The Jury

by Steve Martini

  “Mr. Madriani, am I to understand that your client has opted not to be present today?”

  “That’s correct, Your Honor.”

  Coats makes a note. Because today’s proceedings are in the nature of a motion to admit evidence, Crone is not required to be present. He will have an opportunity to hear what Tanya Jordan says if she is allowed to testify in front of the jury. For a man who has kept a virtual diary of the trial up to this point, he has a curious reluctance to confront the victim’s mother. Harry thinks it is the doctor’s guilty conscience, though he says he is not certain Crone possesses one, guilty or otherwise.

  “The people call Tanya Jordan,” says Tannery.

  The bailiff does not call her name but instead heads toward a side door, the one that leads to the holding cell. They have brought Tanya Jordan in this way so that she wouldn’t have to run the gauntlet of the press out in the hall. A few seconds later, she enters the courtroom.

  Tanya Jordan is tall, stately. She wears a gray business suit, skirt and jacket, and a blouse with a plain white collar. Despite Tannery’s depiction of the distraught mother, there is no air of trepidation on her part. If she is intimidated by the formal surroundings of the courtroom or the specter of cross-examination, she doesn’t show it.

  Nearly six feet tall, she is slender and carries herself with a grace and assurance that is likely to impress a jury. Her eyes are straight ahead, fixed on the judge up on the bench as she walks toward the counsel tables and the clerk. She raises her right hand and takes the oath, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, then climbs the two short steps into the witness box and takes her seat.

  Tannery moves to the lectern that is positioned between the counsel tables.

  “Your Honor, if I may. We have a stipulation outstanding.” He turns toward me for an answer.

  “Do I have a copy?” says the judge.

  Tannery has forgotten to give him one. The detective forages at the counsel table and finally gives up his own copy so that the bailiff can hand it up to the judge.

  “What is this?” Coats looks at it as he asks the question.

  “It deals with the witness’s background, Your Honor. I think we can shorten her testimony if we agree to certain facts.”

  “Your Honor, given the limited information we have concerning this witness, I don’t think we can accept this portion of the stipulation.” Harry and I are conferring at the table as I address the issue.

  “I don’t see why not, Your Honor. The information is probably irrelevant,” says Tannery. “These activities involving the witness took place over two decades ago.”

  “If the defense isn’t comfortable with the stipulation, you know the drill, Mr. Tannery. You can object, and we’ll deal with it then.”

  “Your Honor, this was part of a package. Two stipulations.” Tannery isn’t happy. “If we’re not going to agree as to the one, then the previous stipulation offered by the people must be withdrawn.”

  Tannery looks over at me, dangling this. He knows that the family history, the relationship between mother and daughter, is a measure of damages he can draw out in front of the jury for emotional impact. That he is willing to offer this up makes me wonder why he is so anxious to avoid the witness’s history as an undergraduate at Michigan. Harry has the same thought. He is making a note to himself on a legal pad.

  “We’re willing to accept the one,” I tell the court.

  “We’re not,” says Tannery.

  “Very well,” says the judge. “There are no stipulations. Proceed.”

  “Would you state your name for the record?” Tannery finally turns to the witness.

  “Tanya Elizabeth Jordan.” She spells her first and last names for the court reporter. There is no nervous hesitation. She is cool—almost businesslike.

  “I know this is difficult for you,” says Tannery. Though you wouldn’t know it from her demeanor. “We will take it slow. If you need time to collect your thoughts, just tell us. You are the mother of the victim in this case, Kalista Jordan?”

  She nods. “I am.”

  “When was the last time you spoke with your daughter?”

  She doesn’t have to think long. She remembers the precise date. “It was March thirtieth, last year.”

  “Can you tell the court, did you have a close relationship with your daughter?”

  “Very close. I was a single parent. Kalista and I were the only family either of us had. She was my only child.”

  “Is her father alive?”

  “No. He died when she was an infant. Kalista never knew her father.”

  “So you raised her alone?”

  “Pretty much. My mother was with us for a time, when I was in college. She would watch my daughter when I attended classes, or had to go to work.”

  “But you would characterize your relationship with your daughter as close?”

  “Very.”

  “And it remained close even as she became an adult? Your daughter, I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “How often did you see her?”

  “Objection, lack of specificity as to time.”

  Tannery looks over at me, and before the judge can rule he reframes the question.

  “Within the last year before her death, how often on average would you see your daughter?”

  “At least four times a year, perhaps five. We would spend vacation time together, Christmas and Thanksgiving. Given the distance sometimes I would travel out, sometimes she would come home.”

  “And on the phone, how often would you talk? During this same time frame?”

