A Gambler's Jury

by Victor Methos

  I sat down. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Without an expert to lay the foundation for discussing Teddy’s disability, I didn’t know how much Roscombe would let me say about it.

  I glanced behind me and saw Clay from the Salt Lake Tribune sitting in the back row of the courtroom. Part of me wanted to run over and tell him everything that was going on, but if that all came out now, Roscombe would declare a mistrial—based on the fact that I might have tainted the jury if they read anything about it—and that meant more time for Teddy behind bars. I couldn’t risk it. My only hope was that the jury would acquit him.

  “Mrs. Tiles,” Roscombe said, “your first witness, please.”

  46

  Sandy stood at the lectern while Clint Andrews took the stand. The boy wore a button-down and had his hair slicked back. An older man I’d seen in the courtroom a few times, no doubt the boy’s lawyer, stood in the back and watched the proceedings with his hands in his pockets, occasionally taking out his phone and checking email or texts.

  Clint looked nervous. He cleared his throat and couldn’t look at the jury. Sandy asked him his name and where he lived, how he was connected to this case, and Clint stuttered a few times.

  “Do you know the defendant in this case, Theodore Thorne?”

  “Kind of,” he muttered. “He lives next to Kevin. I’ve seen him a few times.”

  “Tell us what you remember about the night in question, Mr. Andrews. April second of this year.”

  He swallowed. “It went quick. Like, we were playing games and Teddy came over to Kevin’s house. We were leaving to go to my other friend’s house, Eric, who lives in Roy. And Teddy said he wanted to come. I didn’t really want him to come, but Kevin said we had to be nice to him, ’cause, I mean, you know. He’s, like, retarded. And so he came.”

  “So what happened after you allowed him to come?”

  “We drove down, and he’d brought this bag with him. This gym bag.”

  “This bag right here?” Sandy asked, picking the gym bag up off the table.

  “Yeah, that looks like it. So he says we have to stop somewhere, and Kevin asks him where. And Teddy says he can’t tell us other than it’s Richardson.”

  “Did you find it strange that he wouldn’t tell you?”

  “Yeah, I mean, yeah, it was weird. But I just thought it was because he was retarded.”

  Sandy held up her hand. “Let’s leave him being special off the table for now, Mr. Andrews, and stick to what happened. Now, did you drive him to where he wanted to go?”

  “Yeah, he said that he had to go, and then he started kind of wigging out about it. So we drove him, and he kind of told us where to go. Like he’d been there before.”

  “What happened then?”

  “We got to this house in this really shitty—sorry, crappy—part of Richardson and he said he had to go in but he was scared. He didn’t want to. So Kevin said he would go with him. So the two of them went up to the porch.”

  “And what were you doing at this time?”

  “Just sitting in the car with Freddy.”

  “Could you see the defendant and Mr. Simmons clearly?”

  “Yeah, I mean, they weren’t that far.”

  “Okay, so what happens while you’re sitting there?”

  “They talked for a minute, and Teddy handed the dude at the door the bag. And then it was just crazy. Like all these cops swarmed everywhere. One of ’em put a gun to me and pulled me out of the car and we were arrested.”

  “Mr. Andrews, did you know it was cocaine he had in that bag?”

  “No, I mean, yes. Kind of. He said that’s what he had, but no one believed him. And I didn’t see it. I thought he was just messing with us. No way I would’ve gone down with him on something like that.”

  “And you’re certain it was Mr. Thorne’s bag?”

  “Yeah, he ran back to his house, and I saw him come out with the bag in his hands. It was the same bag he gave to the dude in Richardson.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Andrews. That’s all I had.”

  I stood up and looked at Clint. He poured some water out of a jug in front of him into a paper cup and took a swig. “They charged you with distributing narcotics, too, didn’t they, Mr. Andrews?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind of deal did they offer you for testifying against my client?”

  “They said they would drop the charges.”

  “Drop the charges. Just like that?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Hm. How long have you and Kevin and Freddy been friends?”

  “Long time.”

  “Like, two years, five years—what?”

  “Like ten years. We were in elementary school together and just kinda stayed friends.”

  “You care about them, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stepped closer to him. “And they care about you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you say they’re your best friends?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. They’re my boys.”

  “And as best friends, you guys look out for each other, don’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess, or you do look out for each other?”

  “Yeah, we look out for each other.”

  “And if you knew one of your buddies was in trouble, I mean real trouble, being a good friend like you are, you’d be there for him, wouldn’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “You’d say anything to protect them?”

  “Not anything, no.”

  I took a step closer and could see that he grew more nervous the nearer I was to him. “So you just said they’re your best friends, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And that you’d protect them if they were in trouble, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So if one of your buddies was looking at going to prison, you’d want to protect him from that, wouldn’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be much of a friend, would you?”

  “Um . . . Yeah, I guess I’d want to protect him.”

  “Now, you said my client was, in your word, ‘retarded,’ right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you mean by that?”

