Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (best fiction books to read TXT) 📗

challenges and couldn't evict a young guy with a Fu Manchu mustache who glared at me all through voir dire. He cleaned septic tanks for a living, which was the only thing we had in common. Whenever I looked at him, he cupped his chin in his hand with the middle finger extended. For a week, every time I glanced at the jury box, there he was in a work shirt emblazoned WE'RE THANKFUL FOR YOUR TANKFUL, shooting me the bird. When the jury came back in and he stood up as foreman, I started planning my appellate brief. But then the jury ruled for us, and when I shook his hand on the way out of the courtroom, I noticed the finger was frozen stiff. A construction accident, he said, when he caught me looking down at his hand. Things are not always as they seem, or, as Doc Riggs say, non semper something or other.

So now, with Chrissy sitting next to me, appearing demure and nonlethal, I looked at the panel of several dozen prospective jurors. It was the usual collection of schoolteachers, government workers, Miami Herald pressmen, American Airlines mechanics, housewives, and retirees, with an occasional college student thrown in. I've had juries with a lobster pot poacher, a nipple ring designer, a santero who chanted prayers to Babalu Aye during recess, and a cross-dressing doorman from a South Beach club, so today's group looked pretty normal.

I went through the motions of asking personal questions that I assured the panel were not meant to embarrass them. After determining that nearly everyone had been the victim of a crime but very few admitted to seeing a psychiatrist, I started paying attention to body language, or kinesics, as Dr. Weiner calls it.

I watched for hands clasped in tension or arms crossed, closing me out. I watched for crossed ankles and hands squeezing the chair in a death grip. At the same time, I paid attention to my own gestures. "Keep your palms open and friendly," Dr. Weiner always reminded me. "Watch your proxemics, your space usage. You're too tall to get close to the rail. Your vertical power will intimidate the jurors. And don't put your hands on your hips. Taking up too much horizontal space is simply too authoritarian."

Thanks a lot. Before hiring the ponytailed, tinted-lensed Dr. Les Weiner, I was content just to know my fly was zipped up.

So I did my friendly big-guy act, not getting too close, not taking up too much space, smiling, shucking and jiving, and trying to find six honest, sympathetic souls who would hear us out, whatever we might have to say. In the front row of the gallery, Marvin the Maven sat impassively, frowning at me whenever I leaned over to talk to my expensive hired gun. As I questioned the jurors, Dr. Weiner took notes when he wasn't thumbing through the latest yachting catalog. He kept his trawler, a forty-two-foot Krogen named The Pleasure Principle, docked at Dinner Key Marina in what he called his Freudian slip. The Krogen is a lot like me, a widebody that is slow but steady in rough seas and high winds. It is finished in rich teak and impresses the doc's women companions, who tend to be young, blond, and susceptible to strong margaritas and salty breezes.

It took all day to seat a jury. Then Judge Stanger gave the group his spiel, telling them not to talk about the case with each other or anyone else. They all nodded knowingly. They'd seen it all on TV a thousand times. In our courthouse, we call it Ito-izing the jury.

I stood and bowed slightly, trying to make eye contact, as the jurors filed out of the courtroom. I would do the same at every recess and adjournment until the trial was over. Some looked at me and some didn't.

Then I took Chrissy Bernhardt by the arm and steered her out of the courtroom. I needed a drink, a good night's sleep, and a trial strategy, and at the moment I would have taken two out of three.

22

Chrissy, Chrissy, Chrissy

First thing in the morning, Judge Stanger gave his preliminary instructions, and the jurors leaned forward, listening intently. They're like that at the beginning. On edge, wanting to do their duty. As the surroundings become more familiar, as the lawyers wear out their welcome with repetitious questions and obstreperous objections, jurors kick back and daydream or doze. Sometimes I imagine them as cartoon characters, scenes of bass fishing or sexual liaisons filling little bubbles over their heads. Why not? That's what occupies my mind when Abe Socolow is strutting in front of the jury box or the judge is endlessly repeating his admonitions.

"The indictment is not evidence," Judge Stanger said, "and should not be relied on by you as evidence of guilt."

He told the jurors that they were not permitted to infer guilt if the defendant didn't testify. It's a standard instruction, and many times I won't put a client on the stand, since most defendants will only muck it up. In one of my first trials as an assistant public defender, the prosecutor asked my client, "You say you're innocent, yet five people swore they saw you steal a watch."

"So what?" my saintly client said. "I can produce a hundred people who didn't see me steal it."

When your client remains silent, the prosecution isn't permitted to comment on the failure to testily, and the judge repeats his Fifth Amendment instruction after closing argument. Still, I wonder what the jurors think. Even if they don't discuss it, aren't they saying to themselves. If I was innocent, I'd sure as hell put my hand on the Good Book and tell the whole dang world?

The judge ordered the jurors not to speculate about why the lawyers make their objections and what the answers would have been if the objections had been overruled. So silly. Try not thinking of a pink elephant. Whoops, can't do it.