We, the Jury Read online

  Also by Robert Rotstein

  Corrupt Practices

  Reckless Disregard

  The Bomb Maker’s Son

  The Family Lawyer (with James Patterson)

  WE, THE JURY

  Robert Rotstein

  Copyright © 2018 by Robert Rotstein

  E-book published in 2018 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Daco Auffenorde and Sean M. Thomas

  Book design by Tom L. Williamson

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-5385-0771-1

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-5385-0770-4

  Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  For Daco

  How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.

  —Daniel Webster

  THE COURTROOM CLERK

  MICK REDMOND

  Memorandum

  To: The Honorable Natalie Quinn-Gilbert

  From: Mick Redmond, Clerk to Hon. Natalie Quinn-Gilbert

  Judge,

  As you requested, what follows is a summary of the undisputed material facts:

  David Sullinger (hereinafter “David”) killed Amanda Sullinger (hereinafter “Amanda”) on a Tuesday at 3:40 p.m., the day before their twenty-first wedding anniversary.

  Amanda died of massive brain injury that resulted from a blow to the head from a sharp object.

  The instrument that caused Amanda’s death was an ax.

  Amanda had been twenty-eight and David had been nineteen on their wedding day.

  Amanda had previously been David’s eleventh-grade history teacher.1

  Amanda was the sole source of the Sullingers’ income.

  After two years of marriage, Amanda obtained her real estate broker’s license and quit her teaching job. Within five years, she was a member of her firm’s Million Dollar Club, handling only high-end properties for well-heeled clients.

  At the time of Amanda’s death, she and David were living in an 11,955-square-foot home on Bedford Road, located in the bluffs overlooking the city.

  After dropping out of the local community college his sophomore year, David had many different occupations, including, but not limited to, bartender, luthier, dog groomer, apprentice real-estate agent, sous chef, Pilates instructor, and graphic artist.

  As of the afternoon of the homicide, David was unemployed.

  The Sullingers’ daughter, Lacey, was seventeen at the time of the homicide, and their son, Dillon, was sixteen.

  During testimony, the Sullinger siblings both referred to their family home as “Hell on the Bluffs.”

  The Sullinger kids disagree on which parent was Satan.

  Apologies for the last bullet point, Judge. My dark sense of humor rears its ugly head. But you know what? That last bullet point does belong in there. It’s why we’re having this trial.

  1 The parties dispute the year in which Amanda and David first had sexual relations.

  THE HONORABLE

  NATALIE QUINN-GILBERT

  When I first took the bench, my husband, Jonathan, a trial lawyer himself, gave me advice that I’ve invariably followed during my twenty-two years as a judge: when you instruct a jury, don’t read to them; speak to them. It’s human interaction, not dry, legalistic recitation, that fosters justice.

  Now I look up from my three-ring binder and make eye contact with each juror in turn. “To kill with malice aforethought means to kill either deliberately and intentionally, or recklessly with extreme disregard for human life. David Sullinger killed Amanda with malice aforethought.”

  Jenna Blaylock, the defendant’s lawyer, leaps out of her seat as if someone had just told her it was electrified. “Your Honor, may we approach?”

  Interrupting a judge’s charge to the jury is exceedingly rare, appropriate only when a judge misreads an instruction, which I didn’t. I wonder if this is another Blaylock ploy. Over the past four weeks, she’s tried to bully the prosecution’s witnesses, assistant DA Jack Cranston, and, occasionally, me. (No one gets bullied in my courtroom.) She’s made unnecessary objections designed to disrupt Cranston’s examination and confuse the jury. She’s pranced and preened like a manipulative show horse—all tactics that most judges can’t stand, including this judge.

