We, the Jury

by Robert Rotstein

  “Oh, one more thing,” the Foreperson says. “Would it be okay if tomorrow morning I bring my own coffee and some Splenda into the jury room? I’ll share.”

  THE BAILIFF

  BRADLEY KOBASHIGAWA

  They file out. They all look tired except for Juror No. 1. She looks energized. She wants to stay longer.

  “I’m the foreperson,” she whispers to me gleefully as she passes. I wouldn’t have guessed that. But I’m wrong a lot. Mick Redmond has a better record than I do, but he didn’t predict this outcome. He thought the Jury Consultant or the Architect or the Clergyman. I do tell the Foreperson she can bring her own coffee cup and coffee and sugar substitute. She’s worried they’ll confiscate it at security. I’ll alert them.

  Jurors almost always look tired after the first day of deliberations. I get that. The lawyers and the jurors work the hardest during trial. The judge usually doesn’t have as much to do in a jury trial except move things along and rule on objections. Mick says the judges in this courthouse, the not-so-good ones, see a jury trial as a mini vacation. Not Judge Quinn-Gilbert. She takes things to heart. For her, a jury trial is stressful. Mick says that seven or eight years ago, the judge worked so hard in a complicated six-week embezzlement trial that the day after the verdict, she had to be hospitalized for exhaustion and dehydration. It’s not common knowledge around the courthouse. She cares too much, I think.

  More worries. The judge left at a little before five o’clock. We didn’t see her go, Mick or me. She just snuck out. I called down to lobby security. One of the deputies saw her exit the judge’s elevator at 4:48 and walk to the parking lot. She didn’t wave goodbye, he said. Judge Quinn-Gilbert always waves goodbye.

  A judge isn’t supposed to leave before the jury does. If Judge Quinn-Gilbert had stayed like she should have, I could’ve given the jury those extra ten minutes, probably more. Maybe David Sullinger would’ve gone free tonight. While it’s only another eighteen hours, eighteen hours matter when you’re on trial for murder.

  I hope the judge didn’t forget she has a jury out deliberating.

  JUROR NO. 6

  THE ARCHITECT

  The Housewife does go for her cell phone as the bailiff escorts us out. A good little wife, reporting her whereabouts to her husband, though she’ll be home in only twenty minutes.

  The bailiff is holding open the door like a doorman for a Manhattan brownstone. As I pass, I reach out, give his left biceps a squeeze, and flash him a flirty smile. He half grins, half grimaces, and totally tenses up, which causes his perfect biceps to flex. I get that he has to act like he doesn’t like it, but I know he likes it—a lot. Men aren’t complicated. After the trial is over, I’ll give him a call. As well as being gorgeous, he’s nice, courteous, efficient. I think he’s worried about our different income and education levels. That’s a joke. My practice is struggling, and I’m not that smart. He’ll come around.

  I’ve never fucked an Asian man before.

  Everyone else takes the elevator down. I head to the stairwell. This trial has played havoc with my workout schedule, and I need to stay in shape.

  Just as I’m about to open the door to the stairwell, I hear, “Hey, wait up!”

  The Housewife waves and comes over. “How about getting a drink?” she asks. “A girls’ night out to celebrate the impending end of this marathon?”

  “Don’t you have to get home to Jared and the kids?”

  “To hell with that.”

  Uh-oh, a domestic quarrel. Not my problem. “You know, I think I’ll pass,” I say. “I want to get to sleep early and have my mind clear for tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow won’t be …” She lowers her eyes and nods her head slightly, wounded. Whatever she might or might not be, she’s perceptive.

  On any prior night during the trial, I would have said yes, because what else do I have to do at night except watch quirky original programming on Amazon or Netflix, pass the time on Twitter and Instagram, search for guys on dating sites, or hang out with my interchangeable friends? Oh, and drink too much sauvignon blanc? I would have said yes because her tales of diaper changes, autism-inducing childhood immunizations, and quests for admission into prestigious preschools still entertain me. I would have said yes just because. But after her performance today, the thought of spending time alone with her now makes me sick to my stomach.

