by Gerry Spence
Haskins Sewell bowed slightly to the jury and sat down.
As if searching for assistance, Timothy Coker slowly peered through his thick glasses from one juror to the next. He pulled his suit coat together and struggled to button it over his escaping paunch. He would have been more comfortable in a battle with bare fists. But this was a battle in which the weapons were words. And he’d win or lose the war depending on the words he chose to penetrate the armor of the jurors’ prejudices.
He began like a tired father speaking to his children at bedtime. “I want to tell you a story. It’s a story about an ambitious prosecutor with all the power of the state behind him. You’ve met him.” The jurors followed Coker as he walked with a perceptible limp toward Sewell’s table. He looked at Sewell. A foreboding dusk seemed to settle into the courtroom. Coker turned back to the jurors’ blank faces.
“This prosecutor is just that—he’s a prosecutor. What does he seek to gain by this heinous false case? What does he hope to accomplish by disparaging a decent and honorable member of the sheriff’s department when he charges Deputy Huffsmith as a liar without a sliver of evidence to support it? I’m not permitted under the law to give you my opinion about Mr. Sewell’s motivations. But we must remember, he is the only person in Teton County with the power to prosecute innocent people. On the other hand, there is only one person in this case who’s presumed under the law to be innocent, and it is not Mr. Sewell. It is Lillian Adams.”
Coker spoke as if addressing his own thoughts. “There is a conspiracy here all right. It’s a conspiracy to convict Lillian Adams. This forged suicide note”—he lifted it from the clerk’s desk and held it up—“could never exist without a conspiracy. Sheriff Lowe had to know that no such note was ever in the possession of the sheriff’s office. He was at the scene when the evidence was gathered, and he was never called as a witness. Why? Why? Not a single witness testified that the note was at the scene. No one has explained where it came from. It just mysteriously floated down on us from Mr. Sewell.
“But one telling fact cannot be hidden in this case. If it had not been for Deputy Huffsmith, Mr. Adams’s journal would never have been discovered. It, too, was in the secret possession of Mr. Sewell. Let’s ask ourselves, ‘Why did the prosecutor and the sheriff hide that journal from us?’ Isn’t the answer clear—that they didn’t want us to hear Mr. Adams telling us the reason he ended his own life?”
Coker waited. Still he saw only the jurors’ empty faces.
Coker retrieved the alleged suicide note from the clerk’s desk and waved it at the jury. “This putrid piece of paper. It doesn’t stand as a forgery by Mrs. Adams. It stands for something unspeakable, something planted in this case by this prosecutor through the testimony of a high-priced witness, Mr. Widdoss.” As if he’d touched something vile, he dropped the note on Sewell’s desk and faced the jurors once more.
“Why did this prosecutor try to frame Lillian Adams with that obviously forged suicide note? And who forged it? I think you know the answer to both of these questions.” He waited.
The clerk of court sat mute and stony.
Judge Little peered down from his bench mute and stony.
Finally, one juror, the blacksmith, cleared his throat as if to speak, but he remained silent.
“We’ve witnessed how easily the innocent can be converted into the guilty.” Coker took in the jurors one at a time. “This prosecutor had Mr. Adams’s journal in his secret possession during this entire trial. He knew, as we now know from reading Mr. Adams’s journal, that he took his own life. So how can Mr. Sewell make honest, intelligent jurors doubt that truth?
“First he hid the journal from us so we couldn’t know that Mr. Adams took his own life to save his beloved wife from the horrors of his advancing senility. Then this prosecutor provided a phony suicide note, hired the alleged expert, Widdoss, to tell us it is phony, and that Mrs. Adams wrote the note to cover the murder of her husband. And thereby that prosecutor”—Coker pointed to Sewell—“converted suicide into murder, and a grieving wife, Mrs. Adams, into a murderer.”
Sewell tipped back in his chair, closed his eyes, and sighed audibly, as if what Coker was saying was not worth a withering whit.
