The county attorney remained behind the counsel table, but he spoke directly to the jury. Howard listened as the prosecutor laid out the elements of the case and what they would need to decide. The legal questions. The evidence questions. It all began here.
‘This trial is about a relationship that went badly wrong,’ Erickson told them. ‘It’s about a marriage where the wife wanted out and her husband refused to let her go. This wife — the defendant, Janine Snow — saw only one way to be free of her husband. Only one way to escape. Murder. That’s the story of this case. And the witnesses and physical evidence we show you in the next few days will make the details of that story very clear. When we’re done, you will conclude beyond any reasonable doubt that, on January 28 of this year, Janine Snow shot her husband, Jay Ferris, in the head and intentionally caused his death.’
Erickson was serious and confident. He didn’t smile; he wasn’t their buddy. He wore an expensive suit, not an everyman suit, as if he wanted Howard and the other jurors to believe that he was just a little smarter than they were, knew just a little more, had been down this road enough times that you could trust whatever he said.
‘Most of what happened on January 28 isn’t in dispute,’ Erickson continued. ‘We have an eyewitness who saw the defendant and Mr. Ferris together, and we have the defendant’s own statement to the police that night. She was alone in the house with her husband on the night of the murder. They argued. Minutes later, Jay Ferris lay dead of a gunshot wound to his head in the living room of their house. Not in dispute.
‘So what led these two people to that terrible moment? Multiple witnesses will testify that the defendant wanted to end her marriage but that her husband was determined not to grant her a divorce. That the relationship between them was volatile and that each tried to inflict psychological damage on the other. That the defendant’s husband, Jay Ferris, knew about his wife’s addiction to prescription pain medications and was threatening to expose this information and destroy her medical career. He held her whole future in his hands, ladies and gentlemen. That’s the situation Janine Snow faced on January 28. That’s why she used a gun to murder her husband.
‘Did the defendant know how to fire a gun? Yes, she did. We’ll show you a photograph of her firing a gun similar in kind to the gun used to murder Jay Ferris.
‘Did the defendant have access to a gun? Yes, she did. You’ll hear a witness testify that the defendant knew that her husband owned a gun and that she concealed that knowledge from the police. Her husband’s gun has since disappeared.
‘Did the defendant take steps to conceal whether she fired a gun on January 28? Yes, she did. By her own statement to the police, she took a shower and washed her clothes that night before the police arrived. So she made it impossible to run chemical tests on her body and her clothes that would have confirmed that she had fired a gun.
‘This story isn’t hard to understand, ladies and gentlemen. You won’t need anything more than your common sense to know what happened that night. Janine Snow caused the death of Jay Ferris.’
Howard felt the blank slate of his judgment fill with suspicion as Erickson spoke. Judge Edblad had already warned them that nothing an attorney said was evidence, and yet if the evidence revealed what Erickson promised, it was hard not to believe that the case was exactly as he stated.
Then Archibald Gale stood up.
He was warm where Dan Erickson was cool. He was like Santa Claus in a two-piece suit, with his curly hair, peppery beard, and twinkling eyes. He reminded them that Janine, sitting in that chair beside him, was innocent, and that the entire burden of proof rested with the state. With each sentence, delivered with a sad shake of his head, he cast doubt on that proof.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, pay attention to what you do not hear from the state in this case. You will not hear any evidence that Dr. Snow owned a gun, because there is no such evidence.
‘You will not hear any evidence that Dr. Snow fired a gun that night, because there is no such evidence.
‘You will not hear any evidence about the gun used to murder Jay Ferris, because that gun was never found. Think about that. Whoever killed Mr. Ferris took the gun away from the crime scene. On that basis alone, it’s reasonable for you to doubt that Dr. Snow could have committed this crime. But there’s more.’
Gale took a sip of water.
‘You will learn that Jay Ferris wrote things in his job as a columnist at the Duluth News-Tribune that offended people. Outraged them. Cost them their jobs. It’s reasonable to wonder whether one of those people killed him.
‘You will learn that an unknown vehicle was parked in the neighborhood not far from Jay Ferris’s house on the night of the murder and that the police never located this vehicle or who was driving it. It’s reasonable to wonder whether that person killed him.
‘You will learn that Jay Ferris took pictures of an armed man while hiking in a park near Duluth and that the police never identified this man or interviewed him about his whereabouts on the night of the murder. It’s reasonable to wonder whether that dangerous man killed him.’
And so it went on.
By the time Archibald Gale sat down, Howard was back to where he’d started. A blank slate. He had no idea about Janine’s guilt or innocence. All he could do was stare at her face and wonder. This time, her face wasn’t a photograph on the computer screen in the basement of his house. She was real. She was so close that he could smell her perfume.
She was waiting for him to decide.
‘Mr. Erickson,’ Judge Edblad said, ‘call your first witness, please.’
21
Cindy felt physically ill on the witness stand.
At the counsel table, Janine offered her the tiniest of smiles. They were still friends. There were no hard feelings, even though Cindy was the first witness, pounding in the first nail.
Dan Erickson stood up to address her. Cindy knew exactly the kind of man he was. Inside the courtroom, he played his role, leading the jury down the path he wanted them to follow. Outside the courtroom, he was vain, self-absorbed, and manipulative. He was good-looking, and he knew it. He was married, but his eyes and hands wandered over every pretty woman he met.
He took her through introductions. Established who she was. And who her husband was.
‘Mrs. Stride, where were you on the evening of January 28 of this year?’
‘I was at a birthday party for Deputy Police Chief Kyle Kinnick at the Radisson Hotel.’
‘Was the defendant there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was the defendant’s husband Jay Ferris there?’
‘No.’
‘During the party, did you speak to the defendant?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Did you see her consume any alcohol?’
Cindy hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
‘I don’t know exactly. She was drinking white wine. She had several glasses.’
‘Did the defendant subsequently ask if you would drive her home?’
‘Yes, she did.’
‘And do you remember exactly what time it was when you drove her home?’
‘I remember that the clock in my car read 9:32 p.m. It’s not far. We would have reached Janine’s house just a few minutes later.’
‘When you arrived at the defendant’s house, did you accompany her to her front door?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘At that time, did you see Jay Ferris, the defendant’s husband?’
‘Yes, he came to the door and opened it.’
‘He was alive?’
Cindy smiled faintly. ‘Yes, obviously.’