The Last Pulse

by Anson Cameron

  ‘Your decision, and your decision alone, will deter mine the defendant’s guilt or innocence here today. And presumption of innocence is more difficult than it sounds. But as of this moment you must presume the defendant innocent. The onus of proof is on the prosecution, meaning the prosecution must prove to you beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. Failure to do so will lead to a verdict of innocence. Do you understand this?’ The jury variously nods and yeps, this all being needless blather and the defendant’s innocence a done deal – the minor gears that drive the wheels of justice do not need their consideration.

  So they go at it. And presumption of innocence doesn’t survive the first couple of witnesses for the prosecution, who turn out to be that most spiteful Calvinist type of witness, that most merciless and irrefutable witness … the eyewitness. Justice might aspire to be blind, but it is best served by citizens with twenty-twenty vision and a moral snobbery worthy of Moses. Counsel for the defence takes sheets of paper from one stack and places them on another as the prosecution walks his eyewitnesses through what they saw. Two shire employees who know Merv from the Bartel footy club, and are thus testifying begrudgingly, saw him cut the chains off The Party Animal and jump the motors and steer her away downriver. A statement is read from the father of a family that was barbecuing snags in a park below town, whose kids were at school with Em Rossiter, and who knew Merv well. This family saw Merv pull into the boat ramp and winch the boat out of the river onto his tandem trailer. And yes, Your Honour, it was The Party Animal and Merv even said to them, ‘Let’s get this party started,’ which stuck in their heads because it seemed to them a man who had gone through his … recent, you know … troubles wouldn’t want to be partying.

  All up fifteen people watched, in part, Merv steal The Party Animal. As they give their testimony Merv waves and winks at them to let them know it’s okay and no hard feelings. This makes them lower their voices and talk down to the floor and forces the Judge to warn them to remain audible and to tell them that justice is a nobler and more enriching cause than mateship.

  The counsel for the defence, before she rises, pats Merv on the shoulder and gives him a sorrowful look as if to apologise for her inadequacy. ‘Your Honour, we don’t dispute that Mr Rossiter, on the aforementioned date, took The Party Animal.’ She shakes her head. ‘We do dispute he stole it. The boat, as has been stated in previous evidence, is owned by Mr Rodney Slattery, who is best mates with Mr Rossiter’s deceased wife’s brother and, we contend, a friend of Mr Rossiter himself. We further contend, and Mr Rossiter asserts, that in a conversation at closing time outside the Bartel Hotel on the night before Mr Rossiter took The Party Animal, Mr Slattery told Mr Rossiter he was, and I quote, “a ripper bloke”, who could “borrow me wife, kids, boat or lawnmower any time”.’

  Peals of laughter ring about the room and His Honour is forced to douse this tumult by slapping his hand on his desk and shouting, ‘I want to make it clear that this is not an entertainment and on any more outbursts of laughter the persons responsible will be ejected.’

  A member of the tipstaff dressed in a navy-coloured uniform with silver crowns on his shoulders tells the Judge, ‘Your Honour, it was the jury that laughed.’

  ‘Then the jury better remember not to laugh next time the counsel for the defence quotes a drunken idiot.’

  The counsel for the defence, momentarily taken aback at having her client’s deceased wife’s brother’s mate dubbed a drunken idiot, shakes her head as if to say ‘That was well out of order, Your Honour’, before continuing, ‘Your Honour, we contend that Mr Slattery must have, through advanced drunkenness, forgotten this kind offer made to his best mate’s sister’s widower.’

  ‘And it being made in advanced drunkenness, Ms Blamey, I think it might be disregarded as an offer of any relevance in a legal sense. Move on from pub talk and the undying love sworn at closing times outside hotels.’

  ‘But, Your Honour, my client believes he was given consent. He wasn’t to know that Mr Slattery was, as it were, completely maggoted. So it’s not a question of what Mr Slattery soberly intended, but what my client was led to believe was a sober intention.’

  ‘Is it your contention, Ms Blamey, that your client also felt himself given the borrowing rights of Mr Slattery’s wife and lawnmower by Mr Slattery’s brotherly blather outside the Bartel Hotel?’