  Sandy stood up. “Objection, Your Honor, Mr. Andrews is not an expert on mental conditions.”

  “No,” I said, “I was denied an expert because my client would sit in jail while I got one, so this kid’s what I’ve got.”

  Roscombe said, “Counsel, approach.”

  I went up to the bench, and he hit a button in front of him that sent static through the speakers of the courtroom so no one else could hear what we were saying.

  Sandy whispered, “She hasn’t laid foundation as to his condition, I would ask that any mention of it be excluded.”

  “You gave me three days to prepare a defense. You cut my arms off and sent me into a fistfight, Judge. And now you’re both complaining that I want to tell the jury about my client’s obvious condition? And she opened the door anyway by letting the witness say he was retarded.”

  Roscombe said, “Ms. Rollins, what you need is to stick to the facts of this case and not conjecture on ideas that haven’t had foundation laid.”

  I wanted to turn away and ignore them both, but I couldn’t. Before I could stop myself, I blurted, “And what you need is a sane judge so you can see what one looks like.”

  His face went slack, and he glanced at Sandy before saying, “Perhaps more time in my cell would do you some good, Ms. Rollins.”

  I walked away and went back to the lectern. “You never talked to Teddy before that night, did you, Clint?”

  “No.”

  “Never spent any real time with him?”

  “No.”

  “So you couldn’t say what type of condition he has or how severe it is, could you?”

  “Um, no, I guess not.”

  “And you couldn’t say if he has the mental capacity to
understand what he was doing?”

  Sandy shouted, “Objection!”

  “Ms. Rollins,” Roscombe said, trying to keep his voice calm in front of the jury, “we discussed this, and I have made my ruling. Move on.”

  It didn’t matter what he said. As long as I kept hammering into the jury’s mind that Teddy was disabled, they might be thinking about that when they went back for deliberation, and why I was denied a chance to present it to them.

  “You just said Teddy told you Richardson. Do you recall that we had a conversation at your school a bit ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you told me that you didn’t hear Teddy ever mention Richardson, is that right?”

  “Um . . . I don’t remember. I don’t know.”

  “Seems like an important thing to remember doesn’t it? Whether he actually said Richardson or Kevin did.”

  “I don’t remember if I heard Teddy say it or not.”

  “You don’t remember,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I sat down, and Sandy gave me a hard look before she said, “Fredrick Willmore, please, Your Honor.”

  Clint was taken out and Freddy came in. He was dressed in a suit and wouldn’t look at us. He took the stand and was sworn in and then kept his gaze on Sandy as she looked through her questions.

  “Please state your name for the record,” Sandy said.

  “Fredrick Taylor Willmore.”

  “And where do you live, sir?”

  “Salt Lake County.”

  “Do you recognize the defendant in this case, Theodore Thorne?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where is he in the courtroom?”

  “He’s sitting down at that table,” Freddy said, glancing at us quickly. “In the shirt and tie.”

  “When was the last time you saw him, Mr. Willmore?”

  “In, um, April.”

  “April second?”

  “I think so. Yeah.”

  “Describe your interaction with him at that time.”

  He inhaled deeply. There was a pause. The words weren’t coming easy to him; he didn’t want to do this. Maybe if I could push him enough he would say something Sandy didn’t want him to say.

  “We were at my friend Kevin’s house—”

  “Kevin Simmons?”

  “Yeah. We were over there. Me and Kevin and Clint. We were playing video games. Just hanging out. Teddy came over. Kevin let him in and let him sit down. He took my seat, actually.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I mean, Kevin was just really nice to him. He told me to move so Teddy could sit there.”

  As Fredrick was testifying, I noticed movement to the side of me. Teddy had begun rocking back and forth. He wasn’t looking at the stand; he was staring down at his fingers, rubbing them together. Slowly, not at the furious pace I’d seen him do when a situation overwhelmed him. But the intensity only increased as the testimony went on.

  “Teddy played games with us for a little bit. He asked if we could give him a ride somewhere, and Kevin said sure, and then they didn’t really talk about it again. Then Clint got a call from his friend Eric who told us to come over, some girls were coming to his house. Teddy asked if we could give him a ride first.”

  Sandy leaned her elbows on the lectern, attempting to look casual and instead appearing like a wooden doll straining for a position its stiff joints were fighting against.

  “Let me stop you there one second, Mr. Willmore. Are you saying the defendant asked for a ride first? Before he knew where you were going?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Positive. I remember because I thought it was weird that Kevin didn’t ask him where he wanted to go. He just said he’d give him a ride. I think Kevin felt bad for him because he’s retarded.”

  Sandy opened and then closed her mouth. I nearly laughed. She had almost objected to her own witness. Once she had reached the status of district attorney, she became an administrator and stopped being a trial lawyer. Trial law was a skill that needed to be sharpened every day or it dulled immediately. Eventually, it would rust and you’d be back to square one, forgetting everything you had learned, losing the comfort you felt in court.

