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"Nobody said we had to do it in ten minutes or under," Rose said helpfully. "Should we break for a few minutes? That way you guys could have some time to think, and I know at least two of us could use a cigarette." She smiled at Maria-Teresa.
As the others milled around or went to the rest rooms, I closed my eyes and tried to think—^What is it.> What was I seeing that the others weren't.> Or what wasn^t I seeing? Why wasn't I just voting guilty; I could not have cared less about Philip Weber at this point. I wanted to know what made Dwight change his mind, but he'd been one of the first out of the room at the break.
I looked at the judge's instructions again. If I wasn't truly certain that Weber was insane, I had to go along with the others. And I wanted to go along with the others. I wanted the trial to end as much as I'd ever wanted anything. What was it, I wondered, that made me feel so strongly that Weber was insane?
The harder I tried to concentrate, the more my mind darted around uselessly. I leaned back in the chair and rubbed my forehead, then my temples and eyes. I decided to put the whole issue aside for a few minutes; I wasn't getting anywhere, and I needed to get away fi*om it, even if only for a short time.
Naturally, every few seconds my thoughts turned back to Maria-Teresa, and I wondered how I could have been so foolish and irresponsible as to become intimate with her in the first place. What was I thinking, trying to sleep with a married woman in her husband's bed? It suddenly seemed a mystery to me how I'd ever reached that point, how I could ever have done something so unlike me. Thinking along those lines led me to recall that strange moment in Chicago
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when I walked away from the cab—another example of a time I had not been myself. Scolding myself for indulging in a pathetic self-examination when I should have been thinking about the trial, I tried to shake myself out of it and get back to the far more important task of understanding why I felt convinced that Philip Weber was insane. However, my mind kept going back to that dreamlike episode, and slowly I began to see a connection.
When the others returned I said, ''The reason I voted not guilty is that I know there have been times when I did things that I wouldn't normally do, things that surprised even me."
I had to make a supreme effort to keep from looking at Maria-Teresa as I said this. Even so, out of the corner of my eye, I could see her stiffen. I continued nervously, ''So I look at this young man, whose mind is damaged by a disease to begin with, and I see him growing up the way he did; then I see him drifting for a couple of years and becoming more lonely and more socially inept; then I see him living in this church and trying to keep up with their discipline and their confusing philosophy . . . and I think it's very believable that he could have done something like this without understanding what he was doing. I think the testimony we've heard adds up to say that this was a person who lost his mind, who was no longer what we would call sane."
"Can you give us some examples.^ I mean of things you've done.>" Gary teased, drawing a few chuckles out of the group. "Don't hold back!" he said, laughing through his nose.
I declined the invitation but asked them, "Haven't you ever said or done something that was wrong or unnecessary just because, say, you had a splitting headache that day or you were carsick.^ I know these are little things, but they're exam-
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pies. Or have you ever been in a situation so awful, so stressful, that you did something that you later regretted, or could not explain to yourself? Well, I have, and so I think about a person like this Mr. Weber, who had been under stress and on drugs and mentally exhausted for years, and then put himself through that retreat. . . Doesn't anyone else think it makes sense that eventually he would have cracked and lost control of himself?"
"It's possible," Grace said softly, "but didn't the judge say we're not supposed to decide on the basis of possibilities? We have to be certnin that he was insane in order to acquit him, and what you're saying doesn't make me feel certain."
I looked over at Dwight to see if he was going to back me up. He adjusted his watchband, rested his forearms on the table and turned to look at me. "Until a little while ago, I didn't think his mental problems were an excuse for what he did. I had the feeling his lawyer was . . . oh, playing that up for the sake of getting him off the hook. And she just wasn't as believable as the prosecutor to begin with. I voted guilty the first time—partly because I want the guy to be punished, you know.> If a man kills another man for no good reason, you punish him. It makes sense. I was hoping that everybody else would vote that way, and my conscience would have been clear. But there was that one undecided vote, and it spoiled things for me. Now I know I have to think this through more carefully before I can convict a man of murder, and what you just said maybe makes sense to me. ..."
Dwight leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I knew somebody once, when I was in the service, who lost it all of a sudden. It was in Vietnam, when a lot of people were losing it. One day he was OK, the next he went completely bullshit and shot some innocent people. So I know this can happen.
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But the question is, did it happen here? As Grace just pointed out, we have to be certain. I can't say I'm certain yet, but I'm not ready to convict him either."
''I have another question," Grace said almost apologetically. "Mr. Sundheimer, you were saying before that you felt convinced the young man couldn't control himself that day. I know what you mean about losing control—I've certainly done some foolish things in my life, impulsive things. But I thought the main issue is whether or not the boy knew he was killing a man, isn't that it.> He just had to be aware of what he was doing, I thought. He certainly seemed to be aware. He was able to talk about it to those doctors, and to the police."
