The Charred Body
by Charles C. Parsons
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
After the judicial assignment was announced, I joined Chance and Martin for lunch in the courthouse cafeteria. Chance wanted Martin’s insight on Judge Penn. The clean yellow walls of this basement eatery oozed a faint antibacterial odor. The beehive hum of other lawyers nearby flooded the huge expanse. We sat down at a circular Formica table.
Martin’s eyes narrowed as he poked at his salad. “When Penn was an in-house attorney defending the city, I tried a few cases against him. He was devious. He’d do anything to win for the bureaucracy. Then after thirty years of city work, the politicians appointed Penn to be a judge.”
Martin leaned closer over the tabletop to speak confidentially. “Upgrading Penn to be a judge didn’t succeed in making him fair. Nor did it help his health.” Martin suspected that the stress of being a judge had devastated Penn physically. He’d had two heart attacks and a stroke since taking the bench five years before. Martin stabbed his fork into the bowl. “In those five years, every time the city’s been involved in a trial that Penn was conducting, it got favorable judicial rulings.”
I took a deep breath. “Should we still file that motion you suggested to exclude evidence of adultery at trial?”
Martin nodded slowly. “Sure. That way we force the city to file a response, make them set out their arguments for its admissibility.”
That night, I tossed about in bed wondering how to compose the motion, struggling to cogently forbid infidelity as a possible “superseding cause” of death. I was confident that Chance and Martin weren’t sleeping well either.
* * *
The recessed light panels mounted in the high ceiling of Judge Penn’s spacious courtroom spewed a dull glimmer on the stained mahogany walls. From his elevated podium, the judge smirked as he ruled verbally on our motion.
“The court finds that a jury could properly decide that Mrs. Hawkins’ choice to be absent when the fire erupted in her apartment was an intervening cause for the tragic events that evening. Indeed, her selfish pursuit of her own gratification could well be deemed a superseding cause of her son’s death. The plaintiff’s motion is denied.”
Judge Penn rose but remained standing behind his elevated podium, then again spoke out.
“The court also takes notice that Mr. Martin Marshall, an officer of this court, appears as the straw man plaintiff in this litigation.”
The judge bared his teeth before continuing. “Very clever, Mr. Chance. Your ploy gives the appearance that the deceased infant is represented by a disinterested neutral party. Yet, it’s the Hawkins’ parents who will receive any money from a verdict for the child’s death. We’ll see how clever your strategy is when we begin trial next month.”
He smiled at Hicks who stood at the nearby defense table, then strode with black robe rustling over the floor to the courtroom rear door.
* * *
A plague-like melancholy clogged every pore of our office in the countdown to trial. In Chance’s office, I watched Charlie Hawkins sit stiffly as Yvonne recounted her last evening with her son. Her face was puffy, and her eyes were red as she described handing the flashlight to her daughter. Suddenly, she threw up her hands.
“This trial is going to be their chance to publicly shame me, isn’t it?”
Chance rubbed his chin. “That’s how they plan to win. Tar the opponent to escape accountability. We can’t let that happen.” Still, he glanced nervously at the whiteboard, fixing on the column showing his investment in the litigation. The bottom line read: $33,320.
My eyes narrowed as I looked at Yvonne. If she’d only stayed home like a typical mother, we would win a seven-figure verdict. How could a jury now see her as the victim Chance was trying to shape?
After a brief silence, Chance pushed up his sleeves. “Folks, we’re up against a vile opponent.” He cleared his throat. “We’ve got to win this case.”
* * *
A week before the trial began, Martin visited our office. Charlie and Yvonne were huddled in our conference room rereading their depositions. Chance motioned for Martin and me to follow him into his office and closed the door.
“Martin,” Chance moaned, “I can’t see any way I can whitewash Yvonne’s infidelity on the night of the fire.”
Martin pressed his fingers together. “Maybe you should argue that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone at Yvonne. That plea has worked before to defuse a crowd’s fury at an adulterous woman.”
“That spiel might have saved some biblical slut’s life,” I snapped. “But we’re trying to motivate a jury to award money to the estate of the slut’s child.” They both glared at me.
