Blind Judgement g-5

by Grif Stockley

  Connie and I were in the same boat.

  “Rosa, my wife,” I say, “was about a quarter black. As soon as people figured that out, she didn’t have a chance.”

  “I remember the gossip,” Connie says, her voice less heated.

  “You were kind of a hero to me when you came back from the Peace Corps.”

  I had no idea.

  “You must have still been in college,” I say, trying to remember when the last time was I saw her.

  “I had just graduated and was home for a couple of weeks,” she says.

  “You were the talk of the town. Of course, she was described to me as being a lot darker than she was.”

  Back then Connie must have viewed my marriage to Rosa as a hopeful sign that things were changing. And, in fact, they have, to a point.

  “My sister told me later that one of the rumors going around was that I had married a pygmy from a Brazilian rain forest.”

  Connie laughs for the first time.

  “Bear Creek would have accepted a pygmy as long as she could pass for white.”

  I look out my window into the park across the road. I’ve understood almost nothing until the last few days. I had an image of my family and I filtered out any memories of Bear Creek that didn’t agree with that image. Tommy has been wearing blinders, too.

  “It must have been harder for your parents than it was for you and Tommy.”

  “It’s all relative,” Connie instructs me.

  “They made money here and saved almost every penny.

  It allowed us kids to escape.”

  I’m curious to know what her life is like now, but I’m afraid to ask.

  Though she doesn’t seem quite as hostile as she did when we first began talking, there is still an edge to her voice that she doesn’t bother to hide. Blacks, not whites, have been the majority in each place she lived. Though for years they have been saying they were invisible to us, I’ve never admitted to what extent both races were merely background noise.

  “If your mother can think of anything that could help find who your father’s murderer is,” I plead with her, “let me know, please. The only person at the plant who’s really been cooperative is the secretary, Darla Tate. Though she hasn’t actually helped his case any, she says your father liked Class, and he liked your father.” “That doesn’t prove anything,” Connie says.

  “I’ll talk to Mother if you’ll promise not to accuse her of my father’s murder.”

  It hardly seems as if I’m giving anything away-or getting anything, for that matter. Bonner has never considered her a suspect, and he went all through the house the night of the murder.

  “I promise,” I say, knowing Dick will suggest it to the jury if I don’t.

  Connie hangs up, and I curse myself, knowing how badly I have served my client in this case. I should never have taken it. I couldn’t have screwed up any more than if I had stayed drunk for the last couple of months. The only thing I’m convinced of is that Class is simply trying to save his skin, and I haven’t given him any reason to act otherwise.

  “You can’t let Class plead guilty,” I tell Lattice Bledsoe four days before her husband’s trial begins. She has warily invited me into her house as if I were an investigator instead of her husband’s defense attorney. She is seated on a brown tattered couch across from me.

  “You know he didn’t kill Willie “He’s saying now he did,” she says, holding a two-year-old on her lap.

  With no income coming i in, she baby sits during the day before she works the evening shift at the 7-Eleven. The child’s eyes are enormous brown pools. She leans back against Lattice and stares at me as if I am the first white person she has ever seen.

  “I don’t really believe that and neither do you,” I say urgently.

  “Almost the first words out of your mouth when I met you were something like, “I know my husband and he’s not a killer.”” “I don’t want him to die,” she says, keeping her voice even, but unable to keep tears from sliding down her cheeks.

  I lean forward on my knees and argue, “Take away his explanation that Paul Taylor was going to give him Oldham’s Barbecue and there is absolutely no motive. Half a dozen witnesses, including Mrs. Ting, will have to testify that Willie liked Class, and Class liked Willie.

  Without Doss’s testimony there is hardly any evidence of any plan for Class to be paid to kill him.”

  The child, whose name is Tisha, is perhaps frightened by my tone, and puts her thumb in her mouth while Lattice reminds me, “Class says you told him once a jury doesn’t need a motive to convict.”

