by Gerry Spence
“Do you wish to cross-examine?” Chief Justice Beasley asked.
No answer.
“Are you able to proceed?” Chief Justice Beasley asked, his voice betraying concern.
At last, Judge Murray looked up at the justices. “Mr. Sewell claimed he had a witness who heard Lillian Adams tell Sylvia Huntley that she, Lillian Adams ‘should kill the son of a bitch,’ referring to her late husband.” Judge Murray stopped to gather his next words. “In short, if Mr. Sewell had such a witness, who was he? He refused to answer. With the court’s permission, I will ask him that question now.”
Before the chief justice responded, Judge Murray turned to Sewell, who by this time was seated at his table. “Who was this phantom witness, Mr. Sewell?”
Sewell was quick to respond. “I represented to you then, and I do so now, that the identity of the witness is confidential, and that I had then, and I have now, a good-faith basis for asking that question of Ms. Huntley.”
Chief Justice Beasley scowled down. “You either did or did not have a good-faith basis for the question, Mr. Prosecutor. Might you not reveal the identity of the witness to the court?”
“It is confidential.”
“It may be confidential, Mr. Sewell, but that does not make it privileged,” Chief Justice Beasley said. “We tell each other things every day on a confidential basis. But in a court of law, unless there’s an established legal privilege, the fact that a conversation was confidential does not prevent this court from inquiring into it.”
“I represent to the court that a good-faith basis existed for my question. That should be sufficient. I am an officer of the court.”
“No, Mr. Sewell, the prosecutor has no more protection from revealing confidential communications than any other citizen. What was the good-faith basis for your question to Sylvia Huntley? Who was this supposed witness?”
Sewell looked up at the judges for a long time, and finally, like a petulant child, he said, “I refuse to reveal the source of my information.”
“In that case, Mr. Sewell, when you return to the trial, you are precluded from making any inquiry, directly or indirectly, that deals directly or indirectly with the testimony of your claimed confidential witness, do you understand?”
Sewell didn’t answer.
Chief Justice Beasley turned to Judge Murray. “You may continue to inquire.”
“I would first like the prosecutor sworn,” Judge Murray said.
“I object,” Sewell said. “I’m the prosecutor, not the witness.”
“Yes, of course,” Chief Justice Beasley said. “But here at the Wyoming Supreme Court we follow what we have colloquially referred to as our ‘bathtub rule’—that is to say, all witnesses are immersed in the same bathtub when we are scrubbing for the truth, as it were. Please take the witness stand, Mr. Sewell.”
Sewell looked at Judge Murray with a killer’s eye. Then he walked in snappish steps to the stand, where the judge and Sewell changed places.
“Referring to the night of Mr. Adams’s death,” Judge Murray began.
Sewell waited.
“That night, Lillian Adams had a conversation in the drugstore with her best friend, Sylvia Huntley?”
Sewell nodded, his jaw set, his eyes hard as river rocks.
“And you claim that you had a confidential source who heard Lillian Adams then and there say to Sylvia Huntley that she, Lillian Adams, ‘should kill the son of a bitch,’ referring to her late husband, isn’t that true?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Coker demanded to know who your claimed witness was who supposedly heard Mrs. Adams make such a statement?”
“Yes.”
“And you refused to tell him?”
“Yes. It was told to me in confidence by my source.”
“But in truth, no such witness existed except as a fiction that you attempted to fraudulently foist on the court, isn’t that true?”
“No, it is not true,” Sewell said.
“It was all made up by you, isn’t that true?”
“No,” Sewell barked back.
“Will you tell the chief justice in private who the source of your information was?”
“No, I will not.”
“Very well, I have no further questions of this witness or of myself.”
“Do you have anything further?” Justice Beasley asked Sewell.
Without answering Sewell stepped down from the witness stand and took his seat at his table.
“The court will stand in recess for ten minutes,” Justice Beasley said.
