“In conclusion,” the prosecuting attorney said, “I realize the defense has gone to great lengths to paint the defendant as a law-abiding citizen. Above reproach. But nobody does anything wrong until the moment they do. Everybody has a clean record the first time they break the law.”
Raymond thought the man looked tired. He wondered briefly if the attorney took on the stress of these cases as if the victim were one of his own. Or whether it simply mattered to his career whether the outcome of this trial fell into the win or loss category. Or maybe it was unrelated. Maybe he’d stayed up partying too late the night before.
He glanced over at Isabel, who was bouncing the baby gently in her arms. Ramon was fussy. Everyone could hear him fussing, and Raymond could see everyone try to focus away from it. Whatever the prosecutor said next, Raymond missed it, thinking about the baby.
Ramon let out one scorching cry before Isabel managed to swing him back and forth to settle him.
Isabel rose as if to offer to step out of the room. But the prosecutor directed her to sit. Guided her with a motion of his hand.
“No,” he said. “You have a right to be here. That baby has a right to be here. He’s an important reminder for the jury. He’s growing up without a father. The defense will ask you to imagine what it would be like to be Ms. Hatfield,” he said, turning back to face the jury. “To be looking at jail time when you’d left the house that fateful morning not planning to do anything wrong. I’m going to ask you to imagine how it would feel to be Mrs. Velez, or her baby. Or one of her two other young children. You’re going along living your life, planning to grow old together. And then along comes a woman who thinks she knows who should be feared. She’s wrong about your loved one, but she comes to trial still claiming that she knows a threat when she sees one. But you know your loved one was not a threat. Everyone knows it by now, but it’s too late. One bad decision from her, and your life is blown apart. And it never goes back together again. She shot a man to death who meant her no harm, and she will tell you it was an accident. But it was an accident with life-changing consequences for this woman and child. Shouldn’t there be some consequences for the shooter?
“I mean, ladies and gentlemen, there are accidents, and then there are accidents. If she had dropped the gun and it had gone off, that would be a pure accident. But she pulled that trigger. Six times. A voluntary act every time. And she was wrong. I’m sorry, but when you fire six bullets at a fellow New Yorker, you can’t be wrong. He has to have meant you harm. Or you at least have to be able to point to some very real evidence that made you think he meant you harm. Otherwise it’s voluntary manslaughter.
“Sure, we all want to live in a safer city. We all want to live in a safer world. But Luis Velez was not the one making us less safe. A woman with a handgun she was far too quick to use, she was the one who made our streets even more dangerous. She’s the one who brought this instance of gunfire onto our streets, and she killed an innocent man. And there has to be a price to pay for that. What is a life worth? You tell me.”
He walked back to his table.
Raymond waited. Everybody waited. The attorney never said, “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.” He never said the equivalent of “That is all.”
He just sat down.
“Well, all right,” the defense attorney said, and struggled to his feet. “My turn, I guess. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you’re reasonable people. You look at my client, and you know in your heart she’s not a killer.”
Raymond typed a few notes about that. Because it seemed like an odd thing to say. How can you kill someone and not be a killer?
“She’s a mother of two grown children. She plays bridge every Thursday. She goes to church. Now I ask you, what justice is served by putting this good woman in jail? Even for thirty or sixty or ninety days? Look at her. Does she look like the kind of person who belongs in a jail cell to you?”
In the space of silence that followed, Raymond’s fingers flew over his keyboard, noting personal observations.
“Defense seems to be suggesting there is a ‘kind’ of person who belongs in jail and another ‘kind’ who doesn’t,” he typed. “Based on what? It’s supposed to be based on their criminal actions, but you can’t see those. What are we supposed to be seeing here?”
“Of course not,” the defense attorney bellowed, his voice too loud. “You put a person in jail because they’re a danger to society. My client is no danger to society, and you know it as well as I do. She’s never going to hurt anyone again. This was an accident, my friends. A terrible accident. Why would you choose to punish her for that? Isn’t she being punished enough already? She’s been put on trial like a common criminal. Forced to fear for her freedom. She has to wake up every morning regretting that terrible mistake. Why would you want to make it even harder for her?
“She could so easily be you. Think about that. How would you want somebody to treat you if you were in her shoes? You stick with that little bit of the Golden Rule in the jury room, and I just know we’ll be okay. I’m trusting you to do the right thing.”
And, with that, the trial they had waited so long to attend, pinned so many hopes on, was over.
Just that quickly, Raymond was thrust into a post-trial world for which he did not feel properly prepared.
“You folks should get up and walk around,” the prosecuting attorney said. He was leaning over the railing, addressing them directly. “It could be hours.”
“The only thing is,” Raymond said, “my friend here. Mrs. Gutermann. She can’t walk around for hours.”
“And I just gave birth day before yesterday,” Isabel added.
“They could be out for a long time, though. I mean, we don’t even know that they’ll come back with a verdict today. At least maybe go down to the cafeteria and get a cup of coffee. I promise I’ll come down and get you if the jury is about to come back.”