by D. W. Buffa
Chapter Eighteen
Hillary Clark could hardly wait. Ramrod straight, she drummed her hard lacquered finger nails on the table and tapped her pointed shoe. Her long black lashes, heavy with make-up, curved like iron lattice work above the windows of her eyes. She stopped drumming her fingers long enough to cross her legs the other way, and then, changing hands, started doing it again. A tight smile of perfect satisfaction slid serpent-like across her broad, narrow mouth. Her whole life had been a preparation for this, it was the dream she had always had – the prosecutor, eager and aggressive, about to give the closing argument in the case that would make her famous as a leading champion of the rights of women.
Darnell had just come into court, but Hillary Clark did not notice, and if she had she would not have paid any attention. She certainly would not have said hello. She never spoke to the attorney for the defense, unless the attorney spoke first. She did not believe in courtesy and respect; she believed only in winning, especially when the attorney on the other side was a man, and especially when the man was someone as lost in the past as William Darnell. If she had few friends in the profession, that was, far from a source of sadness or disappointment, something viewed with a martyr’s pride. As the voice of women, she welcomed the hatred of the people she fought against.
Growing more impatient by the minute, she glanced at the clock on the wall, and then, just to be sure, checked her watch. Ten minutes late. It was disgraceful. But then so was just about everything Evelyn Pierce did. Hillary Clark stopped beating her fingernails on the table and, as if to stop from becoming even more irritated than she already was, began to tap her fingers against her head. That proved not to be quite as satisfying as she had hoped. She stopped doing it, and to make sure that she did not start again, held her arms tight around herself. With an audible sigh, she began to swing her foot.
The door at the side finally opened and Hillary Clark jumped from her chair. But instead of Evelyn Pierce, the judge’s clerk came out and asked that both attorneys follow her into chambers.
It was annoying. She had been up half the night going over what she was going to say in her closing argument. She had not memorized all of it – she was afraid that would sound too rehearsed – but she had committed to memory each of the main points she wanted to make, placed them in the right order, and for each of them found the phrases that would best summarize what she thought it important to say. She was organized, ready, and now this! Another change of schedule, another disruption, and all because Evelyn Pierce, overweight and undisciplined, lacked all sense of judicial restraint! Hillary Clark was certain she was winning, and certain that Evelyn Pierce did not like it, but she was still shocked when she learned what the judge, no doubt out of jealousy, had decided to do.
“I was bothered by this case before I heard the witnesses for the defense, and now that I have, I’m bothered even more.”
“Bothered, your Honor?” asked Hillary Clark, as she raised an eyebrow, a gesture which did nothing to ingratiate her with the judge.
“As you would be, Ms. Clark, if you were interested in anything more than winning.”
“I resent that!”
“But you don’t deny it,” replied the judge dryly. “Winning this case won’t prove anything, except our willingness to make judgments about things we don’t understand. If I had known what I know now, if I had known the circumstances surrounding what happened, know that far from rape and incest, these two young people wanted to live what I would have thought you would have regarded as a normal, married life – I would have granted Mr. Darnell’s motion and thrown the case out for lack of jurisdiction. We have no business meddling in the affairs of other people, people who seem to have lived quite well without anyone’s outside supervision.”
“Lived quite well? Were we listening to the same witnesses? You just said they wanted to live normal, married lives. What stopped them? – A culture of organized promiscuity in which women, made sex slaves to all the men who wanted them, were denied their most basic human rights!”
“Men, too, from what I remember,” remarked Darnell, not wanting to be left out. “And if you’re right to call their arrangements organized, you’re wrong to call it promiscuity. From what I heard the girl say on the stand, everything was done for a purpose. We might not agree that the purpose was a good one, but it isn’t clear to me at least that it’s any of our business how these people choose to live.”
Hillary Clark did not bother to reply. Darnell was beyond redemption, too old, too much the product of an earlier generation and its discredited ways. She focused all her attention on the judge who, though no more enlightened, had, unfortunately, the power of decision.