  I, of course, have not been honest with Lattice or her husband about why I took this case. I am responsible for Class winding up in this position.

  Whether I’ve actually said the words or not, I’ve wanted him to do exactly what he is doing.

  “You have to convince Class that he simply has to trust the system,” I argue.

  “I think he can persuade a jury he didn’t kill Willie. This isn’t going to be a lynch mob. There’ll be blacks on the jury, and no Chinese.”

  Lattice pats Tisha for comfort.

  “How do you know he didn’t kill him?” she whispers.

  “You can’t be for sure. And neither can a jury. There’s gonna be a black sheriff and a black prosecutor sayin’ he did, and there’re a lot of black people who are ready to believe the worst about ourselves if it’s black people doing the accusing.”

  I watch Tisha as she begins to fidget on Lattice’s lap.

  “Before he can be convicted, twelve people have to believe that Class is capable of killing someone. If he can convince people he came here, and stayed, he won’t be convicted. No one is going to testify they saw him. I believed him the first time he told me he didn’t do it. Your marriage won’t survive him going to prison, no matter what you think now. You’re selling him short.”

  I can see Latrice wavering.

  “He won’t do me any good dead,” she says, but there is no conviction in her voice.

  “Can you promise you’ll get him off?”

  “Even if he is convicted,” I temporize, “I can’t imagine any jury will give Class the death penalty unless they think he was a paid killer.”

  But even as I say this, I remember that Darla Tate, despite her testimony that there was a good relationship between Willie and Class, will make a strong, if reluctant, witness, for the prosecution. If the jury wants to, they can simply believe he was hired by someone else.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” Latrice says.

  I feel my face flush with shame. Under the circumstances, I can’t conceal my own bad motives any longer and admit, “Initially, the reason I took your husband’s case was that I wanted to see Paul Taylor convicted. Because of some things I thought he did to my family years

  ago, I wasn’t at all surprised he was charged, and my thinking was originally that Class might be guilty, and if he could plead to a lesser charge in exchange for his testimony, I would have done my job and gotten to see Paul Taylor paid back at the same time. But now I think the only reason Class wants to implicate Paul is that he’s afraid.”

  Latrice gives me a hard stare.

  “So you were ready to sell him out?”

  I feel like a moth being pinned to the wall.

  “Not sell him out,” I say, unable to meet her gaze.

  “I just started off with a different agenda.”

  Is that what it was? What words we lawyers use! It was a vendetta, pure and simple.

  “Lucy Cunningham said you were pretty much like nearly every other white man she had met-out for yourself,” Lattice says, her voice resigned, “but that you’d probably do a good job eventually.”

  I shrug, not having the heart any longer to defend myself. I’ve managed to accomplish nothing here while I waited, hoping Paul would shoot himself in the foot sooner or later. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve assumed my client’s testimony could make it happen if need be.
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  “I’ll do my best,” I say, not about to use the past tense.

  Lattice draws air into her lungs and then exhales, rocking the child gently against her.

  “I’ll talk to Class,” she agrees finally.

  “He’s okay until he gets to feeling pressure, then he sometimes panics.”

  Welcome to the club, I think but don’t say. I thank her and leave before she can change her mind. I want to get out of this place in a hurry.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Melvin Butterfield, resplendent in dark blue pinstripes, begins his opening statement to the jury, “the state of Arkansas will prove that on last September twenty-third, between the hours of two and four p.m.” Mr. Willie Ting, owner of Southern Pride Meats, was murdered in cold blood at his plant by the defendant Class Bledsoe. Further, the state will show that Class Bledsoe, who worked in Mr. Ting’s plant, was hired to commit this murder by the defendant Paul Taylor…”

