“And you’re still a rude child,” the Grandmother says.
“People, I just want to say, can’t we all get along?” the Foreperson asks, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from asking, who does she thinks she is, Rodney King? The Foreperson probably doesn’t even know who Rodney King is. I’m not sure why I want to embarrass her, but I do. But I’ll try to get along.
There’s a grunt-snuffle at the end of the table—a kind of wide-awake snore that comes from a partially successful attempt at stifling a guffaw. The Clergyman remembers the Rodney King riots, too. Riots? Uprising? Is that the politically correct term these days? Who the fuck cares?
“I’m not a fan of the Sepulveda County Sheriff’s Department, to be honest,” the Student says. “There have been successful lawsuits against them for harassment, especially of minorities. I’m especially not a fan of Deputy Beckermann.”
The Student knows the story behind Beckermann and Deputy Kobashigawa, too.
“Oh, I didn’t think you were one of those,” the Grandmother says with an acerbic trill that’s almost a cackle. Along with the stunned silence in the room—along with the Student’s expression of the newly wounded—comes the Grandmother’s recognition, evident from her open mouth and closed eyes, that she’s revealed something unpleasant about herself she’s made every effort to hide. No matter how much we practice, we can’t consistently hide our prejudice, which, like a virulent strain of herpes, lies dormant until the next unexpected outbreak comes.
“You didn’t think I was one of what?” the Student says.
The Grandmother flaps her jaw. After several false starts, she says, “I didn’t mean … Of course I didn’t. I just have respect for the police, and I …”
“Yeah, right,” the Student says.
“That sucks,” the Express Messenger says.
“That was a patently racist thing to say,” the Clergyman says, slapping a meaty hand on the table, the sound of flesh on wood like the slamming of a car trunk. Many of us jump. I do, as much from surprise that the Clergyman spoke as from the loud noise.
“Please, please,” the Grandmother says, shaking her head rapidly with a range of motion so slight, you’d think she was suffering from some kind of palsy. “Please. I meant no offense. I meant no offense.” She looks at the Student as if she expects her to say, “None taken.” Well, that’s not happening.
I glance at the Housewife, who nods slightly. We suspected it, the way the Grandmother kept telling the Student she was a nice girl. It wasn’t just about the age difference.
The Grandmother makes a pathetic attempt to reach out and touch the Student’s shoulder, but the younger woman recoils, swivels in her chair, and turns her back.
Silence. All I’m thinking is, this is bad, because the Student and the Grandmother won’t agree on a verdict, out of spite for each other, and we’ll be here until June.
“Let’s take the Foreperson’s advice,” the Jury Consultant says. “Let’s get along, put aside our differences. Jury deliberations are stressful. Let’s forgive and forget. Soon, we’ll all be out of here and go our separate ways.”
“At this rate, we’ll never get out of here,” I say. Why am I so antsy to leave? Is it simply habit? In here, I’m doing something most of society considers useful. I’m not sure how useful these deliberations really are, but I do know there’s nothing more important going on outside the room, at least for me.
“Even if we’re here another two weeks, it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things,” the Jury Consultant says. “Here’s my thinking. Jenna Blaylock did a masterful job of making Deputy Beckermann look bad. No, Beckermann did a masterful job of making himself look bad, and Blaylock ran with it. The fact remains that this case is about what was in David Sullinger’s mind. What Beckermann did or didn’t do in the investigation can’t change that. I believe Dillon and not Lacey, which means that David was the abuser and murdered Amanda with malice aforethought. That’s why I’m voting guilty despite Beckermann’s incompetence.”
“I’m not changing my vote,” the Housewife says.
The Jury Consultant politely ignores her.
“Okay,” the Foreperson says. “Still six to two for not guilty. We should …” She appeals to the Jury Consultant. “What now?”
“Do you think a break is in order, Madame Foreperson?” the Jury Consultant asks.
“I think a break is in order,” the Foreperson says, as if she had the idea herself.
THE BAILIFF
BRADLEY KOBASHIGAWA
Mick frightened me when he told me Judge Quinn-Gilbert wandered away. Made me think of my grandfather, who once wandered away. He was found on the banks of the river, trying to fish without a pole. The judge says she didn’t wander away. The judge says she took a walk. Did she?