  As much as I want to dislike her, I can’t. I doubt I’m alone in that reaction. I think the jury loves her. It’s a cliché, but she has presence. Maybe because those intelligent, incisive hazel eyes convey a gentleness even when she’s in bulldog mode. Or maybe it’s her rich contralto voice, a gift from God that, even when she’s borderline shouting, reminds you of a melodious woodwind. (No one shouts in my courtroom.) Or maybe it’s the perfect posture, which conveys confidence and credibility. Blaylock is one of those rare people who can behave badly and yet charm you, who can use her bad behavior as a way to charm you—which makes her an effective trial lawyer and a dangerous person.

  My husband, Jonathan, was an effective trial lawyer, as good in his prime as Blaylock, but he never behaved badly.

  I beckon the attorneys and the court reporter to the bench. My clerk, Mick Redmond, pushes a button that creates white noise so the jurors can’t hear us talking. Mick looks tired, even pained. Understandable. It’s been a long, grueling trial. I’m tired. The heater in this ramshackle building is on the fritz, it’s February, and I’m cold.

  “This had better be good, Ms. Blaylock,” I say.

  “Apologies, Your Honor,” she says. “But you just misstated the malice-aforethought instruction.”

  “I certainly did not,” I say.

  Blaylock brushes away a loose strand of blond hair—an anomaly because usually there’s not a hair out of place. “With respect, you did, Judge Quinn-Gilbert. You told the jury that David Sullinger killed Amanda with malice aforethought. You left out the words ‘It is for you to decide whether.’ You’ve essentially instructed the jury to find David guilty.”

  She gazes at me, her eyes wide, the knuckle of her left index finger in her mouth—a childlike pose of anticipation. Blaylock is a young woman, but before now there hasn’t been anything childlike about her. Her cheeks are pink. This is the first time since this case started that she looks as if she’s not playing a role. In fact, she appears shaken.

  I look at Cranston, her adversary, certain that he’ll disagree with her.

  “Unfortunately, counsel is accurate, Your Honor,” he says, shrugging one shoulder. Even when he’s not advocating, he has an edge. His droopy eyelids make him look bored; his acne-scarred cheeks give him a thuggish mien; his thinning black hair clashes with his ashen complexion. Jonathan would say Cranston was the only person he knew who could sound snarky and smarmy at the same time. If Jenna Blaylock is someone you want to dislike but can’t, Jack Cranston is a man you want to like but can’t.

  I look at the court reporter. “Christina, did I …?”

  “I’m afraid you did, Judge,” she whispers back.

  “Oh, my. I didn’t realize … Apologies, counsel.” I lean in toward Blaylock. “Are you up here to seek a mistrial?”

  “No, Your Honor. I’m up here to ask you to fix the problem.”

  Blaylock believes she’s winning. Otherwise, she would have moved for a mistrial. She�
��s right; she is winning. If Cranston were quicker on the uptake, he’d try for a mistrial even though my error worked in his favor. I wouldn’t grant it, but he should have tried.

  “I’ll fix it,” I say. “Please take your seats. I will fix it.”

  Now I’m the one who’s shaken. In my years on the bench, I’ve stumbled over jury instructions, of course, but I’ve never made a blunder like this. I pride myself on being a meticulous judge. I have high ratings from posters on the Robing Room and Above the Law—unusual because those sites most often attract harsh critics. I know it’s egotistical to care about my website ratings, but I do. How did I botch a jury charge? Few tasks are simpler for a judge. You just have to flip sheets of paper in a three-ring binder and parrot the words that the judicial council has set out in standard-form jury instructions.

  My God, I just told the jury that David was guilty!

  Yes, I’ve been forgetting things, and no, it’s nothing to worry about. Stress, anxiety, grief—mostly grief. My husband died four months ago. Or has it been five already? I miss him. Yes, he’s dead, but no, he’s not gone. He’s here with me at this very moment. The cliché is that the loss of a loved one leaves a huge void in your life, but that isn’t right. After Jonathan died, his presence expanded to inhabit every molecule of my being. Despite his presence, he’s a nanometer out of reach. His inaccessibility is like an unscratchable itch in the deepest chamber of my heart.