  What Lattice said to convince her husband to go to trial, I may never know. As I listen to Butterfield, I lean back in my seat and watch the faces of the jury. Six blacks and six whites. Dick struck blacks as fast as he could, and I struck whites, unable to shed my belief that blacks will be less likely to convict Class. The whites on the jury, each over forty, are from all over the county, only two are actually from Bear Creek. None of the individuals selected admit to knowing Paul Taylor other than casually. On voir dire Dick asked prospective jurors if anyone had applied for loans during the years Paul was on Farmer’s State Bank’s board of directors. When one old man from Rondo raised his hand,

  Dick didn’t run the risk of asking him if he got the loan, but struck him after conferring with Paul, who has been whispering in his ear all morning. Yet if whites or blacks on the jury harbor any buried resentments toward his wealth, no one has admitted it. Judge Johnson, far from tilting in favor of Butterfield, allowed both Dick and me latitude in our questioning of prospective jurors.

  From the way Johnson has handled the proceedings and our pretrial motions, he seems pissed at Butterfield, as if a promise somewhere along the line has not been fulfilled. I glance up at the judge, and he has his nose stuck up in the air like a man avoiding a bad smell.

  I look over at Dick, who is doodling on a pad as he listens to Butterfield. Knowing now he can’t trust me, Dick hasn’t spoken to me in a week except to call me to discuss the order of our opening statements. Having already decided to say as little as possible, I have agreed to go second.

  If I were absolutely sure that Butterfield wouldn’t offer Class a new deal in the middle of the trial and equally certain that Class wouldn’t take it, I would have no qualms about telling the jury that Class was going to deny there had been a conspiracy between him and Paul, but at this point I’m going to play things as close to the vest as possible.

  While Butterfield briefly explains what the testimony of the FBI chemist will involve, I allow myself to think of the look on Angela’s face while she was being sworn in and led off to the witness room. She had the sad, resigned expression of someone who knows her world is about to come crashing down on her head and knows there’s nothing she can do about it. She never even looked in my direction. How can I love a woman I don’t

  fully trust? Easy. Just watching the back of her head while she raised her right hand to take the oath made me wonder if romantic love between two people is programmed into the genes just like eye color.

  After finishing his summary of the case against Class, Butterfield then turns from the lectern and faces Paul, whom Dick has seated to his right so the jury can watch him.

  “Now, the state doesn’t believe for a moment that Class Bledsoe acted alone, we believe Bledsoe was hired by Paul Taylor,” Butterfield says, pointing his finger at Paul, and his voice rising, “because he wanted to buy Southern Pride Meats from Willie Ting and got turned down because Mr. Ting didn’t want to sell his very profitable business to someone who wasn’t Chinese. And when Willie Ting refused for the second time, the defendant Paul Taylor threatened to kill him.” A silence of perhaps ten seconds elapses as Butterfield stares hard at Paul, finally turns back to the jury, and continues.

  “How do we know Paul Taylor threatened to kill him? Well, the fact is, Mr. Ting was so frightened by Paul Taylor that he made a tape of the conversation, and you will hear it for yourselves. Now, those of us in the criminal justice system fervently wish that Mr. Ting had given us this tape as soon as the threat was made-because if he had, he just might be alive today.”

  Butterfield’s voice drops as if he is truly experiencing regret. He looks down at his hands gripping the sides of the podium and resumes forcefully, “But that wasn’t his way. His widow, Mrs. Doris Ting, will tell you that her husband always preferred to keep a low profile in the community and spend his free time with his family.

  He did tell her, however, that if anything happened to him she should tell her son Tommy about the tape. Well, after Mrs. Ting found her husband’s body in the plant that horrific afternoon, she, as instructed, told Tommy Ting, who lives in Washington, D.C.a about the tape, and he immediately called the sheriff, and as I have said, you will hear it in the course of the trial…”

  Class, who has been provided a cheap black suit by Lattice that doesn’t take into account his recent weight loss, stirs restlessly beside me.

