by Diane Capri
I left George a note, got my car keys and stomped off down the stairs, out into the cold air of the wee hours. Although I hadn’t glanced at the clock, it had been hours since my dinner had been delivered.
Greta and I drove over to St. Pete beach. I had a long, long walk. I settled onto a towel on the beach and stared out into the endless dark horizon. And just as the sun was coming up over the horizon, drove home, got dressed and headed to the courthouse.
Nothing was resolved and I didn’t feel any better and if either of those lawyers messed with me today, they’d be damn sorry they had.
I stopped at Cold Storage, my favorite Cuban coffee place, on the way to the office. Cold Storage lost its lease on Florida Avenue when the City sold the land to new development after the Ice Palace increased business over there. Now, it was located at the corner of Whiting and Tampa Street in a much bigger building.
Sometimes when restaurants move, they lose their ambiance. But Cold Storage managed to reproduce its graffiti on the walls, pictures of patrons and welcoming atmosphere in new, larger surroundings. I drank the heavenly mixture of sweet, strong Cuban coffee and scalded milk in the way an addict consumes heroin— I needed it.
When I arrived at the Courthouse, I saw the news vans in front and seized the new target for my anger. If the lawyers in my case were giving press conferences I’d throw them all in jail. I didn’t want my cases tried in the media. The courtroom is where all evidence would be presented.
If I had to put a gag order on the participants to get the point across, that’s what I would do. I’d done it before and if that big city lawyer didn’t know it now, he’d know it in the next ten minutes, I fumed.
By the time I got up to my office, I’d worked myself into a fine snit and I was ready to take on everyone who crossed me. All of which I blamed on the caffeine in the Cuban coffee.
I pushed open the outer door to Margaret’s office and stormed through without even so much as my customary good morning. I snatched my robe from the hook on the back of my door, put my arms through it and marched out into the courtroom, ready to vent my rage on the first person I saw.
Absolutely no one was there. I asked the Court Security Officer where the parties were and he said he didn’t know. I glanced at the clock. Eight thirty-five, five minutes after we were set to start.
The ruckus from the hall was the flock of media I’d witnessed out front just a few minutes before. I turned to the Court Security Officer. “Please go out in the hall and tell both Mr. Newton and Mr. Tremain that if they are not in here in five minutes, this case will be the first in history to have judgment entered against both parties.” To his everlasting credit, he didn’t laugh at me. “Tell the media they are, from this point forward, barred from the courtroom and do not let them in.”
I couldn’t keep the media out indefinitely, but I could do it for the next thirty minutes at least.
Until one of them went to the CJ and he entered an order allowing them back in which I knew he’d do the second they asked him, just to tweak me.
And because he’d be right.
“Yes, ma’am!” the officer said, on his way out as he said it. The court reporter gave me one of those, “What’s with you?” looks, but I didn’t care.
The relationship of the press to the law was an issue I’d always felt strongly about, but on no sleep and less patience, I would definitely have made good on my threat to give Mr. Newton the fifty million dollars he requested and to dismiss his case with prejudice at the same time. Let them figure that out in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Apparently, the officer got the point across, because both lawyers hurried into the courtroom and remained standing at their respective counsel tables while the officer kept everyone else out. I was still standing as well and we all looked foolish.
Getting myself under control, I gestured to the court reporter to begin taking down the proceedings, and managed to speak in an even tone instead of like a mad woman.
“Counselors, listen closely because I am only going to say this once and I expect no misunderstandings. This case is pending before the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. We spent the entire day yesterday selecting a jury. The case is not being tried to the media and the jury is not the public. “From this point forward neither of you are to discuss this case with any member of the media, on or off the record, until the verdict is returned and the jurors are released. This order includes any conversations of any kind.
“If I so much as hear a rumor that you are talking to a friend over coffee who happens to be employed by one of the newspapers, I will enter a verdict against the offender in this case immediately. And I will award fees and costs in amounts I deem appropriate. Is that perfectly clear?”
“But, Your Honor—” Newton sputtered.
“Judge, you can’t—” Tremain spit out simultaneously.
I cut them both off with a slam of my gavel.
“There will be no argument and no further discussion on this subject. I can’t bar the media from the courtroom forever, but I can stop you from talking to them. It is completely within my discretion to do all that I’ve told you I will do.” I turned to the officer and told him to bring in the jury in ten minutes. “Don’t test me, gentlemen.”
The system fails only because we let it. That wasn’t going to happen in my courtroom, where I still had control. Not in this trial, and not in any other.
Despite my outward calm, I was still breathing hard. I felt my fists clinched at my sides and strained to release my fingers.
Both the lawyers were united against me now. That was perfectly fine with me. I was legally right here, they were behaving like jackasses, and I was tired of it all.
Besides that, at the moment I was spoiling for a good fight with somebody.
Too bad the CJ wasn’t here right now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tampa, Florida
Tuesday 9:30 a.m.