For the next forty-five minutes we three groped for a winning theme to excuse Yvonne’s behavior. Finally, Martin rose to leave. He turned to us as he opened the door. “Chance, this case comes down to who your audience will be at trail. Maybe you’ll get lucky with the right kind of the jury.”
Chance forced a smile as Martin closed the door. A short time later, Chance strode to the conference room and asked the Hawkins to return in two days. He needed still more time to mull their case further.
* * *
An October chill nipped at my cheeks as Chance and I marched briskly on the sidewalk ahead of the Hawkins family toward the Washington courthouse. Morning sunlight reflected off the massive mahogany doors at the entrance. Unlike the days preceding, Chance’s gait was assured. He had a spring in his stride. His fingers tightly gripped his briefcase. He was primed for the trial to open.
For the past two days, Martin had holed up in Chance’s office with his door closed. They discussed the trial in hushed tones. At first, Chance’s tall figure was stooped, his eyes were glassy. I was not included in these sessions. Instead, I was directed to draft proposed jury instructions to present to Judge Penn.
Initially, irritable words seeped through the office door. But by the second day, their voices were more upbeat. When the pizza they’d ordered arrived, I carried it into Chance’s office. Inside, on Chance’s desk empty Styrofoam coffee cups were nestled among wadded sheets of paper.
To me, the pair had been engaged in a fool’s errand, but I could see that Chance had undergone a stunning transformation. His chest was now thrust out; his eyes sparkled with confidence.
Nibbling on a cheesy slice, Martin had smiled, gleefully barking out “Betrayal, Betrayal, Betrayal.” I watched in amazement as Chance giggled. They behaved like a pair of merry drunks after a long evening at a pub. After Martin left, Chance fired up his laptop and drafted several pages of highlighted notes to use at trial.
I stood over him as he pecked at the keyboard. “You surely don’t think you’ve escaped this adultery morass, do you? How are you going to get around Penn?”
He winked back at me.
* * *
Sunrise flooded through huge arched windows of Judge Penn’s cavernous courtroom highlighting the brilliant alabaster cornice mold that filled the intersection between the tall walls with the ceiling. Penn strode in, a sneer shimmering just above the collar of his black robe. He bounded up the stairs to an elevated podium and plopped into the high-backed chair not unlike a gunner taking his station on a battleship. His glare was businesslike as he appraised the assembled panel of jurors gathered in the gallery below.
Turning to the lawyers assembled around tables in the courtroom well, he briefly introduced each lawyer and litigant to the jurors.
Then shaking his head and sighing, Penn summarized the case that would be presented. “This is a case of an infant who perished in a fire in an empty apartment.” Rolling his eyes, he continued. “You are here to decide whether, as the plaintiff claims, our city could have prevented this death.”
Penn directed the lawyers to pose their voir dire questions to the panel to begin the process of selecting twelve citizens to hear the case.
While Chance stood questioning the prospective panel, I scrawled notes on the two-page jury roster of the jurors that the courtroom clerk had handed to me. When he’d finished, Chance and I went down the list of jurors together.
I’d scribbled Xs beside the names of jurors who I vaguely sensed held deep religious beliefs. I’d read somewhere that jury selection was a crap shoot. Chance agreed with my suggestion that we strike an elderly, gray-haired minister and another older, white male who’d testily crossed his arms during voir dire questioning. As we moved through the list of prospects, we agreed on who should be excluded until we reached a middle-aged lady named Roberta Cohen.
Ms. Cohen wore a red dress, and the roster listed her occupation non-decrepitly as “banker.” During questioning, Ms. Cohen disclosed that she was the manager of a local branch of a multi-national bank.
At the time, I’d looked across the courtroom well to the defense table where Hicks was seated. He smiled as Ms. Cohen spoke. I was sure that Hicks was confident he knew where her loyalty lay. Looking up at the podium, I noted that Judge Penn was also fixated on the lady in the red dress. His cheeks were glowing.
Yet, Chance had persisted with his questions to her, focusing intently on her demeanor. When he sat down, I handed him the jury roster and pointed at the Cohen biography.
“Deep down, Ms. Cohen probably believes, like all the bankers, that undereducated parents squander money,” I whispered. “Even if she deigned to award a verdict to the Hawkins, she’ll shortchange them on money damages. “
Chance listened then shook his head. “She struck me as honest. And intent on justice.”
