The Justice Game

Part II: The Company
4

A continent away from the chaos in the WDXR studios, Jason Noble approached the jury for the most important closing argument of his young career.

“Let’s talk about the hair,” he said, surveying the inquisitive expressions on the faces of the jurors. Some were literally gaping; others suppressed a smirk. Jason pretended not to notice.

“Mr. Lockhart argues that the hair evidence creates reasonable doubt. ‘Forget about the defendant’s rage when she learned that her husband and her best friend had an affair,’ he says. ‘Forget the fact that her best friend also happened to be a very talented backup singer whom the defendant’s husband could turn into a star the same way he made the defendant a star. Forget all that. If the hair testing shows that Carissa Lawson had been taking drugs for several months, then the cause of death must be a self-administered drug overdose, not poisoning.’”

The jury was only half-listening, but that was okay with Jason. They were too busy staring.

The night before, on a whim, Jason had dyed his hair platinum blond and spiked it-the hairstyle of the victim. And the change was more than symbolic.

Months earlier, when Carissa Lawson’s autopsy showed fatal amounts of oxycodone and cocaine in her blood, the medical examiner had declared the death an accidental overdose. But then the rumors started surfacing. The backup singer had been involved with the husband of rock star Kendra Van Wyck. When Van Wyck found out about the affair, she became consumed with jealousy and rage. She owed her fame to the efforts of her husband, a wealthy recording executive who had “discovered” her. His love for someone else, especially someone as talented as Carissa Lawson, ate at Kendra Van Wyck like a cancer.

Van Wyck was eventually indicted for murder. But the prosecution’s case was largely circumstantial, and Van Wyck had the best legal help money could buy. The defense lawyer opposing Jason, a pit bull named Austin Lockhart, had built his case on the popularity of Kendra Van Wyck and the lab tests of Carissa Lawson’s hair.

Van Wyck had not taken the stand in her own defense. Instead, her lawyers had relied on a distinguished toxicologist named Dr. Richard Kramer, a man who lectured the jury about the wonders of testing hair for drugs. According to Kramer, as hair grew, its roots were fed by blood. In a chronic drug user, the blood would contain trace amounts of the drugs in question, which would become entrapped in the hair’s cortex. Since hair grew at the rate of about a half inch per month, you could test different segments of a person’s hair and tell how long that person had been using drugs.

Kramer testified that hair testing for Carissa Lawson showed high levels of oxycodone and codeine in all segments of her three-inch hair. The obvious conclusion? Carissa Lawson had been abusing cocaine and painkillers like OxyContin for months and had died from a self-inflicted overdose.

As he approached his closing argument, Jason knew that the jury was looking for a reason to spring the popular defendant, consistently ranked by People as one of the hottest female performers. Her husband’s divorce petition and the murder trial had only garnered more attention, fueling album sales. Plus, the rock star cried on cue during the trial.

“Murder by poisoning? Or accidental overdose?” Jason asked. He paced back and forth in front of the jury. No notes, just a spontaneous little chat. He had memorized every word.

“Carissa Lawson had stopped seeing the defendant’s husband. But that didn’t mean he loved her any less. And that didn’t mean he wasn’t planning on dumping the defendant and making Carissa the next big thing.

“Did Kendra Van Wyck have motive? ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ By killing Carissa Lawson, the defendant could punish both Carissa and her husband at the same time.

“No doubt-the defendant had plenty of motive.

“The defendant was seen with Carissa Lawson early in the evening on the night Carissa died. When the defendant found out about her husband’s affair, she never confronted him. She never confronted Carissa either, choosing instead to remain friends so that Carissa wouldn’t be leery about spending time together. The defendant had access to OxyContin pills for pain relief and to cocaine from any number of close associates, two of whom have pled guilty for possession with intent to distribute.

“In other words, the defendant had opportunity.

“But Mr. Lockhart argues that the affair between Caleb Van Wyck and Carissa Lawson occurred just two months prior to her death. Why would the defendant begin poisoning Carissa Lawson six months earlier? According to Mr. Lockhart, the hair evidence proves that Carissa Lawson is a drug addict who died from an overdose rather than as the victim of a one-time poisoning.”

Jason paused. He now had their attention. “And so… it all comes down to the hair. Other than the toxicologists, not one witness has linked Carissa Lawson to drug use. Does the hair really show six months of drug use, or should we throw out the hair testing results as unreliable?

“You will recall my cross-examination of Dr. Kramer. He admitted that hair can be contaminated by drugs from external sources, things like sweat or running your hands through your hair. This can make the results suspect.” Jason paused for effect. One of the things he had learned by studying courtroom advocacy was the impact of silence. An advocate who wasn’t afraid of silence showed confidence. Silence helped refocus the jury.

It also helped Jason remember his script.

“You heard the coroner describe the type of slow and painful death Carissa Lawson suffered. In large quantities, cocaine and oxycodone shut down the lungs, causing the victim to suffocate as fluid collects and breathing becomes impossible. Eventually, Carissa drowned in her own lung fluid, probably while her best friend watched, pretending to call 911 as Carissa gasped for breath.”