In my time with her, she’s never left a jury hanging like that. Not once. Mick says she’s never done it in his time with her. He’s been working for her for years. Worse, she forgot to turn on her cell phone. She promised to turn it on, Mick says.
The problem with this job is that there’s too much time to think. When I was on the street, you had to think, but you also had to act. Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve tried not to think about.
What’s self-defense, anyway? Suppose you get a call. You’re dispatched to confront a homeless guy who’s threatening pedestrians near the docks. It’s summer, so tourists are there. We get there, and it’s Shoeless John, a regular. Harmless most of the time, but now he’s off his meds and not so harmless. Because he’s black, he’s more intimidating to some people. There aren’t many African Americans in Sepulveda County, and people get scared, prejudiced. I know Shoeless John, but my then partner, Beckermann, is new to the county. He was most recently with the Fresno PD. He moved here to join our force. Shoeless John is swearing at pedestrians, mixing up God with the president, the internet with aliens. Can you believe a couple of punks stood around and gawked and laughed? Taunting a paranoid schizophrenic? We park the car and get out. I tell Beckermann that I know the guy, I’ll talk him down, that I have before. Not that Shoeless John couldn’t be a danger to himself or others. He was in the Gulf War.
Too much time to think.
Suppose you and your new partner get out of the patrol car. Approach the subject as slowly and as nonthreateningly as possible. Just like we’re trained to do.
“I’ll do the talking,” I say. “You don’t talk.” That’s to keep Shoeless John’s sensory overload to a minimum, just like we’re trained to do. Besides, I’ve talked Shoeless John down before.
“Hey, John,” I say.
John looks at me and says, “You’re with them.”
“Who?” I say.
“The dark web paramilitary. They’ve infiltrated my frontal lobe.”
“John, it’s me. Deputy Kobashigawa. I don’t understand the situation, but I can see it’s upsetting you. How can I help?”
He looks at Beckermann. “Who the fuck are you? Are you with them?”
Beckermann snaps to attention, aggressively, and says, “C’mon, now, nobody’s after you; it’s just your imagination. You’re going to have to come with us. We can do it the easy way or the hard way.”
Wrong thing to say. Adrenaline on overload, Shoeless John hurls a string of obscenities at Beckermann and feints like a boxer but doesn’t come any closer. I start to talk to John, quietly, but Beckermann reaches for his radio, and not calmly. He calls for backup. We don’t need backup yet. Wrong move. Who the hell trained him?
Suppose Shoeless John pulls a knife, doesn’t approach, just brandishes it, and Beckermann and I both pull our service revolvers, and Beckermann commands John to drop the weapon, and when he doesn’t comply, Beckermann shoots him dead.
The board of inquiry exonerated Beckermann, found that he acted in self-defense. Beckermann was twenty or so feet away from John. A gun doesn’t do
all that much good within twenty-one feet of a suspect with a knife once the suspect advances, an expert testified. The expert testified to a myth. We were in no danger.
We were in no danger, and Beckermann wasn’t in fear for his life. He was trigger-happy. That’s what I told Internal Affairs. The civilian witnesses who testified didn’t see it my way. The board of inquiry didn’t see it my way. My fellow officers don’t see it my way. Bradley Kobashigawa, turncoat. Bradley Kobashigawa, pariah. Can’t fire me, of course. I just gave my opinion, called it as I saw it. They put me in Judge Quinn-Gilbert’s courtroom, off the streets and away from the cops who hate me. They promoted hero Beckermann to detective, where he arrested David Sullinger for lying about acting in self-defense. As my son puts it, “How ironic.”
This is what I think: Beckermann didn’t reasonably fear that Shoeless John, admittedly a knife-wielding psycho, was going to kill him, which means that Beckermann murdered John. David Sullinger reasonably believed that his small, weaker wife was going to kill him with a pickax, which means that David should go free. Doesn’t make sense? Stories don’t have to make sense. Once, I was a patrol cop with a loving wife. Now I’m a divorcé and a turncoat working as a bailiff and worrying that a fine judge has gone mental. We’re not always the heroes of our own stories. Sometimes, we’re the chumps.
