Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

So although I would never play the race card once the trial starts-as I’ve spent months explaining to Ruth-I’m damn well going to stack the odds before it begins.

Which is why, before we begin voir dire to choose jurors, I march into my boss’s office and tell him I was wrong. “I’m feeling a little overwhelmed after all,” I say to Harry. “I was thinking I might need a cochair.”

He takes a lollipop out of a jar he keeps on his desk. “Ed’s got a shaken-baby trial starting this week-”

“I wasn’t talking about Ed. I was thinking of Howard.”

“Howard.” He looks at me, baffled. “The kid who still brings his meals in a lunchbox?”

It’s true that Howard is fresh out of law school and that so far, in the few months he’s been at the office, has only done misdemeanors-domestics and a few disorderlies. I offer my smoothest grin. “Yeah. You know, he’ll just be an extra pair of hands for me. A runner. And in the meantime, it would be good for him to get trial experience.”

Harry unwraps the lollipop and sticks it in his mouth. “Whatever,” he says, his teeth gripped on the stem.

With his blessing, or the closest I’m going to get to one, I head back to my cubicle and poke my head over the divider that separates me from Howard. “Guess what,” I tell him. “You’re going to second-chair the Jefferson case. Voir dire’s this week.”

He glances up. “Wait. What? Really?”

It’s a big deal for a rookie who is still doing scut work in the office. “We’re leaving,” I announce, and I grab my coat, knowing he will follow.

I do need an extra pair of hands.

I also need them to be black.

–

HOWARD SCRAMBLES AT my side as we walk through the halls of the courthouse. “You don’t speak to the judge unless I’ve told you to,” I instruct. “Don’t show any emotions, no matter what theatrical display Odette Lawton puts on-prosecutors do that to make themselves feel like they’re Gregory Peck in Mockingbird .”

“Who?”

“God. Never mind.” I glance at him. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-four.”

“I have sweaters older than you,” I mutter. “I’ll give you the discovery to read over tonight. This afternoon I’m going to need you to do some fieldwork.”

“Fieldwork?”

“Yeah, you have a car, right?”

He nods.

“And then, once we actually get the jurors inside, you’re going to be my human video camera. You’re going to record every tic and twitch and comment that each potential juror makes in response to my questions, so that we can go over it and figure out which candidates are going to fuck us over. It’s not about who’s on the jury…it’s about who’s not on it. Do you have any questions?”

Howard hesitates. “Is it true that you once offered Judge Thunder a blow job?”

I stop walking and face him, my hands on my hips. “You don’t even know how to clean out the coffee machine yet, but you know that ?”

Howard pushes his glasses up his nose. “I plead the Fifth.”

“Well, whatever you heard, it was taken out of context and it was prednisone-induced. Now shut up and look older than twelve, for God’s sake.” I push open the door to Judge Thunder’s chambers to find him sitting behind his desk, with the prosecutor already in the room. “Your Honor. Hello.”

He glances at Howard. “Who’s this?”

“My co-counsel,” I reply.

Odette folds her arms. “As of when?”

“About a half hour ago.”

We all stare at Howard, waiting for him to introduce himself. He looks at me, his lips pressed firmly together. You don’t speak to the judge unless I’ve told you to. “Speak,” I mutter.

He holds out a hand. “Howard Moore. It’s an honor, Your…um…Honor.”

I roll my eyes.

Judge Thunder produces a huge stack of completed questionnaires, which are sent out to people who are called for jury duty. They are full of practical information, like where the recipient lives and where he or she works. But they also include pointed questions: Do you have any problems with the presumption of innocence? If a defendant doesn’t testify, do you assume he is hiding something? Do you understand that the Constitution gives the defendant the right to not say anything? If the State proves this case beyond reasonable doubt, would you have any moral qualms about convicting the defendant?

He splits the pile in half. “Ms. Lawton, you take this bunch for four hours; and Ms. McQuarrie, you take these. We’ll reconvene at one P.M., switch piles, and then voir dire begins in two days.”

As I drive Howard back to our office, I explain what we are looking for. “A solid defense juror is an older woman. They have the most empathy, the most experience, and they’re less judgmental, and they’re really hard on young punks like Turk Bauer. And beware of Millennials.”

“Why?” Howard asks, surprised. “Aren’t young people less likely to be racist?”

“You mean like Turk?” I point out. “The Millennials are the me generation. They usually think everything revolves around them, and make decisions based on what’s going on in their lives and how it will affect their lives. In other words, they’re minefields of egocentrism.”

“Got it.”

“Ideally we want a juror who has a high social status, because those people tend to influence other jurors when it comes to deliberations.”

“So we’re looking for a unicorn,” Howard says. “A supersensitive, racially conscious, straight white male.”

“He could be gay,” I reply, serious. “Gay, Jewish, female-anything that can help them identify with discrimination in any form is going to be a bonus for Ruth.”

“But we don’t know any of these candidates. How do we become psychic overnight?”

“We don’t become psychic. We become detectives,” I say. “You’re going to take half the surveys and drive to the addresses that are listed on them. You want to find out whatever you can. Are they religious? Are they rich? Poor? Do they have political campaign signs on the lawn? Do they live above where they work? Do they have a flagpole in the front yard?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“More often than not that’s someone who’s extremely conservative,” I explain.

“Where are you going to be?” he asks.

“Doing the same thing.”

I watch Howard leave, plugging the first address into his phone GPS. Then I wander the halls of the office asking other public defenders if they’ve had any of these folks on their panels-a lot of the jurors get recycled. Ed is about to head out the door to court, but he glances at the sheaf of papers. “I remember this guy,” he says, pulling one survey free. “He was part of my jury on Monday-grand larceny case. He raised his hand during my opening statement and asked if I had a business card.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Sadly,” Ed says, “no. Good luck, kiddo.”

Ten minutes later, I’ve plugged an address into my GPS and find myself driving through Newhallville. I lock the doors for safety’s sake. Presidential Gardens, the apartment building between Shelton and Dixwell Avenues, is a lower-income pocket of the city, with a quarter of the residents living below the poverty line, and the streets that bracket the residences are rife with drug traffic. Nevaeh Jones lives in this building, somewhere. I watch a little boy run out the door of one building, not wearing a coat, and start jogging when the cold hits him. He wipes his nose on his sleeve in midstride.

Will a woman from this area see Ruth and think she’s being railroaded? Or will she see the socioeconomic difference between them and be resentful?