“What do you propose to do? The trial is nearly over. After closing arguments, the case goes to the jury.”
“I could declare a mistrial, and then, if you decided to prosecute it again, rule in favor of the defense motion that no American court has jurisdiction.”
“The island is an American possession. If we don’t have jurisdiction, no one has.”
“I found that argument persuasive when you first made it; I don’t find it persuasive anymore.”
“But there aren’t any grounds for a mistrial! There hasn’t been any misconduct, nothing that would prejudice the jury. You can’t just declare a mistrial because you feel like it.”
When Evelyn Pierce was thinking about something, her thick neck seemed to shorten and flatten out as her head sunk down to her shoulders. There was a kind of grandeur in her ugliness, the way it made her remarkable intelligence and the solid character that went with it only more apparent.
“The court, as you know, has the inherent authority to prevent injustice. And as for your point about misconduct, I don’t think I need to remind you about the way you deprived the defense of its right to interview one of your witnesses – one of the supposed victims in this case – before she testified for the prosecution. But, leaving all that aside, I am not going to declare a mistrial. I want to settle this another way. I want you to offer the defendant a plea – one count of manslaughter – and, if he agrees, I will suspend the sentence. The defendant, Mr. Darnell, can then go home.”
“You can’t -!”
“I can, Ms. Clark - and I will!”
“I won’t make that offer – not in a thousand years! And there’s nothing the court can do to make me. A plea offer is strictly a matter of prosecutorial discretion.”
“I had a feeling you might say that, Ms. Clark. And you’re right of course: there is nothing I can do to force you to do what is right and reasonable.”
Clark realized her mistake.
“But you’re not going to -?”
“Declare a mistrial? – No, I’m not. I’m going to leave it instead to the jury’s discretion, now that I can’t rely on yours. Among the other instructions I’m going to give them before they begin deliberations, I’m going to give them one on lesser included offenses. It will be up to the jury to decide whether, if he is guilty of anything, he’s guilty of murder in the first degree or manslaughter in the second. The latter charge, as you know, often results in a sentence of probation instead of prison time.”
Hillary Clark did not doubt for a minute what the jury would do.
“Do you really think the jury is going to let someone who murdered a child just walk away?”
Her eyes lit up as she said it. She liked the way it sounded, the easy way it rolled off the tongue – ‘let someone who murdered a child just walk away’ –; she liked the reaction it produced on that hostile audience of two. It seemed to prove that she had struck a chord. The line kept going round and round in her head, the stark reminder that, on a question this serious, there was only one thing the jury could do. She liked it so much that the last thing she said in chambers was with a slight modification the first thing she said in court.
“Do you really believe – does anyone believe – that someone who murders a child can just walk away? That is the question, the only que
stion you have to decide, because, unlike other murder cases, the defendant in this case has admitted what he did. A child was born alive and the defendant - Adam, or Lethe, or whatever other name he may go by – killed it. He killed it, murdered that child in cold blood, and not satisfied with that, tells you that he did a good thing, that far from being blamed, this murder should be praised. But I for one will not applaud. Nor, I think, will anyone who hasn’t taken leave of their senses.”
Hillary Clark bent forward and tapped her red painted fingernail hard against the railing of the jury box, daring anyone to disagree. Her eye ran from one juror to the next, extracting a silent pledge to do what they had all sworn they would: follow the evidence and reach the only conclusion the evidence allowed.
“Go back to the beginning. Remember what I told you in my opening statement, what I promised you the evidence would prove, and ask yourself if I failed to do anything I said I would. Was there a single witness who didn’t testify the way I had told you he would? But perhaps you’re worried that after a lengthy trial like this, you may not remember what every witness said. Let’s go back to the beginning together and review their testimony.”
