by Gerry Spence
Finally, Coker said in a quiet voice that carried the strained sounds of his decision, “I can still win this case on reasonable doubt. A lot of people in town don’t believe you did it. Some may be on this jury. Huffsmith lied. Twelve citizens aren’t going to convict you when the only eyewitness is a confessed liar. I can at least hang this jury.” He hit the table with a decisive thud of his fist. “And I’m not going to put you on the stand.”
“I want to take the stand,” the judge said.
“You never killed anybody, and you know it. A false confession under oath is perjury.”
“Yes, perjury,” the judge said.
“Your life is at stake, Judge. Don’t you understand that?”
“I have always said one must trust the jury.”
“You’re having another one of those spells, Judge.”
The judge’s eyes were closed, and he was rubbing his forehead, as if in deep thought.
Coker stood with his hands on his hips, searching the judge’s face.
Judge Little returned to the bench. “Call your first witness, counsel,” he ordered.
Judge Murray labored to his feet. Coker jumped up to stop him.
“I’m going to testify,” the judge said. He walked with faltering steps to the witness stand. He was wearing his blue jail coveralls. Judge Little administered the oath and gave Judge Murray a quick, anemic smile and looked away. The judge settled stiffly into the witness chair and waited.
Coker looked as if he were witnessing the dead walking. Finally, he took refuge in his standard preliminary questions. “Judge Murray, you know that under the Constitution of the United States you are not required to testify here. Why are you testifying?”
“I want the jurors to know the truth. Jurors don’t often get the whole truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that by the time the lawyers get through with a witness, it’s often hard to sort out what’s true from what isn’t.” His voice was clear but distant.
“You heard Deputy Huffsmith say he saw you at the scene of this homicide just seconds after he heard the blast of a gun?”
“Yes, I heard that testimony.”
“Was that testimony the truth?”
“Yes, it was.”
Coker, smashed back in profound shock, finally half-recovered and said, “You must have misunderstood me, Judge Murray. I asked you if Deputy Huffsmith’s testimony was true—that he saw you at the scene just seconds after he heard the blast of the gun. And what is your answer?”
“I have never known the deputy not to tell the truth as he sees it.”
Coker picked up a file and pretended to read something while he desperately grasped for his next question. Under oath, his client had just admitted to murder. The case was over. John Murray’s life was over. And Betsy’s.
Finally, Judge Little interrupted his silence. “Do you wish a recess, counsel?”
“No, Your Honor. Judge Murray has these spells. Mr. Breslin, the clerk of court, has witnessed a number of these from time to time, as have I.” The clerk nodded his head in vigorous agreement. “How are you feeling, Judge Murray?”
“I feel just fine.”
“Where are you at this moment?”
“I am on the witness stand in my courtroom.”
“Why are you on the stand?”
“To see that justice is done.”
“You previously pled not guilty to murder. Have you changed your mind?”
“Are you listening carefully?” the judge asked.
Coker heard himself ask, “What caused you to change your testimony?”
“Deputy Huffsmith was right,” Judge Murray said. “Tina might get well. She shouldn’t be blamed for a crime she didn’t commit.”
Coker heard himself mutter the ultimate question. “Did you kill Haskins Sewell?”
“Of course,” the judge said matter-of-factly.
“Indeed!” Coker could think of nothing else to say. Finally, in shock that had invaded all reason, he heard himself ask the “why question” that every first-year law student is taught never to ask. “Why did you kill him?”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“How can you say that murder is the right thing to do?”
“Sewell was the incarnate of evil. He was the devil’s agent, and he could not be stopped.”
“You are utterly delusional,” Coker was finally able to say. He turned to Judge Little. “Please, Your Honor! Judge Murray is obviously a very sick man. I ask that he be examined immediately.”
Judge Little sat frozen, his eyes wide, his lips tight white lines.
Without a further question, Judge Murray continued, “For nearly forty years I watched that man destroy innocent people. I saw him take sadistic pleasure from crushing helpless families. After he had me arrested for everything in the book, he was about to become our judge—a position that would have brought untold misery and injustice to Jackson Hole. I had no choice.”