"That's right," Rose agreed. "We can't say if he could have controlled himself, and we don't have to. We only have to know if the guy was aware that he was killing somebody."
"Exactly."
"Uh-huh."
"Yeah."
I pointed to the copy of the judge's instructions and said, "I thought that way too until I read this over. I noticed that Judge Davis put the definition of legal insanity in here for us. It says a person is legally insane if'as a result of mental disease or defect, he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.' Those words 'either' and 'or' give us some leeway here."
Roy was shaking his head again. "Look, he was able to, uh, confirm his conduct to the requirements of the law for almost every other moment of his life, including afi:er killing the guy. Why should we believe that just for that one instant he lost his mind.^ Just for long enough to do something that would
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guarantee he'd go down in history as the guru to beat all gurus, or whatever the hell they call themselves? It seems awfully convenient to me that he had his one instant of insanity at such a perfect time."
"Yeah."
"Good point."
"Yeah," Gary added, "you know, it's like the guy who has a crummy job all his life and who's jealous of his boss, so he shoots the boss and says, 'Hey, man, I'm sorry, I went insane—but I'm OK now, so do you mind if I take his job.>' This Weber guy might get out of the hospital in a year or two, start his own cult of people like him who think that it's cool to walk on the wild side a bit, and—"
"We had guys like that at the plant, believe me," Roy said. "One day they're welding, the next they got some lawyer calling in shouting for worker's comp, sayin' their client has emotional suffering—^you name it. So we had to have doctors take a look, and guess what, most of 'em were faking it. You can't just start letting anybody who says, 'Oops, I lost my mind,' get off, or everybody'll jump on the bandwagon."
"Uh-huh."
"I still think it's the drugs," Jesusita said.
"But what if the drugs aggravated the mental illness and made it worse.>" I asked. "Do we hold that against him.>"
"I'll tell you one th
ing," Rose said, shaking her head. "If this guy was black and from South Central, we wouldn't be sitting here even asking the question. He'd be convicted in a minute. But you get a white kid smoking dope and beating somebody to death, you've got an army of people talking about his father didn't love him enough, doctors arguing for hours, and even religious experts coming in here arguing
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about the meaning of life. I tell you, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.''
'That may be true," I said, ''but that doesn't make it right. Should we rush through this and call this man guilty just because another man wouldn't get a fair trial.>"
"Yes!" she answered, flashing an angry glance at me. "The law should be the same for everybody, and if it's one way for blacks, then it oughta be the same for whites too, because that's the only way things will change if they're lousy. You know what I'm saying.^"
"So you believe that convicting him would be lousy justice, then.^ You agree with me?"
"I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying a black man would be convicted, and that helps me make a decision. I'm voting guilty, and I don't have any second thoughts about it."
We continued arguing for another two hours over Philip Weber's sanity, but without any real progress; by five o'clock we were only repeating ourselves, and the room had become unbearably close. I was exhausted from the tension. Ten people in that room badly wanted to be done with this trial after almost three weeks of sitting in court. One of them in particular probably wanted to be done with me, and they all honestly believed that Philip Weber was guilty. But Dwight and I had a different view, and we were holding the others prisoner. Their lives were being put on hold while we clung to our minority opinion. It was an almost unbearable situation, but I took solace in the fact that at least one other juror shared the burden with me.
At last we decided to call it a day and resume the next morning, since we obviously weren't going to bring in a
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verdict that night. Several of the jurors groaned at the thought of having to go through another day of jury duty just to convince two overcautious men that their concern was misplaced. I have a feeling that some of them believed that Dwight and I were holding out just to be stubborn, or simply to enjoy an opportunity to wield power over ten other peo-pie.
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By eight o'clock the next morning it was already 90 degrees out and a first-stage smog alert had been declared. Immediately after getting up I had called the Kims to cancel Kyung-hee's lessons for the week. After the weekend I'd just had and the way the deliberations had gone the day beft)re, I knew that even if the trial ended later that morning I would be too exhausted to think about teaching for at least several days. Mrs. Kim sounded concerned; she said that Kyung-hee had been very excited since Saturday night's concert and was eager get back to his lessons. I apologized, but assured her that we could resume at the latest by Monday of the next week.
The traffic was even worse than usual. I saw one man who had been in a minor accident literally hopping up and down in frustration; at first I thought he was joking because it looked so comical, but as I got closer I saw that he was purple in the face with rage.
Even though the courthouse was air-conditioned, the jury room was already stuffy, and Mrs. Friedman was fanning herself with a piece of cardboard. The custodian announced that we would have to wait for Betty, whose car had ovcr-
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heated on the way and who was still waiting for a tow truck.
