“Everyone knew she was guilty, and her continued insistence that she was not seemed only to prove her contempt for decent behavior. Not satisfied with ruining her son’s life by repeated acts of incest, she was determined to make him a public spectacle by dragging him through the indignities of a jury trial. Janet Larkin inspired something close to universal hatred, and because I was her attorney, much of it was directed at me. Nearly every day a new batch of letters was delivered to my office expressing in language laced with obscenity the moral outrage of their anonymous authors. Even people I knew began to look the other way when they passed me in a hallway of the courthouse. I decided that in the best interest of my client I had no choice but to ask that the trial be moved as far away from Portland as possible. I filed a motion for a change of venue. It was the first major mistake I made.
“I was of course a lot younger then, and it was early in my career. Still, it’s hard to believe I was ever that naive. Jeffries was already the presiding circuit court judge, and he could have had the case assigned to any judge he wanted. He assigned it to himself. He wanted that case, and he was not about to let it go. The motion never had a chance, but the price I paid for filing it had nothing to do with that.
“Someone once said that chance rules the universe. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I do know that there are occasions on which it can completely change your life, and this, like the fact I was given the case in the first place, was one of them.
I drafted the motion and then put it in final form. Normally, I would have had it sent to the court by registered mail or simply dropped it off at the clerk’s office. But I was in a hurry. I wanted a hearing on it as soon as possible. I did not want to wait while it was sent through all the usual bureaucratic channels. I took it directly to Jeffries’s office.
“No one was there. The outer office, where his judicial assistant had her desk, was deserted. It was not quite one o’clock, and assuming that she was probably on her way back from lunch, I took a chair and waited. Not ten seconds later, the door to Jeffries’s chambers opened, and she emerged from the darkness inside. Barefoot and disheveled, she was pinning her hair up in back when she caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye.
Flushed with embarrassment, she froze in her tracks. I walked from the chair straight to her desk, pretending that I had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Laying the motion down in front of her, I gave a brief, formal explanation of what it was. She glanced at the document and, without breaking her silence, looked back at me, a question in her eyes, not whether I knew what she had been doing-no, she was certain of that-but whether I was someone who was likely to talk.
” ‘I’d like to have a hearing on this as soon as the judge has time on his calendar,’ I said, maintaining the fiction that there was nothing in my mind but the motion I had come to deliver.
” ‘Is someone out there?’ I heard Jeffries call as I turned and left.
“There are few things that make us feel more vulnerable than the suspicion that someone knows something about us we don’t want them to know. It was not a feeling that Jeffries enjoyed, and the first chance he had he let me know that it was within his power to give me that same feeling a dozen times over. It happened during the first day of trial.
“The motion for a change of venue was denied. There was no hearing, no oral argument, nothing, just a two-sentence order that read: ‘Defendant has moved for a change of venue. Defendant’s motion is denied.’ The trial started a few weeks later, on a Thurs-day afternoon. As soon as Jeffries took the bench, I renewed my motion.
” ‘That motion was denied,’ he replied.
“I was incorrigible, and worse yet, rather proud of it. ‘If it had not been denied,’ I retorted, ‘there would not be much point in renewing it, would there?’
“Jeffries stared hard at me. ‘Denied again.’
” ‘Why don’t we have a hearing on it first,’ I suggested with an arrogance that not even my youth could excuse. ‘That way, after you have listened to the arguments on the motion, you might be able to accompany your ruling with a reason.’
“Raising his head, he twisted it slightly to the side as he studied me intently. He took a slow, deep breath, and as he did so his nostrils flared and the corners of his mouth turned downward.
For a long time, he did not speak a word.
” ‘You will do well to remember, Mr. Antonelli,’ he said finally,
‘that you are here to try your case, not my patience.’ His voice, never deep, was more high-pitched than I had heard it before, as if only by an effort could he keep it from becoming a shriek.
‘And, yes, Mr. Antonelli,’ he went on, ‘I do provide a reason when I rule on a motion, but only when the reason isn’t obvious on the face of it, and only when the lawyer who filed it might actually be able to understand it.’
“There was nothing I could do. I had gone too far as it was.
Retreating behind a mask of rigid formality, I played the lawyer, hiding my resentment while I nodded my acquiescence in every harsh word he lavished upon me. ‘Thank you, your honor,’ I said when he was finished, mindful that of all the tyrannies ever established on earth, a courtroom is the only one in which abuse is always to be followed by an expression of appreciation.
“I thought that this was the end of it, but it was only the beginning. I had barely begun questioning the first juror on voir dire when he was on me again.
” ‘That question is not germane to whether or not this person is qualified to be a fair and impartial juror,’ he instructed me. I had asked the woman what grades her children were in. ‘The juror questionnaire tells you how many children she has and how old they are. That’s all you need to know about them.’
“It was the same with the next question, and the one after that. Nothing I asked was right; everything I asked was wrong.
He interrupted me so often that I started to hesitate halfway through a question, waiting for him to do it again. He was making me look awkward, indecisive, someone who did not know what he was doing. He was making me look like a fool in front of the very people who had to trust me if I was going to have any chance to win. And he was doing it on purpose. Somehow, despite his constant badgering, his incessant corrections, I kept going. Then I asked the eighth juror the question I should have been asking all of them, the question I’ve asked every juror in every criminal case I’ve tried since: ‘Even if you’re convinced the defendant is probably guilty, will you still vote to return a verdict of not guilty if the state fails to prove that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?’
“Jeffries practically jumped out of his chair. ‘That question is not permissible. You are not allowed to ask a juror how they might vote on the ultimate issue in the case. You will not ask that question again, Mr. Antonelli. Not of this juror, nor of any other juror. Understand?’
“It was late on the second day, Friday, and I had been beaten on long enough. I turned back to the same juror, and more slowly than I had before, asked the same question again.
” ‘This will be a good time to end for the day,’ Jeffries announced before an answer could be given. ‘We’ll resume Monday morning at nine-thirty.’
“He waited until the last prospective juror left the courtroom.
His eyes were cold as ice. ‘You were told not to do that. I told you that question was not allowable, and yet you immediately asked it again. You deliberately flouted the authority of this court, and I have no alternative but to hold you in contempt.’
“I had expected it, and if the truth be told, had almost looked forward to it. I was in contempt, not of the court, however, but of him and the way he was trying to destroy my ability to put on a defense. I stared back at him and kept my silence.