  I looked over at Double D, who was watching Sandy with an oh-shit look.

  “So he asked for a ride. What happened next?” she asked, hoping the jury had missed the part where her second witness had contradicted her first about when my client asked for a ride.

  “We told him, or Kevin told him anyway, that we were going to Roy, and Teddy said he had to go to Richardson. It’s close, but it’s still, like, ten minutes away, and I said I didn’t want to go that far. But Kevin said we’d do it.”

  Son of a bitch. The little turd really did change his story. He had clearly told me he never heard Teddy say Richardson.

  “Did Mr. Thorne say why he needed a ride?”

  “No.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “Then Teddy ran back to his house and came out with that blue gym bag that’s on that table.”

  Sandy went over to it and lifted it. “This one?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stared at the bag, noticing the small FHY symbol on it, a symbol that wasn’t in any of the photos the police took. I remembered that Teddy’s father worked at FHY. So the gym bag wasn’t Kevin’s. But it would make sense for Kevin and the boys to have Teddy grab a gym bag out of his own house rather than one they owned.

  “You’re positive this is the one?”

  “Yeah. It had that logo on the side.”

  “Did you ask him what was in the bag?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you?”

  Freddy shook his head. “No. Kevin didn’t even really ask until we were in the car.”

  “So you guys get in the car to drive to Richardson. Tell us what happened then.”

  “We just drove down. We listened to music. I don’t remember what it was. But Kevin only asked Teddy a couple times what was in there, and Teddy wouldn’t tell him. But I really wanted to know now. I figured it had something to do with his being retarded but—”

  “Mr. Willmore,” Sandy interrupted, “let’s refrain from using that particular term, shall we? Especially since you’re not a psychiatrist and can’t speak to what Mr. Thorne’s condition is.”

  He shrugged. “Okay.”

  “So you’re driving down. Did you ever find out what was in the bag?”

  “Not until we were there. We sat outside the house, and Teddy kept rocking back and forth and just saying, ‘I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to do it . . .’”

  Freddy looked over at Teddy and then immediately back at Sandy.

  “So what did you do when Mr. Thorne was doing this?”

  “Kevin did the talking. He kept telling him that he could trust us and tell us what was in the bag. Finally he did. He said it was drugs.”

  “Drugs or cocaine?”

  “No, just drugs.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  Little bastard. I could’ve punched him in the balls.

  “What did you do when you found out he had drugs in the bag?”

  “I didn’t believe him. I mean, none of us did. Kevin kept trying to see inside the bag, but Teddy wouldn’t let him. He just kept saying that he didn’t want to do it, and Kevin said, ‘Do what?’ and Teddy was, like, ‘I have to give the bag to the man.’”

  “What man?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think Teddy knew his name. So Kevin said he would do it with him. I mean, none of us thought he had drugs, so Kevin was just playing along. And then he went up to the porch, and this guy came to the door. They talked for a second, and then Teddy handed the bag to the guy and the guy gave him a different bag back. Then there were cops everywhere.”

  Sandy nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Willmore.”

  I stood up before the judge could give me permission and
said, “Do you remember talking to me at your school, Freddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember telling me then that you never heard Teddy say he needed to go to Richardson?”

  “Um, I don’t remember that.”

  “You don’t remember saying specifically that Teddy never mentioned Richardson?”

  He looked down. Clearly, he was scared of something, and I wondered what Kevin’s family lawyer and Sandy had cooked up to get this kid to lie under oath. “I don’t remember that.”

  “Do you remember saying that Teddy never mentioned there were drugs in that bag?”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “You don’t remember or you didn’t say it?”

  “I don’t remember saying it, no. What I just said was the truth.”

  He couldn’t even look me in the eye. I wished like hell I had recorded that conversation earlier.

  “You called him retarded, Freddy. Why did you say that?”

  Sandy stood up with a sigh. “Your Honor, we’ve already been through this.”

  “I’m not asking about whether he is or is not mentally incapacitated, Judge. I’m asking why Freddy said that. What behaviors did he observe to make him say that? He can at least testify as to what he saw, can’t he?”

  Roscombe thought for a second and said, “I’ll allow it.”

  I looked back to Freddy. “Why did you say that?”

  “Because he is. I mean, I’m not a doctor or anything, but he’s clearly retarded. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I don’t know if that’s the proper term for it anymore, but he doesn’t get things very easy.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You can just tell. I mean, he didn’t want to deliver that bag, but he couldn’t form the words to tell us why.”

  “Did it seem like he was being pressured to deliver that bag?”

  “Yeah.”

  All good stuff. But if I confronted him and said that Kevin had forced Teddy to sell the coke, Freddy would deny it. I’d just save it for my closing argument to the jury.

  “Did Teddy ever mention Salvador Zamora by name?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever mention anybody who lived in that house by name?”

  “No. I don’t think he knew their names.”

  “So it seemed to you that someone had forced or pressured him into delivering that bag to a man he didn’t know, is that right?”