Court of Lies

by Gerry Spence

  Judge Murray: “Well what would you say, Mr. Coker, if Mr. Smithson were equally prejudiced against Mr. Sewell?”

  “I’d say we should punt.”

  “Punt?” the judge asked.

  “Yes, to put it another way, I think he should get the hell off this jury. I don’t think we should have anyone who’s prejudiced for or against anyone.” Coker was playing his game. He thought Smithson would be a Sewell juror for sure.

  “Can you be fair, Mr. Smithson?” Judge Murray asked.

  “Depends on how you define fair,” he said.

  “Yes,” the judge responded. “I’ve been attempting to define that word myself for all these years.”

  Coker was at Smithson again: “You know that your bank’s lawyer and I have cases against each other all the time. I try to stop your foreclosures. And I defend a depositor now and then who you claim has made a fraudulent loan application. You must get a little tired of me?”

  “That would be correct,” Smithson said. “But I have to admit, if the bank was after me, I’d be knocking at your door to defend me.”

  With that, both sides accepted the banker. The judge thought Coker had made a big mistake. Smithson would have power over the other jurors who were doing business with his bank. He’d likely be elected the jury foreman and could guide the jury to a conviction. Yet, on the other hand, if Lillian were acquitted, she might reciprocate with mammoth deposits in his bank.

  No grounds for challenges were uncovered for the piano teacher, Helen Griggsley, or for Mary Lou Livingston, the waitress.

  George Hardesty, the plumber, said he’d worked on the Adams place before they bought it. “If they’d bothered to ask me, I could have told them that their cast-iron pipes was about to go and should have been replaced with copper. But they never asked me.”

  Tom Mosley, the pawnbroker, told Sewell, “I keep my mouth shut on who pawns what for what amount and how often. That’s the way I do business.”

  “Well, you obviously never did business with Lillian Adams or her husband,” Sewell said.

  “I ain’t saying one way or the other. That would be violating a confidentiality.” He aimed his determined frown at Sewell.

  “Have you done business with any of the prospective jurors here?”

  “I ain’t saying.”

  Coker joined the fray: “You’re bound by certain state laws that govern how much interest you can charge, isn’t that true?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Mr. Sewell enforces those laws, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “I challenge Mr. Mosley,” Coker said.

  Judge Murray interposed: “Mr. Sewell enforces the laws against all of us, Mr. Coker. If you or I commit a crime, it’s likely Mr. Sewell’s duty to prosecute. Your challenge on that ground is overruled.”

  In chambers, Judge Murray asked Mosley if he’d done any business with any prospective juror. “How come you ask me that?” he complained. “You never asked Smith, the banker, those questions. And I’m just the poor man’s bank.”

  “I don’t ask the questions,” the judge said. “Counsel does.”

  “Well, I ain’t answering those questions for you or nobody else.”

  “I withdraw any questions about his business customers,” Sewell said.

  “I join,” Coker said. Mosley walked out of the judge’s chambers and took his seat in the jury box, his chin nearly pointed at the ceiling.

  * * *

  At the noon recess, Jenny Winkley brought the judge a hamburger and some fries and stood over him like an unyielding mother until he took the first bite. “You know the trouble you get into when you don’t keep your blood sugar up.”

  Shortly after lunch the lawyers on both sides waived any unexercised peremptory challenges—each side being entitled to ten—and twelve jurors and two alternates were sworn by the clerk to try the case. Of the original twelve, only Smithson, Biernstein, Mosley, Livingston, Witherspoon, Smith, and Griggsley had survived the lawyers’ challenges. Why any of them were still on the jury, the judge couldn’t guess. He would have gotten rid of the banker, Smithson, and the “people’s banker,” Mosley, as well. He believed that bankers habitually distrust people. Biernstein, in the real estate business, was too closely connected to the power structure of Jackson Hole.

  And the piano teacher, Griggsley, was a mystery to the judge until he suddenly realized that his animosity toward the woman wasn’t toward her. It was toward his childhood piano teacher, whom he’d despised. She would whack his fingers when he missed a chord, and he’d missed them frequently.

