Though I had told the jury something of Jamaal's background in my opening statement, it had a much more striking effect when it was repeated, refined, elaborated, given context and color by the defendant himself. Nothing was left out. Though I knew he would not say, and perhaps could not say, much more than what he had said to me before, I made him admit that he had never known his father and never even known his name. I made him talk about how he had often been beaten up when he was still just in grade school by teenage gangsters because he was carrying a book instead of a gun. I made him talk about how well he had done in high school and how he hoped to go to medical school after he graduated from college. Everything I asked, everything he said, was designed to paint a picture of a young man who had come too far suddenly to do something so completely out of character. It took us all morning.
“Did I do all right?”he wanted to know before the deputy took him back to jail for lunch.
“You did fine; but remember: Look at the jury when you answer my questions.”
He was embarrassed that he had not, and he promised that he would.
“We'll start this afternoon with what happened that night,”I said as the deputy took him away.
I began to put my things in my briefcase. With a strange premonition, I turned around and searched the faces of the vanishing crowd. At the very back, his hand resting on the corner of the bench nearest the double doors, the grossly corpulent stranger who had left me in the middle of the bridge was glaring at me through the narrow slits of his puffy eyes. A crooked smile crept over his soft wet lips. He nodded curtly and then, with an agility that belied his size, disappeared out the door.
He was there to throw me off, to make me think about him and what he said he could do, instead of concentrating on what I had to do to keep Jamaal Washington from the hands of the executioner. Angrily, I grabbed my briefcase and went down the hallway to a private conference room where I could work undisturbed.
The more I thought about it, the more I remembered the way I had been picked up off the street, pushed headfirst into the car, held hostage, and made to think I was being driven somewhere to die, the angrier I became. Anger became defiance, defiance became determination: I was going to do everything I could to win; not only that, I was going to do everything I could to expose these people for what they were. I sat in that small windowless room, reveling in thoughts of revenge, and it was only when I started to congratulate myself on my courage and resolution that I realized that it was already time to go back to court. I had not done any of the things I had come here to do.
“You heard a shot?”I asked Jamaal after he described what he had done at work that night and the route he had taken on his way home.
“I heard something. I thought it was a gunshot, but I wasn't completely sure.”
Despite his promise, he had done it again: forgotten to look at the jury when he answered. His eyes were still focused on me. I stared at him, saying nothing, hoping by my temporary silence to remind him what he was supposed to do. It had no effect.
“Did you hear anything else?”I retreated to a position at the far end of the jury box. If he was going to look at me, it would at least be as close as possible to the jury.
Pushing his head forward, Jamaal squinted, as if he were back on that street, trying to see through the fog.
“I heard a car door open, then slam shut. Then I heard the sound of footsteps, someone running away.”
There was a certain breathless quality to his voice that seemed to reflect a kind of insistent curiosity.
“The fog was so thick,”he continued, “that just before I heard the shot, I remember looking down and laughing to myself because I could barely see my shoes. It was like walking through snow.”
The smile on his face lingered a moment longer, then faded away.
“At first, I was not sure where it had come from—the shot, the sound of the door, the footsteps running away—except that it was somewhere real close. Then, for just a second, the fog lifted. That's when I saw it—just a few yards in front of me—a face in a car window, all twisted around.”
With my left hand on the railing of the jury box, I studied him intently. “Why didn't you just run away; get out of there before something happened to you?”
He gave me a puzzled look, as if even now, after everything that had happened to him, he could not understand how anyone could suggest that he not try to help someone in trouble.
“I thought he had been shot and that he might still be alive.”
“So you opened the passenger door and got in?”
“Yes. I checked his pulse; but I could not find one. There was a phone in the car, and I picked it up and started to dial 911; but then I thought I better find out who he was. I don't know why I thought it would make any difference: Maybe it seemed too impersonal to report a death without a name,”said Jamaal, strangely absorbed in his own reaction.
