn’t even come close to competing with us? It’s called the Great Divergence. We suddenly drifted away from the rest of the world, and excelled. Why? Because we established the rule of law. A law based on reason, and logic. And we followed that law. China and India are now catching up because they are trying to institute that rule of law. They saw what it did for us and they want it, too. The entire fabric of civilization is held together by this one principle: we let the law determine justice, not an individual.

  “Amanda Pierce threw that principle away when she dressed, got out her gun, got into her car, drove down to the courthouse, and shot Tyler Moore. And she didn’t just shoot him from the car, wildly spraying bullets everywhere. She sneaked up, shouted at him, and put five bullets into him, and to hell with the two deputies standing next to the man—two deputies who had families. She wanted revenge, and nothing was going to stop her.”

  Vince took a step away from the jury.

  “I asked you this earlier, and I will ask you this again: what if she was wrong? What if Ty
ler Moore was innocent? Do you want her out there with a gun shooting at people she thinks have wronged her?” He pointed to the man in the Levi’s jacket. “What if next time she thinks it’s you?” He pointed to a woman in the front row. “Or you? That is exactly why we let the law determine justice: so innocent people don’t get killed. Amanda Pierce didn’t care about that. Amanda Pierce wanted revenge, and to hell with the rest of us. Well, when you go back into that jury room, you tell her no. You tell her it is not okay for her to have your job, and my job, and the judge’s job. We let the rule of law run this country. Not an individual. You tell Amanda Pierce that she does not have the right to kill, any more than that SOB who killed her daughter does. She cannot execute a man and get away with it free and clear. That is not how the law works, and I’m asking you to find her guilty. Not because I want it or you want it, but because the rule of law demands it.”

  Vince looked each member of the jury in the eyes before sitting down.

  Brigham rose. He wanted to button the top button of his suit coat, but it was missing, so he just put his hands behind him and let the coat stay open. He walked to the clerk’s desk, to a laptop used by both attorneys, and did a Google search. He flipped the projector on, and an image appeared against the wall from the projector mounted on the ceiling. It was of a nude man with a black hood on, standing on a box.

  “You guys remember this photo?” Brigham said. “Abu Ghraib. American soldiers and contractors tortured, raped, and murdered Iraqi prisoners of war, most of them civilians. We had five thousand American deaths and over six hundred thousand Iraqi deaths. Do you even remember why we went in? Weapons of mass destruction? There weren’t any. Ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein? Turns out he hated Al Qaeda and never had anything to do with them.” He crossed the well and stood before the jury. “We invaded a country that had never attacked us, to take out a leader that told us, in an interview before we invaded, that he was not our enemy. Is that the rule of law Mr. Dale was talking about?

  “How about TARP—the Troubled Assets Relief Program? The bailouts of the biggest banks in the world. It actually failed in the House of Representatives when it was first proposed. Our congressmen didn’t feel it was fair that the banks should gamble with our money, and then when they lose, be bailed out with our money, too. But two days later, it was proposed again, and it passed the House. Well, what happened during those two days? The rich and powerful talked to each of the congressmen who voted ‘no’ and gave them something to say yes. It varied from person to person, but they all received something, even if it was just a threat that at re-election time, the biggest banks in the world would support their opponents. And TARP, something the American people hated, passed. Is that the rule of law Mr. Dale was talking about?”

  Brigham approached the jury, but didn’t preside over them like Vince. He stood a few paces back and looked them in the eyes.

  “There’s a dirty little secret to this rule of law that Mr. Dale didn’t tell you. If you’re rich enough, if you’re powerful enough, the rule of law doesn’t apply to you.” Brigham paced a little, his eyes never leaving theirs. “We all know it to be true, but it’s so horrific, so against everything we know and love about our country, that we can’t face it. We can’t even name it. We sweep it under the rug and pretend everything’s okay.” He pointed to Amanda, stepping closer to her. “Does anyone have any doubt that if she were a senator’s daughter, or the wife of a rich CEO, that she wouldn’t be sitting here today? Does a single one of you doubt that?

  “We all know it’s true, and that’s what Mr. Dale doesn’t want you to think about when you go back to that jury room. That’s what this entire justice system doesn’t want you to think about. Because ultimately, you are the deciders. And if you knew the system was rigged from the start, you might actually revolt and not do what people like Mr. Dale want you to do. And what does he want you to do? He wants you to crush Amanda Pierce, because she acted like a human being and did what everyone in this courtroom would have done in her place. But she’s not rich. She’s not connected. She didn’t go to the right schools; she doesn’t have wealthy parents. She slaves away in a grocery store, having lost her leg in defense of this system that abuses her and treats her like a parasite. And because of that, she sits here on trial, for something that the leaders of our country do every day. Amanda Pierce had a psychotic break. Even Mr. Dale would concede that if you found she did have that break, you must acquit her. She didn’t have the requisite intent to commit this crime.”

