Rusty Duncan nudges my knee and nods toward the prosecution table.
To my amazement, Shad Johnson is actually pretending to play a violin, which tells me that he’s grossly misjudged his jury. But Quentin has not. In less than five minutes, the old fox has turned aside the juggernaut of momentum that Shad painstakingly built up over the past two days and convinced at least half the jury that they’d be lucky to have an uncle or a father as honest and fair and understanding as Quentin Avery. A closer look at Shad tells me that he’s making his satirical gesture to conceal the rage threatening to boil out of him at Quentin’s folksy performance. For a performance is what it is. No one knows better than Shadrach Johnson that the man in the wheelchair talking like a cross between Will Rogers and Martin Luther King Jr. has argued landmark cases before the Supreme Court, and on those occasions Quentin did not speak like a man who’d just walked out of a Delta cotton field. But galling though it might be, Shad is bound by custom to silence.
“I could parade five hundred people through this courtroom to verify my assertions,” Quentin continues, “but I don’t need to do that. Because most everybody in this room already knows they’re true. The black folk here know there ought to be a monument in front of the old house on High Street where Dr. Cage had his clinic. Where other whites saw a Negro, a nigra, a nigger, a buck, a boy—Tom Cage saw a human being. When most everybody else treated you like a servant, Dr. Cage treated you as an equal. Black folk knew they could go to his clinic and get help, no matter how much trouble they were in.” Quentin raises his forefinger and tilts it just enough that it’s pointing at a pair of black women sitting in the jury box. “How can I put a price on what that meant to people in this town? I don’t know a number that high. And yet”—he sighs as though he can hardly bear to go on—“here sits Tom Cage, accused of premeditated murder of a patient under his care. Here he sits, stoic and silent, while low men and women lie under oath and slander his name.” Quentin hangs his head, as though he can barely endure the injustice of the situation. “Do you know what I say to that, ladies and gentlemen?”
The jury collectively leans forward.
The white shock of hair comes up. “Do you know what I say to the State of Mississippi? To the high-and-mighty district attorney?”
Several jury members actually cock their ears toward Quentin to be sure they don’t miss his answer.
Quentin turns to Shad, his eyes burning with what looks like contempt. “Have you no shame, brother?”
Shad finally explodes, which is exactly what Quentin wanted. “Judge, this is outrageous! Opposing counsel isn’t making an opening statement. He’s delivering an oral hagiography of his client and slandering the district attorney!”
“Oral hagiography?” Quentin echoes, as though mystified. “Isn’t that illegal in Mississippi?”
Half the lawyers in the room burst into laughter, prompting Judge Elder to come down hard on Quentin.
“Mr. Avery, attorneys are permitted considerable leeway in their opening remarks, but you’re not only exceeding the agreed-upon speed limit, you’re driving on the wrong side of the yellow line. Confine yourself to the facts of the case, or move on to your case in chief.”
Shad is livid, but he can do nothing more to slow Quentin’s flow.
“Members of the jury,” Judge Elder continues, “please disregard the defense attorney’s last comments.”
“Thank you for putting me back on course, Judge,” Quentin says, all amicability again. “Let’s get down to the facts that Mr. Johnson has been making such a fuss about. We all know by now that a romantic relationship existed between Dr. Cage and Viola Turner in February and March of 1968. The district attorney has done his best to make that relationship sound sleazy, as though Tom Cage were the kind of slavering, lecherous white man who liked a little dark meat on the side when he could get it.”
The crowd gasps, and the judge steps in again. “Watch your language, Counselor.”
But Quentin refuses to back off. “Judge, can we not be frank in this forum? We’re all adults here. Can we not use the language that accurately portrays the situation?”
The jury clearly agrees with Quentin, but Joe Elder says, “Mr. Avery, you’ll remain within the bounds of propriety or suffer the consequences.”
“All right, Judge. Well . . . we all know the kind of man I was talking about. But Tom Cage ain’t that kind of man. In forty-five years of practicing medicine, not one sexual harassment claim has ever been made against him. And during all those years, he’s had several black female employees, all of whom are willing to come forward and testify to his good character.
“So. What caused this illicit relationship? Do we need Sherlock Holmes or Sigmund Freud to figure it out? No. I doubt anyone knew Tom Cage better than Viola Turner, the exceptional nurse who worked at his side during the troubled 1960s. Now, I don’t know what problems might have existed in Dr. Cage’s marriage.” At this point, Quentin looks pointedly at my mother, who stares straight ahead like a graven image of the long-suffering but loyal wife.
Was that look prearranged? I wonder.
“All marriages have their strains,” Quentin says with regret, “and we never know what’s cooking in someone else’s pot. But take a moment to imagine poor Viola Turner learning that her young husband had been killed in Vietnam. Imagine that young widow enduring a year of terrible loneliness while her brother did dangerous work for the civil rights movement. Picture this dedicated young sister working at Dr. Cage’s side each day, witnessing his unique commitment to helping people. Her people. And not with cocktail party rhetoric, mind you, but down in the trenches, where it mattered. Is it not easy to see how strong feelings might develop in that kind of situation?”
It would be just as easy, I realize, for a modern-day jury to read that situation as sexual harassment. But today Quentin will benefit from Mississippi always being ten years behind the times.