Scott Turow - Limitations

And the view he expresses several times now is that convicting these young men is far from unjust. Race, the perpetual theme song of American life, might be a factor in his evaluation, but George, who has sat with Purfoyle dozens of times, doubts that. Summer, much like George himself, usually sides with the prosecutors, except in clear cases of police misbehavior. Nathan duels with Summerset for some time, trying to nudge the facts with little hypothetical alterations into a shape allowing him to prevail, but increasingly he casts his dark, squinty look toward George, who obviously holds the deciding vote.

The person on the street might think judges are emperors who wave their scepters and do what they like, but in George’s experience, all of them attempt to apply the law. Words are sometimes as elusive as fish, and reasonable minds often differ on the meaning of cases and statutes, but it is still the actual language that has to guide a judge. George concentrates on the question: Is convicting these boys on the basis of a videotape that should not have been admitted ‘a miscarriage of justice’?

Incongruously, it is the tape itself that stands out in his mind as he endeavors to answer. Sapperstein’s arguments required George to view the video, locked in his inner chambers. Hard to shock when it comes to crime, George could stomach only a portion of it before assigning Banion to go through it frame by frame and produce a sterile description.

But the ten minutes or so George took in still reverberate. Mindy DeBoyer was a deadweight throughout, her limbs like wet laundry. The teased ribbons of her dark hair were conveniently pushed across her face, while her naked hips and one leg straddled the arm of a Chesterfield chair, as if the fully dressed upper body slumped on the cushion below-the head, the heart-did not exist. It was crime at its purest, in which empathy, that most fundamental aspect of human morality, evaporated and another being became only a target for untamed fantasy. The sexual acts were committed in emphatic plunging motions of pure aggression, and the way the boys exposed themselves to one another before and after, amid much wild hooting, could only be labeled depraved-not in any puritanical sense but because George sensed that these young men were dominated by impulses they would ordinarily have rejected. But if the purpose of the criminal law is to state emphatically that some behavior is beyond toleration, then this case surely requires that declaration.

“I’m afraid that I’m going to have to side with Summerset on this one,” he says. Koll makes a face. “Nathan, the defendants are entitled to be judged on what they argued, not what they didn’t. I will say, though, that Sapperstein’s claim about the statute of limitations has quite a bit of traction with me. Ms. DeBoyer knew she might have been raped but said nothing. How can we say the crime was concealed?”

“Because that was the trial judge’s conclusion,” answers Summer at once. “He saw the young woman testify. He felt that, given her age and inexperience, those boys kept her from knowing enough to report the crime. We have to defer to him.”

In George’s mind Sapperstein has made his most telling argument on this point, contending that the trial judge’s reliance on Mindy’s age means he was essentially applying an exception to the statute of limitations for crimes committed against minors. In such a case, the victim has a year from her eighteenth birthday to report the offense. But Mindy was three months past nineteen when the tape came to light.

Much as Koll turned to him a moment before, George now looks at Nathan.

“I’m afraid that I’m going to have to side with Summerset on this one,” Koll answers, echoing George’s precise words. Tit for tat. So much for the majesty of the law.

George ponders where they are. Three judges and three different opinions in a case that is already highly controversial. As the senior, George is supposed to fashion a compromise that will not lead the court into ridicule. A reversal, with no agreement why, will only fan the flames in Glen Brae. More important, their job is to declare the law, not hold up their palms and say to the world ‘Who knows?’ Accordingly, he decides to write the opinion himself. Years ago, before Rusty Sabich became Chief Judge, when the appellate court was a retirement camp for able party loyalists, opinions were assigned in advance by rotation, and dissents were all but forbidden. In practice, appeals were argued to a court of one, with the lawyers standing at the podium engaged in a legal shell game, attempting to guess which of the three judges was actually deciding the case.

“I’ll take this one,” he says, and with that stands, calling the conference to a close.

Nettled as always when he does not get his way, Koll directs a heavy look at George.

“And are we affirming or reversing?”

“Well, Nathan, you’ll have to read my draft. I’ll circulate it within the week.” Koll will write his own opinion anyway, a concurrence or a dissent, depending on which way George goes. “This case is-” says Judge Mason and stops cold. He still has no idea how he is going to vote, which argument he’ll champion and which he’ll reject. Decisiveness is a job requirement and one at which he normally excels. His continuing discomfort with People v. Warnovits remains troubling but suddenly not as much as what he was on the verge of blurting out. He has no clue even what the words could mean, but he was ready to tell his two colleagues, ‘This case is me.’

In the late 1980s, the Third District Appellate Court was relocated by the County Board. Litigation had become a growth business in Kindle County, much like everywhere else in America, and the need for more civil courtrooms in the Superior Court building, known as the Temple, had forced the appellate judges to take up residence a mile away in the Central Branch Courthouse, where criminal cases were tried. Bolstered by Reagan-era law enforcement money, the County constructed a large criminal court annex. The appellate judges were allotted most of the grand spaces in the old building, which had been erected with the rich architectural detail characteristic of public projects during the Depression, when skilled tradesmen worked cheap. Nonetheless, many of the jurists were unhappy to move out of Center City. Beyond U.S. 843, the area is blighted, sometimes dangerous, and offers few decent spots for lunch. But George Mason, who began his professional career in this courthouse as a Deputy State Defender, relishes every day the fact that he has come full circle.

Now, in the adjacent concrete parking structure, Judge Mason throws his briefcase down on the front seat of his car. He triggers the ignition so he can put on the air-it is another close evening in early June-but he has no intention of driving anywhere yet. The 1994 Lexus LS 400 is a remaining prize of his flush times in private practice, and he maintains the car devotedly, in part because it is the only space in the world he thinks of as exclusively his. Here at the end of the day, he often reflects on cases and personal issues, when he is finally free from the robe, whose weight he feels everywhere in the courthouse, whether he is wearing it or not.

The gloomy parking garage would not strike many as a welcoming spot for reflection, especially since the Central Branch Courthouse is where many of the County’s most dangerous citizens must report monthly while they are out on bail. Although the garage is heavily patrolled by Marina’s forces during business hours, perpetual budget cuts have left only a small crew on duty after 6:00 P.M., when George customarily returns. Through the years, the garage has been the scene of stickups, beatings, and more than one shooting, involving Kindle County’s eternally warring gangs, the Black Saints Disciples, the Gangster Outlaws, and the Almighty Latin Nation, and their constituent ‘sets.’ ‘Get in and get out’ is the standard advice.