The Justice Game Page 3

  “Objection!” Austin Lockhart could apparently stand it no longer. Most lawyers avoided making objections during closing arguments, since they tended only to underscore the opponent’s points. But Lockhart had made a career out of arguing even minor matters until he was red-faced and furious. Which he was right now.

  “This is outrageous,” he said. “The chemical makeup of hair dye and cocaine is hardly the same. And how do we know that’s even methylene chloride in that bottle? This is nothing but showmanship, and it’s highly improper.”

  Jason acted stunned that anybody would object to this. Instead of responding immediately, he looked up at the judge, as if the objection wasn’t worthy of wasting his breath.

  “Mr. Noble?” asked Judge Waters.

  “For starters, Judge, I didn’t have any cocaine or oxycodone handy last night, or I would have used them instead. But if I were a juror, I’d like to at least know whether this vaunted solvent that Dr. Kramer used could remove a little hair dye.”

  “That’s… that’s just… ridiculous,” Lockhart stuttered. “It’s not relevant and it’s highly prejudicial, and if he wanted to do a demonstration, he should have done it with his expert so I could cross-examine Dr. Chow about it.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Jason responded quickly. “I must have been absent from evidence class the day they said showmanship was inadmissible.”

  When he heard a few jurors snicker, Jason knew he was on the right track.

  “Plus,” Jason continued, “Dr. Chow would look even more ridiculous in platinum blond hair than I do.”

  “There may be some differences of opinion on that,” said the judge, drawing her own set of chuckles. “Objection sustained.”

  Jason turned back to the jury and noticed that Juror 5 still had a thin smile on her face. He would reinforce the feedback with a generous portion of eye contact. “Now that we’ve established how much confidence the defense puts in its hair washing procedures, let’s talk about the affair.…”

  * * *

  In a luxury suite at the Westin hotel, Robert Sherwood, the CEO of Justice Inc., watched the courtroom drama unfold on closed-circuit TV. He studied the images on the split screen—one camera following Jason around the courtroom, the other catching the expressions on the jurors’ faces. Sherwood was willing to bet $75 million of his firm’s money on the outcome of this case.

  Like most larger-than-life rock stars, Kendra Van Wyck supported a labyrinth of companies. Her husband’s record label, a designer line, her own reality TV show and production company. All were highly profitable ventures, but all would be worthless if the diva was sentenced to life in jail. If she won, on the other hand, the companies would skyrocket in value. Until today, until this ingenious stunt in the closing argument, Sherwood thought that Van Wyck would be the biggest celebrity acquittal since O. J. Now… he wasn’t so sure.

  “The kid might be too smart for his own good,” Sherwood said, shaking his head. “Skewing the results.”

  He rubbed his forehead, the pain of another migraine setting in. His firm had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars diligently researching this case, selecting the perfect jurors, scrutinizing each piece of evidence. Now Jason Noble was blowing the whole thing apart with a piece of choreographed drama in his closing argument.

  “We can’t let this happen again,” Sherwood said. “Let’s make this trial his last.”

  5

  Jason Noble watched coverage of the shootings at the WDXR studios on the television in his hotel room—an oceanfront suite at the Malibu Beach Inn on the California coastline.

  Until the footage grabbed his attention, he had been focused solely on waiting for the phone call signaling that the jury had reached its verdict. He was oblivious to the luxury surrounding him—the beautiful white sands of Carbon Beach, the ever-observant hotel staff ready to meet his every need, the Hollywood A-listers who occasionally frequented the lobby bar. None of that mattered as he speculated about the jurors’ progress, tried and retried the Van Wyck case in his mind, and steeled himself for the worst. The same young lawyer who demonstrated poise and a devil-may-care attitude in the courtroom was a world-class worrier when the jury was out.

  But in the last several minutes, he had forgotten all about his own case.

