The Justice Game

Part IV: Pretrial
29

On Friday, January 30, Jason picked up Case McAllister at the airport and headed to Virginia Beach Circuit Court for an 11:00 a.m. hearing. They had agreed that Jason would introduce Case, move for his admission to the Virginia Bar pro hac vice -for this case only-and Case would argue the motion. If the case ended up going to trial, Jason and Case would be co-counsel, with Jason taking the lead. But Case wanted to argue this first motion, and Case was paying the bills. Enough said.

On the way to the courthouse, Jason expected to talk strategy, but Case was more interested in talking football. He asked about Jason’s dad as well, and Jason gave him the CliffsNotes version of Christmas. His father took him out shooting, Jason said. A few days later, he’d picked up the MD-45 Jason had ordered. The father-son fights, of course, were none of Case McAllister’s business. Jason quickly changed the subject.

“When do you think I’ll be able to pick up my special order?” Jason asked, referring to his customized MD-45.

“Not long,” Case replied. “We were backed up for Christmas and haven’t caught up yet. Prototypes can take a while to produce.”

The Virginia Beach courthouse was a mammoth fortress attached to the city jail by an underground tunnel and located on the edge of a sprawling municipal complex composed of matching colonial-style redbrick buildings. Years ago, when the city complex had sprung to life in the southern, agrarian part of the city, it had been surrounded by cornfields. Now it was surrounded by housing developments, office buildings, and commercial establishments. Trees had been turned into asphalt parking lots, wildlife replaced by convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

As they approached the building, Jason was surprised to see a small band of protestors wandering around, carrying signs, allowing themselves to be videotaped by the half-dozen television cameras. Jason knew this was a high-profile case, but all this attention at a Motion to Dismiss hearing seemed a little unusual.

At least the hardy band of protestors, who were braving temperatures in the thirties and a biting wind, appeared to be on his side. Two signs in particular caught his attention. We were meant to be armed-the Lord gave us a trigger finger. And another, neatly printed in large black letters for the TV cameras: God created men; MD Firearms made them equal.

Jason and Case walked past the protestors and cameras, their eyes straight ahead. As they were climbing the steps, Case taking his time because of the bum knee, Jason could have sworn he heard a protestor mumble something meant only for Case McAllister’s ears. It sounded like “Get ’em, Case,” though Case didn’t even acknowledge the man.

Case checked his sidearm at the courthouse metal detector like a real cowboy and exchanged small talk with the deputies. The two lawyers rode the escalators to the third floor and followed the signs toward Courtroom 8. When they reached the hallway outside the courtroom, Jason encountered his second surprise of the morning.

The place was crawling with people. They were pressing forward, trying to get a look inside past three beefy deputies who stood in the open doorway and formed a human blockade. Jason and Case elbowed their way through the crowd, and this time there was no mistaking it. Several folks said hello to Case, shook his hand, or wished him luck.

“You know these folks?” Jason asked.

“Kindred spirits.”

Case and Jason showed their bar cards to the deputies and were allowed into the courtroom. There were only a dozen or so wooden benches in the spectator section, but every seat was filled. A television camera-the “pool” camera that would relay the feed to local affiliates-was set up along one wall. The other walls were lined with people standing, surely a violation of some fire code.

The crowd was overwhelmingly white, overwhelming male, and overwhelming middle-aged. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Case or some other person at MD Firearms had called the local gun enthusiasts and told them to rally the troops. Maybe he was trying to send a message to the judge. Maybe he was trying to influence the jury pool.

Whatever the reason, this was a far cry from the secluded trials Jason had cut his teeth on at Justice Inc.

Muscling her way through the crowd, Kelly Starling thought about what an obvious and stupid ploy this was. A few hundred gun nuts, stripped of their weapons at the metal detector, were not going to intimidate her. Even Judge Garrison, a hard-core conservative and a bad draw for Kelly’s case, would probably be offended by this stunt-as if he might be swayed by pressure from the crowd.

Blake Crawford and a few friends and family members were already inside the courtroom and seemed a little shaken by all the attention. Nobody had treated them rudely, Blake said, but Kelly could see concern in his eyes. He probably hadn’t anticipated a crowd that would be so overwhelmingly against a grieving widower.

There was something else in Blake’s expression that fed Kelly’s fervor. It was the dazed look of a client who was trying to make sense out of tragedy, a threadbare hope that the justice system could bring good out of a horrendous evil. At times like this, clients would irrationally pin their hopes for recovery on the outcome of a civil case: “Maybe I can keep others from suffering like this. Maybe my wife’s death won’t be in vain.”

To balance her client’s tentativeness, Kelly put her own confidence on overdrive, asking the deputies to clear out a few seats in the front row behind Kelly’s counsel table so Blake’s relatives and friends could have a place to sit. That maneuver earned her the barely muted hostility of the crowd, especially since she did it over her client’s objection.

“We can stand next to the wall,” one of Blake’s brothers offered.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kelly said, loud enough for the first few rows to hear. “They’ve packed the entire courtroom. We’re entitled to one lousy row.”

When Jason Noble and Case McAllister came walking down the aisle, Kelly sized them up, positioning herself so it looked like she was talking to her client. McAllister looked old, weathered, and confident, walking with a slight limp. His thin, rounded shoulders revealed his age, but his eyes were sharp, and he had a sly half smile on his face, as if surveying a masterpiece he had just painted. Jason Noble was young and decent looking, in a carefree surfer sort of way. He had penetrating green eyes and dark shaggy hair. He looked like maybe he had just left a frat party at the University of Georgia, the yin to Case McAllister’s yang.

Kelly made a note-Jason would probably do okay with young female jurors. But other than a kind of roguish charm, she couldn’t figure out why MD Firearms might have chosen him to help on the case. He was only two years out of law school-nearly five years younger than she. And Kelly herself was relatively young and inexperienced to be trying a case of such magnitude. Jason, she concluded, was probably just there to carry Case McAllister’s briefcase.

She approached the defendant’s counsel table and extended her hand.

“Kelly Starling,” she said.

Jason’s grip was firm, but his hand was cold and moist. Nerves.

“Jason Noble,” he said.

He turned and motioned toward Case McAllister, who had just settled into his seat. “This is my co-counsel, Case McAllister.”

Kelly took a step toward the man, expecting him to rise and shake her hand. Instead, he looked up at her disdainfully, gave her a curt nod, and turned back to his papers.

“Nice to meet you, too,” Kelly said.

She returned to her own counsel table, blood pounding in her temples. The man was rude, but she wouldn’t let it throw her off focus.

They could bring a big crowd and they could play mind games, but Kelly wasn’t about to back down. McAllister might have experience, a sympathetic judge, and a federal law on his side, but Kelly had a grieving widower, a horrific shooting, and the mainstream media in her corner.

And she also had one other thing. Her own little secret weapon. The reason she was supremely confident about today’s hearing.

Kelly had a lawyer’s holy writ-legal precedent. A case from this very same court. Not a ruling from Judge Garrison but from one of his respected colleagues from more than a decade ago. It was, to use a bad analogy, her silver bullet.

Farley v. Guns Unlimited. Let’s see how the great Case McAllister deals with that.