“The jury’s still deliberating, Nat, so just relax and wait for the verdict. What else can you do?”
I’ll accept the verdict. I believe in the jury system. Still, sometimes juries get it wrong.
My father-in-law, as old and frail as he is, came to see me. That wasn’t easy for him, and he was wonderful. He says if I convert to Judaism, I can be buried next to you, that there’s still room in the family plot. I’ll have to get well first, of course, and then I’ll decide. Plenty of time to decide. Something is nagging at me—some things, like persistent flies swarming and buzzing inside my head and beating against the back interior of my skull. I’m going to lick this thing once they figure it out, and then I’ll remember, and the flies will stop buzzing, and that will be wonderful.
JUROR NO. 29
THE JURY CONSULTANT
Speak authoritatively and you alter perceptions, and once you accomplish that, you’ve altered the truth, and when you’ve altered the truth, you’re a god.
I attended law school for one semester, until I realized lawyers are taught persuasion, not manipulation. Useless—life is about manipulation. I dropped out, enrolled in grad school, earned my PhD, and began my career as a jury consultant. Lucrative if you’re good (I am), but each assignment is a short con—coaching witnesses, putting together mock juries, drafting jury questionnaires, helping with jury selection. Once the trial begins, you’re irrelevant. So many times, the goddamn lawyers fuck it up.
I know how to get out of jury duty. I’ve avoided jury service many times. Then People v. Sullinger came along, and I knew how to get on the jury. It helped that the jury comprised mostly females. Bottom line, women dislike weak men no matter how sympathetic and genuine. That’s why I knew that the Architect, despite her affinity for the Housewife, would get there on her own—eventually.
Poor David Sullinger. His wife forgot their anniversary, he got upset about it, and she ended up dead. Who cares if she forgot their anniversary? To condemn her for that was almost sexist—was sexist. Why shouldn’t she forget? She worked; he didn’t. She worked day and night. It could have been worse. My ex-husband was perpetually looking to succeed in a startup company in the days when people actually succeeded in startup companies. Except that he managed to fail every time and ended up never working much at all. How offended he got when I refused to renew our vows on our tenth anniversary!
“We agreed,” he sniveled.
“Yeah, before the kid came along, before I got to know who you really are.”
He cried real tears, grief-stricken over some silly romantic pact that became irrevocably broken six weeks after his daughter was born. “Force majeure,” the lawyers call it—an act of nature that nullifies a contract. In the case of my “marriage,” the force majeure was my pregnancy and all that followed. Amanda and David had their own force majeure.
Other than the Foreperson, the jury was intelligent—unusually so. Smart people often hold the naive belief that the justice system depends on dialogue and understanding. The Foreperson could have presented a problem. She has a chip on her shoulder, wanted to feel important, and intransigence can make a person feel important. Which is why I nominated her to be the foreperson. Upon being appointed the leader, she became the quintessential follower, precisely because she has no leadership ability. She aimed to please, and leaders can’t aim to please.
Expertise impresses people, engenders trust. The expert announces that a witness has been coached, and flip-flop. When the expert makes up a story about a rival jury consultant being in the courtroom, the others don’t question it—flip-flop. (If anyone checks, I’ll just say the reporter from TrueCriminal.com looks a lot like Jerome Marks.) Sure, Lacey exhibited all the mannerisms and techniques jury consultants teach. We teach those techniques because they convey truth. Lacey is the prototype, not the product. Until I, speaking from on high, pronounced otherwise. And yet, credible or not, Lacey could lie. Truth tellers can lie, do lie, which means that truth tellers are figments. My own daughter, a daddy’s girl like Lacey—oh, so much like Lacey—prevaricated about me. Apt word, “prevaricated.” It comes from the Old French prevaricacion, meaning disobedience. No matter what, a daughter must not disobey her mother; a husband must not disobey his wife. Lacey was disobedient and, so, a prevaricator. What is the truth, anyway, except what the decision makers say it is?
The principles of manipulation: Don’t overstate your case. Give in sometimes. Use honey, not vinegar. (Poison the honey if you have to.) If the lead police investigator is inept, which Detective Beckermann was, acknowledge that fact and move on. The other jurors will admire your objectivity.
Perception is a delicate tapestry. Once a single thread snaps, the entire fabric unravels. After I ripped Lacey apart, the other jurors could believe that that drugged-out, publicity-seeking, bipolar, lying Dillon Sullinger was a truthful witness; that the right to stand your ground means you must run; that a traumatized man who’s just killed his mate of thirty-four years would have any conception of time at all, much less remember that his son is soon due home from school.
