The Justice Game

by Randy Singer

  Jason and Kelly did as they were told and Garrison turned to the jury. “Mr. Noble is not allowed to solicit questions from you at this stage,” Garrison said. “Hopefully, all your questions will be answered during the presentation of evidence.”

  From the looks on their faces, Jason could tell that the jury was at least grateful he had asked. One thing he had learned from interviewing jurors at Justice Inc. was their frustration at never getting to ask their own questions. If they were such a critical part of the trial process, why didn’t anybody care what they thought?

  At least now, they knew that Jason cared.

  When Jason sat down, Case McAllister leaned over and whispered one word.

  “Brilliant.”

  63

  The bailiff approached Kelly Starling and handed her the list of thirteen remaining jurors. She checked some notes, whispered to Blake, and crossed a name from the list.

  The bailiff brought the list to Jason. He huddled with Andrew Lassiter on one side and Case McAllister on the other. Not surprisingly, Kelly had struck the highest-rated juror, putting the symbol for “plaintiff” next to her mark. “That one was a no-brainer,” Andrew whispered. He pointed to Juror 2 and shrugged. “Here’s our no-brainer.”

  Juror 2 was an African American principal who had demonstrated a distaste for big corporations that made money from a culture of violence and death. Jason had tried to get him dismissed for cause but the man swore he would keep an open mind.

  Jason looked at Case, who nodded his assent. The principal was sent packing.

  Kelly and her client took considerably longer with their next strike. When the bailiff returned with the sheet and Jason saw the line through Juror 9, he was somewhat surprised. Lassiter’s system had at least four jurors ranked higher.

  “That’s great!” Andrew exclaimed. His voice was a whisper but loud enough that Kelly probably overheard.

  “Shhh,” Jason cautioned.

  “They don’t get this stuff,” Andrew whispered excitedly. “They should never have struck number nine.”

  Andrew pointed to the next obvious strike for Jason—Juror 3. To Jason’s chagrin, he saw that Juror 3 and Juror 7 now had the two lowest remaining scores.

  “I can’t strike him yet,” Jason whispered. “I’d get a Batson challenge.”

  Case law prohibited lawyers from basing their strikes on a juror’s race. If a lawyer’s opponent raised a Batson challenge, the lawyer making the strike would have to articulate a legitimate reason for making the strike that was not race-related.

  “You’ve got race-neutral reasons,” Andrew insisted. “He’s got to go.”

  “Do him third,” Case suggested. “Get rid of Juror 7 next.”

  Jason squirmed for a second and considered his options. He looked at Jurors 3 and 7—no overt hostility showed on either face. Maybe he was just looking for a reason to keep these two jurors on the panel, but he was starting to think it was worth a gamble.

  Justice Inc. had orchestrated Jason’s hiring in the first place. Then an anonymous source named Luthor had helped Jason find a valuable expert. Now this same Luthor was suggesting that Jason keep these two jurors on the panel.

  The MO had all the markings of Justice Inc. Inside information about the jurors and about Jason himself. The company certainly had a huge financial incentive for influencing this case. The only thing that didn’t fit was the threat of blackmail. Justice Inc. liked to skirt around the edge of the law, but Jason never thought they would stoop to something so blatantly illegal.

  Jason looked at the sheet again. The juror with the lowest score, other than Jurors 3 and 7, was Juror 12. Jason pointed to her name. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about her.”

  “What?” Andrew whispered. “We’ve been through this. Put your feelings aside.”

  “I’m not a robot,” Jason protested. “I’ve got to have jurors I can connect with.”

  Andrew responded with a string of statistics from the focus groups, the importance of this factor versus that factor. “She’s a bona fide bumper-sticker liberal,” he pleaded, pointing to Juror 7. “Get rid of her with this strike and Juror 3 with your next one.”

  The bailiff was hovering over the table, his arms crossed. The entire courtroom waiting with bated breath.

  “Give me that sheet,” Case said. “We look like the Three Stooges.”