  According to Fox News, the whole sordid affair at WDXR had been broadcast live to the Virginia Beach and Norfolk markets. Now, two hours later, he was watching a replay of the shootings for the third or fourth time. Each time they ran the tape, a newswoman told viewers with weak stomachs to turn their heads, and a scroll across the bottom of the screen warned of graphic violence. Jason probably qualified for the weak stomach category but he couldn’t turn away, staring in morbid disbelief as Jamison fired at Rachel Crawford while the SWAT team’s bullets slammed into Jamison’s body, the final shots tearing off portions of his head.

  Jason clicked to other channels, all of which were breathlessly replaying the tape (though some excised the last few grisly frames) and analyzing the siege from different angles. CNN had a civil rights lawyer criticizing the SWAT team. They should have moved in quicker. They should have used tear gas earlier. The usual armchair quarterbacking. NBC featured a forensic psychiatrist who tried making sense of Jamison’s twisted mind. CBS focused on the gun.

  A woman from the Handgun Violence Coalition argued passionately for a renewal of the assault weapon ban. “This gun has no legitimate purpose. You can’t hunt with it. It’s no good for target practice. It’s used for only one thing: mowing down innocent human beings.” Her righteous indignation was palpable. “What we’ve seen today is the reason this gun is sold.”

  CBS anchor Jessica Walsh—young, photogenic, and expressive—nodded. “According to police, the gun in question is an MD-9 semi-automatic assault weapon, manufactured by a Georgia gun company named MD Firearms. We have that company’s CEO, Melissa Davids, joining us live from Atlanta.”

  A shot of a smug-looking brunette filled half the screen. Jason guessed she was about forty-five or fifty years old. The woman had a long face with striking brown eyes, a protruding chin, and sharp cheekbones; a few pounds less and she would have looked anorexic.

  “Good evening, Ms. Davids,” Walsh said.

  “Good evening.”

  “What about the argument that the MD-9 is used primarily by criminals and has no law-abiding purpose? Without rehashing the whole debate about whether guns kill or people kill, can you tell us why you manufacture a weapon like this?”

  “Because people buy it.”

  Walsh waited for a more detailed explanation but Davids just stared at the camera. Unblinking. Unapologetic.

  “But that’s the point,” Walsh said, her brow furrowed. “Criminals are buying the gun in disproportionate numbers, often illegally or through straw purchases. Why would legitimate buyers who use guns for self-defense and hunting ever need a weapon like this?”

  “Why do they make cars that can go faster than the speed limit?” Davids asked, her words clipped and uncompromising. “Your questions miss the point. Why isn’t anybody asking about laws that keep honest citizens from having guns at work? If somebody in that studio had a gun, Rachel Crawford and the other victims might be alive today.”

  Walsh made a skeptical face, twisting the corners of her mouth. “Then you feel no responsibility for these deaths?”

  “No, I don’t. The first tragedy in this case is that the only person who had a gun in that studio was a deranged killer. The second tragedy is that networks like yours keep showing the footage over and over to increase ratings.” Davids narrowed her eyes, her contempt for the media slithering through. “And you feel no responsibility for that?”

  From Jason’s vantage point, it seemed like the question caught Jessica Walsh off guard. She was supposed to be asking the tough questions. Her eyes darted away from the camera for a moment, but she made a nice recovery. “We always warn viewers about graphic footage,” Walsh explained. “But still, it’s our commitment to
show newsworthy events even if they might sometimes be disturbing.”

  “You let the viewers choose; we let the buyers choose,” Davids said. “It’s a free country.”

  Walsh responded with a sarcastic little grunt—the sound of disbelief escaping before she could catch herself. “Melissa Davids,” Walsh said, “CEO of MD Firearms. Thanks for joining us.”

  “My pleasure. And Jessica?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to express my sympathy to the victims’ families.”

  It was, Jason thought, a performance his dad would admire. A city detective in Atlanta, Jason’s dad had seen more than a few senseless homicides. Yet he would probably be the first to defend the rights of gun manufacturers like MD Firearms and gun advocates like Melissa Davids.

  Jason flipped through a few more channels and watched lawyers speculate about who should be blamed. The victims couldn’t sue their own employer, WDXR, because the workers’ comp laws prevented such a suit. A suit against the SWAT team would be nearly impossible because cops had sovereign immunity for judgment calls like this. And it was generally assumed that the killer himself had no assets squirreled away. For lawyers, it was the greatest of all tragedies—a death without someone to sue.

