Baby, Would I Lie?

43

The change in the atmosphere of the shadow jury had come, of course, with “My Ideal,” on Tuesday, which was probably a worse experience for them than for the real jury, because, in fact, one significant difference between the two juries was that the shadows knew they were being paid by the defense, had been hired by the defense to help in their strategies, their efforts to win a verdict of not guilty. However dispassionate they might try to be, the shadow jurors couldn’t help but think of themselves as part of the defense team, rooting for their side to win.

This had not been a problem for the shadows at first. Riding over to Forsyth from Branson in the bus Tuesday afternoon, they’d still been cheerful, chatting, optimistic. Riding back Tuesday evening, after seeing and hearing “My Ideal” on the day’s videotape of the court proceedings, they had been as silent as, well, as the tomb.

And Wednesday was worse. As several of them commented after watching the tape, they hadn’t thought much of Fred Heffner’s summation, they’d seen pretty clearly that he was blowing smoke, and though they’d found Warren’s arguments interesting, they weren’t really all that persuasive; sorry, Warren. No, what they all remembered, not happily, was Ray’s interjection in the middle of the sandwich: “If Belle Hardwick was a saint, I’m the Pope.”

It just stuck in everybody’s craw. “I’m sorry Ray said that,” admitted Juggs, the retired postal worker, and several of the other jurors nodded agreement, more in sorrow than in anger, among them the fellow not really named Jock O’Shanley.

Yes, the cuckoo bird from the Weekly Galaxy was still among the shadows. On balance, despite the shameful falsity of his presence here, he was pretty much giving good weight, doing a credible Jock O’Shanley imitation, commenting as that Irishman would, reacting as O’Shanley might be expected to react. It had finally seemed that to remove him would be more disruptive to the jury as a whole than to leave him in place and leave the rest of the jurors ignorant as to the truth about him, so that’s what had been done — for now.

Warren led a brief discussion, briefer than usual because there was no more strategy to be considered. The war was over. All that was left was to choose which brow would get the laurel.

So, after just a few minutes of chitchat, Warren said, “Let’s see if we can get a sense of where we are here. I want to do a first, very preliminary vote. Not a show of hands. I want this one to be anonymous, so you can make your decision without being asked to defend it. You’ve all got your pads and pencils. I’d like each of you to write one letter on a sheet of paper and fold it so the rest of us can’t see it. Then toss it into the middle of the table. If you were on the regular jury, across the street there, would you vote guilty or not guilty? Write G if you’d vote guilty; write N if you’d vote not guilty.”

They did it. A few of them had to think it over first, but a depressingly large majority had no trouble at all deciding which letter to write. Then, when all fourteen folded pieces of paper were in the middle of the table, Jim Chancellor gathered them and opened them and tallied the vote.

Five N. Nine G.

NG: not good.