Randy Singer - The Justice Game

A year ago, Jason had pleaded for the chance to join Lassiter while he analyzed one of the panels, arguing that it could enhance Jason’s own trial skills and give Lassiter some company. Lassiter eventually broke down, though he swore Jason to secrecy. The two men hit it off instantly-Lassiter as the laser-focused professor, Jason as the studious trial lawyer-brought together by their insatiable desire to scrutinize the dynamics of jury deliberations.

After a few trials, the review process had developed its own quirky routine-like a private premiere party. They discussed the things that worked for Jason and the things he could have done differently. They talked about the idiosyncrasies of each juror and whether anything peculiar had happened in the mock case that might skew the results. After a night of reviewing the video, Lassiter would have a final meeting with a team of other analysts and then call Robert Sherwood with a consensus prediction for the real case.

“Why didn’t you tell us about Juror 7’s husband?” Jason asked.

“You know the rules. You only get access to the same data that the real lawyers have.”

“They don’t know about the affair?”

“I don’t think so. Juror 7 and her husband agreed on a property distribution without going to trial. Cited irreconcilable differences. Neither likes to talk about the real reason.”

“I would have argued the case differently.”

“I should hope so.” Lassiter popped open his second can of beer, blinked at the screen a few times, and took a long swallow. By now he had a nervous bounce going with his left leg-the carbs burning up as soon as they entered his system.

“How did you find out about the affair?” Jason asked. He knew Justice Inc. maintained a slew of investigators who looked under every rock when compiling the micromarketing profiles for the citizens who had been selected for jury duty during the term of the case in question. The investigators checked each juror’s trash-technically not a crime since it was abandoned property. Often they gained access to a juror’s computer files through some genius hacker who reported directly to Andrew Lassiter. A handful of jurors would agree to a telephone survey Justice Inc. conducted under the guise of a time-share company promising a free round-trip airline ticket just for participating. There were rumors of more nefarious methods as well, though they were never discussed in Jason’s presence.

“We know lots of things,” Lassiter said, picking up another wing.

“You have guys following the jurors?”

Lassiter gave Jason a look, out of the top of his eyes, with just a hint of annoyance. They had been over this before-there were some things Jason could never know.

“Okay,” Jason said. “I’m just saying, it’s hard to believe that Juror 7’s husband had an affair, and the actual lawyers trying the case, with their own high-priced jury consultants, don’t even know about it.”

“Please,” Lassiter said. “You might as well hire a palm reader and just skip the so-called jury consultants. They don’t hire real investigators. They just hazard wild guesses based on the same information everybody has. What they do is roulette. What we do is science.”

For the next hour and a half, Jason watched the tape with Lassiter, occasionally checking a juror’s profile information. As usual, Lassiter provided insightful commentary, tying the remarks of the jurors to the data in their profiles. He stopped at three beers and left his plate of half-eaten chicken wings on the table, his leg bouncing, eyes blinking, working on a spreadsheet the entire time the jurors argued-his screen split between a window showing the deliberations and the spreadsheets that predicted their outcome.

Eventually Jason cleaned off the table and put the leftovers in Lassiter’s refrigerator. His friend stayed hunched over his computer, massaging the data even as he talked to Jason and listened to the jurors prattle on.

After two hours of deliberations, Juror 7 decided it was time to take another vote. This would be the fourth or fifth vote-Jason had lost count-and each time the number of jurors in favor of acquittal had increased by one or two.

“Eight to four in favor of acquittal,” Juror 7 announced after a quick show of hands. There were a few groans from the ones who had been in favor of acquittal from the start. They had obviously been hoping for a few more converts.

During the last hour of the video, Jason watched helplessly as Juror 7 and her comrades tore apart his case and bullied the other jurors. He had an answer for every question, but he would never get to voice them.

In two years, he had never lost a case at Justice Inc. Not a single shadow jury had turned against him. But now it was happening right in front of his eyes, and he couldn’t think of a single thing he could have done differently to prevent it.

“The prosecution’s going to lose, aren’t they?” Jason asked, referring to the real case.

“Why do you say that?” Lassiter stood for the first time in two hours and stretched. “You won two of the three panels.”

“But Austin Lockhart’s not much of a trial lawyer. And Juror 7 is on a mission from God. Nobody had better accuse a jilted wife of murder… not on her watch.”

“She’s a little out of control,” Lassiter admitted. He blinked and cleared his throat. “But you won the other two panels, so it obviously wasn’t as much of a factor there. Personally, I’m more concerned about the Jason Noble factor.”

Jason knew it was intended as a compliment-a reference to his superior advocacy skills and whether they had skewed the results. Jason didn’t put much stock in it himself. He was certainly better than Lockhart, but not enough to completely alter the outcome.

“I glanced at the beginnings of the other deliberations before you got here,” Lassiter said. “The other juries were nearly unanimous for a conviction right from the start. Sure, you out-lawyered Lockhart, but you had more to work with. Nine times out of ten, Kendra Van Wyck is going to jail.”

“I don’t know,” Jason said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”

“That’s the point. You operate on feelings. I operate on facts.”

Robert Sherwood and his guests grilled steaks and drank wine for nearly two hours aboard his sixty-eight-foot yacht, Veritas, being careful not to discuss any business until they were beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. Sherwood constantly reminded his guests that they were doing nothing illegal, but you never knew when some headline-grabbing prosecutor would think of a creative new way to twist the law and go after you, based on the theory that nobody should make this much money without a little hassle from the feds.

Sherwood’s guests each represented a major hedge fund. They were part of an exclusive club of Wall Street boy geniuses, a few of the lucky survivors who had bet on a bear market even before the collapse. But it was still Sherwood who dominated the conversation, holding forth on politics, baseball, Manhattan real estate, golf, and yachting-just about anything the great man wanted to talk about. Except business-that could wait until later.

Sherwood was fifteen years older than the oldest guest and outweighed most of them by at least twenty pounds. The man wore his years well, and people routinely expressed surprise when they learned he was pushing sixty. He dyed his hair, bleached his teeth, and worked out every day. He stood six-two and weighed a solid 210 pounds, the same weight he had carried in law school nearly thirty-five years earlier. Sherwood was loud and confident and generally found a way of mentioning his black belt within a half hour of meeting someone new.