  A ringing phone brought Jason back to more immediate concerns.

  “We need you here in fifteen minutes,” the caller said. “All three panels have a verdict.”

  Jason glanced at his watch; the jurors had taken every minute of their allotted time. “Does juror number five look happy?” Jason asked. He was pretty sure the young lady was on his side.

  “I can’t tell,” the caller said. “They all look mad to me.”

  Jason put on a new layer of deodorant—clinical strength—a fresh white T-shirt, and the same white shirt he had worn earlier in the day. He buttoned the shirt and pulled his tie snugly into place. He slid into his loafers and quickly combed and gelled his hair. He could feel his stomach roiling, the coiled nerves of a big verdict winding tighter with each minute of anticipation. He had barely eaten all day—a bowl of soup and a few crackers for lunch, an energy bar and a smoothie after court. He often lost three or four pounds a week during an intense trial, weight he couldn’t afford to shed.

  Jason gave himself a pep talk and focused on getting into character. In a few minutes, he would saunter into the courtroom and listen to the bailiff announce the verdicts. If he lost, Jason would stare at the jurors as if they were idiots and then would walk over and shake Austin Lockhart’s hand. If he won, he would shrug it off as if he expected nothing less. Twenty minutes from now, when the verdicts were announced, you wouldn’t be able to tell the result by the look on Jason’s face.

  He would be stoic. A first-class actor. A devil-may-care trial lawyer.

  He brushed his teeth and gave himself the once-over in the bathroom’s full-length mirror. He flashed a bright smile, accentuated by a gleam in the intense green eyes. There was nothing he could do about the small crook in the bridge of the nose, an old soccer injury, but it didn’t seem to deter the female jurors.

  “We would like to have the jury polled,” Jason said, turning serious, envisioning the worst-case scenario. “And we move for a new trial based on defense counsel’s discriminatory strikes during the jury selection process and our previously filed Daubert motion.”

  He narrowed the eyes, an intense stare for the imagined jurors who had turned on him. The look wouldn’t melt steel, especially with the platinum blond hair mocking his seriousness, but it would certainly let them know that, in Jason’s opinion, they had just sprung an unrepentant murderer. Right after the stare, the jurors would have one more chance to get it right while the judge polled them individually and asked if they agreed to the verdict.

  Okay, he was ready for the worst-case scenario. He would take the blow, congratulate his opponent, and spend a few days analyzing what went wrong. Afterward, he would move on to the next case. That’s what lawyers did. But he also knew a loss would stick with him for months, maybe years. Obsession? Most definitely.

  He shrugged. It is what it is. Underneath the laid-back exterior, a 24/7 Oscar performance designed to lure others into underestimating him, Jason was a warrior. He lived to compete.

  Knowing he could survive the worst case, he banished any further thoughts of losing. Today, he would play the role of the gracious victor, and he allowed himself to imagine the scene in his mind. He would barely react to the verdict, as if it were just a formality, as if he’d known all along.

  Van Wyck would be sentenced to life in prison. And Jason would start getting ready for the next case.

  6

  Jason pulled into the student parking lot at Pepperdine Law School. He parked and quickly found his way to the second-floor courtroom, where a private security guard stood with his arms crossed, a listening device in his right ear.

  Jason nodded at the man, entered the courtroom, and spent the next few minutes giving the broadcast crew and court clerk a hard time. He had liked trying the Van Wyck case here. The school had recently renovated the courtroom, installing state-of-the-art technology, including three wall-mounted cameras and two ceiling-mounted ones, all controlled remotely from a soundproof booth. The inconspicuous technology had been less distracting than in other trials, where Jason felt like he was trying a case and acting in a movie all at the same time.