January 25, 2000
ONE OF THE MOST exciting days of any trial is when the lawyers make their opening statements, a time I normally anticipated with some curiosity, if not joy. Openings are similar to the trailer for a movie: they give an overview of what’s to come. It’s the first time the jury, the judge and the other side all hear the whole story.
No matter how much a lawyer prepares for opening, she is never quite sure what the other side will say. Sometimes, what is disclosed in opening is a fact or a theory the other side had never considered.
The closer a lawyer gets to trial, the more he begins to believe his own case. A dangerous road to travel because it makes him believe he can see what’s around the blind corners.
Newton v. The Whitman Esquire Review was one of those cases where both lawyers were going to be unpleasantly surprised.
Back in my chambers, while I waited for the lawyers to prepare, I attended to the thousand and three details that somehow just multiplied on my desk like rats in a laboratory. I’ve never had, nor do I want to have, any actual experience with rats. Pink telephone slips must be related to rats in some molecular way, though. What else could explain their proliferation?
There were two messages from the CJ. I gleefully put them at the bottom of the pile, and I began to handle the others. As usual, caught up in my work, I became unaware of the passing time.
Margaret buzzed me on the intercom. “Judge? It’s getting late,” she said.
The courtroom was full when I went in again, twenty minutes late. I vowed to work on this problem. I hated judges to be late when I practiced law. I’d been convinced it was a personal snub, that they just couldn’t be bothered to be on time for the litigants who were, after all, their reason for being. Or that they thought their precious time was more important than ours.
Life was just one long, educational experience, wasn’t it?
When the trial began again, I nodded to Nelson Newton who rose to his full five-feet-four, smoothed down his stained red tie, and sucked
his protruding gut in enough to button the rumpled blue suit jacket, as he prepared to make his entrance.
I’ve seen Nelson at social functions and at George’s restaurant. I know for a fact that he owns more than one suit and all fit him perfectly. He wore this outfit because he wanted to appear poor and needy, to make the jury feel sorry for him, particularly in comparison to Tremain’s expensive tailoring. For the same reason he sat at counsel table alone and used the bare minimum of documents.
Continuing his personal mime game of ‘me David, they Goliath,’” Nelson picked up his one manila file folder and pulled out three wrinkled sheets of five-by-seven note paper that probably came from the same car rental desk as his pen. He looked the sheets over, front and back, returned them to the folder, and stepped up to the podium.
Of course, he knew very well he couldn’t see over the podium, but he wanted the jury to know. He turned and asked permission not to use it. I granted the request. He knew I would. He asks every trial, even though I don’t require lawyers to use the podium and no permission is necessary. More elaborate play-acting. But Tremain hadn’t seen it coming.
Before he ever said a word in his opening, Newton had the jury on his side. His disadvantages, albeit carefully orchestrated, were designed to make the jury think he was the underdog. Americans always root for the underdog. It may be genetic. Christians one, lions nothing.
I felt my mood lighten and hid my smile behind my hand as I pretended to cough. Once again, work engaged me, and I was able to forget about George and Andy and my collapsing marriage and murder for a while.
Nelson began without further preamble. “All of us were told growin’ up that sticks ‘n stones would break our bones, but names would never hurt us. Our mamas didn’t want us fightin’ in the school yard, so they told us to just ignore kids who called us names.” He had the jury nodding in agreement.
“But we knew then, just as we know now, that names do hurt us, don’t they? Calling someone names can not only hurt their feelings, but hurt their business and their relationships with their family and friends.”
The jury looked like parishioners in a tent revival, they were so attuned to Nelson by now.
“That’s what this case is about. The Whitman Esquire Review, a newspaper printed out in San Francisco, called me a name.” He emphasized San Francisco as if it was the very essence of hell, instead of a marvelous, cosmopolitan city.
“They don’t know me and they don’t know our town. But they called me a name anyway, and they printed it in the paper, and it’s hurt me.” He stopped here and looked hurt. The posture was so affected that it was hard not to laugh at him. Although the jurors weren’t laughing. Some of them actually frowned toward Tremain and his client.
“They shouldn’t have done that. I know you won’t let ’em get away with it. I don’t know about San Francisco,” he stressed the word again, “but here in Tampa, we’re decent folks and we’ve got standards. It’s up to you all to let The Whitman Esquire Review know that. Thank ye.”
Newton actually ducked his head when he finished and sat back down at his table.
The jury looked over at Tremain with interest. How could he hope to compete with Mom? They were still interested in the answer at this point, but it was a critical juncture for Tremain. For my part, I wondered whether that $850 an hour The Review was paying him would turn out to be worth it.
Tremain had a large, black three-ring binder in front of him on the table containing his trial notebook. It was filled to three-quarters’ capacity, tabbed and organized with white, pink, blue and yellow paper in the different sections. It definitely conveyed the impression of preparedness. And maybe more than a little overkill.
He closed the binder and rose to give his opening without it. No crutches. Except for his slow, deliberate clothes-adjusting routine, which he performed only when the jury was in the room. What was the subliminal message? I found the habit annoying because it took him so long before he ever got started on anything.
