The Justice Game

63

The bailiff approached Kelly Starling and handed her the list of thirteen remaining jurors. She checked some notes, whispered to Blake, and crossed a name from the list.

The bailiff brought the list to Jason. He huddled with Andrew Lassiter on one side and Case McAllister on the other. Not surprisingly, Kelly had struck the highest-rated juror, putting the symbol for “plaintiff” next to her mark. “That one was a no-brainer,” Andrew whispered. He pointed to Juror 2 and shrugged. “Here’s our no-brainer.”

Juror 2 was an African American principal who had demonstrated a distaste for big corporations that made money from a culture of violence and death. Jason had tried to get him dismissed for cause but the man swore he would keep an open mind.

Jason looked at Case, who nodded his assent. The principal was sent packing.

Kelly and her client took considerably longer with their next strike. When the bailiff returned with the sheet and Jason saw the line through Juror 9, he was somewhat surprised. Lassiter’s system had at least four jurors ranked higher.

“That’s great!” Andrew exclaimed. His voice was a whisper but loud enough that Kelly probably overheard.

“Shhh,” Jason cautioned.

“They don’t get this stuff,” Andrew whispered excitedly. “They should never have struck number nine.”

Andrew pointed to the next obvious strike for Jason-Juror 3. To Jason’s chagrin, he saw that Juror 3 and Juror 7 now had the two lowest remaining scores.

“I can’t strike him yet,” Jason whispered. “I’d get a Batson challenge.”

Case law prohibited lawyers from basing their strikes on a juror’s race. If a lawyer’s opponent raised a Batson challenge, the lawyer making the strike would have to articulate a legitimate reason for making the strike that was not race-related.

“You’ve got race-neutral reasons,” Andrew insisted. “He’s got to go.”

“Do him third,” Case suggested. “Get rid of Juror 7 next.”

Jason squirmed for a second and considered his options. He looked at Jurors 3 and 7-no overt hostility showed on either face. Maybe he was just looking for a reason to keep these two jurors on the panel, but he was starting to think it was worth a gamble.

Justice Inc. had orchestrated Jason’s hiring in the first place. Then an anonymous source named Luthor had helped Jason find a valuable expert. Now this same Luthor was suggesting that Jason keep these two jurors on the panel.

The MO had all the markings of Justice Inc. Inside information about the jurors and about Jason himself. The company certainly had a huge financial incentive for influencing this case. The only thing that didn’t fit was the threat of blackmail. Justice Inc. liked to skirt around the edge of the law, but Jason never thought they would stoop to something so blatantly illegal.

Jason looked at the sheet again. The juror with the lowest score, other than Jurors 3 and 7, was Juror 12. Jason pointed to her name. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about her.”

“What?” Andrew whispered. “We’ve been through this. Put your feelings aside.”

“I’m not a robot,” Jason protested. “I’ve got to have jurors I can connect with.”

Andrew responded with a string of statistics from the focus groups, the importance of this factor versus that factor. “She’s a bona fide bumper-sticker liberal,” he pleaded, pointing to Juror 7. “Get rid of her with this strike and Juror 3 with your next one.”

The bailiff was hovering over the table, his arms crossed. The entire courtroom waiting with bated breath.

“Give me that sheet,” Case said. “We look like the Three Stooges.”

He turned to Jason. “You sure about this?”

Jason looked at the table. No. “Yes,” he said softly.

Case struck a line through Juror 12, putting the defense symbol next to it. “I hired you to defend my company,” he said. “Not some computer program.”

When the bailiff brought the sheet back for the third strike, Andrew Lassiter didn’t say a word. “I’m sorry, Andrew,” Jason said, striking out the name of Juror 11.

When Jason handed the sheet back to the bailiff, Andrew closed his laptop. For a moment, Jason thought his friend would walk out of the courtroom right in the middle of the jury-selection process.

If he had, Jason wouldn’t really blame him. Jason had just flushed weeks of work and thousands of dollars down the drain. The truth was, he did have a bad feeling about the last two jurors he had struck.

But the deeper truth, the one that made him sick to his own stomach, was that Jurors 3 and 7 would have been gone if not for Luthor’s e-mail. Perhaps he had stacked the odds against himself, perhaps not. Hopefully he could still pull it out. Or, in a worst-case scenario, at least get a hung jury.

Because Case had gone to bat for him, Jason was more determined than ever to try his hardest. Maybe in the process, Jason could expose Luthor and whoever was behind this attempt to manipulate the justice system.

Or perhaps these were just the rationalizations of a traitor. MD Firearms had hired Jason to defend them. On the first day of trial, he had been too busy defending himself.