From the Eyes of a Juror

by Frank Terranova

  Lyons went on to have Oakely recount the Thanksgiving 2005 incident where Breslin blew up over her sentimental request to go around the table and have everyone in attendance list something that they were thankful for, and once again she recounted the same basic story that her sister had imparted upon the jurors just yesterday.

  From there, Lyons moved on sequentially through the increasingly draining weeks leading up to Fred Miller’s murder.

  “Ms. Oakely, didn’t you receive a barrage of phone calls from the defendant during the month of December 2005?”

  “Yes, we communicated quite a bit just before the holidays,” admitted Oakely while at the same time nodding her head for emphasis.

  “And what were these discussions about?”

  “Well, for the most part, they were about Fred. Johnny was very bitter about the fact that Tracy was constantly going out on dates with Fred during his visitations, and that she’d come home drunk all the time when she was supposed to be attending meetings. Meanwhile, he was stuck at home watching the kids all night.”

  “And Ms. Oakely weren’t you inundated with even more phone calls and emails from Mr. Breslin after the first of the year?”

  “Yes, by that point, Johnny was very confused. He had spent almost two weeks living with Tracy right around the holidays, and he thought that things were moving back in a positive direction, only to find out that she still wanted to go through with the divorce. He said that he didn’t know who else to turn to, and he begged me to help him patch things up between them.”

  “And what did you tell him?” quizzically wondered Lyons.

  “I told him that I thought their marriage was coming to an end, and that he should try to move on. I told him that if it was meant to be then maybe they’d get back together someday. I told him that I couldn’t take his side anymore. I told him that Tracy was my sister and that blood is thicker than water. I told him that I was sorry,” sadly recalled Oakely, and with the memory of an old wound freshly opened up again, she too broke down in tears, just as her sister before her had done on numerous occasions while she was strapped to the witness stand.

  Lyons had hoped to have Oakely recount her activities on the day of the murder, but she realized that it would probably be a pointless exercise given her emotional state, and she figured that there wasn’t much else Oakely could add to the reproduction of that unfortunate day anyway. So, in lieu of posing any additional questions, Lyons read a handful of Breslin’s emails addressed to Oakely out loud for the jurors listening pleasure, and she had them admitted into evidence after Oakely verified the authenticity of the correspondences.

  For his part, Defense Attorney R. J. Gleason also regretted having to get Ms. Beth Oakely involved in her sister’s affairs. As far as Gleason was concerned, Oakely was clearly nothing like her sister, but in the final analysis he had a job to do for his client, and so he forged ahead undaunted.

  “Ms. Oakely you stated that you didn’t care for Fred Miller. Could you tell the jurors why that was the case?” respectfully inquired Gleason, and in return Oakely shrugged her shoulders as she softly replied, “Our personalities just didn’t mesh…and his lifestyle wasn’t compatible with mine.”

  “Ms. Oakely when you say his lifestyle wasn’t compatible with yours, what specifically are you referring to?” wondered Gleason.

  “I guess we just had different interests…different views about life...that all,” insisted Oakely.

  Gleason obviously wasn’t getting the answer that he was looking for so he had no choice but to go to Plan B, and as such, he picked up a sheaf of paper from his briefcase and read from it in a loud, clear tone.

  “Ms. Oakely didn’t you tell the investigators, and I’m quoting directly from your police report; ‘Fred Miller was an alcoholic. He was a marijuana addict. He was a cocaine addict. He was a heroin addict. He was an addict of God knows what else’.”

  Gleason paused and waited for a response, but when none was forthcoming, with a raised voice he added; “Isn’t that what you told them?”

  Oakely bowed her head and whispered, “I may have said that.”

  Meanwhile, Newlan was scribbling into his notebook so fast and furiously that his pencil was already getting dull, but he paused just long enough to take in the murmur from the gallery as the roll call of Miller’s vices were put on public display for all to hear.

  However, the worldly-wise Newlan wasn’t the least bit influenced by Miller’s drug use, going so far as to write into his notepad:

  Unless Gleason comes up with some credible evidence that a dealer or a junkie killed Miller, then his drug use is irrelevant as far as I’m concerned.

  Of course, Newlan, as has already been well documented, was also known to dabble in recreational drug use, so it should come as no shock that he would side with Fred Miller in this regard. But even though Newlan may not have been sold on the implications of Miller’s addictive habits, Gleason was quite pleased with the release of these sordid revelations nonetheless.

  “Ms. Oakely you testified that on numerous occasions, your sister Tracy was out drinking with Fred Miller when in fact she should have been attending meetings. If I may ask, to what meetings were you referring?” gently demanded Gleason, and Oakely frowned while at the same time she managed to whisper, “AA meetings sir.”

  “No further questions your honor,” announced a visibly contented Gleason. And just like that, another unsuspecting witness, namely Ms. Beth Oakely, came to loathe him.

  The next witness of the day, a woman by the name of Ms. Julie Addison, was a former girlfriend of Breslin’s who once worked with him at Tex-Ray Defense Systems.

  Lyons was able to glean that Ms. Addison dated John Breslin off and on in the early 90’s, and that she hadn’t heard from him in about 15 years until September of 2005 when she received an unexpected letter from him. Consequently, he followed up with a phone conversation and a request to meet for coffee, in much the same secretive manner that his ex-wife had engaged in when she was plotting her attempt to reconnect with Fred Miller.

