San Francisco?
The California Superior Courts are headquartered in San Francisco. Judges sit in fifty-eight locations across the state, Bienveneda being one of them. I’d sent my letter of resignation to San Francisco on the day of my seventieth birthday as required by Californian law and, as per tradition, I was due to leave on 30 December of the year in which I turned seventy.
Dick van Nispen’s motion to dismiss was to have been my last day in court, and the last of my responsibilities as a judge. I was in the process of placing books into boxes and googling the best way to store my robes when the call came in. Could I stay?
To say that I was flummoxed would be to understate it. The judge who had been announced as my replacement, Rebecca Buckley, had become ensnared in a scandal involving her domestic staff. An investigation by the Bugle had revealed that her nanny and housekeeper were undocumented. According to the Bugle, Rebecca had also failed to pay their health insurance and withhold their taxes.
That’s one, two, three offences right there. She couldn’t take the appointment.
I put down the phone and called Cecile.
She sympathised with Rebecca. ‘Maybe they had fake papers. How was she to know?’ she said.
‘Judges are held to higher standards.’
‘The rules work against women. If Rebecca was a man, she’d have a wife. But wives don’t get wives.’
‘The question is, do I stay on?’ I said. The decision would mean taking on the Wynne-Estes matter.
‘Oh dear,’ said Cecile, ‘although it’ll certainly be satisfying, seeing David go to prison.’
I wasn’t so sure he would go to prison. The case was as flimsy as it had been when Dick’s motion came to court: there was still no body, no witnesses, and no cause of death. Not that it mattered what I thought. Judges don’t decide the outcome of murder trials; juries do.
Judges preside. Juries decide. That’s my mantra.
I accepted the appointment and soon after accepted another call from my clerk. The Bugle’s editor-in-chief, Marguerite Herrera, had an idea.
‘I feel we almost missed an opportunity, and now we’re saved. This will be your last big case,’ Marguerite said.
‘It will.’
‘I’ve always wanted to ask a judge to chronicle their experience. It’s difficult because nobody wants to do it while they’re still sitting. But you’re retiring. So I’m asking you. Take daily notes. We’ll turn them into a special for Bugle readers – INSIDE THE MIND OF THE JUDGE.’
I sat, contemplating. ‘It’s rather unorthodox,’ I said.
‘That’s what will make it readable. The judge sits through the whole trial yet we rarely get to hear what he or she thinks. I’m not asking you to say whether you think the jury reached the right verdict …’
‘I should hope not,’ I said.
‘But I am asking you to comment on the process. Take us into the mind of the person who has to sit there, presiding over the circus.’
I laughed. Marguerite wasn’t wrong. A trial can be a circus.
And so it was agreed. I would take notes.
‘Maybe start by saying how you feel about being asked to take notes,’ Marguerite suggested. Very well.
Twenty-seven years I have been a judge in Bienveneda. Never before have I been asked for my opinion on the justice system. So why now? The Bugle says it’s because I’m retiring and therefore I can speak freely. That may well be right. But the truth is that few trials have excited our town like the Wynne-Estes murder trial.
And why is that?
I say it’s because we live in a town divided. Literally and figuratively. Our town is divided by the Bienveneda River, but that’s not all that divides us. Income divides us. Race divides us. How many African-Americans live on the High Side? Not many. How many of my neighbours turn up as defendants in my courtroom? Hardly any. Who do I see in court? Mainly people from the Low Side of town. Why is that? We kid ourselves that we’re better over here: better parents, with kids in better schools. Can that really be the reason? The Low Side lives much closer to the poverty line than we do. People ask me if race plays a role. Of course it plays a role. Sit in court every day for years, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that African-Americans commit more crime than white folk, but it’s not so. African-Americans are more likely to be charged and brought to court; less likely to get off with a warning. It’s a subtle but important difference.