  The challenged jurors were replaced with other citizens, most of whom didn’t read a newspaper, and whose histories were as bland as skim milk. The judge told Betsy that evening, “Some jurors have been hiding so long in their personal gopher holes that the holes have become their whole world.”

  Four of the last six called were excused, leaving Amos Rogers, the blacksmith, Bertie Hartnett, the secretary to the school district, and Josephine Heller, an unemployed teacher.

  Three more prospective jurors were called, along with two alternates. Two of the last three, Manuel Ortega, a plumber, and William Carter, a mechanic, were seated. The alternates were Matt Pollack, a ranch hand, and Symphony Finder, a homemaker.

  When all the personality components of the seated jurors and the lawyers were gathered and dumped into the psychic soup, no rational analysis could predict the collective predisposition of the jury. If the judge had to guess, it would be for a conviction. At the primal core of the human beast was an untethered jealousy of those who by reason of luck or even hard work had scored above them, and now luck had given the juror the chance to even things up against the likes of Lillian Adams.

  Before the judge called a recess, he spoke to the chosen jurors. His voice suggested that even his vocal cords were giving up. “It’s hard work to find justice,” he said with a distant look. “I mean, what is justice? You can’t see it. You can’t touch it. No one can agree on what it is. What’s justice for one person is injustice for another. Just thinking about justice can make a person tired, don’t you agree, counsel?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Sewell said. “But it will be very plain to see in this case.”

  “Plain to the likes of you, but not to anybody else,” Coker retorted.

  The judge slammed down his gavel hard. A long silence followed. The crowd in the courtroom waited. Finally, the judge said, “What is truth? You must look for the truth here.” He was gazing out to the fringes of the firmament. “We cannot guess at truth, or we shall never find it.” His voice was dreamy. “But we can never be sure of it. The law says the truth you find must be beyond a reasonable doubt.” He looked down at his desktop, expecting an answer. He waited.

  Jenny Winkley hurried to him with a piece of paper and pretended to ask a question concerning something she was pointing to. Instead, she whispered, “Are you all right, Judge? Has your blood sugar gone to the basement again?” He seemed not to hear her.

  The judge droned on: “What is truly reasonable, as in ‘reasonable doubt’? And how can doubt be reasonable or unreasonable? And beyond—as in ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’—how far beyond? Two city blocks, fourteen feet, beyond a doubt that the sun will rise tomorrow? I am confused already. But then, this jury will be wiser than I.”

  “I object to this volunteered, irrelevant rhetoric,” Sewell said, rising to his feet. “The law is clear and undisputed. All we are required to prove is that the defendant, Lillian Adams, is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  “Yes, of course, Mr. Sewell, I quite agree.” The judge shrugged his shoulders, as if any fool would agree.

  Then more silence.

  Sensing that the judge was in need of assistance, Benjamin Breslin, the clerk, offered lifeless words: “Your Honor, before we recess until tomorrow morning, do you want to admonish the jury?”

  In a voice on the margin of a mumble, the judge said, “You are not to read newspapers, or
listen to the radio concerning this case, and you are not to discuss this case with anyone, including each other.” He gave the clerk his best “Does that satisfy you?” look and dismissed the jury until the following morning.

  * * *

  As usual, the judge drove to Hardy Tillman’s tire store and filling station for his evening libation. The shelving on the back wall of the station was composed of twelve-inch planks filled with gallon cans of antifreeze and quart cans of motor oil of various brands. The concrete floor was black with old oil and smelled like rubber, grease, and gasoline.

  “One lives by habit, wouldn’t you say, Hardy?” The judge eased himself stiffly into the worn-through overstuffed chair across from his friend.

  “What you talking about? You okay?” Hardy opened the old Sears refrigerator, pulled out a beer, and handed it to the judge. Hardy had scars on both eyebrows. His nose had been broken multiple times and had been patched and repatched, so that it bulged at the top and fell off precipitously to the left. His coveralls, laden with grease as thick as cowhide, were evidence of where he’d had spent most of his life—under the bellies of uncounted motor vehicles.

