“The other thing I don’t believe in,” Tommy continued, “is newscasters spouting their opinions or pressing their positions on something.” He sighed. “But no one agrees with me on this anymore. So you’re here to report, but you’re also here to give your opinion, as much as I can’t stand that. We need you to get the backstory on everything you cover, and the network wants you to filter the information through your experience in the law.” Another up-and-down glance. “However little that might be.”
I nodded. “Got it.”
Another sigh. “I wanted you to tail another reporter for a few weeks, but this is a start-up network. We’ve got no time and even less money. So you ready to cover a story today?”
I swallowed hard. “Cover as in on-air?”
“Yeah, you know. Describe the reaction of the defendant-shocked, happy, whatever. Try to talk to the jury. Standard stuff.” He looked at his watch. “By the way, in the future, I won’t keep giving you this stuff. You have to get your own stories.”
I stood there, fairly stupefied. “Jane said I wouldn’t be on-air right away.”
“I like it about as much as you do, but I just found out that the jury reached a verdict in the Tony Pitello trial, and they’re reading it this morning.” He looked at the clock on the wall, then looked back at me and scowled more. “You know who Tony Pitello is, right?”
“Sure.” I was relieved that Tony Pitello had been all over the news. “Mob lawyer charged with murder-for-hire. He allegedly got someone to knock off a witness who he had been paying to stay out of a case.”
Tommy Daley gave me a grudging nod. “I like that you said ‘allegedly.’ No one in this business seems to remember that word anymore.” He clapped his hands together. “All right, so get your shooter.”
“Shooter?”
He grimaced. “Your cameraman.” He pointed across the room to a black guy with a thick mustache. “Now, get the hell out of here.”
19
T he criminal courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue, the place lawyers in Chicago refer to simply as “26th and Cal,” is not in the nicest location. It isn’t too far from some now-gentrified areas on the west side of the city, but such neighborhoods might as well be whole countries apart. A weird airspace seems to exist around 26th and Cal, an air of having seen way, way too much, combined with a bristling, fearful tone as if everyone on the block is looking over their shoulder, certain that something terrible is about to happen again.
The cameraman Tommy assigned to me was a big teddy bear of a guy, and fittingly, his name was Ted. Ted Wheeler was a cheerful man who showed me how to put in my earpiece, called an ISB, and how to work the mike while we were driven in a Trial TV van to the courthouse.
“Cameras aren’t allowed in the courthouses in Illinois,” Ted said, “so you go inside, watch the verdict and get back outside as fast as you can. We’ll pick a spot before you head in, so when you get outside you’ll know where we’ll be, and you’ll need to hit the ground running. We want to broadcast the verdict before any other station or network.”
I nodded fast, taking this all down in my head. “Okay, but shouldn’t I write what I’m going to say first?”
He nodded.
“When will I do that?”
“While you’re running.”
I looked at him to see if he would laugh. Nothing. He stroked his mustache in a thoughtful way. Usually I can’t stand mustaches, but Ted’s suited him.
“We’ll be ready to go live whenever you are,” Ted said.
“Live?” I squeaked.
“We didn’t know until last night that they had a verdict in this case. We need it live. The jury has been sequestered for the weekend. You ever seen a sequestered jury?”
“No, I only did civil cases, and we rarely sequester them for that stuff.”
Ted made a whistling sound and chuckled. “They’re usually ornery. They don’t know when they start deliberating that the judge might sequester them. They don’t get to bring a change of clothes or their Ambien or anything. And then the judge sticks them in a crappy hotel and most of them get drunk from the minibar. By the time they get to court, they smell from wearing the same clothes, and they’re tired and cranky.”
He stopped and peered at my face. “You might want to put on more makeup.”
“More?” I’d slathered it on this morning to the point that I felt like a drag queen about to take the stage at the Baton Club.
“The lights and camera suck it out of you.” He pointed at my cheeks. “More powder. Blush.” Then my eyes. “Lots more mascara.”
Thankfully, I’d brought my makeup with me. I grabbed my bag from the floor of the van and began plastering more paint onto my face.
“Anyway,” Ted continued, “make sure you memorize what the jurors look like, and we’ll try to grab them for interviews when they come out.”
I exhaled, mentally scribbling down everything he was telling me. I nodded toward the electronic equipment that filled most of the van. “Do I need to learn any of that stuff?”
“Some of the good reporters learn it eventually, but no.” He pointed to the driver, a young guy wearing plaid pants and a bulky black leather jacket. “Ricky will handle it, right, Ricky?”
Ricky raised his chin in the air and kept driving and talking on his cell phone.
Just then we pulled up in front of the courthouse. It was a hodgepodge of a place. The original building was elegant, stately and made of limestone, while the newer section was a utilitarian addition that looked like any other municipal building and had no continuity to the original. A wide swath of concrete stairs ran from the street to the front door and the section where the two sides met.
Trailing up those steps was a huge line of people.
We got out of the van. The day was overcast, wind whipping down the street.
“Aw, crap,” Ted said, looking at the line. “It’s like this sometimes on Monday morning.”