  The Housewife won’t take the stairs, because she thinks the courthouse stairwells are dangerous, though the place is crawling with sheriff’s deputies. I change my mind and don’t take the stairs, either, because how much more of a shit can I be? We make small talk in those faux-friendly, high-pitched tones that women use when there’s tension between them. I even hug her goodbye before she gets into her car.

  “See you tomorrow,” we both say.

  “It’s been so great,” we both say.

  “It isn’t over quite yet,” she says, her smile broader than I’ve ever seen it.

  God, I’ll be glad to get back to real life tomorrow.

  I drive out of the parking lot, but instead of turning left down Lake Street, I make a right, drive a mile, and head up into the foothills below the Capistrano Mountains. Most of the county is flat and semiarid, but because it’s winter, the higher elevations are lush with chaparral—greasewood, red-bark manzanita, and scrub oak. My ex told me you can eat manzanita berries, that the Native Americans used the leaves as toothbrushes, and that the leaves can cure UTIs. I replied that I’d remember his advice next time there’s a cranberry juice shortage. My ex knows trivia like that. It used to make me bonkers. Why did it?

  I head in the direction of the Sullingers’ house, which we toured as part of the trial. No, this is not a case of a juror returning to the scene of the crime. I want to pass by a house my ex designed. It just happens to be three blocks from where the Sullingers live. It’s my favorite of all his homes. He combined California case-study design of the 1950s—steel, glass, and modular boxes—with postmodernist elements that include a roof made of sedum plants and a wall constructed with recycled water bottles to provide insulation. When he showed me the first mockups, I thought he was crazy. I was also envious of his talent and creativity. Envy isn’t always an entirely negative emotion. If turned inward, it can spur you to improve. Turned outward, it causes resentment. I turned my envy outward. I could spend the rest of the evening trying to psychoanalyze why I want to see the house, but I’m not going to do that. I’m not an introspective person and don’t want to be. I just happen to be in the mood to see the house; that’s all.

  The winding road up the mountain has quite a few cars on it—the county’s elite returning home. My ex and I talked about moving up here, but it never happened. He’s not the greatest driver, and he’s often distracted (or was when married to me), and I feared he’d have an accident on the poorly lit mountain road.

  Finally, I reach the bluffs, navigate the narrow streets, and drive up to my ex-husband’s tour de force. The home is lambent, even at night with the interior lights off, yet still private—a brilliant postmodernist touch. I park the car and stand outside in the open air to get a better look. It’s chilly, in the midforties. I’m wearing a light sweater, so the wind knifes through me. I look up at the sky, speckled with stars so bright that it seems as if my ex designed the luminous structure as an earthly complement to the heavens.

  Finally, a subarctic gust sends me back into my car. I start the engine, and for the second time I give in to an impulse, this one easier to explain. A few blocks later, I’m on Bedford Road, rolling at a crawl toward the Sullingers’ home. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m about to do. At least, I don’t think there is. We walked through the house during trial, after all. We live in the community.

  David still lives there, out on the bond that Lacey posted once she turned eighteen, took control of Amanda’s money, got her father out of jail, and hired Jenna Blaylock. Those facts were all ov
er the local media months before we could imagine we’d be jurors, so there’s no harm in knowing about that.

  I stop the car, set the parking brake, and leave the engine idling for a quick getaway. Jesus, if David or Lacey sees me, I don’t know what I’ll do. Probably get thrown off the jury for being a weirdo stalker. Funny that I don’t want off the jury anymore.

  The lights are on in the back of the house. Are they in there now? What are they doing? Cooking dinner? Something dark and perverted and twisted, as the prosecutor implied before the judge shouted at him? I wonder how Lacey would have answered Cranston’s questions. I know what he meant to bring out. What did Lacey tell her friend? The answer to that question could have changed everything.

  Don’t speculate, I tell myself. Disregard the questions. Do the right thing. I’ve spent my adulthood telling myself to do the right thing.