Besides being African-American, most of the offenders I see are in poor health. The circumstances in which they live – poverty, mental illness, alcoholism and illiteracy – are ugly. Occasionally, I’ll say: ‘How do you plead?’ The defendant might say: ‘Why does that matter?’ None come with lawyers. We have to give them lawyers. The press isn’t interested; the Bugle occasionally sends a junior reporter into court to file some brief items for the CRIME AND PUNISHMENT page. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve seen a TV camera in the back of the court.
This case is different. It involves beautiful people with a great deal of money. The defendant is – or was – a successful businessman. He presents well. The crime of which he stands accused is ugly, but he’s not. He’s white. He’s fit. He’s handsome. His parents are upstanding members of our community. They have a fine home on the same road I live on with my wife, Cecile.
Will the outcome be different for him? A number of people are betting that it will. I’ve seen the odds that the bookies are giving: three-to-one, David Wynne-Estes walks. I can understand that. The case against him is weak and that is certainly one of the factors that we need to take into account, but what else is different? Mr Wynne-Estes has top-class representation. He has a team of people working on his public image. He doesn’t look like the kind of man who belongs in prison. Will he end up there regardless? Time will tell.
* * *
DID HE DO IT?
That was the headline on the first page of the Bugle website on the first morning of the first day of the Wynne-Estes trial.
Cecile, sitting opposite in our atrium with her egg and her juice, asked: ‘Who wrote that? And come on, what’s his or her verdict?’
My eyes scanned the page for a by-line. They’re not always easy to find on the web.
‘Aaron Radcliffe,’ I said, ‘he’s only been at the Bugle about a year, but he’s broken some good stories on this one.’
‘Must have a good source,’ said Cecile, winking and biting into her toast.
Gossip around town was that he had struck up a friendship with Molly Franklin. He’d been spotted, by a rival publication, helping one of Loren’s girls out of Molly’s car in the Kiss-and-Go at Grammar. The Department of Child Services in Bienveneda had granted Molly temporary custody of Hannah and Peyton when David went to prison. Janet had protested, saying, ‘Their mother left the girls with me when she went to Mexico, which must surely be taken as a signal of Loren’s intentions, should anything ever happen to her.’
The problem with that argument was that Loren had signed a legal document back when the girls were born, saying Molly should have custody of the girls in the event that neither she nor David were capable of taking care of them (one imagines that she hadn’t figured prison time for Dad into the equation).
Janet’s counsel – Dick van Nispen – argued that note was signed when Loren was new to marriage and motherhood – and to the High Side.
‘Loren was still getting used to her new situation when she signed that note,’ said Dick. ‘These girls have spent their whole lives on the High Side. They’d be able to stay in their own home on the High Side if they stay with their Aunt Janet. She has the means to take care of them.’
Buried in that argument was the idea that Loren had grown apart from her family after she married David. Her life – and the girls’ lives – was conducted entirely on the High Side, with occasional visits to her father on the Low Side. The High Side was where Loren shopped and socialised, and it was where the girls went to school. Molly occasionally
visited Loren at home, but did Loren visit Molly in her condo? Not all that often.
As arguments go, it wasn’t a bad one, but Dick still lost. (‘I’m not having much luck, am I?’ he said, over rattling ice cubes at the Nineteenth Hole, after court that day.) The document Loren signed when the girls were born was legally binding; had she wanted her girls to grow up on the High Side with Janet, she needed to have said so.
As I understood it, Molly hadn’t moved to accommodate the twins. They were all squeezed into her little condo, with Grandpa around the corner. Not fancy, not flash, but in all the circumstances, probably not a bad outcome.
What she’d told them about their dad, I couldn’t say. No question, Grammar would be doing its best to shield the girls from gossip, but there’s only so much a school can do.
‘So, come on, what does Aaron Radcliffe say?’ asked Cecile.
I cleared my throat and began to read aloud from the newspaper: ‘There is one person who knows for certain whether Bienveneda businessman David Wynne-Estes murdered his wife.’
‘Oh, really?!’ said Cecile.
‘That person is David Wynne-Estes.’
