Shot yourself in the foot, Bobby.
For a moment there, I felt those jurors were with me. I’d gotten right up there in their faces, but they didn’t seem to hold it against me. They seemed galvanized. I really felt that some current was flowing between us. Bill leaned over.
“Little white girl up there talking about race issues,” he said. “One of the most dramatic moments I’ve ever seen in a courtroom.”
The following day, we went in ready to kick and pick. That’s the term we use for the last volley of the twenty peremptory challenges to get the pool down to twelve. So Bill and I got right in there and mixed it up. We kicked and we picked with a vengeance. And what we ended up with was one white woman, one man who described himself as “half American Indian,” two Hispanics, and eight blacks. Six of those blacks were females.
By the end, we still had four of our twenty peremptory challenges remaining. That’s right: we didn’t use every single one that we were entitled to exercise. I can understand why a casual observer could assume that we missed an opportunity because of this. And, in fact, our detractors seized upon those four unused challenges, claiming that we could have kicked some of the clinkers and fill the slots with better prospects.
No, we couldn’t. Let me explain.
During our nightly bouts of solitaire, Bill and I had kept precise tabs on the rotation of candidates within the pool. As days passed, the rating of the average juror in our pool-going by that 1-to-5 scale we’d developed-kept getting lower. Originally, our population had a very strong contingent of middle-class, educated citizens. But remember: the first round of elimination-the “hardship” phase-drastically changed that. The solidly employed middle class had no appetite to serve on this case, and Judge Ito let them off without looking back. There went most of our potential 5s and 4s. Then the defense began their attacks on two categories of jurors: those who were educated and those who were weren’t black. Ito let them strike many without using their peremptory challenges. We were left with virtually no 4s and 5s, and only a few 3s.
By the time the defense’s peremptory challenges had been exercised, we were down to our 2s. We were playing a defensive game, and we played it as cunningly as we could. The best we could do was make sure that the very worst jurors didn’t find their way into the box. And the way the numbers broke down, if we used even one more challenge we would have called up a batch of even sorrier prospects who would outnumber the peremptories we had left. What would be the sense of knocking off one of our 3s or even 2s if most of the bodies who would take their place were 1s, people who wouldn’t have voted to convict if O. J. Simpson stood in front of them with a knife in his hand and shouted, “I did it”?
The process of picking a jury had been so exhausting that when we finally got the twelfth juror, both sides of the room broke into cheers. We were kissing, shaking hands, hugging each other. It was unbelievable. Especially when you consider that only one side really had anything to celebrate.
Bob Shapiro ambled over to our table for some chat. He and Bill and I laughed and joked about the questionnaires. As I suspected, none of the Simpson team had ever had to soil his fingers flipping through those things. Their consultant had done it all for them.
“Gil made you read your own questionnaires!” Shapiro declared, astounded and amused. “He should give you hardship pay!”
Tell me about it.
Then Shapiro gave me a cartoon he’d drawn of me. There were two stick figures: “Marcia Before the Trial,” showing me with long hair and a short skirt. Then, “Marcia After the Trial,” where I had short hair and a long skirt. It was pretty funny. I kept it.
On balance, I’d never expended so much of myself picking a jury. The exhilaration that came from completing that phase, along with the positive feedback I’d gotten from my speech the previous day, led me to a false optimism. That night, on the way home, I spoke into my little tape recorder:
We knew we’d wind up with an almost all-black jury… We were guaranteed to have basically a female black jury and we do. But I think overall we’re not unhappy with the jury. I think there’s enough strong, fair ones that we’ll get some kind of fair shake. I mean, it’s certainly not the best panel I’ve ever seen, but maybe they’ll rise to the occasion.
I know I was livin’ in a dream world. But you have to leave yourself a little hope.
Fever
There were times I could have drowned Suzanne Childs in a gunnysack. This was usually when the D.A.‘s media relations adviser ignored the signs on my door reading “Leave Me Alone!” and “Go See Patti Jo” and bustled in with her handful of message slips.
“Well, CBS wants…”
“Suzanne!” I cut her off. “I don’t have time for this.”
I didn’t mean to give her a hard time. It wasn’t her fault that she was the bearer of unwelcome tidings.
Actually, I depended on Suzanne a lot, and considered her a great friend. She’s a beauty-tall, thin, and laced with nervous energy. During the seventies she had been a weekend anchorwoman on the local CBS affiliate. She’d also been married to Michael Crichton. That was before he was such a big deal. Their marriage ended in a rather public divorce. As a result, Suzanne knew what it was like to be a much-stared-at single woman in L.A. I think that’s why she took pity on me.
I had no personal life to speak of. Except for the nights when there were other arrangements at home, I usually left the office in time for dinner. Then, after the house was quiet and the toys all put away, I’d burrow in to the makeshift office in my bedroom. We’d started this case off-balance, and because of the defendant’s insistence upon a speedy trial, we never really had a chance to take a breather. We were like greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit.
Beaten down though I was by my workload, I felt I should take at least a baby step toward an actual life. I’d spread the word among my friends and associates that I wouldn’t mind going out on a date, if anyone knew of a moderately intelligent, heterosexual male. In other words, I was available.
One day, when I came back from court feeling whipped, Suzanne met me in the hall and gave me the once-over. (After two months, the “makeover” she had supervised was already beginning to fade.)
“You should get out a little,” she told me.
“Great idea, Suzanne. Could you get me a life, maybe a few extra hours in a day?”
“I could get you invited to a party,” she told me. It was at the home of some director-I didn’t recognize the name. “It’s a little get-together. About ten people. You could go right from work.”
Suzanne gave me the address, which was in Beverly Hills. I found myself driving north of Sunset, deeper and deeper into the heart of mansion country. I was about to run into some serious glitter. Me, in my believe-me suit, driving a Nissan. The window on the driver’s side still wouldn’t work and it looked like it was going to rain. I pulled my little Maxima into a huge open drive and parked it next to a Mercedes. The only other car as crappy as mine was a county-issue Ford Taurus. I knew that Suzanne had arrived.
My God, what a place! A white-pillared entryway framed a pair of huge double oak doors. I’d barely rung the bell when it was answered by a butler in full livery. Behind him stood the host, who pumped my hand warmly and introduced himself as Ray Stark. Over the course of the evening, I came to realize that he was a big-deal producer, something I probably would have known right away if I hadn’t had my head stuck inside of law books and autopsy reports for the past ten years. This little dinner party was also a private screening of Legends of the Fall.
Suzanne took me by the elbow for a quick turn around the place, past a wall of windows that looked out onto a yard of marble statues and topiary. Then, into the screening room. At the rear was a wet bar with all kinds of fancy chocolates set out in silver serving dishes. As we moved, Suzanne made easy introductions to some celebs and semicelebs. God, I couldn’t believe it-there was Kirk Douglas. To my amazement, Kirk (May I call you Kirk?) turned to me and said, “I’m such a big fan of yours.” And I’m like, “I’ve been watching your movies since I was a kid.”