  Jason clipped his battery pack to his belt, threaded the wire between the buttons on his shirt, and clipped the miniature mic to his tie. He did a quick sound check, poured himself a glass of water, and took a seat at counsel table, leaning back and crossing his legs—left ankle on right knee. It was the pose of indifference. What—me worry? Austin Lockhart paced in small circles near his own counsel table, exchanging small talk with his client.

  A few minutes later, the bailiff entered the room and called the court to order. Judge Waters followed close on his heels, took her seat, and had the bailiff bring in the jury. She glanced quickly at both lawyers, and Jason gave her a faint smile, which she chose to ignore.

  Jason wiped his hands on his pant legs and folded them on the table. His moist fists made a little water stain on the polished glass and he discreetly pulled them back, his right arm on the armrest and left hand under his chin. He had won every case in the last two years, but his nerves still frayed at the sight of a jury shuffling into their seats, heads down, somber-looking.

  Juror 5 was definitely not smiling. Juror 7, a single mom who shopped at Costco and read Janet Evanovich novels and Ann Coulter books, was not smiling either.

  Despite his earlier bravado, Jason did not have a good feeling about this one.

  He reached for his glass and took a sip of water.

  “Do you have a verdict?” Judge Waters asked.

  “We do.” The foreperson was Juror 4, a nicely dressed middle-aged woman in the back row. She worked in PR for one of the Hollywood studios. Drank Diet Mountain Dew. Subscribed to Entertainment Weekly. Voted Democrat. Contributed to green causes and PETA. Definitely not Jason’s choice for forewoman.

  She handed the slip containing the verdict to the bailiff, who in turn handed it to the judge.

  Judge Waters studied it for a minute, seemingly enjoying her chance to torture the lawyers. How long does it take to read the word guilty?

  She handed it back to the bailiff and nodded. The bailiff walked to the center of the courtroom, and Judge Waters asked the defendant and her lawyer to stand. The bailiff held the paper in front of him, as if preparing to read from an ancient scroll of Scripture in the middle of the Temple. He waited, soaking in the moment.

  “We the jury, on the count of murder in the first degree, find the defendant…” The bailiff hesitated.

  Time stood still. Jason wanted to puke.

  “… guilty.” The bailiff looked straight at the defendant and Austin Lockhart. Jason barely reacted, other than a quick glance at his two favorite jurors accompanied by a slight nod. They both acknowledged the look with a discreet smile, p
roud of their role in the deliberation process.

  Austin had the jury polled while Jason leaned back in his seat, watching each juror affirm the verdict as their own. After a series of mistrial motions, all of which were denied by Judge Waters, the jury was dismissed and the bailiff led them out.

  One jury down, two juries to go.

  * * *

  This first jury, the one that got to watch the case unfold live, was the most important. But there were two other similar juries, seated in two other moot courtrooms, each watching the proceedings on closed-circuit TV. All three of these shadow juries were made up of Los Angeles–area residents and were designed to mimic the exact characteristics of the real jury, who had been impaneled a few days earlier to hear the actual case in a downtown L.A. courtroom.

  Jason’s company, Justice Inc., was a sophisticated jury consulting and research firm. For major trials, they impaneled three shadow juries as soon as the actual jury was seated. The company rushed through a confidential mock trial in a few days of intense proceedings, arriving at a verdict well before the real trial concluded. A prediction for the real case would then be communicated to privileged investors and would result in millions of dollars of stock purchases or option sales surrounding the affected companies.

  The shadow jurors were paid handsomely and sworn to confidentiality. In addition, they would only know the verdict for their own panel, so even if they broke the confidentiality agreement, they would not be able to leak complete results.

  The first shadow jury, the one privileged to view Jason and the other lawyer in person, was the jury that most closely mirrored the actual jury. But the president of Justice Inc., Robert Sherwood, never liked putting millions of dollars on the line unless all three shadow juries reached the same result. Even then, the votes of individual jurors were fed into the company’s complex profiling software so unexpected results could be flagged and studied. The company’s high-priced analysts would also study the shadow juries’ deliberations for hours to make sure the outcomes weren’t a fluke, perhaps driven by one juror’s strong personality or a quirk in the mock trial proceedings that might not occur in the real case.