  ‘Well … No, Your Honour.’

  ‘Then move on, Ms Blamey.’

  Some members of the jury are assiduously scribbling notes, as if scared to miss some legal nicety or some vague recollection given off by a council worker. The Judge watches them, wondering what part of the preceding conversation was worth recording.

  He eyes them closely, from one end to the other. They seem strangely and unanimously set on some academic task. Juries are beasts normally riven with and debilitated by internal vanities. Due to one-upmanships ricocheting within their ranks, and an unwillingness on the part of every juror to let any other juror have their way or be more perceptive or more wise than themselves, they are usually just flat out dumber than the sum of their parts. So the Judge watches this assiduously scribbling jury closely. They are showing each other their notes. And this is never done. They are in cahoots, he sees. They are collaborating on a thesis, a truth, a verdict. They are pumped for acquittal. He will need to abort that verdict before it is birthed.

  The red-faced counsel prosecuting rises and summarises his eyewitnesses and reiterates their goodness and cites the positions they hold in Bartel society: a banker, two council workers, a young couple with children, a retired accountant, a Vietnam vet …

  The sharp-faced counsel for the defence rises and reminds the court it might have all been a misunderstanding sparked by beer and boastfulness and … and … and … The jurists are grinning at her, miming love, their twenty-four eyes sparking and winking and telling her silently not to worry. They are going to acquit. Damn the facts and damn those dickhead eyewitnesses (at whom they stare contempt) four ways from hell. This dude laid down his life so that others may farm. He ain’t going to jail on our watch.

  When the defence counsel has resumed her seat His Honour takes off his glasses and lays them on his table and leans back in his chair and scratches his forehead. Staring at the jury he is troubled to see its strong, righteous face. To see how brave they’ve become, their defiant unanimity in defence of their man. He knows they are going to fly in the face of justice and let their hero walk.

  He begins talking softly. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you look pretty happy with yourselves, I have got to tell you. You look like you might have made up your minds to do a very grand thing. Sort of thing that might get you shouted drinks in riverfront pubs for the rest of your lives. “Oh, you’re one of those jurists, are you? One of those jurists that spat in the eye of the tyrant. What are you drinking?”’ He shakes his head softly. ‘Well, hold on a second before you go spitting in my eye to get free booze.’

  He smiles at them, seeing the puzzlement he is spreading among them. ‘You will remember I told you at the beginning of this trial that presumption of innocence is harder than it might at first appear. Having said that, if you reach a unanimous decision that Mr Mervyn Rossiter is innocent of the crime of which he is accused, then you must acquit him.’ He takes his wig from his head and lays it on the table next to his glasses. ‘If you believe, despite the overwhelming evidence, that the defendant is not guilty, then that’s your decision to make. I can’t dictate to you a verdict and nobody else can. This man’s fate is in your hands.’ His Honour laces his fingers behind his balding head and leans back and looks at the cobwebbed ceiling, seemingly lost in its dusty pressed-iron fleur-de-lis. He begins to talk up at that ceiling, distractedly, as if merely musing, no longer interested in directing a jury, just keen to narrate a circumstance. ‘If a jury decides, for some bright beautiful reason approximating mateship, or nepotism, or a fair go, that it is representing a type of justice above and beyond the type I r
epresent … then that’s okay. It’s wrong. But it’s a perfectly legal type of wrong and I can’t do anything about it. You, if you want, can acquit this man. And you can wave at him and clap him on the back and shout, “Good luck, Merv,” as he sails off down this river here toward Bartel and the waiting arms of the Federal Police and charges of terrorism and hostage-taking and a charter flight to Brisbane and a jury there quite unlike you because it’s made entirely of … Queenslanders, but quite like you, too, because … its mind is made up in advance.’

  His Honour takes his hands from behind his head and leans forward, looking across at the jury, looking from face to face. ‘You getting me? I’m telling you the “innocent” verdict is yours to give and the moment you give it it stands. But so is the other verdict … yours to give. Guilty. Yours to give.’