  My OCD kicks in. One hundred minus seven is ninety-three, minus seven is eighty-six, minus seven is … The serial sevens. Yes, I’ve researched dementia online, and if you can subtract from a hundred by sevens accurately, you’re good. I’m good.

  … minus seven is thirty, minus seven is … Stop being ridiculous, Natalie. Stop distracting yourself with nonsense. Maybe you made the error because you were distracted with just this sort of nonsense.

  I shiver slightly. It’s not dementia; it’s that this courtroom is like an icebox. That’s what my parents called a fridge: an icebox. Who cares if I forgot the word citronella the other day? I remembered the word ten minutes later without googling “scented candle that repels bugs.” I’m sixty-four years old, this trial has been exhausting, and I miss my husband.

  When the attorneys are seated at their tables, I say, “Members of the jury, counsel pointed out to me that I misspoke in giving this last instruction. Apologies. You will disregard what I said and draw no inferences from my mistake. Here is the proper instruction. To kill with malice aforethought means to kill either deliberately and intentionally, or recklessly with extreme disregard for human life. It is for you to decide whether David Sullinger acted with malice aforethought. That’s the key. That’s what I left out—that the issue is for you to decide.”

  The jurors look at me impassively, which is exactly what I want. A good group, this jury. Smart. Attentive. Capable of ignoring my error. I fixed it. Have I? It was just a slip. I hope the jury doesn’t think it was a Freudian slip.

  In those online brain-function tests, I was also able to draw the hands and numbers on a faceless clock and to identify a volcano.

  I tap my pen on the desk three times, a technique Jonathan uses—used—when he was arguing a court case. Calmed his nerves, he said. Got the jurors’ attention, he said.

  His little self-help trick works, and I’m back on track. “An issue in this case is whether David Sullinger justifiably killed Amanda Sullinger in self-defense. The use of deadly force is justifiable only if David reasonably believed that such force was necessary to prevent imminent death to himself. If David had a lawful right to be in the Sullinger residence, he had no duty to flee an attack. Rather, he would have every right to stand his ground.”

  I pause, take off my readers, rub my eyes, and take another long breath, then say, “Evidence that David suffers from battered-person syndrome was admitted for your consideration regarding his claim of self-defense. The standard is whether the circumstances were such as would excite the fears of a reasonable person possessing the same or similar psychological and physical characteristics as David and faced with the same circumstances surrounding David at the time he used force.”

  Circumstances were such? Excite the fears of a reasonable person? Who writes this gibberish? I wrote that gibberish yesterday, though I was following the guidelines of the judicial council and the case law. I guess when it comes to instructing a jury, I’m a parrot with some discretion. I’m tempted to add, “Members of the jury, in English, this last instruction means that you have to figure out whether Amanda was so abusive that David killed her because he legitimately thought she was going to kill him first.” I can’t. The powers that be abhor plain English.

  I recite the next instruction by heart. “Ladies and gentlemen, in a moment, the bailiff will take you to the jury room. Your verdict finding the defendant either guilty or not guilty must be unanimous. You must follow the law spelled out in these instructions. Even if you don’t like the laws, you must use them. For over two centuries, we Americans have lived by the Constitution and the law. No juror has the right to violate the rules we all share.”

  THE COURTROOM CLERK

  MICK REDMOND

  Wonderful uncle that I am, last Christmas I bought my four-year-old nephew a set of colored ink stamps (ideal for three and up). My sister-in-law gave the little pecker some sheets of blank paper and told him to go to town. First thing, he made a colorful zoo. He was calm, a model child. But he’d been eating gingerbread men and candy-cane drops all morning, and when the sugar high came on, he was suddenly on overload. In a frenzy, he stamped not only the paper but the table cloth, the dining-room wall, and his left forearm. All the while, his eyes were filled with that lunatic gleam that little kids get. I had two thoughts: (1) the look in this kid’s eyes is demon-seed terrifying; and (2) welcome to my world, adorable little buddy, because I stamp paper all day for a living, except that the asshole attorneys charge eight hundred and fifty dollars an hour to prepare the paper I stamp. I have the ultimate power, though. If I decide not to put my official seal on the legal papers, the attorneys’ pleadings are worth less than my sugar-crazed, ADHD nephew’s ink elephants, monkeys, and giraffes—in short, nada.

