Jason paused. He now had their attention. “And so… it all comes down to the hair. Other than the toxicologists, not one witness has linked Carissa Lawson to drug use. Does the hair really show six months of drug use, or should we throw out the hair testing results as unreliable?
“You will recall my cross-examination of Dr. Kramer. He admitted that hair can be contaminated by drugs from external sources, things like sweat or running your hands through your hair. This can make the results suspect.” Jason paused for effect. One of the things he had learned by studying courtroom advocacy was the impact of silence. An advocate who wasn’t afraid of silence showed confidence. Silence helped refocus the jury.
It also helped Jason remember his script.
“You heard the coroner describe the type of slow and painful death Carissa Lawson suffered. In large quantities, cocaine and oxycodone shut down the lungs, causing the victim to suffocate as fluid collects and breathing becomes impossible. Eventually, Carissa drowned in her own lung fluid, probably while her best friend watched, pretending to call 911 as Carissa gasped for breath.”
Jason shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. “Was Carissa Lawson sweating as she died this slow death, fighting to get air?” He paused again, looking from juror to juror. “You decide. One thing that’s not open for question-if she was poisoned, her sweat would have contained high quantities of these drugs and contaminated her hair.
“But Dr. Kramer says we shouldn’t worry about that. Before testing the hair, he washed the samples twice with methylene chloride, a solvent guaranteed to remove any contamination. But you also heard our toxicologist, Dr. Chow, say he believes that drugs contained in sweat cannot be removed from the hair through mere washing because they form ionic bonds with the hair follicles. As a result, hair testing can’t tell us whether the drugs present in the hair are due to contamination from sweat after a one-time poisoning event or from long-term use.
“And so, last night, I came up with a harebrained idea, if you’ll pardon the expression. I dyed my hair platinum blond-the dye representing external contamination that bonds to the hair particles.” He walked over to his counsel table, speaking over his shoulder as he went. “You’ll recall that Dr. Chow testified that the same chemical reaction that explains the incorporation of hair coloring into hair follicles also takes place with drugs like cocaine and oxycodone.”
Jason pulled a towel out of his briefcase and picked up two plastic bottles from the floor. He walked back toward the jury and smiled briefly at two young female jurors-Jurors 5 and 7-who had been nodding as he made his points.
Jason could usually count on the younger women. He didn’t have the stone-carved jaw of a movie actor, but he was in good shape and had received more than a few comments about his eyes. “Sleepy.” “Intriguing.” Or on courtroom days like today, when he had his green contacts inserted, “piercing.”
Jason did fine with women at a distance-like the ten feet that separated him from the jury panel. The ones he let in close always gave him trouble.
“I asked my expert to provide some methylene chloride,” he explained. “And I’m going to wash my hair right here in front of you, using the same chemical and the same procedures that Dr. Kramer used before he tested the victim’s hair.”
“Objection!” Austin Lockhart could apparently stand it no longer. Most lawyers avoided making objections during closing arguments, since they tended only to underscore the opponent’s points. But Lockhart had made a career out of arguing even minor matters until he was red-faced and furious. Which he was right now.
“This is outrageous,” he said. “The chemical makeup of hair dye and cocaine is hardly the same. And how do we know that’s even methylene chloride in that bottle? This is nothing but showmanship, and it’s highly improper.”
Jason acted stunned that anybody would object to this. Instead of responding immediately, he looked up at the judge, as if the objection wasn’t worthy of wasting his breath.
“Mr. Noble?” asked Judge Waters.
“For starters, Judge, I didn’t have any cocaine or oxycodone handy last night, or I would have used them instead. But if I were a juror, I’d like to at least know whether this vaunted solvent that Dr. Kramer used could remove a little hair dye.”
“That’s… that’s just… ridiculous,” Lockhart stuttered. “It’s not relevant and it’s highly prejudicial, and if he wanted to do a demonstration, he should have done it with his expert so I could cross-examine Dr. Chow about it.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Jason responded quickly. “I must have been absent from evidence class the day they said showmanship was inadmissible.”
When he heard a few jurors snicker, Jason knew he was on the right track.
“Plus,” Jason continued, “Dr. Chow would look even more ridiculous in platinum blond hair than I do.”
“There may be some differences of opinion on that,” said the judge, drawing her own set of chuckles. “Objection sustained.”
Jason turned back to the jury and noticed that Juror 5 still had a thin smile on her face. He would reinforce the feedback with a generous portion of eye contact. “Now that we’ve established how much confidence the defense puts in its hair washing procedures, let’s talk about the affair…”
In a luxury suite at the Westin hotel, Robert Sherwood, the CEO of Justice Inc., watched the courtroom drama unfold on closed-circuit TV. He studied the images on the split screen-one camera following Jason around the courtroom, the other catching the expressions on the jurors’ faces. Sherwood was willing to bet $75 million of his firm’s money on the outcome of this case.
Like most larger-than-life rock stars, Kendra Van Wyck supported a labyrinth of companies. Her husband’s record label, a designer line, her own reality TV show and production company. All were highly profitable ventures, but all would be worthless if the diva was sentenced to life in jail. If she won, on the other hand, the companies would skyrocket in value. Until today, until this ingenious stunt in the closing argument, Sherwood thought that Van Wyck would be the biggest celebrity acquittal since O. J. Now… he wasn’t so sure.
“The kid might be too smart for his own good,” Sherwood said, shaking his head. “Skewing the results.”
He rubbed his forehead, the pain of another migraine setting in. His firm had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars diligently researching this case, selecting the perfect jurors, scrutinizing each piece of evidence. Now Jason Noble was blowing the whole thing apart with a piece of choreographed drama in his closing argument.
“We can’t let this happen again,” Sherwood said. “Let’s make this trial his last.”
5
Jason Noble watched coverage of the shootings at the WDXR studios on the television in his hotel room-an oceanfront suite at the Malibu Beach Inn on the California coastline.
Until the footage grabbed his attention, he had been focused solely on waiting for the phone call signaling that the jury had reached its verdict. He was oblivious to the luxury surrounding him-the beautiful white sands of Carbon Beach, the ever-observant hotel staff ready to meet his every need, the Hollywood A-listers who occasionally frequented the lobby bar. None of that mattered as he speculated about the jurors’ progress, tried and retried the Van Wyck case in his mind, and steeled himself for the worst. The same young lawyer who demonstrated poise and a devil-may-care attitude in the courtroom was a world-class worrier when the jury was out.
But in the last several minutes, he had forgotten all about his own case.
According to Fox News, the whole sordid affair at WDXR had been broadcast live to the Virginia Beach and Norfolk markets. Now, two hours later, he was watching a replay of the shootings for the third or fourth time. Each time they ran the tape, a newswoman told viewers with weak stomachs to turn their heads, and a scroll across the bottom of the screen warned of graphic violence. Jason probably qualified for the weak stomach category but he couldn’t turn away, staring in morbid disbelief as Jamison fired at Rachel Crawford while the SWAT team’s bullets slammed into Jamison’s body, the final shots tearing off portions of his head.