There’s too much time to think on this job.
JUROR NO. 33
THE GRANDMOTHER
I meant no offense. I meant no offense. I don’t think I heard what was said, because my hearing aids … What I meant was … No offense intended. Was I so wrong? Is there not reverse racism, reverse bias, a disrespect of law enforcement among some minorities that were long oppressed but now are as free as the rest of us—more privileged in many ways, no offense intended? The Student isn’t a product of the ghetto, for heaven’s sake. Her father owns the biggest fabric store in the county, and her mother is a teacher. She grew up more privileged than I, whose father worked in a picture-frame factory and whose mother was a housewife until she had to go to work in the school cafeteria when my father lost his job because the factory closed and the work was outsourced to Japan. Wasn’t the Student wrong to suggest that Deputy Beckermann is a racist, that the sheriff’s department is racist? That’s not evidence.
The homeless man was threatening Beckermann with a knife. The homeless man just happened to be black, and the officer of the law protected himself. That’s what the investigation found. Hardly Selma, Alabama, in the sixties. Racism has nothing to do with this trial. The Student is a very nice girl—I mean, woman. She dislikes me now. They all dislike me now. Even the Clergyman dislikes me. Perhaps not the Jury Consultant. What hurts most is that even after all this happened, the Student helped me out of my chair when we went on break. She helped me back to the table when the break ended. She didn’t say a word, turned her back on me when I was settled, but she helped me. How cruel of her.
JUROR NO. 1
THE FOREPERSON
I can’t believe the Student helped the Grandmother to her seat. The girl’s face looked like she was cleaning up dog poop when she grasped the older woman’s elbow, but she still helped. A second later, the Jury Consultant took the Grandmother’s other elbow and smiled in gratitude at the Student. Was this infighting my fault? I’m the foreperson. Could I have stopped it? Where’s my cell phone? I check my pockets, my purse, look on the floor and under the table. Others help me look, but no luck. Why were the Architect and the Clergyman smiling after I told everyone we should get along? Isn’t that my job? They smiled like my blouse was unbuttoned and my right boob was hanging out. During the break, I looked in the bathroom mirror, and my boobs were in their proper place.
“I want to ask a question,” says the Housewife to the Jury Consultant.
“Wait a minute,” I say. I hop up and hurry to the bathroom. There it is—my phone is right there, sitting on the sink. I’m always losing things.
“Sorry,” I say when I get back. “My phone was …” I look at the Housewife. “You had a question?”
“Other than Dillon’s testimony, what evidence is there that David was a violent man? There’s plenty of evidence proving Amanda was violent, but nothing about David. Zip.”
“Splitting your wife’s head in two with a pickax is pretty good evidence of a propensity for violence,” says the Jury Consultant.
“That begs the question,” says the Grandmother, her voice breathy. “It assumes that David didn’t act in self-defense.”
I expect the Jury Consultant to say to the Grandmother, “Whose side are you on?” or something like that, because the Grandmother voted guilty the last two times and her response implies not guilty. But the Jury Consultant doesn’t say that. It takes me a sec, but I get why. The Grandmother had to say something, anything, to try to become one of us again. It won’t work.
“There’s the testimony of the head of the cooking school,” says the Jury Consultant. Before we can all laugh, the Jury Consultant raises her hand and says, “I understand why you’re smiling, but please hear me out on this,” and we don’t laugh, because this case isn’t a laughing matter. Oh, my God, it was so hard not to laugh in court at the cooking-school guy’s testimony. It was about one of David’s many attempts to get a job. Even though I think David is innocent, I don’t get why he never held a real job longer than a few months. I’d like to be a chef or a singer or have my own jewelry design shop, but I have to work in the real world. Doesn’t matter that I hate the file room—I have no Amanda to support me.
I check my juror notes. I’m a great note taker, probably took more notes than any of the other jurors, even though the judge instructed us not to take too many notes, because we might not pay enough attention to the witnesses’ demeanor and stuff like that. But I’m such a great note taker and multitasker that I did both things at once.