For the next hour, never once referring to a note, Hillary Clark summarized the testimony of each of the witnesses she had called to make the case for the prosecution. She left nothing out. There was no distortion, no attempt to emphasize only the strongest points; instead of ignoring a contradiction, she explained it, showed how it was actually consistent with the central argument in the case against the defendant. Talking in a low, confidential tone, pausing frequently to smile when she appeared to stumble over a word – appeared, because it was each time deliberate, a way to make the jury believe that she was as prone to human error as any of them – Hillary Clark told a timeless story of depravity and murder.
“We’re told that we can’t apply the standards of the civilized world to people that haven’t yet been taught the advantages of civilization. We’re told that – and Mr. Darnell tried quite ingeniously to use the prosecution’s own witnesses to do this – that we don’t know enough about these people to know, not only whether the murder of a child was considered a crime under the customs and traditions they might have had, but whether it might not actually have been – if you can believe this! – required.”
Throwing her hands in the air, she turned on Darnell with what appeared to be a warning.
“There is a limit how far anyone should be allowed to go. It’s a dangerous thing to suggest that murder isn’t murder unless you can prove that everyone agrees. What’s next? – Let the murderer decide if he should be convicted?” Watching Darnell a moment longer with an eye filled with contempt and derision, she then turned back to the jury. “That really is the sum and substance of the defendant’s case. He doesn’t say he didn’t do it; he says he did, but that it doesn’t matter, because as the father of a child he doesn’t want he decides whether the child lives or dies. He killed – he murdered – a child, but that is his business and he ought to be left alone. There are no rules, no standards, no requirements of civilized behavior, which can bind him; he has standards of his own – what ‘nature’ tells him, what he knows is right by some instinct the rest of us don’t seem to have!”
Her voice had become harsh, brittle, an echo of revenge. Her dark eyes glittered with eager malice.
“You know - every one of you knows - that what he did was wrong. Look at him, and then remember the girl. You saw the way she looked at him; you saw how much she is still under his spell. She was just a child herself, subject to God knows what kind of strange and bestial practices among that ignorant people, lured away by the promise of something better, a chance to escape the organized promiscuity of that dreadful way of life, caught up in a young girl’s infatuation, ready to give herself as often as he wanted to the man she trusted as her brother. Yes, she consented to what was done to her. Yes, she agreed to share her brother’s bed. But does anyone – does even the defendant, or the defendant’s lawyer – dare to argue that had that happened here, under the laws we fought for to protect the rights of women against violence and abuse, he would not be guilty of rape?”
“Objection!” shouted Darnell as he leaped red-faced from his chair. “This is beyond all tolerance! She can’t be allowed to do this – argue a charge that has been dismissed! Even her own witnesses could not prove it, and now she thinks she can act as if the charge were going to the jury? Your Honor, I’ve seen a lot of things in a courtroom, but never anything like this!”
Judge Pierce brought down her gavel to silence the murmuring of the crowd. Hillary Clark was glaring at her, defiant of anything the judge could do. The judge ignored her insolent smile and turned instead to the jury.
“The court would remind you that when the trial started the defendant was charged with three separate crimes. One of them, the charge of rape, was dismissed at the end of the prosecution’s case because the prosecution had failed to provide sufficient evidence that the crime had been committed. It doesn’t concern you why the court was forced to reach this conclusion, only that the charge has been dismissed. That means, as a matter of law, that the defendant has been ruled not guilty of that crime. In plain English, ladies and gentlemen, it has been decided that the defendant didn’t do it, and it would be a gross dereliction of your duty to assume for any purpose that he did. Your decision with respect to the two remaining charges must be based on other evidence. In the heat of the moment, things get said in a trial that should not be mentioned. In her zeal to make the strongest case she can, Ms. Clark has stepped over the boundary of what is permissible in a closing statement. I’m certain this was inadvertent, and I’m certain,” she said, looking straight at an unrepentant Hillary Clark, “that she won’t do anything like this again - will you Ms. Clark?”
