Baby, Would I Lie?

21

Jury selection took all of Wednesday and most of Thursday. Warren Thurbridge and his defense team played the voir dire like a Wurlitzer, prying out the prejudices and the eccentricities of the potential jurors, looking for strengths and weaknesses, potential sympathy, potential hostility. At the end of the process, mid-afternoon Thursday, they were reasonably well pleased with their performance. Nine of the jurors they were not unhappy to have on the panel, three more they could live with, one could probably be neutralized by the interaction of the jury room, and as for the fourteenth, all they could hope was for that God-fearing harridan to be chosen one of the two alternates when that cull was made at the end of the trial. In any event, Warren and his team felt they had done reasonably well in this opening round and were slightly ahead of the other side.

The other side, of course, was the people of the state of Missouri, though not all of them were in court. Legally speaking, Taney is a third-class county, which means the Taney County prosecuting attorney is a part-timer, with a private practice of his own to think about in addition to the county’s business. The current holder of the office, Buford Delray, had requested the assistance of a criminal-trial specialist from the state attorney general’s office, and his request had been granted in the form of a Lincolnesque gentleman named Fred Heffner, whose record, so far as the Thurbridge team could discover, seemed to be limited almost completely to the prosecution of drug couriers picked up by the state police in the course of traffic stops along Route 65, a known drug transportation lane north out of Arkansas, or on Interstate 44, a similar through route crossing Missouri east-west from Springfield to St. Louis.

This meant the Thurbridge team did not look upon the arrival of Fred Heffner as a threat likely to cause sleepless nights among the partisans of Ray Jones. Of course, Buford Delray did also have at his command the assistance of the Missouri Highway Patrol, the Taney County Sheriffs Department, and, since the body had been found in water and with water inside it, the Missouri Water Patrol — a fairly formidable array, all in all.

What that array might be doing with itself on Thursday afternoon, after the close of court, Warren neither knew nor much cared, but what he was doing was getting to know the shadow jury.

As each actual juror had been agreed upon by prosecution and defense and accepted by Judge Quigley, the word had flashed from the courtroom to Warren’s offices, where the staff had at once pored through its computer files, finding the half dozen or so other Taney County voters who most closely matched the demographic profile of the just-empaneled juror. Staff members then hopped into cars and went in search of these people, with a simple question to ask: How would you like to take a vacation for the next week or two, live all expenses paid in a nice motel, have your meals provided, and be guaranteed an exciting, if unpublicized, part in the famous Ray Jones murder trial? Some restrictions apply: You won’t be allowed to read a paper or watch TV or communicate with family and friends until the trial is over. But you’ll be paid well — better than the state pays its real jurors, who have no choice — and you’ll actually get to meet Ray Jones his own self!

Child’s play. There were very few turndowns among the potential shadows, partly because everybody likes to have a role in an ongoing drama, but mainly because most people aren’t doing much of anything, anyway. Take a couple of weeks off from this life? You betcha!

Court adjourned on Thursday at 2:25 P.M., and at 6:30 Warren, bringing Ray Jones his own self along, walked into the conference room in the former furniture store to greet the fourteen people sitting around with grins on their faces as though Ed McMahon had just called them personally to say, “No shit, now, this time you are a winner!”

“You all know Ray Jones,” Warren said unnecessarily.

“Hi,” Ray said generally, waving a casual hand and grinning a casual grin.

“Hi, hello, hi, Ray,” they all said back.

Warren said, “I’m Ray’s defense attorney in the trial just getting under way here, my name is Warren Thurbridge, and I want to tell you right now, for both Ray and myself, how pleased I am, and how grateful, that you folks have consented to take time from your busy schedules to come in here for the duration of the trial and help us see that justice is done.”

They all looked solemn at that, prepared to do their duty come hell or high water. The fact was, however, that even though there’s nothing illegal or underhanded about the use of a shadow jury in a felony trial, the jurors all had the sneaky feeling there ought to be, and the idea that they were part of the process of pulling a fast one made them feel giggly all over.

Warren went on to explain the concept of a shadow jury, and one woman raised her hand to ask, “Does this mean we’re going to be in court every day?”

“No, I’m sorry,” he told her. “I wish we could do it like that, but we just can’t. What we’ll do is, we’ll videotape the proceedings every day and then we’ll all gather in this room and you’ll watch the tape; you’ll see and hear everything the jury saw and heard that day. And then we’ll discuss it.”

A laconic fellow with a big nose and some kind of English or Irish accent said, “You mean, we won’t be here in the daytime at all?”

“You’re going to have your days free,” Warren assured him, “at the motel. There’s a nice pool there, a well-equipped game room, and we’ll get you any movie at all you want to watch on the VCR. I’m sorry you won’t be able to hang out with the other guests or anybody at all except your own group and our staff, but those are the same conditions the regular jury faces, and that’s what we’re trying for here, to get you people as close to the actual jury as we possibly can.”

There were a few more questions of a housekeeping nature, and one woman briefly seemed ready to quit, not having understood the concept of sequestering until about the eleventh time it was explained to her, but a couple of the other shadows assured her the whole thing would be fun and a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so she settled down, and that was that.

Then Ray Jones spoke to the group, while Warren stood to one side and looked them over, pleased. “After this is all over,” Ray told them, “we can get to know one another better, but for right now Mr. Thurbridge here tells me I have to keep my distance from you nice folks, for fear you’ll like me more than the other jury over there does.” Grinning, shrugging, he said, “Or maybe like me less — that could happen, too. So all I want to say now is, I’m real thankful for your help in my time of trouble and I just hope we can all have a victory celebration together out to my place when this is all over. Thank you.”

The woman who hadn’t understood sequester raised a timid hand. Ray grinned and pointed to her and she said, “Ray, would you sing us a song?”

This was a surprise. Ray and Warren looked at one another, both stuck for a second, and then Warren smiled at the woman and shook his head and said, “Mrs. Carlyle, Ray isn’t singing for the regular jury. We’re trying to make these groups as parallel as possible.”

One of the other jurors, a scrawny little retired postal worker named Juggs, said, “The trial won’t start till tomorrow. I bet Ray Jones could sing us a song today.”

Warren, not liking loss of control like this, was about to turn down the request a second time, but Ray stepped in, saying, “Well, I think I could. I didn’t bring my guitar with me, but let’s see if I can carry a tune without help.” He smiled at each and every one of the shadows. “You know,” he said, “most of my songs are a little comical or irreverent or whatever, but I have my serious side, as well. You may know this song from one of my albums. I don’t sing it all the time, just at special occasions, and I guess this is one. If you know the song and feel like joining in, you’re welcome.”

Warren stepped back, the smile frozen on his face. What the hell was Ray going to do now?

A cappella, Ray sang:

There wasn’t a dry eye in the conference room.