The Deep Blue Alibi

Thirty-eight

"Do you watch Leno or Letterman?" Richard Waddle asked.

That old one? Leno fans favor the prosecution, Letterman the defense.

The State Attorney needed to update his repertoire along with his wardrobe, Victoria thought, as they started day two of jury selection.

"I don't stay up that late," said Angela Pacheco, temporarily ensconced in slot seven of the jury box. She was a married woman in her early forties who sold time-share condos from an office in Islamorada. "I never miss Desperate Housewives, though."

Victoria processed the information. Did Ms. Pacheco identify with Bree, the uptight Republican housewife, a sure prosecution juror, or Gabrielle, the cheating, conniving-and therefore defense-oriented- hausfrau?

But Waddle must not have watched the show, because he moved on. "Does your car have any bumper stickers, Ms. Pacheco?"

Bumper stickers. Straight out of the prosecutor's cliche bag.

A prosecution juror boasts: "My child is an honor student at Dolphin Elementary." The defense juror: "My kid can beat up your honor student."

"Only one," Mrs. Pacheco said.

"And what's it say, ma'am?"

" 'If It's Called Tourist Season, Why Can't We Shoot Them?' "

Ooh, good. A defense juror, even if she's only joking. In fact, anyone with a sense of humor is a likely candidate for the defense.

"This is a homicide trial," Waddle said. "The charge is second degree murder. If convicted, the defendant faces life in prison."

"This is a homicide trial," Pinky Luber said. "The charge is first degree murder, and the state seeks the death penalty. So I have to ask all of you a very tough question. If we prove beyond every reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of a vicious premeditated murder, with malice aforethought, can you render a verdict that may result in his execution?"

The words in the transcripts were beginning to blur. Steve had been sequestered in a corner of the musty records room of the courthouse for two days. He'd skimmed thousands of pages of transcripts. The words had melted together like the cheese in Bobby's panini. Nothing in the cold, black type to indicate anything different in Luber's losing trials from the winning ones. Nothing remarkable in Herbert Solomon's rulings. The judge seemed evenhanded on objections, and his jury instructions were right out of the book. As for Reggie Jones, the transcripts seldom mentioned him at all, except when he responded to questions concerning an item of evidence.

Just like Bobby said, "Nothing was amiss."

There was one oddity in the records, but it didn't seem to have any relevance. One of the defendants was tried twice. His name was Willie Mays, his parents doubtless hoping he'd become a baseball star instead of a drug dealer with a homicidal streak. Mays was the last murder defendant to walk out of Judge Solomon's courtroom a free man, the last person acquitted before Luber's famous hot streak. A year later, Luber had a second shot at him. Charged in a new case-killing his ex-girlfriend and her infant child-Mays was convicted and sentenced to death. And no wonder, Steve thought, studying the man's hefty rap sheet. Willie Mays had been arrested exactly twenty-four times, equaling his namesake's uniform number. The Florida Supreme Court unanimously affirmed both the conviction and Judge Solomon's sentence.

The second Mays trial had been televised back when that was still a rarity. The local public station had broadcast the trial with expert commentary from various lawyers eager for TV exposure. In the era before Court TV and twenty-four-hour cable stations, this was pretty hot stuff, at least in the legal world.

Now Steve riffled through the appeals papers. One of the public defender's appellate arguments was that the cameras deprived his client of a fair trial. Jurors are intimidated; there's more pressure to convict; the courtroom is turned into a theater. All routine arguments in the 1980's and all routinely denied by Florida's courts.

Steve looked through the exhibits attached to the PD's appellate brief. A bunch of courtroom photos. Several showed TV technicians setting up their equipment. In others, the lawyers were smiling, either for the jury or the cameras. One photo taken just before the trial began caught Steve's attention. The entire jury panel, ninety strong, sitting in the gallery, waiting to be called to answer questions. It struck him then.

Where are the black faces?

He counted five apparent African-Americans. Way underrepresented.

In a capital case in which a black defendant was accused of killing his white ex-girlfriend and their infant daughter, the defense lawyer would crave black jurors.

Steve found a photo of the panel actually seated. Twelve jurors plus two alternates. Two of the African-Americans made it onto the panel, and a third was an alternate. Okay, that seemed to cure the problem, evening out the statistics somewhat.

A nice trick, getting three of five black jurors on the panel, Steve thought. He turned back to the transcript of voir dire. Hank Adornowitz, the defense lawyer, was a veteran of the PD's office. He'd long since retired, but at the time, Adornowitz was considered the top capital crimes defense lawyer on the public payroll.

Steve dug deeper into the transcript and matched up jurors' names with faces in the photos from their position in the jury box. Juror Two, an African-American man wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a tie, without a jacket, turned out to be Leonard Jackson. He owned his own home, worked security at a downtown department store, and served in the military as an MP.

Holy shit. Sure, he's black. But you couldn't ask for a more pro-prosecution juror.

Unless you had an immediate family member killed by violence. Juror Seven, Martha Patterson, an African-American cook in a North Miami restaurant, lost a teenage sister to a drive-by shooting. And the alternate, Charlene Morris, worked as a paramedic and dated a cop.

Other than their skin color, these three could give prosecutors wet dreams.

So, what gives? Why did Adornowitz leave them on? Steve could think of only one answer. With the sea of white faces he had to work with, the PD must have been happy to get any blacks seated.

Still, there was something haunting about that first picture. Steve wished he could study the racial composition of all seventeen trials in Luber's winning streak. But the photos were in the Mays file only to bolster the argument about the prejudicial effect of cameras in the courtroom. Lacking the same appellate issue, the later cases would have no photographs. And there's no way to determine each juror's race from the bare transcripts.

But the transcript of voir dire would reveal something. Home addresses.

Miami was among the most segregated of cities. Twenty years ago, if you lived in Liberty City or Over-town or the Grand Avenue section of Coconut Grove, there was a high probability you were African-American. Bobby, the little statistician, could easily put the numbers together for him.

And there was one more thing to examine. The videotape of the second Mays trial. Gavel to gavel on the public TV station. An eerie look into the past. A chance to stare through the knothole at his father two decades earlier. That gave Steve a moment of pause.

Just why am I doing this?

Sure, he wanted to get his father's Bar license back. Partly to rehabilitate the old man's reputation. Let people call him "Judge" again without irony or footnotes.

And partly just to prove to his father that he could. It didn't take a shrink to figure out what a son will do to seek his father's approval. But there was something else, too.

If his father was dirty, Steve wanted to know.

If there was to be a wedge between them, he'd prefer it deep enough and wide enough that there'd be no way to bridge the distance.