  He takes his glasses from the desktop and bran dishes them at the jury. ‘And if you are too blind to see why I’ve come here today … if you’re too stupid to see who I am … if you’ve mistaken me for some federal legal cudgel, rather than a County Court Judge of South Australia, then you go ahead and acquit this boat thief and by your acquittal turn him into a defendant in a marble clad court filled with humid air and monsoonal rain drumming on its roof in the tropics.’

  Slamming his wig back on his head he continues. ‘Because believe me, despite what you people might want and expect me to do, I have dedicated my life to the proper application of the Common Law. I feel the law’s sanctity in my every working moment, and I’m not going to show a remorseless boat thief like this any mercy just because he’s a hero in the south. If you hand down a guilty verdict here today it will be my grim duty to come down on this man hard, and he will serve a lengthy probation. It will be a pissing long time before he takes his next holiday north fishing for barramundi.’

  Those members of the jury who were taking notes have given it up. This revelation can’t be written. All twelve are leaning back, awe dawning on their faces at the beauty of Justice being revealed to them. They had always thought her a harridan and a hammer, but now, the robes stripped back, she is revealed as an … an … accomplice. Their mouths fallen open, they are staring in amazement, blinking at this robed dignitary who has just mutated from an alien into an uncle. He is nodding at them slowly, urging them to understand. And was that a flicker of a smile? When he spoke the word ‘probation’ did he wink? ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we will take a short recess, say, ten minutes, for you to consider your verdict. Easier if you remain in situ, I think. We legal people will stretch our legs.’

  The various staff, prosecuting counsel, defence counsel, His Honour himself, the architects of courtly deportment in their long navy coats, mill about outside the front of the Mechanics’ Institute leaning their faces up at the morning sun. The town stands at a distance and stares. Coffees are made in one of the black vans and handed out to the visiting court staff. The red-faced prosecutor erupts now and then with laughter, sifting coins loudly in his trouser pocket. His Honour, watched by the town, smokes a small cigar seriously, for himself and his audience, blowing smoke in thin, temperate streams.

  Merv stands apart, beneath a peppercorn with a cop either side of him, and watches Bridget walk up from the hotel carrying Em, following another cop. Bridget has showered and is no longer dressed in farmer’s hand-me-downs. She is wearing a white dress covered in a red brush-stroke pattern. She has on women’s sandals. Her wet hair is tied back off the sharp angles of her face. At fifty metres distance she puts the girl down and points Merv out to her in the shade of the tree and Em, still in her mauve flannel pyjamas, runs to him and he swings her high in the air and hugs her tightly. ‘Hello, kid.’

  She buries her face in his neck. ‘You smell like after work.’

  ‘I’ve been sweating. Courtrooms are hard work.’

  ‘We had doctors and they gave us jelly beans and Twisties and asked us stuff and put a rubber thing on my arm.’ She looks around at the police and at the blackly robed smokers and the vans so black and shiny in the dull yellow town. Like spaceships, she thinks. Like aliens.

  ‘What is this?’ Bridget Wray asks. ‘Why are all these legal people in this place?’

  ‘I’m being tried. This is justice. A court. I think I’m buggered, too. They’ve got eyewitnesses and a hanging judge.’

  ‘Out here.’ Bridget Wray looks around sceptically. ‘You have an eager judiciary in South Australia.’

  ‘Daddy, what is a hanging judge and an eyewitness and an eager jishery? I don’t … I don’t like them.’

  ‘Oh, you shut up, you rude pyjama girl.’ He tickles her and she squeals and squirms. ‘Those people are organising our parade. Didn’t I promise you a parade? Those are parade people. And by the end of this afternoon you’ll see Julie Oxley and Jaxon Smith and Steven Newman and Bruce Lowe and Rhonda Kellock and Sophoenix McCormack and all your other little classmates standing on the riverbanks clapping and whistling at you for bringing the water back.’

  ‘Could you possibly be a worse father?’ Bridget Wray closes her eyes and shakes her head to ask the question.

  Once His Honour has finished his cigar he ushers the lawyers come hither. ‘Is this jury smarter than a kelpie, Jennie?’ he asks. Counsel for the defence lets her cigarette fall to the dirt and grinds it with her toe. ‘You can’t second guess a jury. But you couldn’t have done much more and stayed within shouting distance of jurisprudence.’