‘Ah,’ said Cecile, disappointed. ‘I see. I thought they were going to reveal some super new witness. Do they predict an outcome?’
‘Not overtly,’ I said, skimming the text. The tone of the article clearly suggested that David was guilty, but the Bugle had been leaning that way for a while.
‘There’s a quote from me,’ I said.
‘Oh yes?’ said Cecile. ‘What do you say?’
I took a quick sip of coffee and began to read again: ‘This will be the last trial in the long and distinguished career of the judge, L. Samuel Pettit, who has agreed to keep a journal for the Bugle.
‘“I will go into court with an open mind,” Judge Pettit says. “There has been a great deal of publicity and gossip surrounding this case, but everyone is entitled to a fair trial and I will be working to ensure that’s what happens for Mr Wynne-Estes.”’
‘Very good,’ said Cecile, nodding approvingly. ‘Now, off you go and get yourself to court.’
I rose from the breakfast table. It’s a timber table, built long and narrow, and able to seat ten, although it hardly ever seats more than two these days. In rising, I lowered my head to place a light kiss on Cecile’s raised hand. It’s one of our traditions.
As a judge, I’m entitled to a car and driver, but my habit has long been to drive my own car to the courthouse. The new building sits above an underground car park; I can glide right in and make my way up in the elevator. The building is, as I’ve said, quite modern. There are seven courtrooms, all identical in their furnishings – the walls are blonde wood; the seats are pale blue – but Court Five is extra large, for cases like this one.
Ben was standing ready to help me into my robes. The clerk’s job is also to ensure that all my notes are in order. Court goes into session at ten am, but anyone who wants to be inside should be seated before that.
‘Is the public gallery full?’
‘Yes, Your Honour,’ said Ben. ‘Some people have been waiting since before dawn.’
‘Are the families here?’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘His and hers?’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘And they have reserved seating?’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘And the press seats? Are they full?’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘Well then, please go in and remind them to turn off their phones.’
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
I waited for Ben to return before striding down the corridor to the courtroom. I won’t shy from this, it’s a magical feeling, having everyone rise and fall silent upon the clerk’s opening the door to announce my arrival.
I’ve been at pains over the years to ensure that power – I’m the most important person in the room – hasn’t gone to my head. Cecile had been generous in her desire to assist in this regard (now, where do I find one of those winky emoticons?).
I gathered my robes around myself, and settled into the high-backed chair.
‘Court is in session,’ said Ben.
The court manager – his identity changes from one day to the next, depending on rosters – strode across the courtroom and opened a side door for David.
David Wynne-Estes has been described in the Bugle – and online – as tall and handsome too many times to count. He is indeed tall and handsome. I knew him slightly; we are – or were – members of many of the same clubs. Flanked by burly armed security, he did not look particularly tall. Nevertheless, he was the star attraction, so all heads turned to watch as he made his way not to the front but to the back of the courtroom. In Bienveneda, the defendant sits at the back of the court, directly facing me. His chair – an ergonomic chair like mine, although not as high in the back – sits within a three-sided, bulletproof Perspex box. The box is open at the front, so the defendant can see and hear (and, I suppose, breathe). He sits behind a desk, made of the same blonde wood as the table for the attorneys, with a modern microphone – thin, like a black straw – screwed into the top.
David reached out and bent and tapped the microphone, as if to see whether it was working – it was – but thereafter he left it alone.
David seemed to be doing extremely well, given the circumstances. He hadn’t been in prison all that long and he hadn’t yet put on, or taken off, any weight (either is possible, depending on whether one can stomach the food; also depending on how much use one makes of the gym). He was wearing a terrifically expensive suit, but who besides those who routinely wear terrifically expensive suits would have known that? To most people, the suit would simply have said: ‘I accept that this is a serious situation, and I am taking it seriously.’
Predictably enough, his tie was yellow.
There was no sign of David’s daughters, for which I felt grateful. Little girls should not under any circumstances have to sit through their father’s murder trial, and doubly so when the victim is their mother. Then again, it’s amazing what some image makers put up as ideas to win the jury’s sympathy.