“May I continue, your Honor?”
Evelyn Pierce narrowed her eyes and leaned forward.
“Will you Ms. Clark?”
“No, your Honor,” replied Clark with an air of indifference. She turned quickly back to the jury and went on as if she had not been interrupted.
“The defendant and this underage girl – the girl he calls his sister – had a child. The defense tries to make a point that everyone on that island who was roughly the same age called each other brother or sister because none of them supposedly knew who their parents were. But remember, there was no answer for it when I asked whether it wasn’t true that they could clearly identify their parents, and therefore their real siblings, by how much they looked alike. The defendant knew who were his real brothers and sisters and who were not. He called the girl his sister. I suggest he did not lie. I suggest that he committed incest and that he knew it when he did. I suggest he committed murder when he killed the child produced by this incestuous relationship and I suggest that nothing anyone can say can change that. Murder, ladies and gentlemen, had been murder since Cain slew Abel and there isn’t anyone in this courtroom who doesn’t know it.”
When she was finished, when she told the jury one last time that the evidence was overwhelming and that the murder of a child should never go unpunished, the silence in the courtroom was electric. She sat down, exhausted but with the glow of victory on her cheek, confident that she had left William Darnell no escape. To her astonishment, Darnell appeared to agree.
He waited for a long time before he stirred from his chair. No one is allowed to applaud or make any overt sign of approval after an attorney makes her closing argument, but that did not mean that there was not a palpable sense of emotional intensity after Hillary Clark’s final performance. Darnell sat quietly, swinging his foot back and forth, perfectly relaxed, as if what the prosecutor had just done was the same kind of routine closing he had heard in every case he had taken to trial. The tension in the courtroom began to subside, the silence broken by the sound of shuffling feet as spectators, jammed together on hard wooden benches, shifted from positions that, mesmerized by Hillary Clark’s oration, had been held beyond the
normal terms of endurance. Several of the jurors sank back in their chairs, crossed their arms and began to glance around.
“Mr. Darnell, are you ready?” asked Judge Pierce finally.
Darnell looked up as if mildly surprised. He got to his feet, slowly and to no apparent purpose. He continued to wear a slightly baffled expression as he approached the jury box.
“I’m afraid I’m completely unprepared for this,” he remarked, scratching his head like someone who had just realized that he is in serious trouble. The button on his suit jacket had come loose, perhaps by Darnell’s own design, and was hanging by a thread. He held it between two fingers, twisting it back and forth, a kind of symbol - a talisman - he seemed to say, of the way his case had been picked apart by the sharp-tongued prosecutor with the sharp-pointed nails. “I’m not prepared for this at all.” With one last, rueful glance at the button, he raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t realize until just now, after the prosecutor finished her speech, that there really is no defense to these two charges against the defendant. There is no question now but that he’s guilty of both incest and murder; and if I were you I wouldn’t even waste the time it would take to get back to the jury room to reach that verdict.”
The jurors looked at him in wide-eyed amazement, not sure what to make of it, and, when he turned and began to walk to the empty chair at the counsel table, not sure what they should do.
“I mean what I say,” said Darnell, pausing in his exit to explain. “Just get it over with. Find him guilty. Go home. There isn’t anything to decide – Ms. Clark has done all your thinking for you.” He waved his pale white hand in the air, a gesture of the futility of further argument. “It’s decided.” He took a single step back toward them. His gaze became serious and more intense, challenging them to decide something on their own. “Isn’t it? You were ready to convict him on the spot not five minutes ago. I saw it on your faces. You were transfixed – every one of you – by the prosecution’s rhetoric. She would have had you hang him had she thought to bring a rope. He’s guilty: incest, murder – rape, too, because after all what difference does it make that the prosecution not only could not provide any evidence but their own witness proved it didn’t happen? What difference does anything make when we all know – don’t we? – that he did it.”