I scowled but could not persuade Chance to reject Ms. Cohen as a juror. The clerk seated her in the middle seat of the front row of the jury box where her crimson cardinal-like attire eclipsed the other eleven jurors. As directed, the jurors rose and swore to follow the court’s instructions of law they would hear at the conclusion of the evidence. Judge Penn took a brief recess.
Martin joined us as we stood in the hallway outside the courtroom. “Gutsy call seating that woman in red, Chance,” he commented. “She’s sure to be a force with that bunch. Why did you keep her?”
“I read her body language as honest. Plus, there weren’t any bitter, peevish furrows in her face.” He took a deep breath. “It’s a gamble, but I sense she’s genuinely impartial.”
I shook my head. Chance had just bet the case on a hunch about a woman’s face. He’d forgotten that fraudsters succeed because some people trust their countenance.
Martin shrugged and headed back to his seat. “I’d watch her. She’ll be central to the verdict.”
* * *
When the case was reconvened, Judge Penn directed Chance to give his opening statement for the plaintiffs. Chance rose to his full height in a navy-blue suit over a white shirt and striped tie. He strode across the well of the courtroom and stood at the railing of the jury box:
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is a case of not one, but two betrayals. The first betrayal is between a husband and his wife. It is a peripheral matter, an issue to be resolved within their marriage. But the second betrayal is a felony that caused death. The city betrayed its promise to safeguard its tenants at the Shadow Oaks apartment building.”
Chance hesitated, allowing his message to sink in. “The city owned and leased a building which it falsely claimed provided safe housing for its tenants. But city officials had knowingly rejected explicit instructions in order to save money when they installed the most crucial safety device to warn of a fire. The city’s choice was a betrayal, and it directly caused the death of a minor child.”
At the nearby defense table, I heard Hicks fumbling with papers. Looking at the podium, Judge Penn was red-faced, nostrils flaring. Ms. Cohen leaned forward in her seat, sensing the uneasiness Chance’s oratory had created.
Before sitting down, Chance showed the jury the fire department picture of the blackened child corpse stating that had the warning devices been operable, the child would be alive.
Several jurors nodded their heads. Ms. Cohen stared at the picture, but sat quietly, sphinxlike.
Hicks delivered a short but emotional opening statement repeating loudly: “Where were the parents? If they’d paid their electrical bill, we wouldn’t be here today.”
Chance called his first witness to testify. Robert Harris was a short scrappy man in jeans. He wore a sweatshirt displaying a D.C. flag. He testified he’d been a technician for the city for twenty-two years before he retired. He had been the supervisor in 2006 when the smoke detectors were installed at Shadow Oaks.
He rested his elbows on the witness table. “I remember that building very well.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I told the head of the division that we needed more heavy cable to hardwire to the inlet electrical line.”
“Did you get the additional cable?”
“No, the director told me that costs were exceeding budget and we needed to economize.”
“What did you do?”
“I had my crew connect the devices into the circuit of each apartment like he told me. But I also wrote a memo to the boss of the department telling him that we were exposing those tenants to real danger. I was worried a fire might happen in one of those rental units while the juice was turned off.”
Ms. Cohen clutched the handrails of her chair. Juror No. 3, a male in overalls, frowned and crossed his arms.
When Hicks rose to cross-examine Harris, he produced a folder. “Mr. Harris, this is the file for smoke detector installation at Shadow Oaks in 2006. There’s no memo in here about exposing tenants to fire hazards.”
Harris leaned back in the witness chair and reached into his coat pocket.
“I figured that the department director might deep-six my memo,” he said, withdrawing a yellow sheet of paper. “So, I kept this copy in case any Shadow Oaks tenants ever got hurt for lack of a smoke warning.”
Chance rose and quickly requested that Harris’ yellow paper be marked as an exhibit. Several curious jurors leaned forward watching Judge Penn as they awaited a judicial ruling. After several moments, Judge Penn grimaced, but he ordered the document admitted into evidence.
While the clerk marked the document as an exhibit, Chance leaned close to me, whispering. “Penn only admitted that memo to avoid offending the jury. They were sure to want to see it. He’s scheming to influence their verdict.”
Copyright © 2023 by Charles C. Parsons
