Time's Witness

by Michael Malone

  Walking back to my table with a friendly wave at Yarborough and Molina, I found Nora seated there alone, drinking a glass of wine in an exhilarated state. She smiled at me. “What was that, a drug bust?”

  “You heard of Yalta. The Council of Trent. The Treaty of Versailles. Well, that was the Treaty of Pogo's Urinal. Where's the Fat Man?”

  The green tilt up of her eyes lifted even more. “Cuddy. Isaac Rosethorn's amazing. You know who just walked in here and asked to talk? Neil Sadler and the attorney general. The attorney general! They want to discuss a nolo contendere plea from George. To second degree. They’ll drop murder one right now. If we don’t put on a defense.”

  I sat down.

  “Right!” she said. “And the thing is, Isaac knew it was coming. He was waiting for them.”

  “What about Mitch Bazemore?”

  “He wasn’t with them.”

  “Right.…So much for a pure conservative heart.”

  When I asked Nora if the State had given any reason for its sudden generosity, she said they’d given a lot of reasons. “But right now I bet Isaac's in the D.A.'s office making them eat dirt over the real reason.” With a downright violent gleam of victory in her eyes, she pulled a sheaf of papers from her new briefcase. The top one was a list of witnesses subpoenaed by Isaac Rosethorn for the defense in S. vs. Hall 2179 N.C. It was a long list. It included Purley Newsome, Lana Pym, Sergeant Charles Mennehy, Assistant D.A. Neil Sadler, Mr. Dyer Fanshaw, Warden Zackery Carpenter of Dollard Prison, and the lieutenant governor of the state of North Carolina, Julian Dollard Lewis.

  She laughed from pleasure. “God, I love him. So, what do you think he's going to do? Bargain them down to voluntary manslaughter for a nolo contendere?”

  John Emory strode inside Pogo's and tapped his watch at me. I pulled out Nora's chair and handed her her briefcase. “Honey, nothing on God's occasionally green earth is going to make that old man give up a chance to make a speech to that jury.”

  chapter 23

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. It's late, and it's Friday, and we’re all hot and tired, and we’re all ready to go stretch out somewhere with a glass of something cool. I need to sit down and get off this bad leg. And I know you twelve good people would love to stand up. And get off those hard chairs!

  “So I’m going to keep my opening remarks as short and lean as a fat old Southern lawyer can manage. Not as short as the prosecution would have liked. Because they didn’t want me to make any opening remarks at all! They didn’t want you to hear any defense at all! They wanted George Hall to come back in here this afternoon, throw up his arms, and say, ‘All right. I’m not going to argue with you. As long as it's not death, give me whatever you folks decide on in a back room, and I’ll go along.’ Well, by God, they don’t know George Hall, and by God, they don’t know me!”

  The thunder of Isaac Rosethorn's baritone rumbled up through the sixteen handsome chandeliers hanging from the forty-foot ceiling of the court. At the sound, people stirred in the long tiered rows of seats. This was what they’d come for. The grand old man, putting on—according to today's Hillston Star—“his last defense.” Hands in his rumpled jacket, his dark, deep eyes glittering, slowly he walked from George's side across to the table where District Attorney Mitchell Bazemore sat stiff as a rod, his cheeks flushed, and where Assistant D.A. Neil Sadler sat with the same bland smile that was on the face of the assistant attorney general, who now sat beside him.

  “No, sir. They don’t.” Isaac leaned over Mitch, shook his head sorrowfully, then slowly limped, the shoe on his weak leg scuffing the floor, all the way back—past Nomi Hall motionless in black, past the press table where Bubba Percy grinned as he wrote, past Miss Bee Turner at her desk, and old Mr. Walkington at his recorder, past a whole row of rapt Haver law students—all the way back to the jury box, where he quietly placed his hands on the rail. Isaac looked at each face in the box. Gave each a solemn nod. Women. Men. Blacks. Whites. Lindquist, the school principal, who was foreman. The elderly farm widow who’d stopped turning her shoulder on the black man seated beside her. Mrs. Boren, who never let go of the purse in her lap. Isaac sighed. “And, ladies and gentlemen, if the prosecution thinks that, they don’t know you! If they think you have sat here these long weeks, sacrificing time and convenience and money, sat here and not cared whether you heard George's side of the story or not, then they have sadly misjudged the citizens of Haver County. Haven’t they? I’ve been with you day by day for weeks now, and I’ve seen the earnest, hard-thinking diligence with which you have accepted the sacred duty placed upon you by this great state. The duty to well and truly try this case, to seek the truth, to find it, and to judge it!”

