Joseph Teller - Guilty As Sin

BARNETT: — I went to Family Court and won permission to have visits with my daughters.

JAYWALKER: How did that go?

BARNETT: It was hard at first, very hard. My daughters were angry at me, and rightfully so. I’d gone to prison. I’d abandoned them. At first the visits had to be supervised and conducted at BCW, the Bureau of Child Welfare. But after a while, once they were going smoothly and we’d dealt with the anger, the visits became unsupervised and freer. I was allowed to bring my daughters to my apartment, though not overnight. I was working on that, too, when…when…

This time his voice didn’t crack; it just tailed off into silence. Jaywalker waited a few seconds before asking if something had happened.

“Yes,” said Barnett.

“What happened?” Jaywalker asked.

“Somebody showed up.”

Again Jaywalker paused a beat before asking his next question. This was the quiet part of his direct examination, the part conducted in barely a whisper. This was the sad part.

“Who showed up?” he asked.

But he needn’t have. Even before Alonzo Barnett had a chance to answer, the jurors answered for him. They answered in their nods and their grimaces, some of them going so far as to mouth the name silently to themselves, or not so silently to those on either side of them. “Clarence Hightower.”

For the next forty minutes Jaywalker engaged Barnett in a re-creation of the tug-of-war that had taken place between the two men nearly two years ago. They broke it down into seven separate visits in which Hightower played Iago to Barnett’s Othello. Six times Hightower begged Barnett to cut him into his former heroin connection, pleading in turn sickness, poverty, profit, old times’ sake and whatever else he could think of. Six times Barnett refused him. Finally, on the seventh visit, Hightower pulled out his trump card and played it.

“Listen up,” he said. “You owe me. I saved your life. Now it’s your turn to save mine.”

JAYWALKER: What happened when he said that?

BARNETT: For a long time I didn’t say anything. I just thought about what he’d said, as hard as I could. And then, when I was done thinking, I nodded and I said okay.

JAYWALKER: Why did you do that?

BARNETT: Because he was right. He had saved my life. I couldn’t argue with that. I did owe him. At least that’s the way I figured it.

JAYWALKER: Do you still figure it that way?

BARNETT: Yes and no. I wish I hadn’t succumbed to the pressure he put on me. But I’m an adult, and nobody put a gun to my head. My decision ended up costing me everything I’d accomplished. It cost me my freedom, my job, my home, my self-respect. Most of all, it cost me my daughters. So on the one hand, it’s obvious that I figured very wrong.

JAYWALKER: And on the other hand?

BARNETT: I don’t know. Prison is a tough place, ten times tougher than your worst imagination of it. I was a dead man…I really was. When no one else would reach out and help me, one man did. He saved my life. So did I owe him a debt? Yes. Did that mean I had to repay it when he called on me to? I’m not sure. I held out as long as I could, and then I said yes.

JAYWALKER: And if you had to do it all over again, would you still say yes?

BARNETT: I honestly can’t say. A debt is a debt, after all. So I might. I hope not, but I might.

By asking his questions softly, almost gently, Jaywalker had elicited responses from his client that were just as soft, just as gentle. Thoughtful, he hoped, thoughtful and honest. Anyone can say, “No way. I’ve learned my lesson. I’d never do that again.” It takes some real soul-searching to admit that, in spite of the horrendous price you’ve paid for doing something, you’re not sure how you’d react if asked to do it all over again.

For better or for worse, the quiet portion of Alonzo Barnett’s testimony was over. Jaywalker stepped back a few paces and, in a matter-of-fact tone, asked his client if after saying yes, he’d agreed to meet Hightower’s man and bring him to someone he knew for the purpose of buying heroin. Yes, said Barnett, he’d done that. Only the guy had refused to meet either Hightower or his man. He said he’d deal only through Barnett, who he’d known for years. So three times Barnett had taken money from the man he now knew to be Agent Trevor St. James. Three times he’d exchanged it for heroin, each time in increasing amounts. And three times it had been his intention to deliver the heroin to St. James. Twice he’d succeeded; on the third occasion he’d been arrested before he’d made it back to the agent’s car.

Just like they’d said.

JAYWALKER: Did you know it was heroin each time?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: Did you know it was against the law to possess heroin?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: Did you know it was against the law to sell heroin?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: But you did those things nonetheless?

BARNETT: Yes, I did. I’m ashamed to say so. But yes, I did.

Jaywalker looked up at the clock, saw it was nearly five. He had a few minor questions left on his notepad, but Alonzo Barnett’s last answer had been a good one, and it seemed an okay place to leave things. Miki Shaughnessey would have the whole night to work on her cross-examination, of course, but there was nothing Jaywalker could do about that.

“Thank you,” he said, and sat down.

The typical defense lawyer will allow himself the luxury of relaxing just a bit following a lengthy direct examination of his final witness. Next up is the prosecutor, after all, who conducts cross-examination while the defense lawyer gets to sit and relax. But relaxing simply wasn’t part of Jaywalker’s vocabulary when he was on trial.

On trial.

A friend, a banking lawyer, had once accused Jaywalker of misusing the phrase. “It’s the defendant who’s on trial,” she’d said. “Not you. ”

She’d obviously never tried a case. Certainly not a criminal case.

So Jaywalker didn’t even think about taking the evening off. Time off was something he treated himself to after a trial, not during it, and even then, only if he’d won. Until the moment he heard the verdict delivered, there was simply too much to do. And if he lost, there would be still more. It was one of the reasons he fought so hard to win, so it would be over. He could still feel the sting of learning he’d flunked the bar exam the first time he’d taken it. Not because he felt stupid or because his pride was hurt. Jaywalker and pride had barely been on speaking terms for as long as he could remember. No, it was the realization that he’d have to go through it all over again, that it wasn’t over.

Which was why he spent what was left of Monday, as well as the first hour or two of Tuesday, preparing his redirect examination of Alonzo Barnett. Even though he hadn’t yet heard a word of Miki Shaughnessey’s cross, Jaywalker knew what she’d ask. Despite the fact that Jaywalker had preemptively gone into Barnett’s criminal record three times now-during jury selection, in his opening statement and now on direct examination-no young, inexperienced prosecutor was going to be able to avoid the temptation of covering the same ground on cross. After that, she’d try to challenge Barnett’s notion that owing a debt to another man constituted a moral justification to sell heroin, or a legal defense to having done so. She’d pin him down on the amounts involved, which had gradually grown from small to significant to substantial. She’d bring out that as a former addict himself, Barnett had to have been aware of the consequences of his actions. And she’d use that same “former addict” label to accuse him of being that worst of all combinations: a seller without the excuse of being a user needing to support his own habit. She’d pointedly ask him about the money he’d made or hoped to make from the sales. She’d want to know why he hadn’t considered his debt to Hightower paid off after the first sale, or at least the second. She’d suggest through her questions that, had Barnett not been arrested when he was, there might have been a fourth sale, then a fifth, and that the sales might still be going on to this day. Then, mostly because Jaywalker hadn’t-in fact especially because Jaywalker hadn’t-she would go into the details of how the three transactions had gone down, in order to show how accurate and honest her own witnesses had been in describing them. Finally, she’d try to put Barnett on the hot seat by asking him about his source, the person he’d gotten the drugs from on each occasion. It was a question no dealer ever wanted to answer, whether out of fear, loyalty or a combination of both. And it was a subject Jaywalker had purposefully avoided going into on direct.