Coker began anew: “Let us consider another piece of his fakery. We discovered that the smears of blood on the floor came from the officers dragging the body to the gurney. The sheriff knew that truth because he helped remove the body. Other officers in this case knew the truth, as well.” Coker pointed at Sewell. “That prosecutor knew the truth. He was there. But he called none of these officers as witnesses to testify to the truth. Instead, he knowingly presented and argued fake evidence to us.”
Again Coker took in each juror, eye-to-eye. Was he speaking to a choir of mummies? Had the dead taken over the courtroom? He looked up at the judge, who peered down with empty eyes.
“The great American safeguard—that the accused must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt—was not only given to us by our founders to protect the innocent against a prosecutor such as this one; it was provided to protect each of you. You as jurors!” Coker began to pace. “Our founders gave us reasonable doubt to save each of you from staring at the ceiling in the dark in bed and wondering, Did my decision convict an innocent person?”
Coker’s face was sad, his anger worn away, his voice tired but firm. “This is not a case of reasonable doubt. This is the prosecutor’s totally failed case. Worse, it is his fake case. He knows it. Give it back to him!” Coker’s hands gathered up an imaginary bundle and threw it in the direction of Haskins Sewell.
“Under the law, the prosecution is given the last word. When I sit down, my lips will be sealed forever here. Please remember as he argues again that if I were given the chance, I could answer every one of his fabrications with the truth. I will be silenced by the law. But justice is not silenced, because each of you has the last word, not Mr. Sewell. In my absence, I ask you to answer Mr. Sewell’s arguments in the jury room, as you know I would have answered them had I been permitted to do so.”
Coker’s voice was as if a weary friend were speaking confidentially to a gathering of friends. “This prosecutor has enormous power. Under the law, we are all presumed innocent. It is as much, yes, even more, his duty to fight for our rights as it is to charge and convict the guilty. When the people elected prosecutor Sewell, they trusted him to perform those duties faithfully and to protect them. But he has done the opposite. He is charging one of us with a crime and dragging her before a jury to face false charges. But he is attempting to destroy one of us. We elected him to save us from the ravages of crime, to prosecute only the guilty and to protect the innocent. Such is his sad betrayal of our trust.”
Once again, Coker engaged each juror slowly and thoughtfully. “We have choices to make in our lives, and we live by our choices. And the choices we make define who we are.” In a near-whisper, he said, “When the facts of the prosecutor’s case are scattered across the table of truth like pieces in a puzzle, and none fit, the prosecutor argues that there has been a vicious conspiracy of liars. We can choose to believe that the prosecutor and his handsomely paid handwriting expert are the only truth tellers here. We can believe that the other witnesses, one and all, are liars including a faithful judge who has served us for nearly forty years, and an honest deputy who broke from the prosecutor’s gang and came forward with the evidence they hid from us. This is your choice. You can choose to believe that Horace Adams the Third was murdered for whatever motive was Mr. Sewell’s motive of the moment, or you can believe that Mr. Adams loved his wife, provided for her, and removed himself from her life as his final act of love. We have the choice to believe in love and compassion or in the lies that feed hate.”
Again Coker waited for his words to settle on the jurors.
Finally, he said, “I have this vision. I see us walking out of this courtroom together, you, and Lillian Adams, and, yes, I will walk with you. We will be celebrating the immortal vision of our
forefathers, who gave us the jury to protect us against the power of the state. We will be rejoicing that you, as jurors, have once more thrown your arms around us to protect us against the unrelenting, hideous, self-serving power of the likes of Mr. Sewell.”
Coker looked across the courtroom as if he could see into the past. “The greatness of our system is that each of you, alone, by simply saying no to Mr. Sewell, has the final power to save us from the betrayal of justice in the hands of this ambitious prosecutor.”
Timothy Coker gave Lillian Adams a fatherly, apologetic smile and started slowly to sit down.
Sewell rose before Coker was settled in his chair. He began, “You have just heard so much emotional defense-lawyer fancy talk. If juries listened to that sort of folderol, no murderer would ever be convicted. Speaking of duty: We have a dead man here.” He waved the photo showing Adams facedown on the desktop, his head surrounded by the large pool of blood. “He was one of our citizens. If people can kill and get away with it because of the fancy talk of a clever mouthpiece, none of us would be safe.”