  ‘I feel a rosy optimism,’ the prosecutor says. ‘You might think my face is coloured by wine. But it’s not. That’s a rosy optimism.’ His Honour Judge Boz Secomb of the Circuit Court of South Australia ushers them toward the door. ‘Righto. Let’s hope your hue is justified, Geoffrey.’

  They file back into the courtroom, taking their various places. Merv sits next to his defence counsel and she offers him a Tic Tac and he takes one and hands the box behind him to Em sitting on Bridget Wray’s lap and Em rattles them loudly in the silent room trying to extract one. His Honour smiles down at her. ‘I got four,’ she whispers loudly to Merv. ‘I could put three back … if you want.’

  Sitting straight-backed, looking ahead, hands in laps, most of the jury are stone-faced with the gravity of the thing they are bidden to do. But a few are twitching, fiddling, squirming, nervous that they may not have got this right.

  ‘Quiet, please,’ His Honour barks at the already quiet room. ‘I call this court to session. Chairman, has the jury reached a unanimous verdict?’

  A middle-aged woman in a yellow t-shirt and dirty jeans stands, holding her hands one in the other before her. ‘We have, Your Honour.’

  ‘And what is that verdict?’

  ‘Your Honour, we find the defendant guilty as charged.’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the court thanks you for discharging your duty with the gravity it deserves.’ His Honour nods at them. ‘And for bringing a rare perspicacity to the task.’ He looks down at his desktop, perhaps to hide a smile, and reaches for a sheet of paper and makes some notes on it. ‘Would the defendant please stand.’ All eyes turn to Merv as he does so, trying to sweep and flatten his woolly hair for sentencing. ‘Mr Mervyn Rossiter, you have been found guilty of the theft of a motor boat, to wit The Party Animal, from the main jetty at Bartel, South Australia. In itself this might seem a crime not deserving of a custodial sentence, but it is rumoured you used this boat to aid in the perpetration of further and more serious crimes beyond the jurisdiction of this court to consider. Further, not only have you shown no remorse for your crime since being in this court, you have flagrantly devoured Tic Tacs with a minty disdain.’ His Honour looks up over the top of his half-moon glasses and grins at Em. Bridget Wray mimes the words, ‘A minty fucking what?’

  ‘Mr Rossiter, in partial mitigation of your dishonest act the court notes you have suffered great personal loss during this current drought, and the court has been given written testimony as to your state of mind, in particular the seeing of visions, and the court takes note of the psycho
logical extremities to which you have been pushed. Malign forces, both ethereal and northerly, have conspired to deal you and your daughter a terrible and tragic blow.’ The jury relaxes, sensing Justice’s light touch. ‘Howsoever this may be,’ His Honour’s voice hardens, ‘larceny of this nature cannot be tolerated by civil society. I cite The Province of South Australia versus Samuel Legoe in 1836, in which the aforementioned Legoe stole a barque from the government surveyor and took to a brief piracy in the gulf waters. He was hanged a fortnight into his career, Judge Tallis of the Supreme Court of South Australia noting our colony, being dependent on supply by water, had a special loathing of piracy and placed a great value on the sanctity of our watercraft.’

  The jury now rises on its twenty-four tensing buttocks and its twenty-four eyes light with misgiving. One juryman stands slowly, goggling at His Honour he points at Merv and says, ‘Sir … Oh, Your Honour … we don’t … we didn’t … We were thinkin’ … Can we have another go at makin’ a verdict?’

  ‘Sit down, sir. I am about to pass sentence in a major crime.’

  ‘Yes, Your Honour.’ The defeated man falls to his seat.

  ‘Mr Rossiter, given the grave nature of your crime, I sentence you to a period of local detention and civic probation for a period of ten years. You will wear a GPS tracking device monitored by the Bartel Police and be confined to the shire of Taringa-Bartel for the duration of your sentence and be obligated to report to police once a week. Failure to comply with the terms of your probation will result in its revocation and a custodial sentence. Do you understand this, Mr Rossiter?’ His Honour lowers his head to look at Merv over his glasses.

  ‘I’m going home?’

  ‘Probation. Local detention. Ten years. Severe sentence.’