Timothy Coker hurried to Judge Murray’s table, where the judge sat alone, waiting for the return of the judges. “Sewell’s so-called confidential source was bogus bullshit, and you exposed his lying ass,” Coker said.
“If they don’t disbar me here, maybe we could get together again, Timmy,” the judge replied.
“You still don’t know what’s going on,” Coker said. “You’re about to get good news.” He walked back and took his seat by Lillian.
Shortly, the judges returned. Chief Justice Beasley cleared his throat to deliver the opinion of the court.
“During this recess we’ve come to a decision.” He turned to Haskins Sewell with an air of exhausted patience. “We’ve given this matter more attention than it deserves, Mr. Sewell. It appears that you’ve knowingly taken a set of innocent facts and have presented them to us as evidence of Judge Murray’s wrongdoing.
“However”—the justice cleared his throat again—“it is clear to the court that such enmity exists between you and Judge Murray that this case cannot be concluded with all proper safeguards of due process. We’ve considered replacing you with another prosecutor. But there is not sufficient time for that. Therefore, we have decided that we should replace you, Judge Murray, with Judge Homer Little of Platte County, who advised us by telephone during our recess that he can take over the trial of this case immediately.
“We further order that the contempt orders against Mr. Sewell be vacated in order to ensure a speedy and adequate trial for the state, reserving, however, the right of this court to intervene at any time as may be required should the prosecutor create grounds for disciplinary action.
“We finally find that the petition for the removal of Judge Murray is denied, but we appoint Judge Little to carry on as the judge in this case, not because of any improper conduct by Judge Murray, but solely to expedite the trial of Mrs. Adams, who is entitled to a fair and speedy disposition of her case.”
With that, Chief Justice Beasley struck his gavel, and the justices exited the courtroom in single file, black robes billowing behind them like black angels.
As Haskins Sewell walked past Judge Murray, he spit the words from the side of his mouth: “See you in court, Your Honor.” Sewell began to swagger slightly, caught himself, and straightened himself at the shoulders. The courtroom carpet protected against the sound of his tromping feet.
Judge Murray sat dazed.
The supreme court’s order left him naked, dangling dead on the tree of innocence. The court had just adjudicated that he was guiltless, but at the same time, it took him off the case and left him to the mercy of Sewell, who would call him to the witness stand and, with other poisoned questions, chop him to bits, until there’d be nothing left but his parched old tattered hide. And this new judge, this Homer Little, was known across the state as a nice but lily-livered jurist who, on his best day, could never handle the likes of Sewell—not for a fractured minute.
The judge looked over at Lillian Adams. She started toward him. But Timothy Coker stepped in front her and said, “You can’t talk to anyone, much less Judge Murray. He’s now going to be called as a witness against you.”
CHAPTER 32
THE JUDGE CALLED Betsy from Cheyenne. She was hysterical. “Where are you? What did they do to you? The sheriff’s office won’t tell me. I tried to call Tim Coker. I couldn’t find him. Are you all right? Why didn’t you call me? Have you eaten?”
&n
bsp; He couldn’t answer her questions fast enough. He couldn’t answer them at all. He couldn’t remember what he’d told her. He found his way to his pickup, and “the old hunk of junk,” as he lovingly called it, proved to be eager to get home again and started right off. He scratched aside a small opening through the frost on the windshield, stuck his nose up to the glass, peered as best he could through the peephole, and put his foot hard on the accelerator. If he was going to die, well, a man should die at home.
Somewhere down the road, he entered into a zone where the voices sounded like Chief Justice Beasley’s, and then like Sewell’s, and the voices echoed back and forth across the crumbling walls of his mind, and he couldn’t make sense of them.
Finally, he pulled the pickup over by the side of the road and slept—for how long, he didn’t know. He wakened to an aching, shivering body. His old bones felt brittle and breakable, like icicles hanging from a roof. His hand shook uncontrollably as he tried to turn the ignition key. Eventually, he got the pickup started, then pulled it back onto the highway.