Sewell’s voice rose in ringing, righteous indignation. “Coincidences do occur. We all know that. But things are just too neat here. We have a very crafty woman. She sits there in tears. Are those tears for her dead husband, or tears for herself?”
Sewell checked his notes. “Ah, yes, I see. I am asked to explain the supposed suicide note. I, of course, went home and forged it, right after the murder, brought it to court, hired the best expert in the business to tell you that the note was forged, and had the county pay him thousands of dollars to say so as part of a conspiracy. Then Deputy Huffsmith tells us that nothing in his records revealed the existence of the note. Do tell!” Sewell puckered his lips and squinted his eyes cynically. “Can we in law enforcement no longer trust our own officers? Are we but barnacles on a sinking ship? How can we protect the citizens of this county when we can no longer trust our own officials?”
He walked a step closer to the jurors. “I agree with Mr. Coker on one thing. You have choices to make here, and you must live with them. They do define who you are. You have either found the truth—that Mr. Adams was murdered and his murderer sits right here”—he pointed to Lillian Adams—“or you will be taken in by the likes of Mr. Coker and give a murderer a free pass. I have more faith in you than that.”
The sound of his leather soles and heels laid a confident beat back to his table. He closed his file and nodded to the jurors.
CHAPTER 49
THE JURORS ELECTED James Smithson, the bank’s youngish vice president, as foreman. He wore a banker’s clean white shirt and a different tie every day; his black pointed-toe shoes were shined and his fingernails polished. He was chubby, but his tailored, well-pressed suit coat nicely covered his girth. He was pale and wore his blond hair in a short cut, so that his ears protruded slightly, but all in all, he exhibited an air of credibility. He spoke in a confident tenor voice.
“Do we need to read the judge’s instructions again, given that we’ve just heard them?” He looked from juror to juror.
“Let’s take a vote and get this thing over with,” the rancher, William Witherspoon, said in his rough, splintered voice. “I got chores to do and a bunch of cattle loose on my neighbor’s land. He don’t like my cattle eating his grass. Grass is money, you know.”
The jury took its first secret ballot, after which Smithson carefully unfolded each piece of white paper the jurors had used for voting—seven to five for conviction.
Witherspoon said, “I don’t know who voted to convict that lady, but whoever you are might need a little head examination yourselves.” He was sitting on the edge of his chair and inspected each of his fellow jurors with a challenging look.
“Everyone should try to be civil, Mr. Witherspoon,” foreman Smithson said in a voice edged with the authority he’d been awarded. “I can always call the judge if this sort of conduct continues.”
“You look like the type who’d go running for mama if everything didn’t go your way,” Witherspoon said. “I suppose you voted to convict her.”
Smithson turned his head away. “This was a secret ballot,” he said. “And since I am foreman here, I think it improper for me to reveal my vote, because it might influence others on this jury.”
“Well, I know how you bankers operate,” Witherspoon said. “You can tell a man what he’s got to do, because a man’s got to have your money in hard times.”
“This deliberation isn’t about me, but your conduct here doesn’t measure up to—”
Witherspoon interrupted him and stood up. “If you’re passing your banker’s judgment on me, we can have us a little talk outside this jury room.”
“Well, we’ve all gotten along pretty well here,” Margaret Reed Smith said. She was the grandmother who worked as a volunteer at the hospital. “This is a very important case, and we must consider it like adults.”
“Well, ma’am,” Witherspoon said with a nasty twang, “if you don’t mind telling us, how did you vote?”
“I voted for conviction,” Margaret Reed Smith said. “To cover her lies, she did a lot of crying. I know women of her type.”
“I suppose that everybody who’s ever lied is a murderer,” Witherspoon said. “If that’s the case, I should get the hell outta here on account of I am surrounded here by murderers.”
“Well, I’ll put in my two cents’ worth,” Amos Rogers, the blacksmith, said. His back pain caused him to slump in his chair. “That Sewell is wanting the judge’s job. Everybody knows that. And he kept that journal away from us because he knew it would show that the old boy killed himself.”