I couldn't stand the tension in the room, the feeling that so many people were angry with me. I tried to tell a funny story, hoping to give them the impression that I was not an unreasonable man. I told about the time I gave a concert with an orchestra in Rome on an especially humid summer night, when I thought that nothing could surpass the discomfort of the heat. Suddenly the unthinkable happened: my chair was placed on the fixed part of the stage along with the rest of the orchestra, but the spike of my cello rested on an extended platform that could be raised or lowered by throwing a switch backstage. The stagehand, an ancient fellow, was overcome by the heat and fell asleep, slumping forward onto the switch and setting the platform in motion. I could see the audience react in horror as the platform started to descend. The conductor couldn't see it, so he and the orchestra kept going. I didn't want to be the one to stop, so I didn't stop as the cello sank. The cadenza—my solo—arrived, and I kept playing. The cello sank so low that at one point I was doubled over with my chest touching my knees. Fortunately the kettledrum player realized what had happened and rushed backstage to throw the switch in reverse, so the platform slowly came back up again. I got through the cadenza without missing a note, we finished the concerto, and I got a thunderous standing ovation. The Italians love a spectacle, so I became an instant celebrity when the story and photos hit the local papers.
I hoped that telling the story would make it possible for me to debate the verdict without drawing hostility from anyone. A few of them laughed at the story, but I think my plan backfired; apparently some of them thought I was telling it as a conciliatory gesture before admitting that I had been
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wrong yesterday and was now ready to vote with the majority. When Betty finally arrived, in a terrible mood over being put through all this, Roy smiled at me hopefiilly and asked, '*So, any change of heart since yesterday?''
Everyone turned to look at me, and they were all smiling, except for Maria-Teresa, who was looking at me without any expression at all.
^'Not really."
A collective sigh of exasperation let me know that my hope for debate without frustration was an unrealistic one.
"What about you, Mr. Anderson.^"
Dwight glanced at me, then leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms in ft-ont of him. 'T thought about it a lot last night. Especially about what Reinhart said about how, if even normal people can lose control under pressure situations, then a guy with mental problems could be pushed out of control a lot easier. And I thought about my example of the guy in Vietnam who lost it ft-om battle fatigue, and all the guys whoVe lost it even after the war ended because the stress finally got to 'em and twisted their minds into knots. But then I had a problem."
"What problem?"
"Well, soldiers get put into hellish situations because it's in the line of duty. They have to wade through that swamp, or crawl through that field where they could get shot or blown up, because they're under orders, they have to complete their mission. When a person not in a war situation does something strange, when he loses control, you have to ask what the situation was. Was it something he could have avoided before he lost control? Do you see what I'm getting at?"
"No, I don't." Mathilda complained. "Are we ... are you talking about war now?"
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"I'll give you an example, ma'am. When someone's drunk, really stone-dead drunk, diey lose all control of their reflexes and their judgment. They stumble around, they act rude, they do stupid things and regret it in the morning—if they remember at all, that is. They're out of control, right.> A drunk man can't suddenly straighten up and control himself, right? But we convict drunk drivers. Not because they knew what they were doing when they were driving, but because they knew what they were doing when they did all the drinking. If they knew they had to drive, they could have thought about that when they were sober and not had so much to drink.
"My problem with our Mr. Weber is that while I'm willing to believe that at the time he killed the Zen guy he was out of control, I think the fact that he chose to participate in that retreat when he knew how tough it would be, and knew how strange all the puzzles would be, that's where he loses my sympathy. A guy like this, who's dropped out of college, who's been jerkin' around with dope, who has brains and can use 'em when he wants to, had plenty of opportunities to improve himself rather than make himself worse. So he lost my sympathy when he joined this group instead of, say, going to a counselor or a drug clinic."
"That's what I was gonn
a say," Jesusita said.
"Yes," Grace added quiedy, "I didn't think of it that way, but now that you mention it. . . He could have done so many constructive things, or at least tried to, but instead he chose to join a group where he could sit around all day and think about himself I don't think we have to feel sorry for people who make this kind of choice, especially when it leads to murder."
"Right."
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*'So you'd vote guilw now?"
"Yes,'' Dwight said, to my great disappointment, 'Tm cominced that it would be the right thing to do."
I was all alone. No one was looking at me, but it was obvious that I was the center of everyone's attention.
"What do you think of what Dwight said.>" Roy asked me, grinning as if our foreman's change of opinion were a personal ictor'.
I said it made sense, and that I would certainly give it my full attention.
"It doesn't change your mind, though.^" Gary asked.
"Not yet."
"Can you say why not.^ Or try to.>"
"I ... I think that ... It may not be a fair analogy, but this boy has ... a physical disease, something he was born with—"
"But he chose to join that church!" Roy practically yelled, "and this is a religion where their saints hit people with sticks! He decided to join that bunch, just like he decided to drop out of school and loaf around the house smoking pot! You can't blame it all on a disease, for Chris'sake."
"No, I'm not saying that everything can be explained by his disease. He joined the group of his own free will, it's true, but that shouldn't be counted against him. You talk as if joining that church only proves that he's a bad person!"
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