  He turned to Jason. “You sure about this?”

  Jason looked at the table. No. “Yes,” he said softly.

  Case struck a line through Juror 12, putting the defense symbol next to it. “I hired you to defend my company,” he said. “Not some computer program.”

  When the bailiff brought the sheet back for the third strike, Andrew Lassiter didn’t say a word. “I’m sorry, Andrew,” Jason said, striking out the name of Juror 11.

  When Jason handed the sheet back to the bailiff, Andrew closed his laptop. For a moment, Jason thought his friend would walk out of the courtroom right in the middle of the jury-selection process.

  If he had, Jason wouldn’t really blame him. Jason had just flushed weeks of work and thousands of dollars down the drain. The truth was, he did have a bad feeling about the last two jurors he had struck.

  But the deeper truth, the one that made him sick to his own stomach, was that Jurors 3 and 7 would have been gone if not for Luthor’s e-mail. Perhaps he had stacked the odds against himself, perhaps not. Hopefully he could still pull it out. Or, in a worst-case scenario, at least get a hung jury.

  Because Case had gone to bat for him, Jason was more determined than ever to try his hardest. Maybe in the process, Jason could expose Luthor and whoever was behind this attempt to manipulate the justice system.

  Or perhaps these were just the rationalizations of a traitor. MD Firearms had hired Jason to defend them. On the first day of trial, he had been too busy defending himself.

  64

  Judge Garrison gave the jury another stiff lecture about not discussing the case with anyone, then dismissed the panel and invited the lawyers back to his chambers. When they arrived, Garrison took off his black robe and motioned toward two unoccupied chairs.

  “We’re off to a good start. But, Mr. Noble?”

  “Sir?”

  “We could have done without your asking the jury that question.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You don’t have any stunts cooked up for tomorrow, do you?”

  “Not yet.”

  Garrison had been glancing through some papers on his desk but the comment stopped him cold. “Say what?”

  “Just a little humor, sir.”

  “Yes, well . . . let’s try to keep this thing on track and keep the showmanship to a minimum.”

  Jason wanted to ask if that applied to judges as well, but he let it go. For the next few minutes, they discussed scheduling matters and how long the case might take.

  “Have the parties discussed settlement?” Judge Garrison asked.

  Kelly responded first. “My client’s not willing to settle. It’s a matter of principle.”

  “Yes, yes, I’ve heard that a few times.” He turned to Jason. “Why don’t you put some money on the table so we can find out how much those principles cost?”

  “I’m sorry, Judge. For my client, it’s a matter of money—and she’s not willing to pay any.”

  Garrison sighed. “Well then, be ready to start opening statements at nine.”

  After he warned the lawyers not to make any inflammatory comments to the press, he sent them on their way.

  Kelly stopped Jason in the hallway and handed him a manila folder.

  “These are some documents responsive to your discovery requests,” she said. The look on Jason’s face must have telegraphed his suspicion at not receiving them earlier. “Before you blow a gasket, you should know I just received them myself,” Kelly continued. “Most lawyers wouldn’t even produce them to you—they would just surprise you with them on cross-examination.”

  “Cross-examination o
f whom?” asked Jason.

  “The documents speak for themselves,” Kelly said.

  Jason ignored reporters on his way out of the courthouse and walked straight to his truck. When he opened the truck door, it felt like a blast furnace inside. He threw his suit coat over the passenger seat and loosened his tie.

  He started the air-conditioning, braced himself for the worst, and opened the manila folder. He perused the bank documents—an offshore account under Ed Poole’s name—and the pages of cell phone records.

  Jason didn’t recognize any of the phone numbers and didn’t understand the full significance of the offshore account, but he did know one thing—if Kelly Starling intended to use the documents on cross-examination, they must be bad.

  Which in turn led to another sickening conclusion—Luthor had set Jason up. Jason’s main expert witness had a serious Achilles’ heel. Luthor had undoubtedly known about it all along. And now, like an idiot, Jason had dug an even deeper hole by keeping Luthor’s suggested jurors on the panel.