“I put down the phone and reached inside his suit coat for his wallet. That was when I saw the gun, laying there on the floor.”
“Did you pick it up?”I asked.
“No. A light came flashing out of nowhere. I crouched down as far as I could. I was afraid whoever had shot him had come back.”
Jamaal had not once looked anywhere but at me; now, as he recounted the fear that had taken him over, his eyes started to roam all around.
“I was scared; I didn't know what to do. All I could think about was that I had to get out of there, I had to get away. I shoved the door open as hard as I could and jumped out of the car and started to run fast as I could.”
“You were afraid,”I said, taking a step toward him. “Afraid you might be killed?” “Yes.”
“And because you were afraid you might be killed, you panicked?”
“Yes,”he admitted. “I panicked.”
“And in your panic, you might have picked up the gun, held on to it without even knowing you had it?”
“No, I didn't touch the gun.”
We had been over this more times than I could count. He had told me that he did not think he had taken the gun—that he could not remember taking it. But I had pressed him, pressed him hard, until he agreed that he might have picked up the gun and not retained any conscious memory of it.
I tried not to betray my own sense of panic. I asked the same question a different way.
“Yes, but because of your fear, because of that panic you felt, isn't it possible that you might have picked it up, had it in your hand, and now, after the trauma of being shot, simply don't remember?”
His gaze once again rested on me. Beneath the surface of his eyes I detected what I thought was a faint glimmer of regret. Most of us jump at the chance to find an excuse for something we should not have done or an explanation that removes any suspicion that we did something we did not. I should have known better than to think that he would testify to something he did not really believe. He was going to tell the truth, and the only concern he had was that he might have misled me into thinking he might do something else.
He answered my question directly and without the slightest ambiguity.
“No, it's not possible. If I had touched that gun, I wouldn't have forgotten it, no matter what happened.”
We looked at each other across the length of the jury box. Silently, I nodded my approval.
“Very good. You didn't have the gun. You didn't have it when you left the car; you didn't have it when you were shot. Did you hear anyone shout a warning once you started running?”
“No, I didn't hear anything. I was running as fast as I could. I remember thinking I was safe: that no one could see me in the fog. It was like being inside a cloud—a big gray cloud—and then everything went black. That's all I remember.”
I had no other questions to ask. As I took my seat, I glimpsed the impenetrable expressions on the faces of the jury and tried to guess what they were thinking. They must have understood that I had given him the perfect excuse by which to explain how the gun could have been found inches from his hand after he was shot. Why would anyone have said what he did unless he was telling the truth? It was a point the district attorney understood quite well and wasted no time trying to turn to his own advantage.
Placing his hand on his hip, Clarence Haliburton studied for just a moment longer the notebook lying open on the table below. With his other hand still on the page, he looked up and greeted the witness with a dismissive smile.
“So you did not pick up the gun at all?”he asked in a mocking tone.
“I never touched it,”insisted Jamaal politely.
With a theatrical gesture, Haliburton opened his eyes wide. “You never touched it.”He lowered his eyes and dragged his finger across the open notebook to the edge of the wooden table. The corners of his mouth turned down as he seemed to revolve in his mind the answer he had just been given.
“You never touched it,”said Haliburton again as he looked up. “Then perhaps you can explain,”he asked, his voice beginning to rise, “just how that gun managed to end up next to you?”
Jamaal shook his head and looked straight at the district attorney. “I don't know,”he said firmly.
Haliburton's eyes shone with malice. Standing at the corner of the table, he crossed his arms over his chest and put one foot slightly ahead of the other.
“You needn't be so modest, Mr. Washington. You must know. You heard your lawyer explain it to us. If you didn't pick up the gun in a 'state of panic,' there is only one way it could have gotten there—isn't that true?”
Jamaal refused to be drawn in. Again he shook his head, though this time without quite the same emphasis.
“I don't know,”he said calmly.