  Brigham placed his hands in his pockets, and, borrowing a trick from Vince, looked each member of the jury in the eyes individually. “Amanda Pierce is you. She’s me. She’s every person out there that acts like a human being. Don’t destroy her because she doesn’t have the power to fight back. She deserves to be acquitted of this crime, and I am asking you . . . I’m begging you, not to let her down.”

  Brigham looked at Vince as he sat down. The two men glared at each other as the judge began explaining to the jury what would happen next.

  The next hour and a half was spent on jury instructions. The judge read aloud into the record every single instruction, all sixty-three of them. Brigham watched the jury’s faces. None of them were paying attention. Once he had learned about jury instructions in his trial advocacy class, he had a gut feeling that they didn’t really matter. It was still comforting to know that the mental health defense instructions had stayed in, though, despite the fact that an expert did not testify about it.

  Once the judge was done, he rose and said, “All rise for the jury.”

  Everybody stood as the twelve men and women shuffled out. None of them looked over to Amanda.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Now we wait.”

  Evening had come by the time Molly and Scotty could make it down to the courthouse. They brought a sandwich and some chips for Brigham. Hunger and fatigue, which he’d fought off for the past three days, gnawed at him now.

  “How’d closing go?” Molly asked as they sat outside the courtroom on benches.

  “Good, I guess.”

  Scotty adjusted his glasses and said, “You never know what a jury’s going to do.”

  They hung out and played a trivia app on Molly’s phone. Several hours went by and they paced the halls, used the bathroom, and went for a quick walk around the courthouse, to the back steps where everything had started.

  As Brigham sat on the steps, Molly stood in front of him. She took his hands in hers and they didn’t speak for a long time. Scotty was examining the bullet holes that had been left behind by Amanda’s gun, using a little flashlight he had on his keychain for illumination.

  “So now that you’ve had time to think, what’re you gonna do?” Brigham said. “Since Tommy’s gone?”

  She shrugged. “I’ll figure it out, I guess.”

  “No big firm job?”

  “No, I’d rather get out of law than do that. I’d consider opening my own practice, if I had a partner.”

  He smirked. “And who would be foolish enough to start a law practice from scratch when the market is saturated?”

  “Someone foolish enough to take a homicide as their first case.”

  Brigham’s cell phone buzzed. It was a text from the clerk, letting him know that the jury had reached a verdict.

  Thirty-two

  The jury deliberation had lasted from four in the afternoon until eleven. The judge had considered calling it a night, but when he sent the bailiff back to check, the jury said they were close to a verdict and would like more time.

  Brigham sat next to Amanda. She had a glazed, despondent look. The judge came in and glanced at both attorneys. He asked the bailiff to call the jury in.

  “Will the defendant please rise?” the judge announced.

  There was no moment Brigham could think of when he had been more anxious or frightened than right then. He stoo
d with Amanda. She reached out and held his hand and he didn’t stop her. The jury filed in and took their seats. None of them were smiling at the defense: a bad sign.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” the judge said solemnly, “it’s my understanding that you have reached a verdict in this case. Would the foreman please rise.”

  The man in the Levi’s jacket stood up. “We’ve reached a verdict, Your Honor,” he said in his country twang.

  “Please pass it to the bailiff.”

  The verdict form passed from the foreman to the bailiff and then to the judge. The judge read it and handed it back to the bailiff. There was no expression one way or the other on Ganche’s face. He simply leaned back in his seat and said, “What say you in this matter?”

  The clerk was handed the verdict form next. She began to read . . .

  “We the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Amanda Evelyn Pierce, not guilty of the crime of aggravated homicide.”

  Brigham felt his knees buckle. He had to press his hand against the table to hold himself up. Before he could look to Amanda, the clerk kept reading.

  “In the lesser included count of manslaughter, we find the defendant, Amanda Evelyn Pierce, guilty.”

  This time Brigham couldn’t hold on. He sat down in his seat as Amanda kept standing. Vince swore under his breath and said something like “Dumb fuckers,” before packing up his exhibits and laptop.

  The judge excused the jury and thanked them for their time. One man, the man in the Levi’s jacket, stared at Amanda, some strong emotion in his eyes, but then he turned and walked out with the rest of them.

  The maximum sentence for manslaughter that had been reduced from aggravated homicide was still a first-degree felony, which meant Amanda could get six to life.