  I close my eyes and reimagine the killing, and the chill that goes through me rivals the one I felt while standing in the cold. During trial, just walking into the house was scary, and walking into that kitchen was horrifying. There was still a stain from Amanda’s blood on the untreated granite countertop. Who would want to live in a house where a brutal murder happened? More importantly, what husband would want to live in the house where he killed his wife? And what daughter would?

  THE BLOGGER

  KELSI CUNNINGHAM

  David Sullinger is NOT GUILTY. No, David Sullinger is INNOCENT! Some of my feminist friends and colleagues and readers think a battered-husband defense is bullshit. I disagree. To be gender-blind, you must acknowledge that a woman has the power to abuse a man. So I’ve written in my blog posts and articles. In fact, I’ve painted David as far more sympathetic than he really is. He was rather sniveling on the stand, and he did, after all, split his wife’s skull with an ax. But if David prevails in his defense, battered women will have a better shot in future trials, and that would be an awesome consequence. I’m all in on David.

  My reportage is hardly objective, but objectivity is pointless in this era of limitless information. The public meets objective news reports with charges of bias, anyway. Face it, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the network news, and CNN are fucked. Twitter fucked them. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat fucked them. Alt-right websites have fucked them. WikiLeaks and the Russians have double-fucked them. So if you’re me, why not write a slanted article that might just influence readers? That’s exactly what I’ve done. Sure, my stories focus on the Sullinger family’s dirty little secrets at the expense of reporting the dry facts unfolding at the trial, but unlike the mainstream reporters, who behave like human recording devices, I have a perspective. Well, I should, because I work for a tabloid. The purpose of a tabloid is to entertain and motivate. Objectivity is neither entertaining nor motivating.

  Until my sophomore year in college, I never considered becoming a reporter, and I’m not a reporter now. I majored in premed, documentary filmmaking, and philosophical theories of sexuality. Then, one day, my smart-ass roommate, Lola, said, “You’re a decent writer, an alpha female, and a gossip. Why don’t you major in tabloid journalism?”

  “What an awesome idea,” I replied.

  Naturally, I didn’t major in any type of journalism, which, as a profession, was dying then and has died more since. The internet was killing iconic newspapers and magazines, which were folding all the time. Why pay a subscription when you can get your news for free? What I did was join my college newspaper, the Westholme College Weekly, reporting on school sports, music, and drama and writing about diverse, mundane topics in a blog called the Westholme Wonk. Not scintillating fun, but better than premed or theories of sexuality. Then I discovered that the college’s married athletic director / football coach was having an affair with one of his female assistants. Sleazy enough, but he had hired her after they started sleeping together. He’d kept that secret from the administration, of course. Who would admit that he put his mistress on the payroll? When I vetted the story with the managing editor, the gutless second-semester senior panicked and called our spineless faculty advisor, who panicked and emailed the school president, the big pussy, who, in a panic, ordered the story killed. I published it anyway. That’s the beauty of cyberspace. All you have to do is click a couple of keys and promote the story on social media, and presto—you’re published and disseminated. By the time the school authorities took the story down thirty minutes later, the mainstream media had picked it up, and I was a full-fledged cyberjournalist. Not long after, I started working for a successful online tabloid. I wanted to cover Sullinger. They didn’t think the trial was big enough, but I was right and they were wrong—we have homicide, adultery, spousal abuse, sibling rivalry reminiscent of Cain and Abel, hints of incest, a celebrity defense attorney, a bumbling prosecutor, a possibly mentally impaired judge. Millions of views on our website. What could be better?

  I’m the perfect woman for the job, by the way. I write well, I’m not afraid to confront people, I have a flexible moral compass when it comes to lying, and as a little kid, I enjoyed peeping into the neighbors’ windows. True story.

  The other media members left the courthouse after the judge sent the jury into the deliberation room, certain the jurors wouldn’t reach a verdict for days. After all, it had been a four-week trial. To come back in less than two hours would have been disrespectful of the process, and my colleagues didn’t think this jury would disregard the process. I wasn’t sure about that, so I hung around. My colleagues were right, damn it—no verdict today. But I saw many of the jurors walking out, and I think they’re close. I haven’t been doing this for very long, but I have an instinct for these things.

