John Lescroart: The Dismas Hardy Collection by John Lescroart

Author:John Lescroart [Lescroart, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Legal, Mystery & Detective, Retail, Thrillers
ISBN: 9781101644539
Google: 6igY2FrPr0MC
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2012-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

For the eighth time in five weeks, eighty people filed into the courtroom. The clerk read off twelve names and those people came out of the gallery and filed into the jury box. All eighty swore to answer truthfully any question pertaining to their qualifications to serve as jurors.

Judge Villars began: “Jennifer Lee Witt has been charged with three counts of murder in the first degree and special circumstances in an indictment returned by the grand jury for the State of California.” She continued, asking the standard battery of initial questions: Did anyone on the panel know the defendant? The victim? How about the attorneys representing them? Had anyone been a victim of a violent crime? Did anyone have a policeman as a relative? A lawyer? A judge? Did anyone consider themselves familiar with the case from reports they’d seen on television or read in the newspapers? Had any of them been arrested? Hands went up in answer to each question, and the lawyers took notes.

And so it went, Jennifer leaning close to Freeman, occasionally turning to Hardy with a question or comment. They were making notes on their peremptory challenges, deciding who they would dismiss, although there wasn’t much to go on.

Jury selection, even in the old days of voir dire, was, of course, no exact science. Now under the new rules it was close to a crapshoot. Did Juror Number 5 look like she was sympathetic to Jennifer? Would the young stud, Number 11, want to give Jennifer a break because she was so attractive, or would he identify with Larry Witt, a hardworking guy who got stuck with the wrong woman? How about the Plain Jane who was Number 9? Would she be jealous of Jennifer’s looks, or would she perhaps see her as a misguided sister who had been maligned and unfairly accused?

None of the first twelve survived the initial questioning. Twelve more were called. By September 27 there were ninety-two people eligible to serve as jurors. All the others had been excused for “good cause,” hardship or bias disclosed during the initial questioning. Only now did the lawyers use their peremptory challenges. Powell challenged eleven times. Freeman used all twenty of his. They picked six alternates.

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