  He knows as well as I do that the jury is eating this stuff up. What I fear is that even if the jury doesn’t think there is enough evidence to link Paul, Butterfield will have established a motive by the time he is finished. When Butterfield tells the jury that Darla Tate will testify she overheard Class talking to someone about money, it is clear he is laying the groundwork for his closing argument that even if the jury doesn’t convict Paul, it doesn’t mean they have to come back empty-handed.

  As expected, Butterfield has a harder time talking about Paul’s involvement once he gets past the tape.

  “You will learn that Paul Taylor employed Class Bledsoe for years as a delivery man at one of his stores …” he says, explaining the arrangement Paul had with Henry Oldham, who will testify that in August of last year, one month before the murder, Paul had told him he thought he should retire in another year.

  Butterfield also tells the jury he will prove that Class has lied about

  how many times he was seen talking to Paul, a discrepancy that I, and surely Dick, will attribute to nothing more than lapses in memory.

  Even a jury made up entirely of former prosecutors would have to conclude that without Doss’s testimony, there is no compelling evidence that Paul hired him to murder Willie. As the evidence comes in against Class, the pressure will mount, and I won’t be entirely surprised if by this time tomorrow. Class will be wanting to sing a song I have heard once before.

  I get up to make my opening argument, uncertain about the best place to begin. Butterfield has been talking close to an hour, and I don’t want to be up here nearly that long, but I want to do more than just wave to the jury and then sit down.

  “The evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen,” I say, when I reach the podium, “that anyone working in Southern Pride Meats that day knew, or could easily have found out, where Class stored his knife on the kill floor every night. And the evidence will show that everyone in the plant knew or could easily have known that it was his habit to go straight home after work, fix himself lunch, drink a beer, and then take a nap.

  Everyone in the plant knew or could easily have known that Lattice, his wife, was at that time working the day shift at the 7-Eleven in Bear Creek, because at the plant everybody knew everybody else’s business.

  You see, ladies and gentlemen,” I say, coming around the lectern to the front of the jury rail, “the testimony will be that Class Bledsoe was the type of employee who never missed a day’s work and gave a hundred percent on the job he had held for the last five years. You’re going to

  hear at least six plant employees say that Class Bledsoe genuinely respected Willie Ting as a boss, and Darla Tate, t
he plant secretary, will testify that Willie Ting thought Class Bledsoe was a model employee because he came to work every single day and did his job as well as it could be done. What the evidence is going to show is that Class Bledsoe,” I say, and turn and point to him, “was as predictable as a Timex watch. He did the same things, at the same time, in the same way every day for five years. The fact is, there will be no physical evidence at all linking him to Willie Ting.

  Absolutely nothing! No hair or fiber, no trace of skin or fingernails, no bloody clothing. At the end of this trial there will be nothing that links Class Bledsoe to this murder except his knife, and everybody in the plant knew or could have known exactly where he kept it.”

  I turn back to the jury and focus on Emma Parsons, an attractive black schoolteacher in her thirties, whom Class has said might be sympathetic to him.

  “And every person who testifies in this trial will say they know Class either by reputation or personally as a family man who was as stable, reliable, and dependable as any man or woman in Bear Creek.”

  I walk back around to the podium, not at all satisfied by the cold expression on Emma Par 5

  sons’s face. If she is sympathetic to Class, she has a funny way of showing it.

  “You see, obviously my theory is that someone in the plant framed Class

  Bledsoe because he or she knew that he wouldn’t have an alibi. That person or persons knew he was going to be by himself between the hours of two and four, that person or persons knew every worker’s routine, what they did after getting off work and who they did it with, so Class was the perfect setup, because he isn’t going to be able to produce a single person to say where he was between two and four in the afternoon on September twenty-third. He will tell you that he was at home by himself as he always was.”

  I come back around the podium and place my hands in the center of the rail, wondering how many of these jurors already have their minds made up. Four of the whites on the jury and three of the blacks have their arms tightly folded across their chests, not a good sign. They are waiting for me to name a suspect. It is time to oblige them.