  “The old hypocrite,” I whispered to Alice MacLeod, beside me in a side row. “It was just noon today when he asked the judge to render a directed verdict and throw out the case.”

  “The jury probably doesn’t know what a directed verdict is,” Alice whispered back, as she struggled in vain for a comfortable position. She was pregnant now, and starting to complain about a variety of dissatisfactions—from indigestion to heat rash to her husband. Eventually, she gave up, mumbling as she left, “Justin and this little bastard got me into this and what do they care? I’ll see you at Trinity tonight.”

  I sat there deciding they must already know the baby was a boy; would anyone call a girl baby a “little bastard”? So I missed the next few Rosethorn sentences. I doubt anybody else did. Every seat in the huge courtroom was filled, and silent, although it was late—quarter to four—and afternoon sun streamed in hot yellow light through the western windows. Court hadn’t even reconvened until 3:30, because until then all the counsels had been sequestered first in the D.A.'s office, then in the judge's chambers. What they’d been doing in there was anybody's guess. I sure couldn’t figure it out, and hadn’t had a chance to ask. One thing was clear. The trial wasn’t over. As far as Isaac was concerned, it was probably just beginning.

  Zeke Caleb had stepped into my office half an hour ago and said, “You wanted me to let you know—well, Miss Bee's downstairs now, calling court to order.” I’d been talking all afternoon with agents from the FBI, SBI, and the ATF, while off in the holding cell the Carolina Patriots and their lawyer screamed about the exorbitant bail set by Judge Dolores Roche. His argument that she’d used “reverse racial discrimination” against those heavily armed white supremacists hadn’t gone down too well with a black female New Deal Democrat like old Dolores.

  When I’d slipped through the side door into the first row of the courtroom, Shirley Hilliardson was already giving a lecture to the jury, the details of which, as Alice had deduced, they didn’t seem to be following too closely. He explained to them sternly that he was overruling the motion that a directed verdict be entered for the defense. At that point, Isaac stood and calmly took exception to the ruling. “So noted,” said the judge. Then he stroked the side of his hawk's nose awhile, then he announced with no more affect than if he were reading a phone book, that counsel for the State had instructed the bench that, at this juncture, on the basis of the evidence, the prosecution no longer wished to seek the death penalty against the defendant, but was prepared to accept a verdict of guilty of murder in the second degree.

  The news ricocheted around the room like the loud frantic flutter of birds trying to escape. Some spectators cheered, some hissed. Reporters ran outside for phones. I thought, well, damn, Isaac did agree to the nolo contendere, and I was surprised by how much the fact disappointed me. But then, slow as molasses, the old man strolled up to the bench, and Sadler, the assistant D.A., ran up there after him. While they talked, Judge Hilliardson nodded a few times, the twist on his blade of a mouth indecipherable. After both sides returned to their respective tables, Hilliardson rapped his gavel to quiet the fluttering. “I take it then, Counselor,” he said to Rosethorn, each word sliced through that sharp mouth. “The defense does not rest?”

  With his hand on George Hall's shoulder, Isaa
c shook his white mane of hair. “Your Honor, that is correct. The defense will offer evidence against the charge of murder in the second degree. Or indeed, in any degree.”

  My breath rushed out. He was going to fight.

  But what had happened then at the bargaining table? Last I’d heard from Nora, the A.G.'s deal was “second degree” in exchange for no defense.

  “Are you prepared now to make an opening statement, Counselor?”

  “Yes, Your Honor, if the Court pleases. The defense is ready.”

  So that's how it had started. And while Isaac was true to his promise and kept it short (for him, that is—I’d heard one opening statement of his that lasted two hours), he managed to say quite a lot, without my being able to figure out what the hell he was up to.

  Right now, he was embracing all twelve of those jurors in the warm hug of his low rich voice. “Now, folks. The defense doesn’t have to offer a bit of evidence, doesn’t have to say a word. The defense doesn’t have to prove George innocent. A man walks into this court innocent, and he stays innocent until and unless the prosecution proves him guilty. So I could tell you, go on back in the jury room right now, and ask yourselves, ‘Do I have an abiding conviction amounting to a moral certainty that George Hall committed intentional murder?’ Ask yourselves, ‘Do I believe beyond any reasonable doubt that the evidence presented in this courtroom proves that George Hall committed an intentional murder?’ Think back on what you’ve heard here, and ask yourselves, ‘Have I been offered any evidence that George planned to murder Pym, except for the mumbled-scumbled, inconsistent, contradictory, and blatantly fabricated testimony of a bartender, Mr. Fattie McCramer, who is a far better witness for the good eats at his establishment than for the truth about this case? And the testimony of Mr. Moonfoot Butler, who came in here claiming to be George's best friend and didn’t know the first thing about him!? Is that proof? The self-serving claims of a shameful scoundrel, a convicted felon whose staggering arrest record I wouldn’t ask our clerk Miss Turner to attempt to lift for fear it would do damage to her back!”