  As I walk across the parking lot, I notice a woman fumbling with her car keys. Holy crap, it’s Judge Quinn-Gilbert! Without her clerk or bailiff to block my access! I start walking in her direction. The infinitesimal odds of her granting an interview don’t deter me. The way I approach interviews is best summed up in a joke a sexist classmate of mine told in college. Two guys walk into a popular nightclub. Guy number one sidles up to a beautiful woman and asks, “Wanna go back to my place and fuck?” The woman slaps his face. The same guy walks up to a second beautiful woman, then a third, asks each the same question, and gets two more slaps. Guy number two says, “Wow, I bet you get your face slapped often with that line.” Guy number one replies, “Nine times out of ten.”

  Before I take five steps toward Quinn-Gilbert, she’s inside her car, and the brake lights are illuminated. To my surprise, she drives a Jeep. I figured her for a Mercedes or Lexus kind of woman or, if she wants to buy American, a Cadillac. Hers is a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, if I’m not mistaken—an off-roading car. She’s closer to the entrance than I, because she gets to park in the judges-only zone. I sprint for my rented Toyota Corolla about ten rows down. Good thing I got to court earlier than anyone else and found a decent parking space. I might still be able to catch Her Honor. Yes, I’m going to follow a superior-court judge home and ambush-interview her. Might be a violation of journalistic ethics, but as I said before, I’m not a journalist.

  When I get out of the parking lot, I spy the judge’s car about a block ahead of me. I don’t know this part of the world at all, haven’t had occasion to visit Sepulveda County (fortunately), and I’m not sure where the judge lives or how she’s going to get there. These one-way streets are a hazard because they’re not consistent—there can be two in a row going the same direction, followed by a two-way and then a one-way going the other way. What the fuck, city planners!

  She drives not up into the hills, where the Sullinger house is located, but to a quiet street lined with 1920s gingerbread, Cape Cod, and Tudor-style homes. Small-potatoes rich. I probably pay three times more in rent for my apartment in New York than the judge pays on her mortgage. Big fish, small pond—that’s Judge Quinn-Gilbert. Although that wasn’t true of her late husband. He was a superstar, hired to try large cases everywhere. I researched it, and t
hey had houses in Park City and La Jolla and an apartment in midtown Manhattan. He must have left the judge in good financial shape. Maybe she’s a bigger fish than I thought.

  She makes a left turn into her driveway and stops, leaving the engine running. Nice house! She seems to be fumbling for something—oh, the garage door opener—and I have time to park, get out of my car, and run over and rap on the driver’s-side window. She doesn’t flinch. Fuck, if someone sneaked up on me like that in the dark and knocked on my window, I would’ve shattered the moonroof with my head, pissed my pants, started honking, and tried to escape. The judge rolls down her window. Is she bat-shit crazy, or has she reacted this calmly because this is a small town and people are trusting?

  “May I help you?” she asks, and while there’s no smile in the question, there’s no concern in it, either.

  She doesn’t recognize me! I’m mildly offended because I’ve been sitting in the courtroom every day for the past month, but I’m also thinking, Yass, this gives me some options!

  “Judge Quinn, so sorry to disturb you at home,” I improvise, making my voice tremulous and calling her by her maiden name to make her think I’m a clueless, low-level ditz. “I’m a messenger working for the law firm of Richardson & Pierce.” That’s the county’s largest firm, which isn’t so large and which I know only because one of their lawyers originally represented David Sullinger until he—or, more correctly, his daughter—hired Jenna Blaylock. “We have a—whaddya call it—an emergency motion. A client was put in jail without probable cause, and the police refuse to bring her before a commissioner or a … They say there’s no judge available. They wanted to see if I could find a judge available while they finish up the papers. It’s after hours. If you’d be available, I could call them and they could bring the papers up.” I hold up my cell phone and surreptitiously press the record icon. “I’m supposed to call when I find somebody—a judge, I mean.” I cobble this story together based on the facts of some lawsuit my attorney mother handled back in the 1980s. She told my brother and me about that case many times, not that I paid attention. One reason I didn’t go to law school is that my mother wanted me to follow in her footsteps.