  He cursed and pounded a fist on the dash. Why hadn’t he seen this coming?

  Perhaps because he didn’t want to see it. He was so intent on keeping his past a secret that he had closed his eyes to the obvious and stepped right into the middle of Luthor’s trap.

  A tap on the window shook Jason out of the fog. He looked at Case McAllister and rolled down his window.

  “You okay?” asked Case. “You look a little peaked.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just been a long day.”

  * * *

  Kelly Starling didn’t check her phone messages until she was on her way to the Hilton Oceanfront hotel, her temporary headquarters for the next two weeks. Sometimes being part of a big firm had its privileges.

  The fourth caller had called from an unidentified private number during lunch. Kelly had returned to the courtroom early and shut off her phone. She must have just missed him.

  The voice sounded like a male’s, but it was hard to tell because it had been digitally altered. The connection wasn’t the greatest, and Kelly had to listen twice in order to make out exactly what the person said. What she heard made her heart stop cold.

  “Kelly. This is Luthor. Keep Juror 3 and Juror 7 on your jury. If you do, your secret’s safe with me.”

  After listening the second time, she hung up the phone without checking her other messages. She had kept both jurors on the panel—why wouldn’t she have?—but that’s not what bothered her. Luthor was interfering with the case. Giving her direct orders. If he had been watching jury selection, he would think that he had her, that she had acquiesced to his requests.

  In truth, she had resolved to do just the opposite. She was going to represent Blake Crawford to the best of her ability no matter the cost.

  From the looks of things, the price could be high. She had gone along with this demand, albeit unintentionally. How long before Luthor made another demand that she couldn’t comply with?

  She called Judge Shaver to let him know she had heard from Luthor again. He didn’t answer his phone, so she left a cryptic message.

  “This is Kelly Starling. I just heard from a mutual friend named Luthor. He’s fine right now, but I’m afraid it might just be a matter of time. Thought you’d want to know.” She left her cell number and hung up.

  She wondered what she had missed about Jurors 3 and 7. She had frankly been a little surprised that Jason had not struck Juror 3, Rodney Peterson. Now she wondered: Were they plants for the other side?

  It seemed unlikely. Luthor appeared to be on her side. He had already provided the damaging cross-examination material for Ed Poole and the copy of Case McAllister’s cost-benefit analysis. But how could she know for sure? Maybe Luthor was just trying to gain her trust in order to betray her in the end.

  She still didn’t have the foggiest idea who Luthor was. The only thing she could do was focus on the case. Maybe in the meantime Luthor would slip up and Kelly would learn his, or her, identity.

  Either way, if Luthor thought he could control Kelly Starling, he had another think coming. If her affair with the judge ever became public, it would get ugly, but Kelly would survive. After that, Luthor would wish he had never met her.

  That was all for later. Right now, she needed to focus on her opening statement.

  65

  Jason drove back to the office slowly. He didn’t want to face Andrew Lassiter. In fact, he wasn’t even sure that Lassiter would be there. Andrew believed so strongly in his jury vetting system that he would likely take Jason’s actions today as a personal slight.

  Jason also dreaded seeing Bella Harper and Case McAllister. They believed in him. They had worked so hard on the case. Now, to save his own skin, Jason had sold them all out.

  He rolled up his sleeves on the way home, stopping at a 7-Eleven to fill up with gas and grab a soda. He was in a funk. He felt as if he were walking around with his soul separated from his body, suspended in some weird state of purgatory after being purchased by Luthor and his e-mails. Yet even in the emotional darkness, Jason recognized a single ray of light. It might not be a way out… but it was a place to start.

  Ironically, the documents sitting on the passenger seat provided the one advantage Jason had in his battle with Luthor. Jason assumed that Luthor had provided these documents to Kelly. If Jason hadn’t been so shocked when he first received the documents, he would have asked Kelly about Luthor right there in the hallway and watched closely to see if she flinched. He still planned to ask her at some opportune time during the trial.