A couple of hours later, a deer crossed the road. He slammed on the brakes and his foot missed the pedal, but the deer somehow escaped. Everything and everybody was out to get him—Sewell, the judges, the law, even the deer. The snow on the road had turned to ice.
You have no choice, he said to himself. You must fight Sewell with everything you have.
The old truck rattled on.
And now that his decision had been made, he felt resolved and at peace. He sensed a momentary return of his strength. Yet more than once he’d caught himself nearly driving off the road, and from time to time he had to pull the old truck to the side and let sleep take over. Hours later—he couldn’t remember how long—and after an interminable wrestling with the invading ghouls, he turned into the lane leading to his cabin.
A porcupine waddled across the road. He slowed nearly to a stop and let it cross. He knew one thing. A certain truth had risen to the top of his madness: He could trust no one in the judicial system. His courthouse was a whorehouse. All had their agendas, and they’d sell themselves to achieve them. The only persons in the world he could trust were Betsy and Hardy Tillman, and, yes, he could trust old Horatio.
When he drove up to the cabin, Betsy came rushing out of the front door. She helped him out of the truck. The walkway was slick and his legs wobbly. Horatio was wiggle-wagging at the judge and pushing at him with his wet nose. The judge put his arm around Betsy’s strong shoulders and, one step at a time, they finally made it into the kitchen. He collapsed into his chair next to the stove.
“You look awful,” she said. “My God, what did they do to you down there?”
He didn’t answer.
She tried to feed him some chicken soup, but he was too tired to eat. She helped him to the bedroom and off with his boots and his suit and pulled the covers over him. He was unable to get up for supper. The next morning, he was able to take half a bowl of oatmeal, and he drank a few sips of hot chocolate.
When he was finally able to tell Betsy what happened, her response was predictable. “That son of a bitch, Sewell,” she said. “I ought to kill him myself. He’s not going to do that to you or to Lillian.”
He slept the rest of the day.
The following morning, Betsy coaxed the judge to eat a boiled egg and a slice of toast. The thought of returning to the courthouse, where he’d have to face all the courthouse hens, intimidated him. But a man had to face his fear. Such is the definition of courage, and in these, his last days, he thought he must be courageous.
The work had piled up on his desk—motions to be heard, orders to be drafted, lawyers playing their games—it was all a game. The courthouse crew would be watching him, a judge who’d been thrown off his case by the great judges in Cheyenne, and a judge who’d soon be shredded into particles of raw flesh by the prosecutor, Sewell.
On his way to court, he stopped at Hardy’s. As was his habit, the judge flopped down into his old ripped-up chair. He could hear the air hoses popping, the sound of men wrestling with the steel rims of tires, the laughter of workingmen, and Hardy’s shrill yeoman’s voice barking orders. Too early to drink, but he needed strength. He pulled a Horace Adams out of the old refrigerator and opened it. He propped his feet up on a couple of old tires and took a long draw on his beer. When Hardy opened the door, he examined the judge like a doctor searching for symptoms.
“I hear them judges in Cheyenne threw your ass off the case.” He pulled out a beer for himself. “Jesus,” he said. “What the hell’s the matter with them old petrified stumps up there?”
“They said I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Well, you kept putting the boot to Sewell, an’ he finally got ya. I always said you should never kick a fresh turd on a hot day. But I ain’t criticizing you none.” The judge took another swig and slumped farther down in his chair. They were silent for a while. His bottle empty, the judge got up to go.
Hardy walked over and patted the judge on the shoulder, which was as close as Hardy Tillman could come to expressing such an uncomfortable emotion as affection. “I wish I knew whose ass to kick, and I’d do it for you.” He took the last swig of his own beer. “Maybe I’ll start with that sack a moldy donkey shit, Sewell.”
* * *
That night, the judge was in bed and asleep in the cabin when a little past midnight the phone began to ring. He stumbled over a footstool, smashed his shins against the coffee table, and screamed into the phone, “Who is it?”
