Dancing with the Devil by Rodney Barker

Author:Rodney Barker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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The court-martial of Sgt. Clayton Lonetree officially began at 9:30 on the morning of August 11, 1987, and the prosecution went first.

Major Beck had given a great deal of thought to his opening statement. Most military prosecutors marched to the podium and dryly stated the list of offenses and the prosecution’s intention to prove them beyond a reasonable doubt, but that wasn’t good enough for Dave Beck. Not in a case that was being observed by the national media. Not when opposing him was an attorney notorious for bringing theatricality to the courtroom.

From the motions made by the defense in the pretrial stage, Beck figured the defense team was going to point the finger of blame at everyone other than their client, so at the very start he wanted to set the tone dramatically and emphatically for what he wanted the members of the court to keep in mind throughout the coming proceedings.

Pushing his chair back, he strode briskly over to the defense table, where he stopped, snapped to attention, raised his right hand, and staring Sergeant Lonetree fiercely in the eye, recited the Marine oath of enlistement.

“I, Clayton J. Lonetree, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed above me, according to regulation and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, so help me God.”

Some of Beck’s legal friends had cautioned him against using this opening gambit. They were concerned the members of the jury would roll their eyes and think it was overly histrionic for a formal military hearing. But when Beck saw the entire defense team, including Sergeant Lonetree, leaning backward as if they’d just been blasted by a cold wind, he knew he’d made the right decision.

Swiveling on his heels to face the Marine officers in the jury box, Beck followed the script he had carefully prepared.

“The oath of enlistment is familiar to each of us, and I want you to keep it in mind throughout the course of this trial. Whatever sins of commission or omission by other organizations you may hear about, that is the oath this Marine swore to. And the evidence will show that he betrayed not only that oath, but his fellow Marines, and his country.”

Major Beck was of the mind that whether the charge was espionage or robbery, for a trial counsel to be effective he had to capture the jury’s interest right at the start. Then he had to keep them focused by reducing complex evidence to its simplest elements, and hold the jury’s attention all the way to the end with the strategic ordering of strong and weak witnesses. Experience had also taught him that juries were no different from ordinary people in that they liked to be told a story. So when he tried

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