  The judge looked at his bottle of beer to absorb its answers. “I mean, you live today like you lived yesterday, which means that life becomes a meaningless redundancy.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” Hardy said, “whatever that means.” He lifted his bottle. “Here’s to Lillian Adams.” Then thinking better of it, he said, “I suppose you can’t drink to her, you being the judge and all.”

  The judge took a long draw from the bottle. From the time they were kids in the schoolhouse across Fish Creek, he and Hardy had remained close friends. Hardy had been good at fixing things, shooting hoops, and could whip any kid in his grade and most of the older kids, as well. In those days, Hardy and the judge enjoyed a sort of unspoken pact: Hardy was better at fistfighting than the judge, and the judge excelled in the “book stuff,” as Hardy called it. They’d supported each other along the way as circumstance required, and remained close friends ever since.

  “You got that jury pretty well confused on that ‘reasonable doubt’ business,” Hardy said. “It was pretty smart the way you was working to get a hung jury for Lillian.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the judge said.

  “You were talking about justice and all. I say it wouldn’t be justice for a woman like her to be took out of circulation.”

  “Aren’t you a little too old for those kind of thoughts?”

  “A man is only as old as his genitals,” Hardy said. “That being the measure, I’m just short a sixteen.”

  “Tell me more,” the judge said, meaning the opposite.

  Then Hardy said, “There’s something a little bit strange about a rich bastard like old Adams who has himself a couple billion and then comes to a pissy-ass little burg like Jackson Hole to live. He ain’t got no friends here, and they’re living in that old log house up on the hill that’s been falling apart for Lord knows how long. I say something a little queer was going on there.”

  “Lillian convinced him to build a brewery here. That’s what was going on.”

  “Well, I suppose.” Hardy gave the judge a long look. “You feeling all right about what’s going on there in your court?”

  The judge was silent. What could he say to his old friend? Should he say it appeared that Sewell was winning? Should he say it would kill Betsy if he let that happen, and that he wouldn’t know how he could bear it himself—that he had to stop the conviction, but he didn’t know if he could?

  “You got to get her out of there,” Hardy said. “The world is better off with them kind running free.” Then he looked over at the judge to apologize and saw that his old friend seemed to have fallen asleep. When it was time for him to go, he touched the judge lightly on the shoulder, but the judge had been awake. When he opened his eyes, they were sharply focused—on what, Hardy couldn’t tell.

  “Betsy will be waiting supper for me,” the judge said.

  CHAPTER 14

  IN CHAMBERS, JUDGE Murray slipped his judicial robe over his blue flannel winter shirt. No tie. He brushed the folds of his robe over his “golden-age belly,” as he called it. With both hands, he smoothed back the sparse remnants of a once-thick bush of hair, stroked the undisciplined hairs of his gray beard, entered the courtroom from the side door, and faced the three steps upward to the bench as the packed courtroom watched. He took the steps with an imposed steadiness on unsteady legs.

  Benjamin Breslin hit his gavel and intoned, “All rise.”

  The dutiful stood in unison like churchgoers about to sing “Rock of Ages.” Joe Morris, a veteran, struggled up on his artificial legs and worn crutches, both legs left at the Anzio beachhead during World War II.

  The judge ordered the audience seated, then settled into his chair. The small reading lamp on his bench reflected light across the long, deep valleys of his forehead and the ravines that cut through his cheeks. His mouth was wide and his ears liberal. The weary light reflected a marbled image of an old man whose features lent authority to his thin face.

  Squatting lamps with green shades provided thin yellow illumination on each attorney’s table. At Coker’s table, the lamp reflected a flat, lifeless light on the face of Lillian Adams. Her face was carved in white marble, like a statue at the hands of some nameless ancient Greek sculptor—stonelike, yes, immobile and without expression.

  The judge glanced down at the woman whom he’d known since she was a child. He wouldn’t have recognized her. He saw the early lines of pain that had begun to form around her eyes—pain from the loss of her husband or from the relentless stabbing of guilt?