“Come now, Judge,” Coker pleaded. “I’ve known you for decades. You wouldn’t even kill a mouse.”
“I protected the people from him as best I could,” Judge Murray said. “When he charged me with perjury as a common criminal, he destroyed my reputation and the people’s faith in me, and I could no longer protect them.”
“They were false charges. Everyone knew that,” Coker said.
“No. Everyone did not know that.” His eyes had taken on a strange light. “The people have been taught that the prosecutor keeps them safe from crime. Sewell’s charges turned me into an inveterate criminal in their eyes and left me powerless to protect them.”
“You have been through too much. You’re an old man, and you’ve been in jail all these months. You are—”
Judge Murray interrupted him. “Sewell was running against me for the judgeship and would have won. It was all over—for me and for the people.”
“Yes, but…”
“After he became the judge, who would save the people? They are my people.”
“Judge Murray, you are quite ill. You’ve been taken over by one of your spells.”
“Yes, I am ill,” the judge said. “I never thought I could kill any living thing.” His voice cracked, and he looked as if shaken, his bones would scatter across the floor. “Now you need to haul me off as the law provides and dispose of me.”
Coker looked to Judge Little again. “Judge, please. This man is delusional.”
Judge Little was transfixed by Judge Murray.
“Judge, please,” Coker implored.
Coker turned back to his witness. “Judge Murray, you were sworn to uphold the law. You have always upheld the law.”
“Yes, the law too often fails to do right, and when it failed, I, as a judge, failed, as well.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying? How can you testify to such nonsense?” Coker threw his words at the judge as if to awaken him.
“Justice must find ways to trump the law.”
“After these nearly forty years, you’re now claiming you are above the law? That is utterly insane.”
“No,” Judge Murray said. “Insanity in the law is when one doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong. I know the difference. It’s the law that is insane. The law doesn’t recognize the difference between right and wrong.”
“You are truly insane,” Coker said in a near-whisper.
“When the law fails us, our responsibilities are not diminished,” the judge said.
“Well then, listen to what you have repeatedly ruled over your whole life—that no one is above the law, that were it otherwise, we would become a lawless nation.” Coker turned again to Judge Little. “You see, Your Honor, he is very ill.”
The jurors were leaning forward in their chairs, some with eyes wide in apprehension, some with eyes squinted in dismay. The woman in front on the far left was holding on to the railing. Some, with nothing else to grasp, clenched their hands tightly.
Judge Mur
ray spoke again in a low, far-off voice, “The law has a moral duty to protect the people, failing which the people must protect themselves.”
Coker said, “I have heard quite enough, Judge Murray. You have forgotten who you are. You are a judge.”
“It is one thing to be a judge. It is quite another thing to be a human being.”
Judge Murray then got up from the witness chair and walked back to the counsel table and sat down. Coker sat down beside him and gazed at the table’s top, his jaw slack, his eyes downcast.
Finally, Judge Little came alive and hit his gavel to get Coker’s attention. “Do you have further questions, counsel?”
“No,” Coker said in a barely audible voice, his head still down.
Headley rose slowly, tentatively to cross-examine. He took in the judge as if to assure himself that the man hadn’t descended into some kind of dangerous, irretrievable madness. Finally, he reached out with a careful question while Judge Murray was still seated next to Coker. “Judge Murray, did I hear you correctly, that you intentionally killed Haskins Sewell?”
“Yes, you did,” the judge said in a clear, convincing voice.
“When did you decide to do that?”
“I had been thinking about it for some time.”
“You want this jury to convict you?”
“I want them to do their duty.”
Betsy Murray hollered from the front row, where she’d been seated, “He’s sick! Can’t you see he’s sick? He’s very sick.”
“Sit down,” Judge Little said to Betsy. He slammed his gavel.
“I’ll never sit down,” she said. “He’s sick! Can’t everyone see that?” She started to run up to her husband, but before she was able to clear her way past other seated spectators, both bailiffs moved in to stop her.