  The tiny Miss Bee gave Isaac a steely look, as if to say she could easily lift Moonfoot's arrest record in one hand and Rosethorn in the other. He smiled at her.

  Then he walked to the witness chair, and from it pointed his finger at the prosecution table. “Ask yourselves, ‘Have they proved their case?’ No, they haven’t! Of course they haven’t. You know it, and I know it. And what's more, they know it. Seven years ago, they came in here hollering for the death penalty. That conviction was overturned. Thank God, in time! Thrown out. They came in here, a month ago, hollering for the death penalty again. Now, oh yes, now, they’re willing to give up first-degree murder. Why? Because they know they didn’t prove it! Why didn’t they prove it?” Isaac's voice, building with each sentence, roared down the length of the room. “Because it isn’t true!”

  His hands stroked sadly down his face, and he spoke quietly. “Because it's hard to prove a lie. Not impossible, as the sad book of history tells us. But it's hard. You can hide Truth, gag her, smother her, offer her bribes, lock her in darkness. But Truth has a way of slipping through the lock, of whispering through the crack until she's heard.” His hand lifted toward the bright windows, as if to pull Truth through them. “You will hear her now.”

  “Amen,” some woman shouted.

  Rap, went Hilliardson's gavel.

  Isaac didn’t take his eyes from the jury. “The defense will prove that George Hall is not guilty of murder in any degree. Not guilty by reason of self-defense. We will prove it, even though we are not required to do so, because this courtroom, this temple of truth, where I have spent my life in the service of the law, has been defiled by the lies set loose here. And I want it cleansed!”

  “Right on!” yelled, of all people, young G.G. Walker, seated with half the Canaan Twelve. Their loud claps were picked up by other spectators. The long black swoop of Hilliardson's arm slammed down the gavel so hard it flew out of his hand and Miss Bee Turner had to retrieve it. Standing, he arched over the bench like the grim reaper. “Once more!” he seethed, “and I will clear this court. And Mr. Rosethorn, I will ask you to restrict yourself more rigorously to the perimeters of opening remarks, as opposed to closing statements.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” Moving toward the jury again, Isaac's left hand hit the palm of his right in rhythm with his words. “Members of the jury, what is the truth? Was there malice aforethought? Yes, there was. But not by George Hall. By Robert Pym! It wasn’t George who brought a gun to Smoke's. It was Pym! Was there gross and reckless provocation by Robert Pym? Yes, there was! Was there not only an attempt to inflict serious bodily harm on George Hall, but the grievous infliction of bodily harm? Look at George's face! Seven years later, he still carries the scar on his nostril! Did the defendant believe his life was in danger? Why, everyone in Smoke's Bar believed it! Even the long stream of witnesses for the prosecution believed it! Even the arresting officer C.R. Mangum believed it!”

  Several jurors nodded and Isaac joined them. “Of course they believed it. Because it was true.” His arm waved contemptuously at Bazemore's table. “All this stuff from the district attorney about ‘Don’t let Isaac Rosethorn convince you that George was overcome by irresistible impulse.’ About the ‘policeman at the elbow’ rule, and how if one had been there, George wouldn’t have done what he did.”

  Turning around, Isaac's fist slammed the table in front of Miss Bee, who remarkably didn’t jump out of her chair. “Well, a policeman was there at George's elbow. He was there jamming this .38 revolver into George's nose!” He grabbed up the gun from the exhibits labeled as evidence, and brought it to the jury. “Look at this ugly thing. It's scary, isn’t it? How scared would you be if a belligerent drunk shoved this thing in your nostril, and said, ‘Buddy, your ass is grass.’ Well, I’ll tell you how scared I’d be! I’d be scared I was going to die!”