ADA Cranston calls Anton La Pierre (ALP) to stand. Owner of French cooking school in Tapia Beach. Academie de la Jambe du Cochon San Franciso (witnes spells). French accent. Cute. David enroled in his cocking school July 2014. Prof track. Pastrie chef. David lasted 3 wks, couldn’t take criticism, temper. ALP critisized David’s profitarolls, said they tasted burnt. Profitarols=creme pufs. David shoved ALP. ALP shoved David. David went for palett knife. ALP ran, David expelled.
X-exam Def atty Blaylock. Academie de la Jambe du Cochon means pig leg school in English. Lol! ALP is expert in pork dishes. No school in SF, ALP just thought it gave school presteege. Denies lying about SF part. Lie. ALP real name Aaron Rees. Never lived in France. Doesn’t speak french. Says accent real cuz he watched so many french cooking shows. Lol! Cullinery certificat from unacredited online school!!! Never lived out of state. Blaylock calls him liar, says David droped out because bad teaching. ALP gets upset, loses most of French accent. LOL!! Temper Blaylock establishs ALP never called cops re David’s aleged knife assalt. No further Qs. No re-direct by Cranston. Bad witness for DA.
“Blaylock skewered the guy on cross-examination,” the Jury Consultant says. “No doubt about it. LaPierre—”
“You mean, Reese?” the Architect says, arching her eyebrows in sarcasm.
“LaPierre, Reese, whichever you prefer,” says the Jury Consultant in a professional tone. “Blaylock is cagey, brilliant. She tore the guy apart without ever challenging anything substantive about his testimony. Which stands uncontradicted—David got mad, picked up a knife, and brandished it.”
“Your theory doesn’t hold water,” says the Housewife. “Blaylock got that clown to admit that he never went to the police after David supposedly went for the knife—which was a dull palette knife, by the way, as anyone who’s ever baked knows. If David really threatened to stab him, Reese would’ve called the police.”
“I don’t agree,” says the Jury Consultant. “Most of us have been confronted at one time or another over the course of our lives with potential threats of violence yet didn’t call the police. Is
there anyone here who hasn’t been the victim of road rage, the target of some crazy person swearing or giving you the finger? Yet despite that, you didn’t call the police?”
“Road rage is totally different from threatening someone with a knife,” says the Housewife. “Someone flips me the finger on the street, it happens. Someone picks up a knife and threatens to stab me, and I’m calling the police and reporting them. Reese didn’t do that.”
“I don’t think there’s that big a difference,” says the Express Messenger. “You all know that when I don’t have an acting job, I drive a truck. There are some real nutcases out there. In a way, I’m more afraid of a two-ton vehicle than some joker wielding a flimsy baker’s knife.”
“Reese lied about everything else, so he obviously lied about David pulling a knife,” replies the Housewife.
“Maybe it did happen. Maybe the reason Reese didn’t call the police was because he was scared of David and didn’t want to make him madder,” says the Student. “I have a friend, and this guy at her prior college was stalking her, and she didn’t call the cops, because she thought he’d get violent, so she quit school and moved back home to get away from the guy. Sometimes, it’s better not to escalate a situation.”
“I don’t see how anyone could believe Reese,” says the Housewife. “He lied about—”
“When David was on the stand, he never refuted Reese’s testimony,” says the Jury Consultant. “The subject never came up in the hours and hours of direct.”
“Reese was such a poor witness that David didn’t need to refute his testimony,” says the Housewife. “David isn’t on trial for assaulting Reese with a palette knife.”
“Or …” says the Grandmother, then slumps her shoulders.
“Go on,” I say.
“Well, I recall that Cranston tried to ask Dillon about what David told the family regarding the culinary school incident. But the judge sustained Blaylock’s relevancy objection. So we never got to hear the answer. David obviously said something to the family about the fight with Reese. What if David admitted to his family that he picked up a knife? If he later testified about the incident under oath, claimed it didn’t happen, wouldn’t Dillon’s testimony then become relevant because Blaylock opened the subject up? Is that why Blaylock didn’t go into it with David, because she knew David was lying and Dillon would say so on rebuttal?” She looks at the Jury Consultant for guidance.
We, the Jury Page 18