  “At least twice a week. Sometimes more.”

  “Did she confide in you?”

  “We didn’t have any secrets, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Did she come to you for advice?”

  “Usually. Children don’t always ask, but Kalista is . . .” For the first time Tanya Jordan breaks her concentration, looks up at the ceiling and amends her answer. “She was a good child.” Her voice catches a little as she places her daughter in the past tense.

  “Yes.” Tannery glances over at Harry and me as if to say there will be much more of this if we don’t take the stipulation.

  “When she was young, I take it she would talk with you about boys, her friends, what she was doing at school?”

  “Oh, yes. We discussed almost everything. She never kept any secrets from me.”

  “And I assume you shared things with her?”

  “I did.”

  Tannery shuffles a page to the top of the stack from the papers in front of him on the lectern.

  “Did you ever discuss with her your experiences in college, at the University of Michigan?”

  “I did. We talked about the fact that I’d done some things, made some mistakes, but that she was not one of them.”

  “What do you mean she was not one of them?”

  “I mean having my daughter was not something I had planned. But I would never have changed it for the world.”

  “You weren’t married to Kalista’s father?”

  “No.”

  “Was she troubled by this?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, I’m sure there were times in her life when growing up without a father was difficult. But she didn’t dwell on it. And, as I said, he died long ago.”

  “So she would have been without a father whether you had been married to him or not?”

  “Objection.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sustained. You’re not supposed to answer the question if there’s an objection,” says the judge.

  “Sorry.” She looks up at him, only a few inches shorter than Coats even though he’s on the bench.

  “Let’s concentrate on your days at Michigan.” Tannery now starts to lead her into ancient history. Harry and I are looking at each other wondering why, unless Tannery is just trying to take the sting out of an old arrest, something we are not likely to raise in any event.

 
“Did you talk to your daughter much about your undergraduate days?”

  “We talked about it. She was interested in the period. Student activism. I think it held a certain nostalgia for her. Kids today have it much easier, but they think they missed a lot, in the sixties and seventies.”

  “Civil rights?” says Tannery.

  “That was a big part of it. Yes.”

  “And you were involved back then when you were in college.”

  “I was.”

  “You were active in civil rights activities?”

  “Yes.”

  “You engaged in demonstrations? So-called sit-ins?”

  “I did.”

  “And Kalista was interested in this?”

  “Yes. She always wanted to know what it was like. I think to her it was”—she thinks for a second— “like history. Curiosity driven by nostalgia. Kalista was born when I was in college, but she was only an infant when I graduated. She had no recollection of that time. It was very difficult. The only reason I was able to attend the university was that I had a scholarship, and my mother provided child care so I could attend classes. We lived in a small apartment off campus. Kalista wanted to know about it. She was very curious.”

  “And you would talk about this with her?”

  “We would discuss it.”

  “Your mother, is she alive?”

  “She died four years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.” Tannery is laying it all out, life leveraged from the bootstraps. He takes her through her studies in college, her jobs on the side to support the family while she went to school, a time punctuated with bouts of social activism. What Tanya Jordan calls her “period of commitment.” She says it with a somewhat cynical grin as if she has grown up since then and come to realize there is no such thing as justice.

  “And you say you participated in demonstrations when you were at the university?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you consider yourself highly active in this way?”

  She thinks for a moment. “I considered myself committed.”

  “To social justice? Civil rights?”

  “Right.”

  “Do you believe you are still committed in this way? To these goals?”

  “Yes.” She says it, but the conviction is gone from her voice. What kind of social justice can exist in a world in which her child has been savagely murdered and dismembered?

  “And can you tell the court, did your daughter share this same interest? This commitment?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  Tannery pauses, looks through his sheaf of papers, finds the one he is looking for and studies it for a moment. “I’m going to hand you a document. Your Honor, may I approach the witness?”

  The judge motions him on.

  “I want you to look at this document and tell the court what it is.” Tannery hands her what looks like three stapled pages. The witness looks at it briefly, then looks up.

  “It’s a police report. A record of my arrest on May second, nineteen seventy-one.”

  “And what were you arrested for?”

  “I’m not sure what the exact charge was. Disturbing the peace, or unlawful assembly.”

  “What were you doing when you were arrested?”

  “We were picketing. It was a sit-in at the university. In the faculty offices.”

  “Why were you picketing?”

  “Because of research being done at the university.”

  “What kind of research?”

  “It was a kind of racial profiling. Intelligence quotients, based on so-called genetic research.”

  Tannery, who is still at the witness box, now turns to look at Harry and me.