“Is that the security line?” I held my hair back from my face. The wind was blowing it everywhere. I had only been to 26th and Cal once, and that was for a ticket I’d gotten on the Vespa for not signaling a turn. The cop pulled me over, asked me on a date, and when I said, no, thanks, I’m engaged, he gave me a sour look and a citation.
“Yeah,” Ted said. “And it’s bad. I mean, that kind of line can take an hour.” He looked at his watch. “And we don’t have an hour.”
“There’s an attorney line, though, right?” I stood on my toes and craned my neck around the column of disgruntled people.
Ted shrugged. “I’ve never been here with an attorney before.”
I let go of my hair and dug through my bag for the ID I’d previously used to get through security at the Daley Center, the civil courthouse. I flipped it over and read the back. “Yep. It’s for the whole county. I can skip this line.” I looked back at Ted. “It’s legal nirvana.”
He beamed. “What else do I need to know?” “Room number five hundred. Break a leg.”
20
I nside the courthouse, I ran up to a bored-looking sheriff. “Morning. Where’s Room five hundred?”
Like an automaton, he pointed to his left, no other movement of his body, no change in his expression.
“Thanks.” I sprinted that way, dodging around families, rapper types in baggy jeans, cops. This was definitely not like the civil courthouse, where nearly everyone was a lawyer, and people moved fast and with a purpose.
My heels click-clacked on the floor, but I stopped momentarily when I got to what was obviously the original foyer of the old building. The marble floors, carved stone walls and stained-glass windows were beautiful, but you’d have to look beyond the film of grime that coated them in order to truly appreciate them. No time.
I hurried to the elevator bank and snuck in a packed one as the doors were closing. At the fifth floor, no signs explained where the courtrooms were. I made a few starts and stops in different directions until I found 500.
T
he courtroom was huge and majestic. At the far end, a judge’s bench made of oak sat high above the rest of the room. Next to the bench was an inlaid wood bookshelf full of ancient law texts that looked as if they hadn’t been touched in years. A jury box sat on one side of the bench, counsel’s tables on the other. Behind the counsel’s tables, high oak-trimmed windows lined the wall.
If the courtroom was open and spacious at one end, the gallery was packed. Rows of wooden pews provided seating for probably two hundred people, but the spectators were crammed together, shoulder to shoulder, causing the overflow to stand around the perimeter. I scanned the room and saw a few newscasters I recognized, and others who were obviously news types. Some of them chose to stand near the front, probably to get the best view. I decided to take a different tactic. I muscled my way between a few men at the back, ready to run for the door when the verdict was read.
But we had to wait. And wait. Well, that was one thing that was the same as the civil courthouse-the judges took their sweet time, no matter how many people were wasting away their mornings.
As we waited, my nerves started to ramp up. To distract myself, I texted Grady. I knew he had taken a deposition that morning in a big medical malpractice case.
How did the dep go? I wrote. The text was just like any I would have sent him last year, a question posed by a friend, by another lawyer. But something about it seemed false.
Apparently, Grady felt that, too. I don’t want to talk about depositions, he texted. I want to talk about you working at that lingerie store.
I sat for a second and stared at my phone, thinking. Before I could decide how to respond, I had another text from Grady. Let’s have dinner?
I waited for an immediate response from deep inside me, something that would tell me either No, Grady and I are just friends, or Hell, yes, tell him you’ll meet him tonight. But no obvious answer appeared. Which frustrated me. Apparently, I was not someone who liked to play on the edge of decision. I had thought that as I got older, I would know sooner, quicker, exactly what I wanted.
Maybe? I wrote Grady.
A pause. I stared at my phone. Finally he replied, That’s the last time you get to use that answer.
A door behind the judge’s bench opened and in walked Tony Pitello with his attorneys. Pitello was a good-looking, if slick, man in his midfifties who, according to the news stories I’d seen, favored silk suits and diamond cuff links. Today was no exception, but the gray silk suit he wore seemed too tight. He’d clearly gained weight during his trial, and his face was red, as if his collar was choking him.
Pitello and his lawyers took a seat at their table, all stone-faced. One of the lawyers leaned toward Pitello and whispered something. Pitello nodded, his eyes fixed on the empty jury box.
The state’s attorneys were next to come through the door-two women and one man. They didn’t look at the crowd in the courtroom. They joked a little, they cleaned up files on their desks without ever glancing at the spectators or even seeming to feel their presence. It was as though their actions were always watched by a throng of people.
The judge entered the courtroom then. A man in his sixties with wavy gray hair, he stood on his bench, towering over everyone. He said nothing, but the room fell silent. He nodded, then sat.
He clasped his hands on the desk in front of him and looked down at the lawyers. “Any matters to address before I bring in the jury?”
Pitello’s lawyers shook their heads no. The lead state’s attorney called out, “No, Your Honor.”
The judge raised his gaze to the horde of people in his gallery. “There are rules of decorum in this courtroom, especially during the reading of a verdict. I will tolerate no outcries, no emotional displays. Jury service is one of the most important duties any American can provide for his country, and I want this courtroom to remain silent while the verdict is read. I want you to respect this jury and this process. Do you understand?”