The lawyers’ final arguments were the shortest in the annals of Wyoming jurisprudence. Headley began and ended by saying, “I have no argument to make. I join the defendant, Judge John P. Murray, in asking you to do your duty.”
Coker got up. He didn’t approach the jury as was his habit. Instead, he stood behind Judge Murray and made his statement to the jurors with a hand on each of the judge’s shoulders.
“I have my hands on a great man. I am humbled to represent him. I have never known him to bring injury intentionally to anyone. I have only known him to do the right thing even when he could have benefited by doing the wrong thing. We cannot believe his testimony here. By his conduct, he has shown us how ill he is. I wish I could ask you to love him as I love him.” Timothy Coker sat down, grabbed the judge’s hand, and held it like a son holding the hand of a father who was in mortal danger.
The courtroom emptied.
* * *
After the verdict, members of the press interviewed some of the jurors. Several thought that Haskins Sewell had had it coming, no matter who had killed him. Some thought that Deputy Huffsmith was an unreliable witness, that he had changed his story for reasons of his own, and they couldn’t convict anyone whose story bounced around as Huffsmith’s had.
Others thought that the judge was protecting someone he cared about—most thought it was the girl, Tina—that she was young and had a possible life in front of her, while the judge was old and near the end of his.
One juror argued, “That Tina was like a granddaughter to the judge. Everybody knows that. And she is one crazy bitch.” Another juror chimed in, “Yeah, and she hated Sewell. And yeah, the judge would have took the blame. I say, sometimes a man’s got to take care of his family, no matter what.”
Most believed that the judge was innocent but was doing the right thing, as he always had, that it took courage for him to martyr himself for the right reasons. They all agreed that a guilty man would never take the stand and admit his guilt. Guilty men always say they’re innocent. And one juror reminded the others that Huffsmith never claimed he saw the judge shoot Sewell. Huffsmith just said he’d heard the shot.
One juror argued, “The judge was right. We all know that Sewell was about to take the county over, and none of us would have been safe after that. If he done anything, he done what he done to save us.”
Although a couple of jurors thought the judge was having one of his well-known spells, most believed that with the death of Haskins Sewell, Jackson Hole would be a safer place. After three hours of deliberation, the jury returned their verdict of not guilty.
When Betsy heard the verdict, she was unable to speak. She and the judge walked out of the courtroom together. They didn’t speak. She couldn’t stop crying. At the turnoff to the cabin, he kept on driving. “Where are you going, honey?” she was finally able to ask.
“Thought we could drop by our pond. Maybe our geese have come back,” he said. “It’s spring again.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM GRATEFUL for the good work, kindness, and patience of Bob Gleason, my editor, and for the eagle eye, sharp tooth, and rock-solid judgment of Junius Podrug, whose guidance from time to time during the writing of this manuscript has been invaluable both as an editor and a dear friend.
ALSO BY GERRY SPENCE
Bloodthirsty Bitches and Pious Pimps of Power
Win Your Case
The Smoking Gun
Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom
Half-Moon and Empty Stars
Gerry Spence’s Wyoming
A Boy’s Summer
Give Me Liberty!
The Making of a Country Lawyer
How to Argue and Win Every Time
O.J.: The Last Word
From Freedom to Slavery
With Justice for None
Trial by Fire
Of Murder and Madness
Gunning for Justice
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GERRY SPENCE’s court trials are studied in law schools, and he is widely celebrated as one of the greatest courtroom lawyers of our time. He has not lost a jury trial in nearly fifty years and has never lost a criminal or capital case. His defense of high-profile clients, as well as of the poor, the injured, and the damned has won him international renown. His own trials have been the subject of books, film, and television. He received the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Consumer Attorneys of California and another one from the American Association for Justice. He is the author of nineteen books, including the New York Times bestseller How to Argue and Win Every Time. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
> Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Acknowledgments
Also by Gerry Spence
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
COURT OF LIES
Copyright © 2019 by G. L. Spence and Lanelle P. Spence Living Trust
All rights reserved.
Cover photographs: man walking by pillar in city © Mark Owen / Trevillion Images; mountain scape © Getty Images
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-18348-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-18349-1 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250183491
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First Edition: February 2019