  While the courtroom waited, the judge began reading the indictment to himself. His lips moved silently at the grinding words of the law that described first-degree murder—a killing with malice aforethought—that Lillian Adams had first planned and then intentionally killed her husband.

  The judge began to feel heady. His brain, like an undisciplined hound, had run off. He kept trying to call it back. He motioned to the clerk to come to the bench. He heard himself whisper, “Are we not all waiting for that dreadful moment, Mr. Clerk?”

  “What dreadful moment, Your Honor?” the clerk asked. He reached for the water pitcher on the judge’s bench and filled the judge’s glass. He heard the ambient rustling of the restless crowd impatient for the trial to begin. “Should I call a recess, Your Honor?”

  “The murder demon lurks insidiously in all of us, Mr. Clerk, and we deny it with all due vehemence.” He looked down at the prosecutor, Haskins Sewell, who glared up at him with a jaw-tight sneer. More than once the judge had said to himself, I ought to kill that man for the good of society. Of course, he would never utter such words aloud, not even to Betsy. Everyone suffered unspeakable fantasies from time to time—fantasies that provided a healthy means by which to render harmless the ever-lurking murder demons.

  “You remember what Sewell did to old Joe Skivington?”

  The clerk stared at the judge without answering.

  “Sewell charged that poor man with a fraud he hadn’t committed, and Sewell knew it—you remember Old Joe, who was treasurer of the board of the Farmers’ Co-op.” The judge’s eyes were fastened on Sewell. “Old Joe believed that a man’s reputation was all a man had, and he said even if he were acquitted by the jury, he’d never get his good name back. He shot himself in the head, Mr. Clerk. You remember that.”

  “I remember the case, Your Honor.”

  “The board audited his books, and they were immaculate to the penny,” the judge said.

  “I heard that, Your Honor, but we have a case here to try and—”

  “Sewell had that audit in his possession all along. He was fighting Old Joe to get on the co-op board. I remember it all. Sewell murdered the man. And when Joe’s widow put in for compensation, Sewell contested it, and she had to go on welfare with their three kids.”

  With obvious concer
n, the clerk said, “Your Honor, is there something wrong?”

  The judge, annoyed, looked down at the clerk. “Something wrong? Yes, of course there’s something wrong,” he said. “I should have thrown Sewell’s case against Old Joe out of court. I could have, you know. I could have,” he repeated. “But, Mr. Clerk, there was nothing on the record that would allow me to dump the case. Sewell made a perfect record.”

  “We could talk about this later, Your Honor,” the clerk said. “The people are waiting.”

  “They will have to wait a long time for justice,” the judge said.

  “Your Honor, I’m going to call a recess.” The clerk turned to the audience. “We will stand in recess until tomorrow morning at nine A.M.” The clerk started to help the judge down from the bench, but the judge rejected the clerk’s hands. “How are you feeling, Your Honor?”

  “I feel fine, Benjamin,” the judge said. He patted the clerk on the arm. “I feel very fine.” As the crowd of onlookers left the courtroom, the judge continued to sit at his roost on the bench.

  My God, the judge thought. I can smell—actually smell—the history of this courtroom. He shook his head in disbelief and felt the pulse in his wrist to make sure he was alive. “Yes, Benjamin, I can actually smell the lawyers who fought their battles in this courtroom. Can’t you smell their sweat and their foul cigar breath? Surely you can smell them, Benjamin. The jurors smelled, too, and the accused—oh, Benjamin—the poor accused! I can smell that hideous odor when the jury pronounced its sentence of death. That odor can never be expunged from a courtroom. Never. Surely you can smell that, Benjamin.”

  The clerk looked hard at the judge and coughed nervously.

  “You can draw the names of the jurors in the morning,” the judge said.

  He carefully stepped down from the bench and turned toward his chambers.

  “The jury has already been selected, Your Honor,” Breslin said.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” the judge replied. He took a step toward his chambers. “We should ask the commissioners for funds in next year’s budget to repaint the courtroom—that ghastly smell in here, you know.”