  Lyons was also able to ascertain that Ms. Addison had rendezvoused with John Breslin on a number of occasions in the fall of 2005, strictly as a friend, and that they primarily discussed his impending divorce.

  When it was his turn at the plate, Gleason got Ms. Addison to admit that the primary topic of conversation during her coffee hour meetings with John Breslin centered on his children; how proud he was of them; how much he missed them; how it was breaking his heart to see them getting hurt by the separation of their mom and dad. All of which had Newlan once again resorting to a faintly pertinent boxing analogy.

  “If I was scoring this round I’d call it a draw,” intoned Newlan while the final witness of the abbreviated session, Officer Juan LaRosa of the Marlborough Police department, gingerly took to the stand.

  Officer LaRosa testified to the fact that sometime in the early morning hours of Monday October 10th, 2005 he was called to the Breslin residence by Mrs. Tracy Breslin who wished to file a report; she was alleging that her estranged husband was making harassing phone calls, and at DA Lyons’ request, he also confirmed that Fred Miller was present at the time of the incident.

  Gleason had only a couple of questions for the respectable cop, starting with; “Officer LaRosa at anytime during your visit to the Breslin home did you have the opportunity to speak to Mr. Breslin on the phone regarding a legal agreement which stated that Mr. Miller was to have no contact whatsoever with his children?”

  “Yes sir, I called Mr. Breslin at the request of his wife, and he informed me of the agreement,” replied Officer LaRosa.

  “And Officer LaRosa did you confirm whether any of the children were present in the Breslin’s home during the time of your visit?” added Gleason.

  “I asked Mrs. Breslin directly about the children, and she stated that they were upstairs sleeping, but I didn’t actually see them,” explained Officer LaRosa, as a satisfie
d Gleason smiled softly and thanked him for his time. He then turned to the Judge Gershwin with the familiar refrain of, “no further questions your honor.”

  And with that, Judge Gershwin adjourned the trial for the day, but not before enthusiastically commenting on the dedication that was being shown by “this fantastic jury.” She then wished the jurors a safe and enjoyable weekend, along with her usual reminders.

  “I’ll see you all bright and early Monday morning, and as always do not discuss the trial with anyone, do not read about the trial in the newspaper, and do not attempt to research the trial on the internet.”

  With Judge Gershwin’s marching orders behind them, Billy gave the “all rise” signal and the jurors were trotted out of the courtroom one last time for the week.

  As the jurors milled about the deliberation room, waiting impatiently to be escorted back to their cars, Mark the lanky, young network security expert whispered to Yong, the pretty Korean woman, “all those phone calls and emails between Breslin and Beth proved to me just how angry and bitter he really was.”

  Yong nodded her head in agreement, and their meeting-of-the-minds left an eavesdropping Newlan sullenly thinking the worst.

  “There go two more jurors over to the guilty side,” mumbled Newlan…and try as he might to bite his tongue, he just couldn’t help himself. He had to say something to stem the tide of fury which was rising up through him like an erupting volcano, and so he threw his hard-hat of conjecture into the ring one more time for the road.

  “That’s funny, because in my humble opinion, practically all the evidence we heard today showed just how much Breslin cared about his kids,” retorted the opinionated Newlan.

  Not surprisingly, Jane, who had also been snooping in on the conversation, also felt the need to toss her two cents into the wishing well.

  “Oh come on, Breslin could care less about his kids. He was obviously obsessed over the fact that Miller was seeing his wife and it was eating him up inside,” insisted Jane, much to Newlan’s dismay. He was very slow to anger, but he had finally reached his boiling point. He was just about ready to unleash a venomous tongue-lashing directed towards any and all jurors who crossed his path when Billy barged into the room and growled, “All right everybody, let’s get you down to the garage so you can get the hell out of here for the weekend.”

  And so with another confrontation averted, Newlan took a deep breath as he trudged over to his automobile, which assisted ever so slightly in his cooling-down reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere; and just to be on the safe side, he bit his lip for good measures. However, he still had plenty of spare time on his hands with which to mull things over during the stop-and-go ride home, and he couldn’t help but ruminate on how a roomful of people could be presented with the exact same set of facts and yet come to such a dramatically different set of conclusions.

  As Newlan finally made his way down the highway off-ramp, the day’s events, much like the grating lunch-hour traffic, converged in his mind like a black cloud of thunder and lightning, and his ire once again intensified until he was shaking with a blind rage; as a matter of fact, it was a rage so blind that the intensity of his indignation led him to run right through a red light.

  Newlan was brought back to his senses by the sound of breaks screeching in every direction, and when he peered out of his rearview mirror he observed that it was none other than a beat-up old red Ford Taurus which had just missed colliding with the side of his car. Luckily there was no harm done, but nonetheless Newlan looked back. He had to look back, he always looked back. He looked back just long enough to observe the driver of the Taurus giving him an angry middle-finger salute.

  Two miles later, Newlan was still trembling as he limped on down the road, except that now he was shaking with fear, not rage.

  “I could have been killed…by a red Ford Taurus no less. Man, you can’t make this shit up,” sighed Newlan, and he knew right then and there that something drastic had to be done, and it had to be done immediately. He knew right then and there that he needed to pay a visit to the only person who might possibly be able to help him crawl out of his debilitating malaise. He knew right then and there that he needed to pay a visit to his primary care physician, Dr. Donald Clay. He knew right then and there that the good doctor would know what to do. He knew right then and there that the good doctor would know…exactly…what to do.