  Luthor’s only mistake thus far was that he hadn’t factored in Kelly Starling’s ethical standards. He had counted on her to keep the documents to herself and spring them on Poole during cross-examination, the way most lawyers would. That way, Jason wouldn’t have known until later in the case that Luthor was definitely working against him. Instead, Kelly had provided the documents to Jason early, and now he knew, right from the beginning of the case, that Luthor was trying to sabotage him, not help him.

  It was a slim and temporary advantage, but it was something. In order to leverage this knowledge, Jason needed an investigator he could trust.

  He pulled his truck into the parking lot of his office and let it idle for a few minutes. He pulled out his BlackBerry, took a deep breath, and called his father.

  Listening to the phone ring, Jason almost hung up. He put his mind in neutral, forcing himself to say on the line.

  “Yeah.”

  “Dad, it’s Jason.”

  A pause. “I know,” his dad said. “Caller ID.” He waited another few seconds. “It’s been months.”

  There’s no law that says that you couldn’t have called me. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’ve been busy.”

  They talked for a few minutes, a clipped and awkward conversation about the case. His father’s bias against MD Firearms was still evident. The man spoke with a thick tongue, and Jason could picture him sitting in his living room, wearing jeans and a white undershirt, empty bottles scattered around the room.

  Jason stared out the windshield, wondering if this was the right move after all. “I could really use some help on this case, Dad. I need somebody I can trust to investigate a couple of the jurors.” He hesitated, his dad’s silence unnerving him. “I was thinking, I dunno, like maybe you could take a few days off to come and help.”

  The silence on the line seemed interminable. Jason’s heart pounded in his ears. A second passed… two. Jason wished he had never asked.

  “Seems like you’d want an investigator who didn’t need to be in rehab,” his dad said bitterly.

  Jason didn’t know how to respond. “Dad, I did what I thought I needed to do. Julie and Matt too. If that hurt you, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not sorry, Jason. You need something. It’s what you’ve done your whole life. You come crawling home to fleece the old man; then I don’t hear from you for months.”

  Jason wasn’t in the mood for this. It had already been a long day. He di
dn’t need his dad piling on. “You know what, Dad? Just forget it. I shouldn’t have called.”

  His dad snorted. “What do you need?”

  But it was too late. Every time he tried to reach out to his dad, this was the reward. Rejection. Humiliation. Criticism. Jason just wanted to punch something.

  “I don’t need anything from you,” Jason said.

  And with that, he hung up.

  A few minutes later, after calming down, he walked into the office. Bella was at her station.

  “Turkey and cheese on your desk,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat it anyway. Trials are like a marathon. You’ve got to stop at the juice stations.”

  Actually, trials are more like waterboarding, Jason thought.

  He made his way back to the conference room, which looked worse than ever. He had to step over a box and a pile of documents to get through the door.

  “Didn’t expect to see you here,” Jason said.

  Andrew Lassiter thumbed through some papers. “We’ve got to get our shadow jurors in place,” he replied, not looking at Jason.

  It was Andrew’s way of saying he was going to stick around despite what Jason had done in court. They talked for a few minutes about the shadow jury, neither saying a word about Jason’s selection of the actual jurors. Andrew thought that he could have a shadow jury in place by Thursday.

  “Do the best you can,” Jason said. “And Andrew—” his friend looked up—“I appreciate you hanging in there with me.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Andrew said, the eyes blinking. “You’re going to make me rich.”

  Jason furrowed his brow. “How?”

  Andrew put on his glasses, brushed his hair out of his eyes, and stared at Jason for a few seconds. “When we impanel this shadow jury, I’m going to bring in two extra jurors who will be just like the last two that you kicked off the panel. When the case is over, we’ll compare the opinions of the two you picked with the two I recommended that you leave on. It’ll make for great marketing materials: man versus machine—look what happens when you rely on your instincts.”