It was Hardy. “You’d better come down here and get me out. They got me in here fer something I never done. All I done was defend myself against your friend Haskins Sewell—”
“Don’t say anything more, Hardy. They’re recording whatever you’re saying. I’ll be down as soon as I can get my truck going.”
Twenty below. The old truck ground away and begged to be left alone, took a last feeble, frozen breath, and quit. The judge stumbled through the snow, and from the kitchen, with Betsy’s help, he strung out the battery charger cables, opened the hood, found the battery, checked the polarity, and hooked up the alligator clamps. Betsy put some wood in the stove and brewed a pot of coffee. When he finally got his truck going and arrived at the jail, it was past three in the morning.
He was still the judge. He ordered Hardy released on his personal bond and waited for the night clerk to process the paperwork. At about five in the morning, the jailer, Gilbert Prosser, a retired postal worker, ambled down the corridor with his prisoner. “Here’s your friend, Your Honor,” he said.
Without preface, Hardy said, “These retarded peckerheads got me charged with something I never done.”
“We’ll talk later, Hardy,” the judge said.
They climbed into the judge’s truck. The Big Chief Café was just opening. They stopped for a cup of coffee.
“All I done was go down to the sheriff’s office, looking around fer Sewell. He hangs out there all the time. I seen his car parked out front, and I waited in my car until he come out of the sheriff’s office, and I just sort of walked up to him friendly like to have me a little conversation with him.”
“Like what, for Christ sake, Hardy?”
“Well, I says to old Sewell, ‘I’d like to tell you a little story.’ And he is trying to walk past me, and I says, ‘Just don’t be such an impolite bastard. You’re a public servant, and I got me a little story to tell you,’ and he stopped in his tracks and give me a dirty look, like I was nothing but pure dog shit.”
Hardy took a swig of black coffee and continued, “I says, ‘Once there was a DA who thought his shit didn’t stink, an’ who got too big for his britches. And you know what happened to him?’ Old Sewell jus’ stood there, and then he tried to push me out of the way. Now note,” Hardy said with all due emphasis, “he pushed me. I never touched him. So when he pushed me, I had no other way to go except to kick his ass in self-defense. So that there is just what I done.”
“Jesus Christ, what did y
ou do to Sewell, Hardy?”
“Like I told you, I kicked his ass. I reached up and grabbed hold of his ear, and then I led him around real easy like, him following me like a pup on a leash, and when his ass was to me, well, I gave it a good hard kick.”
“And then what, for Christ sake?”
“I just turned him back around, and he was looking real scared, and he starts running back to the sheriff’s office. But I caught him because I had to defend myself, you know. A guy like him might be going for a gun or something. Anyway, I stops him, and I grabs both ears, and I pulls him up close to me, eye-to-eye, and I says, ‘Now, you walking prick with ears, if I hear anything more about what you’re doing to a certain friend of mine whose name I shall not mention, I am going kick yer ass up so high, you’ll have to take your hat off to shit, you understand?’ An’ I jerked both of his ears real good so he’d understand. That there is all I done, and I done it hundred percent out of self-defense, as you can plainly see.”
CHAPTER 33
IT WAS NEARING five in the afternoon. Finally, Jenny Winkley tapped on the door to his office, and when there was no answer, she hit the door with her fists, and when there still was no answer, she hollered, “Are you all right in there?” He’d locked the door and fallen asleep on the old couch after his long night with Hardy.
“I’m ready to kill,” the judge finally muttered.
“What’s the matter with you?” she harped. “What did you eat for breakfast?”
“I am speaking metaphorically,” the judge finally heard himself reply.
He sat up and ran his fingers though his hair. He was more exhausted than ever. He realized he was in his chambers. Yes, he was the judge, and he had duties—his cancerous docket had continued to grow and threatened to consume him. The supreme court had stripped him of his powers but not of his duties.
“What are you doing in there?” she demanded.