Jason shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. “Was Carissa Lawson sweating as she died this slow death, fighting to get air?” He paused again, looking from juror to juror. “You decide. One thing that’s not open for question-if she was poisoned, her sweat would have contained high quantities of these drugs and contaminated her hair.

“But Dr. Kramer says we shouldn’t worry about that. Before testing the hair, he washed the samples twice with methylene chloride, a solvent guaranteed to remove any contamination. But you also heard our toxicologist, Dr. Chow, say he believes that drugs contained in sweat cannot be removed from the hair through mere washing because they form ionic bonds with the hair follicles. As a result, hair testing can’t tell us whether the drugs present in the hair are due to contamination from sweat after a one-time poisoning event or from long-term use.

“And so, last night, I came up with a harebrained idea, if you’ll pardon the expression. I dyed my hair platinum blond-the dye representing external contamination that bonds to the hair particles.” He walked over to his counsel table, speaking over his shoulder as he went. “You’ll recall that Dr. Chow testified that the same chemical reaction that explains the incorporation of hair coloring into hair follicles also takes place with drugs like cocaine and oxycodone.”

Jason pulled a towel out of his briefcase and picked up two plastic bottles from the floor. He walked back toward the jury and smiled briefly at two young female jurors-Jurors 5 and 7-who had been nodding as he made his points.

Jason could usually count on the younger women. He didn’t have the stone-carved jaw of a movie actor, but he was in good shape and had received more than a few comments about his eyes. “Sleepy.” “Intriguing.” Or on courtroom days like today, when he had his green contacts inserted, “piercing.”

Jason did fine with women at a distance-like the ten feet that separated him from the jury panel. The ones he let in close always gave him trouble.

“I asked my expert to provide some methylene chloride,” he explained. “And I’m going to wash my hair right here in front of you, using the same chemical and the same procedures that Dr. Kramer used before he tested the victim’s hair.”

“Objection!” Austin Lockhart could apparently stand it no longer. Most lawyers avoided making objections during closing arguments, since they tended only to underscore the opponent’s points. But Lockhart had made a career out of arguing even minor matters until he was red-faced and furious. Which he was right now.

“This is outrageous,” he said. “The chemical makeup of hair dye and cocaine is hardly the same. And how do we know that’s even methylene chloride in that bottle? This is nothing but showmanship, and it’s highly improper.”

Jason acted stunned that anybody would object to this. Instead of responding immediately, he looked up at the judge, as if the objection wasn’t worthy of wasting his breath.

“Mr. Noble?” asked Judge Waters.

“For starters, Judge, I didn’t have any cocaine or oxycodone handy last night, or I would have used them instead. But if I were a juror, I’d like to at least know whether this vaunted solvent that Dr. Kramer used could remove a little hair dye.”

“That’s… that’s just… ridiculous,” Lockhart stuttered. “It’s not relevant and it’s highly prejudicial, and if he wanted to do a demonstration, he should have done it with his expert so I could cross-examine Dr. Chow about it.”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Jason responded quickly. “I must have been absent from evidence class the day they said showmanship was inadmissible.”

When he heard a few jurors snicker, Jason knew he was on the right track.

“Plus,” Jason continued, “Dr. Chow would look even more ridiculous in platinum blond hair than I do.”

“There may be some differences of opinion on that,” said the judge, drawing her own set of chuckles. “Objection sustained.”

Jason turned back to the jury and noticed that Juror 5 still had a thin smile on her face. He would reinforce the feedback with a generous portion of eye contact. “Now that we’ve established how much confidence the defense puts in its hair washing procedures, let’s talk about the affair…”

In a luxury suite at the Westin hotel, Robert Sherwood, the CEO of Justice Inc., watched the courtroom drama unfold on closed-circuit TV. He studied the images on the split screen-one camera following Jason around the courtroom, the other catching the expressions on the jurors’ faces. Sherwood was willing to bet $75 million of his firm’s money on the outcome of this case.

Like most larger-than-life rock stars, Kendra Van Wyck supported a labyrinth of companies. Her husband’s record label, a designer line, her own reality TV show and production company. All were highly profitable ventures, but all would be worthless if the diva was sentenced to life in jail. If she won, on the other hand, the companies would skyrocket in value. Until today, until this ingenious stunt in the closing argument, Sherwood thought that Van Wyck would be the biggest celebrity acquittal since O. J. Now… he wasn’t so sure.

“The kid might be too smart for his own good,” Sherwood said, shaking his head. “Skewing the results.”

He rubbed his forehead, the pain of another migraine setting in. His firm had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars diligently researching this case, selecting the perfect jurors, scrutinizing each piece of evidence. Now Jason Noble was blowing the whole thing apart with a piece of choreographed drama in his closing argument.

“We can’t let this happen again,” Sherwood said. “Let’s make this trial his last.”