The Attorney by Steve Martini

Author:Steve Martini
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101549599
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2001-01-01T23:14:13.863000+00:00

EIGHTEEN

* * *

Courtrooms in America are laid out with an eye toward turning defendants into furniture. The counsel table for the prosecution is parked, as it is today, right next to the jury box so that the DA can pass winks and nods to jurors without fear of getting a kink in his neck.

Harry and I, with Jonah at the far end, are seated at the defense table, ten yards away, clear on the other side of the room. Between the two sets of lawyers is a rostrum nearly as tall as a man and twice as wide. Erected in the gap between the two contending teams of lawyers, this podium stands directly in line with the judge’s bench so that even if Jonah wanted to look down the line to make eye contact with jurors, he couldn’t.

It’s like seats under the bleachers at a basketball game, except that here, Harry says you can’t even grab an occasional glance up a passing skirt. While Jonah may have a jury of his peers, in this setting so would the chair he is sitting in.

The panel of twelve, tried and true, has already been seated, with five alternates down from six. One of them begged off two days after opening arguments for reasons of health.

We have nine women, three men. Two of them work for the phone company, which seems to be disproportionately represented on nearly every jury I have ever seen. Whether it’s civic pride, or that they get paid time-and-a-half for jury service I’ve never figured out.

Several of the jurors are older. This could be an advantage, given the facts. There is no way that prosecutors can avoid the issue of Amanda, Jonah’s granddaughter, and the inference that Suade played a part in her disappearance. This is key to their theory of motive in the murder.

On the other side, behind the prosecution table, directly behind the railing, sits the widower Harold Morgan, Suade’s husband. He is tall, slender, urbane, with gray hair parted on the left and a bow tie. He looks the part of some Ivy League think-tanker, only here he has the explosive potential of cordite, sitting as he does in a sea of reporters. I have seen him outside in the hall, holding forth in front of the cameras, calmly intoning that all he seeks is justice.

When asked whether he would favor the death penalty if Jonah is convicted, Morgan looked at the reporter, and said he would have to defer judgment on the question until he sees the evidence.

Mary Hale sits one row behind us, up close to the railing on our side so that on occasion Jonah can turn and talk to her during breaks. She is worried about his health. There have been some spikes in his blood pressure over the last week. The doctor is now seeing him nearly every day, monitoring his pressure and his medication.

Though Jonah is depressed, we have one advantage in the social skirmish to win empathy with the jury.

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