  Processing legal pleadings and scheduling hearings and trials isn’t my main job. My main job is protecting Judge Natalie Quinn-Gilbert. I felt this way even before she went out on a limb and officiated at my husband, Eric’s, and my wedding, one of the first gay marriages in Sepulveda County. Not a big deal, since we live in a progressive state? Wrong. We have neo-Nazi–alt-right bikers in residence, and our county’s voting pattern resembles that of rural Indiana.

  Now I’m worried because the judge botched up the jury instruction and didn’t catch it. Judge Natalie Quinn-Gilbert doesn’t do that. She tried to fix it, but if Sullinger is convicted and Blaylock appeals, who knows what those intellectual snobs on the appellate court will do? Who knows what they should do?

  Because the trial is over except for the verdict; the attorneys’ lackeys gather up the litigation bags, laptops, and demonstrative exhibits, like circus roustabouts packing up to move on to the next town. Blaylock is a bombshell in a St. John’s suit, with the face and figure of an actress—which she is, both during a trial and on those cable news appearances. She’s resting her hand on her client’s shoulder, guiding him toward the corridor, where she’ll undoubtedly hold yet another impromptu victory press conference.

  Sullinger shuffles up the aisle with head down and eyes focused on his shoes—the beaten-beagle look. Since day one, the man has kept his head and eyes down, even when sitting at counsel table, even on the witness stand, and that’s a bad thing to do if you’re a defendant trying to win over a jury. Or maybe it’s a brilliant thing, because this doleful passivity makes him seem harmless, even gentle. You’d never know that poor, sweet, mild-mannered David buried an ax in his wife’s skull. Not that Amanda didn’t ask for it.

  David’s daughter, Lacey,
runs up to her father, throws her arms around him, and says, “Oh, Daddy,” more like an eight-year-old greeting her favorite parent after a long business trip than a twenty-year-old who has watched her father’s trial for killing her mother. The tabloid journalists sure jumped on that one—whether David and Lacey have a sick relationship. Yes, I’m talking incest. Mercifully, that word was never uttered in this room, because when Jack Cranston tried to explore the idea while cross-examining Lacey, Judge Quinn-Gilbert exploded in front of the jury and threatened to sanction him if he said another word. I guess she did the right thing by shutting down the questioning, although I was curious about what Lacey would say. But I also think the judge firmed up the possibility of incest in the jury’s mind. Juries remember when judges get mad, and they try to figure out why, and that leads to speculation about what they’re not supposed to speculate about. (Don’t think about a pink-and-blue-striped elephant.)

  The Judge Quinn-Gilbert I know can be stern and tough but is rarely temperamental. I can remember only two other times when she lost her temper. The first time was at a shyster who missed a filing deadline, offered me a bribe to backdate my time stamp and, after I reported him to the judge, claimed I had solicited the bribe. Luckily, the jerk was already under investigation by the state bar and the sheriff’s department, so his credibility was nil. The second time, she lost it with a biker on trial for felonious assault, who told her she was biased against him because she was married to a “kike.” After calming down, the judge denied a motion to disqualify her, and after the thug was convicted, she had the pleasure of sentencing him. Except that it wasn’t a pleasure for her. Sentencing criminals never is. Cranston’s infraction in this trial, if it was that, didn’t come close to those prior instances. The Judge Quinn-Gilbert I know would have called a recess and used a verbal spindle to ream Cranston a second anus for trying to pursue the perverted stuff, but she would have kept her wrath hidden from the jury. It has to be Jonathan. She’s still in mourning. I told her to take time off, and so did some of her fellow judges, but she wouldn’t hear of it.