Nods from around the courtroom. The judge scrutinized the faces in the gallery as if he were extracting a tacit agreement from each of us.
The judge looked at his bailiff. “Bring in the jury.”
The weight of anticipation hung over the room like a shroud.
The crowd seemed frozen as another door behind the bench opened and twelve jurors filed in. As Ted predicted, the jurors looked exhausted, their clothing rumpled. Seven of them were women, five men.
I tried to make quick notes as they began to take their seats in the jury box. Asian guy with glasses. Blond woman with birthmark on cheek. Heavyset guy, balding.
But then I stopped. Because I noticed something about the jury.
None of them were looking at Tony Pitello. Not one.
As lawyers, we always try to read the jury. We watch their facial expressions during testimony to see if they understand the information. We try to divine if they are registering the weight of it. We notice when they nod asleep for a second. We take note when they nudge the person next to them. We take bets on who the foreman will be based on who takes the most notes or who usually comes through the door of the jury room first.
But none of this is a science. Sometimes a jury that seems unmoved by the woes of a plaintiff during a trial comes out of the jury room with a record-breaking verdict for millions of dollars. Other times, it’s the woman who seemed to talk to no one, who wrote down not a word during the trial who ends up being the foreman.
But if the jury is about to read their verdict and they don’t look at the main participant-the plaintiff in a civil case, the defendant in a criminal one-that’s huge.
The opposite isn’t always true. If a juror were to glance at Pitello now, it could mean one of many things. They might be sending him a look to say, Don’t worry, you’re off the hook, or a holdout juror might be sending a fleeting apology with their eyes, as if to say I tried, but I couldn’t turn them. You’re cooked.
And yet to not have any juror-not a single member of the twelve-be able to meet Pitello’s eyes almost certainly meant one thing. Guilty.
I quickly examined them again. Every juror was looking at the floor, studying their fingernails or staring at the judge.
I looked at Pitello. He’d seen it, too. As a lawyer, he understood exactly what was happening. His mouth hung open a little, as if he was breathing heavily through his mouth. His face grew more florid as he hastily scanned the jury, almost begging them with his gaze to look at him, to send him a message that it was going to be all right.
He got nothing. Not one juror would meet his stare, not even for a nanosecond.
I watched Pitello. He appeared completely panic-stricken. His body seemed to sway.
And then a loud Crack! rang through the courtroom.
One of the jurors screamed. The spectators gasped.
Pitello had fainted, his forehead hitting hard against the table in front of him.
The sheriff ran over. He and Pitello’s lawyers lifted the man up. He was alert, blinking madly, blood trailing from an open cut above one eyebrow.
“Mr. Pitello, are you all right?” the judge said.
Whispers between Pitello and his lawyers. Pitello touched a hand to his wound, then stared at the blood on his fingers, as if he couldn’t comprehend it.
More whispering with his attorneys.
“Mr. Pitello,” the judge said in a loud, insistent voice. “Are you all right?”
Pitello nodded.
“Your Honor,” one of Pitello’s lawyers said, “Mr. Pitello believes he is fine, but if we could have a brief recess to make sure.”
The judge frowned. Hushed conversations rolled through the gallery. What’s he doing? Is it a hoax? What’s going on?
The judge directed his scowl toward the onlookers. “Quiet!”
The room fell into silence.
“Ten minutes,” the judge said. “And this verdict will be read.”
He cracked his gavel and the courtroom starting buzzing with conversation.
My body was ramped up with anxi
ety. What should I do? I looked at the other reporters. No one was moving. Most of them were texting furiously on their phones or looking at their watches.
I felt yanked in two different directions. Stay and wait for the verdict, or run outside and report on what had happened and what I thought the verdict would be. There wasn’t enough time to do both. It would take nearly five minutes just to get outside.
I heard Tommy Daley in my head then. You’re here to report, but you’re also here to give your opinion…The network wants you to filter the information through your experience in the law.
I bolted from the courtroom and ran to the elevators. It seemed to take an interminable amount of time to get down. As I scurried through the once-grand foyer I began to write my lines in my head. My only experience was from watching the news. I really had no idea what I was supposed to say or do. But if the network wanted opinions that were filtered through my legal experience, I had one.
I was panting by the time I reached Ted.
“What’s the verdict?” he said.
I shook my head, sucking in breath. “They don’t have one yet. Pitello passed out. They took a ten-minute recess, but I think I know what’s going to happen, and I want to run with it.”
Ted gave me a wary look. “What do you think is going to happen?”
I filled him in on the lack of a single look from the jurors. I told him my opinion that they were going to find Pitello guilty.
“How sure are you?” he said.
“Ninety-nine percent.”
We both stared at each other, pondering that one percent.
“Isn’t this what Trial TV wants?” I asked. “It’s the first day. And if we’re the first to report on what we think is expected with this verdict and we get it right, won’t that be a good thing?”
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