Tremain had no trouble standing behind the podium; He towered above it. He gripped the sides with both hands, the better to give the jury a look at his plain gold wedding band, a piece of jewelry his opponent did not possess.
Tremain leaned into the podium, toward the jurors, but leaving both the podium and the rail between them so as not to invade their space. I wondered again which of the high-priced trial advocacy programs he’d graduated from. Many of his techniques bordered on textbook.
“First, I want to thank you for your service as jurors in this case. I know you are not the country bumpkins Mr. Newton makes you out to be, just as he isn’t the bumpkin he pretends to be.” He stopped here for effect, pretending to need a sip of water.
“I know you have busy lives and taking time out to help us is a hardship for you. I want you to know that we appreciate it.” He nodded toward his client and his entourage at the defense table.
“But more than that, aside from going to the polls to cast your vote, serving as a juror is the most patriotic thing many of you will ever do. This is your chance to uphold the laws of the United States.” He let his voice ring out like a presidential candidate accepting his party’s nomination.
I felt impressed. The man had talent. And it was not a bad contrast, actually. Mom versus Patriotism. The sides were chosen and the battle joined.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tampa, Florida
Tuesday 1:30 p.m.
January 25, 2000
TREMAIN WENT ON ABOUT the constitutionality of free speech, the right to print what’s true, newsworthiness and the legitimate concerns of the public, for about thirty minutes. By the time he finished, the jury would have had a hard time remembering anything Newton said. They were all puffed up with the importance of their job to the continued viability of the nation.
This trial promised to be more than a fair contest. A little hard to tell the Christians from the lions at this point, but I was still on Newton’s side. I knew firsthand what it was like to have your life be the subject of everyone’s morning coffee conversation and I didn’t like it, either.
Newton’s first witness was Mr. Tampa, herself. She was a youngish woman, about twenty-five, with purple-black hair and a small diamond in her pierced nose. She was dressed like a member of the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or a trashy lingerie catalogue model.
Mr. Tampa took the stand, raised her hand and swore to tell the truth, “Of course.”
“Are you a man or a woman?” was Newton’s first question.
“A woman.”
“Were you born that way?”
“Of course.”
“Then calling yourself Mr. Tampa is misleading to the public, isn’t it?”
The jury snickered.
The questioning went on in this vein for a while, Newton trying to show that Mr. Tampa was a fraud and her column full of lies. We took a break after the direct, but Tremain would have some rehabilitating to do when we reconvened.
By the time we got to the lunch hour, I’d had as much grandstanding by both of these lawyers as I was willing to put up with. I told the jurors they could go home for the day and I told the lawyers that I would hear argument on their various evidentiary motions at two o’clock, before Newton put on his next witness tomorrow. Then I left the bench, seeking sanctuary, and maybe a nap, in my office.
When I got to my desk, Margaret had ordered my standard tuna sandwich for lunch and set it on my conference table with spring water and flatware. She’d put out my messages from the morning and a list of matters I should have handled that afternoon.
Right on top, she’d written a note that George had called three times this morning and said it was urgent. She’d underlined urgent three times, too. The little flutter in my stomach was hunger, I hoped. And I tried to dredge up a little anger, too, for protection.
For weeks George had acted like I didn’t exist; last night he told me a terrible secret and then left the house; and now he wanted to talk, so it’
s urgent. My spine stiffened. I was busy. I had a full afternoon ahead and more calls to return than I could possibly finish before two o’clock. Calls I’d been ignoring while I worried about him. He could wait. I wasn’t really ready for any more revelations just yet. Whatever he had to say would certainly keep until I got home.
Still in the mood for a good fight, I picked up the phone and dialed the CJ’s extension. On the fourth ring, he picked up. “Chief Judge Richardson,” he answered.
Normally, getting through to him was like trying to call directly to the President. CJ thought one of his privileges was to have his calls screened, even on his private line.
“CJ, it’s Willa Carson returning your call.” I refused to play the power game with him. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m reassigning you to preside over the asbestos cases,” he told me without preamble. “You’ll have three hundred new files on your docket next week.”
“What?” I asked him, my voice loud enough to reach all the way over to that fancy new courthouse where he was hiding as he gave me this news. “I don’t have time for that nonsense.”
The asbestos cases were once again clogging the court dockets across the country. At one time, there were hundreds of thousands of them. After twenty years, we’d gotten them down to numbers in the mid-six-figure range. Still, they were an administrative nightmare and made trying to handle a court docket a little like trying to wade through unprocessed sewage.
“Sorry, Willa. It’s your turn. Everyone else has taken a year or two of this and now, you’re in the box.”
I slammed down the phone, which I was sure simply made him happy to know that he’d gotten my attention one more time. Then, after promising myself not to speak to the CJ again until hell froze over, I trudged back to the bench, moving slowly under the heavier load.
Just to prove that things can always get worse, at three o’clock, in the middle of Newton’s argument that Tremain should not be able to put on witnesses who’d allegedly had homosexual affairs with Newton in the late seventies because such affairs were irrelevant to the truth of the assertion that Newton is gay, Margaret came out with a note and handed it up to me on the bench.