Joseph Teller - Depraved Indifference

"So you can convict Carter Drake if you want to, as I'm sure Mr. Firestone will ask you to. He even told you in his opening statement that he would, back before any of us knew what we now know. If not for the admitted fact of Carter Drake's drinking too much, his wife never would have had to drive a car she was unfamiliar with, in a place she was unfamiliar with, in the dark, and in the midst of an argument, and this tragedy never would have occurred. So there'd even be a kind of poetic justice were you to convict him.

"But you're not here to impose poetic justice. You aren't poets. You are jurors, and you're here to impose real justice. And real justice, no matter how unpleasant and distasteful it sometimes becomes, requires us to ask ourselves one question, and one question alone. Are we convinced-convinced beyond all reasonable doubt- that it was Carter Drake, and not Amanda Drake, who was behind the wheel of the Audi at that fateful moment? Or do we have at least some hesitation when we get to that issue, some lingering doubt that leaves us less than convinced beyond all reasonable uncertainty? There can be only one answer to that question, jurors. And that answer is no, there's no way we can be convinced, not beyond all reasonable doubt. So it's up to you. If you do your duty, follow the law and impose real justice, you must f ind Carter Drake not guilty, and leave how he is finally judged in other hands."

And with that, barely twenty-five minutes after he'd begun, Jaywalker sat down.

Abe Firestone spoke for twice as long, but not half as well. Despite Jaywalker's having done so, he, too, listed the names of the victims, though he read them from the captions beneath their photos on the oak tag exhibit. He accused Jaywalker of orchestrating the "mistake" with the stick shift and the clutch, and of getting Amanda Drake to invoke her privilege so that both husband and wife would evade responsibility.

But Firestone was off his game. Apparently the same night in jail that had first panicked and then enervated Jaywalker, had simply exhausted Firestone. He lost his train of thought, repeated himself, backed up, and repeated himself again. Only toward the end of the hour did he seem to regain his composure, finishing strong as he demanded justice for the nine victims.

"If ever anyone was guilty of murder," he told the jurors, "it is this defendant. If ever anyone acted in a reckless manner, exhibiting a depraved indifference to human life, it is this defendant. And then for him to pull the kind of stunt he pulled and pretend he wasn't even driving… The nerve of him, the gall, the c hutzpah, to try to blame it all on his wife. Shame on him, shame on him."

Firestone ended as Jaywalker had begun, reciting the names of the victims once more. Had it not been for the fact that his passion was misguided, devoted as it was to asking the jury to convict an innocent man, it would have been an extremely effective closing, at least the last part of it. But from the looks on the jurors' faces, they weren't buying it.

Then again, Jaywalker had been wrong about such matters before. The thing about jury verdicts was that you never knew.

Never.

Justice Hinkley's charge to the jury took exactly an hour, and it was just before one o'clock in the afternoon when the twelve regular jurors retired to deliberate. The four alternates, rather than being discharged, were led off to a separate room, just in case one of the regulars became sick or otherwise incapable of continuing.

As for Jaywalker, he became both sick and incapable of continuing. Exhausted from a night spent listening to Firestone's snoring, to fighting off claustrophobia, and to tweaking his summation to fit the trial's latest twists and turns, he'd gotten through the morning on adrenaline and caffeine. While his summation had been short, far shorter than he'd originally planned, it had been emotional, and had taken a lot out of him. Listening to Firestone for an hour, and then to the judge for another hour, had been an ordeal, and at times he'd had to bite the inside of his cheek or pretend to be taking notes just to stay awake.

He found an empty stall in the men's room and tried to throw up, but he'd eaten so little over the past four days that all he could do was gag. Dry heaves, they used to call it back in college, when they'd come back to the dorm, knelt before the porcelain god, and paid the price for having been stupid boys trying to act like stupid men.

He left the stall and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Amanda had come through once again with a pressed suit, a clean shirt and a new tie. She'd brought a razor and comb this time, both of which he'd used in the twenty minutes the judge had allowed before summations started. But none of it had helped much. He looked as if he'd been on trial for three weeks. His eyes were dark and sunken, his skin pale, his clothes loose from the fifteen pounds he'd no doubt lost.

He glanced upward toward the heavens, but spotted only a bare lightbulb, protected by a wire cage. Oh, Lord, God of Rockland Light and Power, he began silently, grant me an acquittal in just this one case and I'll never ask you for anything again. I'll eat regularly. I'll quit the business and take up writing full-time. I'll clean my apartment. I'll go to the dentist. I'll have that colonoscopy I keep putting off, and that PSA test. I'll even stop seeing Amanda, if you want me to. Just don't let me lose, not this one.

It was pretty much the same prayer he always offered up around this time, to whatever deity might be listening in and have a spare moment for a humble nonbeliever with a shoddy history of following up on his pledges once his wish had been granted. But old habits died hard. He continued to put his left shoe on before his right because, at least since his wife's illness and death, things had more or less worked out for him so far. He threw a little salt over his shoulder if he'd happened to spill some. He folded his towels as they came out of the dryer, even though a moment later he'd unfold them so he could hang them on the hooks in his bathroom. And he always remembered to say thank-you after each acquittal. Always.

He was an atheist, but he was a superstitious atheist. Just in case.

Back in the courtroom, the jury had already sent out a note. Jaywalker felt the sudden surge of adrenaline, the pounding of his heartbeat at his temples. Notes were clues, valuable indications of what the jurors were focusing on and which way they were leaning.

But not this one.

They wanted to know how long the judge would make them deliberate tomorrow if they couldn't arrive at a verdict today. Tomorrow was Friday, and for many of them the Sabbath would begin at sundown.

With no objection from Firestone or Jaywalker, Justice Hinkley sent them back a note assuring them that under no circumstances would they be required to deliberate on the Sabbath. What she didn't tell them was that under no circumstances could she permit them to return to their homes, either. This was a murder case, and the law required that they be kept together, even when they weren't deliberating.

But even with their innocuous request, Jaywalker wondered, had the jurors been telegraphing that they were in for a long ordeal? Why else would they be thinking ahead to tomorrow? And what did "lengthy deliberations" mean in this case? Surely there was reasonable doubt as to who'd been driving the Audi, and if there was, the case should end right there. The fact that the jurors didn't seem to be seeing it that way couldn't be good.

After he'd gotten his clothes and toiletries from Amanda in the morning, Jaywalker had sent her packing, even before the jurors had begun arriving. He didn't want them seeing her anymore, especially in his company. He'd expected Firestone to make the collusion argument in his summation, and he hadn't been disappointed. So even though it might have been nice for the jurors to see a devoted wife each time they filed in and out of the courtroom, Amanda's presence, coupled with the fact that she might well have been the one who'd killed the nine victims, could have proved troublesome for the jurors, to say the least. And while they couldn't take their anger out on her, they could take it out on her husband.