Terry came out swinging-and showed me exactly what I was up against. With her very first question, I found out that even my best batch of jurors was vulnerable to the defense party line.
“Juror Number Seventy-four, do you believe that sometimes innocent people can be framed?”
The juror, a divorced father of three employed by the Department of Water and Power who looked like a beer-drinking football fan, responded, “Uh…sure.”
“And have you heard of cases where innocent men served as much as thirty years in prison before the courts agreed that they’d been wrongly convicted?”
He nodded seriously. “Yeah.”
I noticed she conveniently forgot to mention that those men had been freed by DNA evidence-our strongest proof of guilt in this case. I’d make sure to point that out when I stood up again.
Terry stretched the question out to the rest of the panel, and every single one of them said they’d seen such cases in the news.
“How many of you have heard about the Rampart Division of LAPD planting drugs and lying to justify arrests?”
I looked at Judge Osterman to gauge whether he’d sustain an objection. He glanced at me but looked back at Terry-a sign I shouldn’t waste my breath. I sat tight and did my best to look serene.
About six of the jurors raised their hands, and I heard rustling behind me that said many in the audience would’ve raised theirs too.
“Would you agree that the Rampart Division’s actions are an example of a conspiracy?”
The jurors answered in unison, “Yes.”
Where the hell was she going with this police conspiracy junk? Why on earth would the cops want to frame Ian Powers? I was glad Bailey wasn’t here to listen to this; she’d be ready to pull out her gun. Bailey and I were going to have to do some more digging to try to find out whether there was some bad blood between Ian Powers and the LAPD we hadn’t heard about yet.
“Now, you all agree, I’m sure, that it’s a terrible thing for an innocent man to be convicted?” Terry asked.
Firm agreements all around, “Absolutely” and “No question” and “Of course.”
“And you’d never want to be in the position of believing evidence that’d been trumped up to frame an innocent man, would you?”
Again, there were headshakes all around and murmured verbal responses of “No” and “Never.” Only my electronic engineer seemed immune. He pressed his lips together and watched Terry with a stony expression.
Terry moved on to the more personal issues. “You all know by now that my client, Ian Powers, is a very important figure in the film and television industry, and that he’s a wealthy man.”
Nods and murmurs of “Yes” throughout the jury box.
“Juror Number Twenty-eight, are you going to hold that against him?”
That, at least, was a fair question. The juror, a slight Hispanic woman who’d worked for the California Highway Patrol as a dispatcher but was now unemployed, shook her head vigorously and frowned. “No.”
Declan had given this juror a thumbs-up, but I’d been less impressed. Civilian employees of police departments aren’t necessarily big fans of law enforcement, and the fact that she was no longer working for the CHP worried me. She’d said she left because she wanted to go back to school. I wasn’t sure I believed her. Now, watching her practically mugging for Terry, I knew this juror was trouble.
“And just to follow up with you, Juror Twenty-eight, have you ever heard of an innocent person being framed?”
Juror twenty-eight started to nod, then darted a glance at me. She cut short her nod and asked, “What do you mean by ‘framed’? That someone made him look guilty? Or put him in a situation where he’d do something wrong?”
Pretty smart question, but her body language and attitude told me she’d asked that question to curry favor with me. She wanted on this jury way too much.
Terry finished with her and moved on to more mundane subjects like reasonable doubt. I snuck a look at Wagmeister and Ian. They were huddled together as though they were old fraternity buddies-the upper-one-percent fraternity. Ian was writing copious notes to Wagmeister, who nodded as he read them and patted Ian on the back. Wagmeister seemed to have slipped into the role of second fiddle rather easily, which was surprising. He was someone who’d always seemed to enjoy the limelight. On the other hand, if Ian had decided he preferred Terry to be lead counsel and he was still paying the freight, Wagmeister had no choice but to go along or get off the case.
I turned back to the jury and firmed up my decisions about who to kick first, then wrote down those juror numbers and showed Declan. Declan raised his eyebrows at my decision to kick the former CHP dispatcher.
Finally, Terry thanked the jury and sat down.
“The first peremptory is with the People,” Judge Osterman said.
I stood. “The People would like to thank and excuse juror number twenty-eight.”
The former CHP dispatcher favored me with a dirty look on her way out of the jury box.
“Defense?”
Terry stood. “The defense would ask the court to thank and excuse juror number sixteen.”
There went my electronic engineer.
One by one, I watched the best of the pool walk out the door as the defense used one challenge after another to get rid of them. I passed as often as I dared, to save up my challenges for the coming groups, but it hardly mattered. I’d just be trading a stomachache for a headache, because they were all equally bad. And so it went that day and the next.
At mid-afternoon on Friday the judge turned to face the jury. “I know this is the least fun part of the trial for you, so for your sakes, I’m going to let you go early today and get started on your weekend.” The jurors gave him a hearty thanks, which made Judge Osterman smile. The kiss-ass.
63
On Monday, as we’d been doing all along, Declan and I ate lunch in my office. I unwrapped my vegetarian pita sandwich and salted it liberally. I know salt is bad for me. But it was a lot better than a big belt of scotch-which was what I really wanted. “I can’t believe the way all the jurors are biting whenever she throws that conspiracy hook into the water.”
Declan nodded glumly. “And whenever she talks about the innocent guys who get nailed-”
“I’ve got to keep pushing back and reminding them that those guys eventually got sprung by DNA, get ’em to say they believe in it-”
“That’ll help, but when you look at what we’ve got coming…”
That was the most painful truth of all. Our next batch of jurors included a guy who’d been busted for DUI twice and believed the cops had rigged the blood test (both times!); a woman who’d divorced her cheating husband (a former sheriff’s deputy) and was now taking him to court for unpaid child support; an older man whose daughter was unfairly busted for possession of cocaine (that really belonged to her roommate); and a university professor whose best friend had been (unjustly) accused of misappropriating funds from his accounting firm and was now facing criminal charges. And it went downhill from there. The group after that one included a woman whose son was on death row and a father whose daughter had stolen the family business right out from under him-and who passionately hated everyone under the age of seventy.
Naturally, all had claimed in their questionnaires that they could be fair.
“Let’s talk about the good ones that’re still in our clutches. We’ve got the librarian, the soccer mom from cop country-”
“Cop country?” Declan asked.
“Simi Valley. Bedroom community where lots of law enforcement live. Very good for us, and the defense might like her too, because she reads People magazine and watches Celebrity Ghost Stories, so she seems like a Hollywood groupie-”
“I watch Celebrity Ghost Stories.”
I eyed him with mock reproach.