  “And who was performing this research? The head of the project at that time?”

  “Doctor David Crone.”

  “The defendant in this trial?”

  “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “Had you ever met the defendant at that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when was that?”

  “I took a class from him.”

  “He was a faculty member and you were one of his undergraduate students?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “This was a science class in genetics?”

  “Right.”

  “And why did you take this class? I mean, I assume it wasn’t a required course?”

  “I took it to get information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “At that time, it was suspected that he . . .”

  “Doctor Crone?”

  “Yes. It was believed that he was gathering information to show that blacks, African-Americans, lacked certain cognitive abilities based on their genetic makeup.”

  “The ability to reason, to form judgments.” Tannery is leading her shamelessly, but Harry and I don’t object. We want to see what the witness has to say. It will be another thing if she gets in front of the jury.

  “That’s correct.”

  “And I take it this was controversial?”

  “Dynamite,” says the witness. “It was not something they wanted out in the public, at least not until they were finished, until he had his studies done. Then it would take time to refute the findings. While that was being done, Dr. Crone would have been all over the airwaves promoting his study, giving it wide publicity.”

  “Which takes us back to the question of why you took the course from the defendant in the first place.”

  “Because I was asked to.”

  “By whom?”

  She takes a deep breath. “We were activists. We called ourselves Students for Racial Justice. Some were grad students. Others undergraduates.”

  “And you were a member of this group?”

  “I was.”

  “Why did they pick you? I mean, why not some graduate student who was doing research with Dr. Crone?”

  “There weren’t any minority graduate students involved in his project. He wouldn’t have them. At least that was the rumor.”

  “Objection. Move to strike.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Were there any black graduate students working on Dr. Crone’s project?”

  “No.”

  “Were there any minorities of any color?”

  “He had one Asian graduate student, and the rest were all white.”

  “So the only opportunity to get close to the project was as undergraduate?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Now, with reference to the undergraduate class that you took from Dr. Crone, were there any other African-American students in that class, besides yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “The word was out on campus that this was not a class that African-Americans would want to take.”

  “Why was that?”

  “It was believed that Dr. Crone had a racial bias.”

  “Objection. No foundation. Speculation on the part of the witness.”

  “Let me rephrase the question,” says Tannery.

  “Did you have occasion to talk to other black and minority students at the time about this class?”

  “I did.”

  “And based on those conversations, did you form any conclusions as to why minority students might not want to take this class being taught by Dr. Crone?”

  “Yes. I concluded that there was a general feeling that Dr. Crone was racially biased.”

  “And what was this based upon?”

  “Stories regarding his work.”

  What the witness means is rumors, since none of the students were close enough to know the nature of his work.

  “How many students were there in the class?”

  “Roughly a hundred, maybe a hundred and twenty.”

  “And you were the only African-American?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now you say you were selected by this group. This Students for Racial Justice. Why were you selected to do this?”

/>   “I majored in education, minored in science. I had good grades. Also, I worked at the university part-time, which gave me access to certain information and to some offices.”

  Harry looks at me as if the shoe has just dropped.

  “This access, did it involve faculty offices?”

  “It did.”

  “Including the office of Dr. Crone, the defendant?”

  “Yes.” She looks at me and smiles as she says it.

  “Except for your daughter, have you ever told anyone else about this?”

  “Only the people involved in our group.”

  “You’re talking about this organization you belonged to, Students for Racial Justice?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And during this period, did you actually enter Dr. Crone’s office?”

  “I did.”

  “When?”

  “I can’t remember the exact date, but it was in the spring, near the end of the academic term.”

  “And did you take anything from that office?”

  She looks directly at me, Crone’s alter ego, before she answers. “I did.” She says it with purpose, as if this was the culmination of some mission.

  “And what was it that you took?”

  “I copied some research papers. Handwritten notes in a binder. There were also printed forms with raw data and some conclusions, written by him in his own hand, based on that data. I copied all of it.”

  “By ‘him,’ I assume you mean the defendant, David Crone.”

  She nods.

  “For the record,” says Tannery.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Why did you copy these papers?”

  She hesitates an instant before responding. “They were evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “Of what he was working on.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Racist studies,” she says.

  “Objection.” I’m on my feet. “Your Honor, this is irrelevant, prejudicial. It is hearsay. It’s beyond the scope of any evidence before this court. The worst kind of speculation by this witness.”

  “We’re not offering it to prove the truth of the matter,” says Tannery, “that these documents or that Dr. Crone’s work was racist, but only to show the state of mind of this witness. As a motivating factor.”

  “Motivation for what?” I ask.

  “We’re getting to that,” says Tannery.