“I’m sick and tired of listening to Timothy Coker,” Helen Griggsley, the piano teacher, said from behind her sunglasses. “He’s always getting some scummy individual loose so that now a person is afraid to go out after dark in this little town.” She stopped to catch her breath. “And I know that Haskins Sewell is a God-fearing man. He goes to my church every Sunday, where I play the organ. I see him there praying, and he supports the Women’s League with a solid donation every year and—”
“I don’t recall any of that being in the evidence,” Witherspoon interrupted. “And I don’t remember that when you were being selected for jury duty that you said anything about you knowing Sewell.”
“Nobody asked me,” she said.
“The judge asked if there was any reason why you couldn’t fairly try this case,” William Carter, the mechanic, said. “You damn sure heard that.”
“I can be fair. Just because I know that Mr. Sewell is a God-fearing man doesn’t disqualify me. Mr. Sewell isn’t on trial.” Helen Griggsley gave Carter a quick, victorious nod and sat up a bit straighter.
“Let’s get back to the evidence, shall we?” foreman Smithson said. “I don’t know what her motive was for sure, but Judge Little said we didn’t need to know her motive to convict.”
Harmony Biernstein, the real estate broker, said, “I agree.” She was wearing her blue business suit. A small gold cross hung across her front on a thin gold chain. She wore low-heeled black patent-leather shoes. “Everybody knows Lillian Adams. Her reputation isn’t so, shall we say, spotless. She’s been married a few times. And she is wild, or so I hear, and I mean wild.”
“Yeah,” Witherspoon said. “She’s capable of taking away your man or, for that matter, any other woman’s man. A woman gets to hating a woman like that.”
“You men are all alike,” Mary Lou Livingston, the waitress, said. “You see a pretty face and a pair of legs, and you forget everything else.”
Witherspoon snorted. “You women are all alike, too. You see a pretty face on another woman and a pair of good legs and you immediately go into your killing mode.”
Finally, foreman Smithson said, “Well, I shouldn’t say this, but I happen to know that Lillian Adams was writing checks on his account, forging his name and all.”
“Horace was losing his mind,” Witherspoon replied. “Somebody had to write the
checks to pay the bills. And you shouldn’t be revealing confidential information like that. As soon as this case is over, I’m going to take my money out of your bank.”
“Yeah,” Tom Mosley, the pawnbroker, said, looking squarely at Smithson. “You told Coker under oath during jury selection that you knew nothing about the finances of the Adamses. You were under oath and that is perjury.”
“That’s perjury all right,” Witherspoon agreed. “So we got us a perjurer for a foreman, and he’s voting to convict the lady. How do you like that?”
“Well, I haven’t said how I voted,” Smithson said.
“I know one thing,” said Bertie Hartnett, the school district’s secretary. She wore rimless glasses and a black sleeveless dress, exposing her thin arms. Her hair was graying and cut short. “The Adams woman admitted killing her husband both to Sylvia Huntley and to Judge Murray himself. That old devil! I’ve known the judge and Betsy for years. Just goes to show you: You can never trust a man. Not even a judge!”
“None of that ain’t been said.” It was the plumber, Manuel Ortega. He wore his customary bib overalls. “The judge, he has bad ears, no? You remember?” He shook his head and laughed. “And I remember another thing. Judge Little says we decide this case on the evidence, and for me, well, I seen sewers all messed up, and you no can follow them nowhere—and this case is like a plugged-up sewer. And that there is reasonable doubt.”
“You got something there all right,” Witherspoon said. “But that journal. Sewell hid it because it showed it was a suicide. If it hadn’t been for old Huffsmith, we would have had to convict her! Are we supposed to believe somebody like that, who holds himself out as an honest prosecutor?”
Manuel Ortega said, “You could tell he’s fightin’ to keep his lights on. And if that ain’t so, why was that Sewell tryin’ to hide his journal from us? There’s something down there that’s cloggin’ things up, if ya know what I means.”