  He returned the revolver to Miss Bee, as he said, “I never had the slightest intention in the world of talking about irresistible impulses.…Not unless we can agree that self-preservation is an irresistible impulse.” He paused, shook loose a handkerchief, and tapped his forehead. “Cicero,” he said, as if the name had just occurred to him. “Some of you remember him from high school Latin? Old Roman lawyer back in Caesar's time?” The jury foreman smiled at him.

  “Well, Cicero summed up the law of self-defense as it's been upheld by society from time immemorial. Cicero said, ‘This law we do not learn from books, for it is embodied in each of us: that if our life is in danger, any means of escape is honorable. This is the first law of nature.’”

  His hand stroked along the jury rail reassuringly. “And that law of nature is also upheld by the laws of this state. All you have to believe is that, to George, at that time, in those circumstances, there was a reasonable appearance of the necessity of deadly force to prevent his own immediate death, or serious injury. If so, the shooting of Robert Pym was an act of self-defense, and the defendant is not guilty of murder.…Now!” Isaac patted the rail, and stepped away. “The State brought in its own psychiatrist to tell you—after, by the way, one interview of forty-three minutes—that George is a violent man with dangerous impulses. Well, first of all, in this country we don’t put people in prison for having dangerous impulses, but for committing crimes. Second of all, what did these dangerous impulses turn out to be?” Isaac counted them off on his fingers. “One, George tried to protect himself from a racist thug throwing beer on him at the ballpark. Two, he tried to stop Officer Robert Pym from slamming a handcuffed eighteen-year-old suspect against a concrete wall. A suspect, by the way, later released for lack of evidence. Three, he tried to stop Robert Pym from killing him. As we will prove, all George has ever done is try to protect himself. And protect others. Which, by the law of nature, and the law of this state, he had a right to do!”

  The assistant D.A. was whispering to the assistant A.G. Isaac stopped and stared at them. “Gentlemen, excuse m
e. I believe I have the floor. Besides, the State has already rested. It's a little too late to start figuring out a case for the prosecution now.”

  Over the loud general laugh, I could hear Bubba Percy's guffaw.

  Isaac strolled on. “Oh, we could bring in our own psychiatrist who’d tell you George would no more slap a fly than Albert Schweitzer would. But I’m not going to mess with it. I don’t need to.” He shook his handkerchief at the State's table, then stuffed it in his seersucker jacket. “Instead, I’m going to let you hear from George's commanding officer in the U.S. Army, who will tell you George was a good and valiant soldier, wounded in battle protecting this country. I’m going to let you hear from the minister of George's church, who, believe me, knows him better than Moonfoot Butler ever did. And you’ll hear from the warden of Dollard Prison, who will tell you that even under the savage stress of an unjust death sentence—even under the inhuman torture of seven years on death row, and four separate nights set for his execution, even hours before he was to be strapped to a metal chair and gassed to death for the heinous crime of protecting his own life from a barbaric assault— even then, George Hall never displayed a single instance of these so-called violent tendencies of his. All the violence has been on the other side…on the other side.”

  His head bowed for a moment, and when he looked up, there were actually tears welling in his eyes. If it was a trick, it was one I’d never seen him use so well before. Quietly, he said, “I am going to prove to you that George Hall is no killer. Far, far from it. George Hall is a man noble enough to be willing to lay down his life to protect others from being killed.” Isaac let his glance move across the court to rest on Nomi Hall, down whose face a single tear ran. The whole room rustled as people turned questioning faces to each other.

  Leaning toward the jury, moving step by step along the rail, Isaac ended his statement with a softly delivered hand grenade. “Ladies and gentlemen, the defense contends, and the defense will prove, by affirmative evidence, by expert opinion, by deposition, and by eyewitnesses, that George Hall had no plan to kill, no intent to kill, did not mean to kill, and had no reason to think he would kill Robert Pym when he shot that gun. The defense contends, rather, members of the jury, that Robert Pym—accompanied by his companion in crime, one Winston Russell, a killer now at large, wanted on three counts of murder, including the murder of George's only brother, Cooper Hall—that Robert Pym and Winston Russell did plan and did intend to kill the defendant. That Pym came into Smoke's Bar expressly for that purpose, that he provoked an altercation expressly for that purpose, and that he failed in that purpose only by mischance. Or by the grace of God. Just as the attempt of the State to kill George Hall has failed only by mischance. Or by the grace of God. George Hall has been a victim, sacrificed—as so many of his race have been sacrificed in the long bloody chronicle of this nation's history—to prejudice, to politics, and to power. That's the truth.” Isaac's chest heaved in a slow, tired sigh. “That's the truth.…And that's why the defense does not rest.”