The defendant’s sister-in-law, Molly Franklin, was there with Loren’s father. David’s new girlfriend was also there, sitting right in the front row, with Janet, and David’s parents.
His new girlfriend? Yes, the Bugle had already outed David for having a new squeeze. Cecile assures me that Cody Kim is her real name. Cody had platinum-blonde hair. Her cardigan was pink. Her bosom swelled perfectly. The first time Cecile saw her picture in the paper, she said: ‘She looks like Betty Draper. Where did they find her? She’s so perfect.’
‘Perhaps she comes from Sally & Sons?’
‘I’d put nothing past them,’ said Cecile. ‘They could well have a closet full of girls who look exactly like that for occasions exactly like this.’
I must admit to being perplexed as to why David would want a new girlfriend.
‘Isn’t that a bad idea?’ I asked.
‘Oh no,’ said Cecile. ‘It’s a fine idea. It’s a subliminal message to the jury: “Look at this lovely lady. She believes me. Why not you?”’
I glanced over at the jury. They were six men and six women, all suitably, sombrely attired. At least one of the six men was indeed focused on Cody, and not in a bad way.
I turned my attention back to the court. Besides the girlfriend, it seemed that we were to be blessed with a daily performance by David’s new lawyer, Tucker the Texan (after losing on the maritime argument, poor old Dick had been given the shove).
Tucker’s real name is J. Tucker Bingham, III. Is he Texan? I heard a rumour he was from Tennessee. I guess it doesn’t matter. As he himself says on his website, Tucker is about the best defence that High Side money can buy. There are people within the Bienveneda legal community who will tell you that Tucker is a tool, but I quite like him. No, I do. I like him. He looks the part, if the part is that of the Texan. He has a good head of white
hair. He brings his hat into court. He isn’t allowed to wear it, yet he still brings it in and lays it on the table. He wears a suit built around the idea of a safari suit, with boots. The boots have amethyst detailing.
With court in session, I read out the charge – first-degree murder – and I asked David: ‘How do you plead?’
David leaned forward. ‘Not guilty,’ he said.
The bloggers and tweeters in the back row tapped hurriedly at their screens: David Wynne-Estes has entered a not-guilty plea …
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Let’s begin.’
* * *
‘Well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an attractive jury.’
Tucker the Texan was standing in the middle of the courtroom with his thumbs in his pockets and his hat on the table.
‘No, I’m serious. Look at you folks,’ he said, looking directly into the eyes of each of the twelve jurors. ‘What an attractive bunch you are.’
The jurors grinned. Probably they knew better than to be seduced and yet couldn’t help themselves, not with Tucker standing there like Colonel Sanders, grinning right back at them. Tucker’s strategy – and I’ve seen him do this more than once – is to appeal not to me, not to the noisy press in the back row, but directly to the jury. To their intelligence, their better natures, their collective maturity, and to their sophistication. It’s a clever move.
I’ve seen plenty of defence lawyers – especially the younger ones – go the other way. They address the jury, but in doing so, they bore the jury. Worse, they badger the jury.
Tucker the Texan, he flatters the jury. And why not? It’s their vote he needs, not mine. It’s the jury he needs to win over, not me, and not you, following on Facebook. He doesn’t need you. He needs the vote of every single person on the jury. As such, he goes after them like a presidential candidate.
‘Now, I want you to know that we screened you people pretty well,’ Tucker said. ‘And not only for your looks. We need you for your brains. I mean, maybe there’s been a more attractive jury put together in Bienveneda, but I don’t think so. No, I’m messing with you! Don’t let me mess with you. What I mean to say is, you’re good people. I know that. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. You’re interested in justice. That’s obvious. And you already know quite a bit about this case. You can’t help that. You’re smart people: you read the newspapers, you watch the news. You’ve heard this and you’ve heard that, and maybe you’ve already got an idea in your mind about whether or not my client here is guilty.
The One Who Got Away Page 23