Ah, the Clergyman. A block of inscrutable stone who was voting not guilty. Then a stroke of luck when the Foreperson found that photograph of him with Amanda Sullinger. (I’m not arrogant enough to believe that luck doesn’t count in an endeavor like mine.) I couldn’t go to the judge with the photo. Nor could I encourage the others to take the picture to the judge, because by empowering them I would have lost control of the proceedings. So I bided my time. Then more luck: discovering the Foreperson’s misplaced cell phone on the ladies’-room sink, checking the screen, and realizing the phone was powered on and wasn’t locked. I launched the browser app, found the photo of Amanda and the Clergyman, and used the Foreperson’s email address to send the link to Kelsi Cunningham. Not only did I make it seem as if the Foreperson were the person who had busted the Clergyman, I also knew that Cunningham would protect her source at all costs. All of which meant that no one would finger me as the person who gave the photo to the media. Cunningham published the photo, of course, and as a result, the Clergyman’s apparent relationship with Amanda came to the judge’s attention. A judge like Quinn-Gilbert wouldn’t let him stay on the jury even if that photograph was a coincidence, which I highly doubt. Wave goodbye to the Clergyman. I am surprised the media didn’t find the photo earlier. But the internet still has little nooks and crannies that hide information in plain sight.
Smart woman, the Housewife. Foolish, needy, corrupt
woman, the Housewife. She had talked too much before the trial ended, and counted on the support of the Architect, a shallow, enigmatic fashion plate with a mean streak. Poor judge of character, the Housewife—she hugged me before we left the deliberation room.
Too bad about Natalie Quinn-Gilbert. I like her; I sincerely do.
THE BLOGGER
KELSI CUNNINGHAM
I assured my loyal readers a not-guilty verdict was a slam dunk, a foregone conclusion, shooting fish in a barrel, a sure thing, open-and-shut, a dead certainty. As it transpired, the only certainty is that Amanda Sullinger is dead. I swear to God, I’ll get to the bottom of this. The guilty verdict has embarrassed me with my editors and my readers and has emboldened my critics. The guilty verdict has made me look like a schmuck, and Kelsi Cunningham does not enjoy looking like a schmuck.
None of the jurors will talk to me. I guess it’s not a surprise, because I’ve been hard on them. I coined the term “Simpleminded Sullinger Seven” in one of my articles, and some of the other media outlets picked it up. Worse, after the verdict came down, Judge Quinn-Gilbert advised them not to talk to anyone about the deliberative process, to keep their jury-room discussions confidential. The veteran reporters were stunned because, in the past, Quinn-Gilbert has been a big supporter of freedom of the press, and all that. The judge’s “advice” was bad enough, but then, three days ago, I ambushed the Foreperson at her home, and before she ordered me
off her lawn, she let slip that Judge Quinn-Gilbert’s bailiff told the jurors they especially shouldn’t speak with me. The bailiff called me unethical and untrustworthy, according to the Foreperson. I’m not unethical; I’m intrepid. Anyway, when I pointed out to the Foreperson how she’d trusted me before—trusted me so much that she sent me that photo of the Clergyman standing with Amanda Sullinger—the woman shouted that I was crazy and threatened to call the cops.
It’s not the judge or the bailiff I blame for the jury’s stonewalling. It’s that court clerk, the son of a bitch.
I still remember Judge Quinn-Gilbert’s look of betrayal, and the clerk’s unbridled revulsion at my little subterfuge. I’ve gotten a lot of those looks in my short career. The memories of such expressions of disdain are insidious. No matter how hard you fight against them, they come back full force, like some kind of superresistant bacterial infection.
I tried to arrange an appointment with Judge Quinn-Gilbert and apologize for what I did. Of course, I had an ulterior motive: to convince her to advise the jurors to speak with the media. Her nasty court clerk informed me the judge has taken a leave of absence. He wouldn’t divulge why. None of my sources who work in the courthouse will divulge why. I’m sure it concerns her mental state. I smell the stench of cover-up, which is fine with me, because I’m in the business of yanking covers off and exposing the underlying garbage.
Somewhere down the line, a juror will talk to me, reveal the truth, I’m sure of it. And then I won’t look like such a schmuck. I need to flip only one of the Simpleminded Sullinger Seven. The problem is, People v. Sullinger isn’t the O. J. Simpson murders or the Lindberg kidnapping, or even Jody Arias or the Menendez brothers. Those cases had legs. The public is already letting go of Sullinger, already moving on to the next salacious comitragedy. I report NEWS. My competitors fled Sepulveda County as quickly as they could. I’m scheduled to fly back home tomorrow.
The Simpleminded Sullinger Seven. What would I have called the jury if they’d remained at eight?
After the Clergyman got kicked off because of my article, he became something of a fifth Beatle. Only I and a couple of other reporters tried to talk to him, and like the other jurors, he declined to comment. Yesterday, on instinct or a whim, I called him again, and this time he invited me to visit his church and pray with him.
“A very private, very exclusive prayer service,” he said in a big yet soft and enigmatic voice. “Perhaps both of us shall gain a bit of redemption and enlightenment.”
Of course, I don’t know what the hell he meant. I doubt he’ll talk to me about the substance of deliberations, but I think I’ll head over there now. What better way to kill time in this boring county?
Yeah, I’ll head over and pray with the Clergyman—to kill time, dig up dirt, and, just maybe, get a booster shot of that redemption and enlightenment he talked about.
THE END
We, the Jury Page 23