Page 54 of The 1 Lawyer
CHAPTER 41
THEY LOCKED Della in the holding cell outside the courtroom while the jury decided her fate. Before an hour had passed, the jurors sent word that they had reached a verdict.
My client sat on a flat metal bench in the cell, resting her head against the cinder-block wall. Some inmate had laboriously scraped off the bench’s gray paint and etched into the metal an angry message: Fuck the police.
I was pretty sure that Della hadn’t had sufficient time to scratch the words onto the bench. The jury had been out for only fifty-two minutes.
“We’ve got a verdict, Della,” I said.
She nodded, looking as hopeful as I felt weary. When the jurors assembled in the box, I didn’t try to read them. Didn’t even look at their faces.
Judge Eckhardt held the verdicts in his hand. “‘As to count one,’” he read, “‘we, the jury, find Della Jess Calhoun guilty.’”
Della swung toward me with a look of dismay. “No! Didn’t they listen to what happened out there?”
I shushed her, and she clenched her jaw shut, waiting for the rest. As I stood and waited for the hammer to fall on count two, I tried to be philosophical. Biloxi was like most communities—ordinary citizens tended to approach the homeless in their midst with the popular sentiment “Not in my backyard.”
Not my fault. That’s what I told myself.
The judge read the jury’s third and final verdict: “‘Guilty.’” Della came unglued.
She pounded on the counsel table with her shackled fists. “This is bullshit! It ain’t fair—didn’t you hear me up there? Them boys attacked me first!”
I leaned close and tried to reason with her. “You’re not helping your cause, Della. We’ll save our arguments for a motion for a new trial. And don’t forget, you have the right to appeal.”
“I’m appealing now!”
When she stopped yelling to suck in a breath, I heard muffled laughter behind me.
Sitting with their parents in court for the reading of the verdict were the three young men called by the State as victim witnesses. Two of the teens were tall. The benched athlete wore his high-school letterman jacket. The third boy, a short, stocky kid, had the grace to quail under my eye, but his friends continued to snicker.
The judge said to the jurors, “Ladies and gentlemen, is this your verdict?”
The jurors stated that it was. When Eckhardt asked me whether we wanted the jury to be polled, I said, “No, Your Honor,” because there was no point in the exercise.
Della yelled, “I want a new lawyer! You hear me, Judge? I don’t want him.”
The judge’s grim expression made it clear that he had no patience for Della’s theatrics. I tried again, moving close to her and saying in a whisper, “We can talk about all of this later—”
“I’m not talking to you no more. If I’d had a good lawyer, I’d be getting out. You don’t even look like a lawyer. You didn’t even shave today! And your breath stinks!”
She was right.
That morning my hands had been too shaky for me to risk shaving. I feared I’d butcher myself with bloody nicks. My suit, the one I’d worn in the Caro trial, was wrinkled. It hadn’t been dry-cleaned in over a year. I had gargled with mouthwash after I brushed my teeth, but apparently it didn’t kill the residual alcohol smell from last night’s bender.
The judge slammed the gavel. “I’m removing you from the courtroom, Ms. Calhoun. Bailiff!” After he threw her out, he dismissed the jury and left the bench.
The courtroom emptied until only I was left to hear the State’s witnesses and their parents exchanging triumphant congratulations. At one time, hearing the other side celebrate would have been a novel experience for me. These days, it was my new normal.
Mollie Piper edged up to the defense table and extended her hand. “Good job, Stafford Lee.”
It’s a long-standing ritual in Biloxi courtrooms for the victor to offer praise and a handshake to the loser. I was supposed to accept the gesture with good grace. But I wasn’t up to it. Everyone knew I’d been off my game since Carrie Ann died.
Piper dropped her hand when I made no move to take it. As she hurried away, I wondered whether she was one of the people in Biloxi who still viewed me as a suspect in my wife’s death, despite Jenny providing my unshakable alibi.
I wasn’t the target of a murder investigation. But my wife’s death had changed me. My reputation was in the toilet. I had to chase clients down, scrape together any business I could get.
The court administrators had appointed me to represent Della Calhoun out of pity for my floundering career, not because they wanted Della to receive a vigorous legal defense.