Killer Ambition

63

On Monday, as we’d been doing all along, Declan and I ate lunch in my office. I unwrapped my vegetarian pita sandwich and salted it liberally. I know salt is bad for me. But it was a lot better than a big belt of scotch-which was what I really wanted. “I can’t believe the way all the jurors are biting whenever she throws that conspiracy hook into the water.”

Declan nodded glumly. “And whenever she talks about the innocent guys who get nailed-”

“I’ve got to keep pushing back and reminding them that those guys eventually got sprung by DNA, get ’em to say they believe in it-”

“That’ll help, but when you look at what we’ve got coming…”

That was the most painful truth of all. Our next batch of jurors included a guy who’d been busted for DUI twice and believed the cops had rigged the blood test (both times!); a woman who’d divorced her cheating husband (a former sheriff’s deputy) and was now taking him to court for unpaid child support; an older man whose daughter was unfairly busted for possession of cocaine (that really belonged to her roommate); and a university professor whose best friend had been (unjustly) accused of misappropriating funds from his accounting firm and was now facing criminal charges. And it went downhill from there. The group after that one included a woman whose son was on death row and a father whose daughter had stolen the family business right out from under him-and who passionately hated everyone under the age of seventy.

Naturally, all had claimed in their questionnaires that they could be fair.

“Let’s talk about the good ones that’re still in our clutches. We’ve got the librarian, the soccer mom from cop country-”

“Cop country?” Declan asked.

“Simi Valley. Bedroom community where lots of law enforcement live. Very good for us, and the defense might like her too, because she reads People magazine and watches Celebrity Ghost Stories, so she seems like a Hollywood groupie-”

“I watch Celebrity Ghost Stories.”

I eyed him with mock reproach.

“It’s not appointment viewing or anything, but it’s kind of interesting…”

“Anyhow, I’d guess Hollywood nonsense is a fun distraction for her, not the sun in her universe. I think she’ll ride with us. We’ve also got the single mom with the violent history-”

“You want to keep her?”

“Absolutely. She’s cool and smart and she won’t buy anyone’s garbage. And I’m betting the defense doesn’t get who she is, so they’ll leave her on. Trust me on this one. What about that retired schoolteacher who taught English?”

“Not sure. I get a creepy vibe from him,” Declan said.

“As in pedophile creepy?”

“I don’t know.” Declan finished his sandwich and wiped his mouth with the paper napkin. “But whatever. Do pedophiles tend to convict?”

I almost spit my soda across the room. “You’re twisted, Declan. Yet another thing I like about you.”

Back in the courtroom, the afternoon session flew. I hammered away on the virtues of DNA and did my best to find something good in what looked like a relentlessly bad batch.

By four thirty the next day, I had at least seven jurors I needed to kick and only two peremptory challenges left. This was the true heart-pounder, when I had to make the choice between the lesser of the evils. There was the owner of a paycheck advance business (the kind who prey on the poor, charging twenty percent interest for a loan against forthcoming paychecks) who openly admitted he wanted to write a book about the trial; a left-wing blogger who called me a “functionary of the male-dominated establishment” (personally, I appreciated her point of view, but legally, she had to go-and did I mention she hated cops?); and the pièce de résistance: a waiter (aka out-of-work actor) who was very familiar with the work of the genius Russell Antonovich and his partner, the “brilliant Ian Powers.” The other four were equally nightmarish.

I asked for a five-minute break to take aim at our final round of challenges and huddled with Declan in a corner of the courtroom.

“I think that guy in the back row, the one whose mom is so sick, has got to go,” Declan said. “Did you see how pissed off he was when Terry got into her spiel about the innocent men wrongly convicted? I thought he was going to come out of his seat.”

“Number eighty-nine, yeah.” An anesthesiologist had botched a routine hip replacement operation that left the prospective juror’s mother a vegetable, albeit one who’d probably get to go home, where doctors opined she’d survive for many years. Because he’d signed a binding arbitration agreement, the most he could recover was $250,000-which he probably wouldn’t get, because his mother was elderly. I had an idea that whatever he got wouldn’t come close to covering the costs of in-home care. In a word, the issue of innocent people being mowed down by the machine was very real to him. I tried to find a bright side. “He’s got a bachelor’s degree. There’s a chance our evidence could get him to see past his own life. Besides, the paycheck loan guy looks way too impressed with Powers. He doesn’t care what’s true, he just wants a book deal.”

Declan shrugged. It was a choice between death by hanging or by poisoning. There weren’t many good options here. I booted paycheck loan guy and the “waiter” and prayed I was wrong about the rest. Like it or not, by five thirty we were done.

“Congratulations, we have our jury,” Judge Osterman said. “Ladies and gentlemen, would you please stand and raise your right hand.”

Exhausted, I watched as Judge Osterman swore them in, wondering if I’d already made the fatal mistake that would set a murderer free.