Haliburton flashed a derisive smile. “The police put it there, Mr. Washington. Do you remember now? That's exactly what your lawyer said—isn't it? That if you didn't pick up the gun in a 'state of panic,' then the police must have planted it next to you. My only question is why?”He began to pace in front of the table, smiling to himself in a manner calculated to irritate all but the most self-possessed witness. “Why would they have done that, Mr. Washington?”Haliburton stopped still and raised his eyes to Jamaal. “Why, Mr. Washington? Why would they have done that to you?”
“I don't know.”
Haliburton took two steps toward him, staring at him with open contempt. “You don't know? You just said you never had the gun in your hand. Is that right?”
“I never touched it,”insisted Jamaal. “I don't know how it got out of the car.”
Haliburton's head snapped up. “Perhaps the police were just out to get you. Have you ever been in trouble with the law, Mr. Washington?”
I flew out of my chair. “Objection! Your honor, I have a matter for the court!”
Thompson was already on his feet, glowering at Haliburton. “In chambers!”he thundered as he stalked off the bench.
Thompson was so enraged that he forgot to send the jury out of the courtroom. They were left to sit quietly in the jury box, while Jamaal waited, silent and alone, on the witness stand.
Drumming his arthritic fingers, Thompson sat behind his desk, glaring at Haliburton.
“Do you want me to declare a mistrial, Antonelli?”asked the judge without moving his eyes from the district attorney.
I had learned from the beginning that it was best to go along with anything the honorable James L. Thompson suggested, especially when it supplied him the means to embarrass the district attorney. This time, however, I was genuinely angry. I did not want to try the case all over again from the beginning, but I had no choice but to ask for the chance to do precisely that.
“Yes, your honor; I do want a mistrial. The district attorney—”
His eyes still on Haliburton, Thompson held up his hand, letting me know there was no need to tell him what he already knew. Not without pleasure, the judge asked, “Can you think of any reason I shouldn't give it to him, Mr. District Attorney?”
Haliburton met Thompson's stare with a blank wall of indifference. “You must be kidding,”he sniffed.
The steady monotonous drumming of Thompson's fingers suddenly stopped.
“ 'Kidding,' ”repeated Thompson. “You think I'm kidding?”he said as he cocked his head to the side. “Kidding? Let me explain the facts of life, counselor. I denied your motion to introduce the defendant's juvenile record. I denied it a week ago. You knew you weren't allowed to bring it up. So what do you do?”he went on, jutting out his chin. His mouth quivered belligerently. “You go ahead and ask him if he's ever been in trouble with the law! Who the hell do you think you are? Nobody does that in my courtroom!”
Nothing he said, nothing he did, made the slightest impression. Haliburton sat there, undisturbed and implacable, the only change in his expression a thin, patronizing smile that seemed to become more flagrant the angrier Thompson became.
“I don't know what you're so upset about,”grunted Haliburton. “I may have asked a question that could have elicited an improper response, but no answer to the question was given.”
“Only because I stopped it with an objection,”I reminded him.
Haliburton shifted back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other, and began to swing his foot back and forth.
“That's exactly right,”he said as he raised his eyes to mine. “And by preventing an answer, that objection of yours removed any conceivable ground for a mistrial.”
“The question left the impression the defendant had something to hide,”I said as forcefully as I could.
Haliburton leered at me, a sarcastic grin that grated more on my nerves than I wanted to show.
“And he does, doesn't he?”he said, arching his eyebrows. “But we're the only ones who know that. The jury doesn't know he has a juvenile record for assault.”
“A juvenile record for assault!”I cried, letting my anger get the best of me. “He was fourteen years old; another kid called his mother a name—not just any name, Haliburton—the kid called his mother a whore! Anyone ever call your mother a whore, Clarence?”I asked, shaking my head with contempt. “Jamaal Washington broke the kid's jaw; I would have killed him— and so would you!”
Haliburton tried to dismiss it. “I don't care what he did—the point is, the jury doesn't know anything about it.”