To my surprise, I see several faces that belong to potential witnesses—at least, they would be witnesses if I were defending my father. Viola’s sister, Cora, and Lincoln Turner are the most obvious examples. Quentin could easily clear them from the court by “invoking the rule,” which any competent criminal lawyer would do to prevent witnesses from adjusting their stories based on the testimony of others. Yet for some reason Quentin has not done so. What kind of crazy game is he playing? I wonder. And does he truly understand the stakes?
My mother is squeezing my hand so hard that my fingernails are turning blue, but I don’t protest. Wearing a dove-gray dress and gloves—yes, gloves—she looks like a first lady facing a congressional hearing in which her husband could face evidence for impeachment. But Mom came from far humbler origins than Hillary Clinton. Born on a subsistence farm in Louisiana, she picked cotton from the time she was old enough to drag a sack until she left for college, the first person in her family to attend one. Educated in a two-room grade school, she read seventy-five novels the summer after her senior year and ultimately graduated first in her college class. After teaching in the slums of New Orleans to put my father through medical school, she served several years in Germany as a military wife, among women who spent more on their spring wardrobes than she’d spent on clothes since her wedding day. Yet despite her marital “success,” Mom never basked in the glow of being a doctor’s wife, which confers considerable status in a town like Natchez. Nor did she have patience with the ex-sorority girls who ran the garden clubs, though she joined one for a while and worked tirelessly at whatever projects she was assigned, so that her children would become part of the social fabric of the town.
How must it feel for her to sit here and watch a black judge, two black lawyers, and a predominantly black jury decide the fate of her husband, whose alleged crime is killing a black woman to whom he once turned for romantic comfort? Twelve citizens of Adams County, Mississippi, seven black people and five white. And no matter how noble their intentions might be, no matter how objective they’ve told themselves they can be, such detachment is not possible. The people on this jury represent a divided city, a fractured state, a wounded nation. Evidence will be presented to them, but they will not see that evidence the same way. Arguments will be made to them collectively, but they will not hear the same words. Those jurors will be like men and women in the middle of a divorce. The facts at issue may be as clear as glass to neutral observers, but the principals will see only reflections of their own fears, hear only echoes of their own prejudice, act only out of anger and wounded pride.
I’m surprised Mom can sit here without a toxic level of Xanax or Zoloft in her system. Though she may be seventy, Peggy Cage is still the farm girl whom her mother called to kill the copperheads and rattlesnakes that sometimes slithered up onto the porch while the men were away in the fields.
The small hand now gripping mine—the hand that once gripped a hoe handle just as hard—is damp enough to wet the glove that covers it, and its nails dig into the back of my hand like knife points. Leaning close to Mom’s ear, I whisper, “The judge will be here any minute. Then Shad will give his opening statement. It’ll be tough to listen to, but Quentin will make up whatever ground we lose as soon as Shad sits down.”
“Penn,” she whispers, “I know people on that jury. Third from the left, second row, that’s Edna Campbell. And the man two seats down from her. He worked at a service station I used to patronize. He was always rude. And—my God, that black woman on the other end, first row . . . she used to cook for Margaret Corwin over in Glenwood, at parties.”
“Mom, that’s how it is in small towns. Take a piece of advice: Try not to think about the jury. Don’t even look at them. You’ll drive yourself crazy analyzing every twitch and raised eyebrow, and in the end all you’ll do is miss half the testimony.”
“But your father’s fate is in their hands!” she hisses with urgency.
“Yes and no. It’s Quentin and Shad who’ll determine Dad’s fate, far more than those twelve people. And Dad himself, maybe. So save yourself the aggravation.”
Mom doesn’t answer, but her grip tightens another notch, and my hand begins to go numb. As I try to ignore the pain—and wonder whether I can take my own advice—it hits me just how historic this trial really is. Natchez has a distinguished judicial history: the first bar association in the entire United States was founded here in 1821. Most recently the Justice Department decided to relocate a federal district court to Natchez, which over two hundred years ago was the capital of the Mississippi Territory. Between those two historic benchmarks lie several notable trials, some of which are best forgotten. But my father’s trial is certain to be remembered for more than the matter at issue before the bar. A trial in which not only the judge but also both principal attorneys are black is as rare as snow in Mississippi—rarer, in fact, since it actually snows in Natchez every couple of years. Black district attorneys are thin on the ground in my state. Since each judicial district has only one DA, whereas many districts have multiple judges, gerrymandering has carved out a significant number of “black” posts, making black judges quite common.
Judge Joe Elder is one of those smart lawyers who, around the age of fifty, realized that the state retirement system was one of the best around and decided to run for the bench. He has fulfilled most of his first four-year term, and by all measures he’s been an exemplary judge. A native of Ferriday, Louisiana, Elder attended historically black Alcorn State University, where he played basketball, then Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. He joined a corporate firm in D.C. for a few years, but then returned to Mississippi and set up shop on Lawyers’ Row in Natchez. Like most local attorneys, he handled whatever walked through the door, and he was overqualified for most of the work. He often trounced the white Ole Miss law school graduates whom he faced in court, and I suspect that gave him more than a little enjoyment.
To my immediate left sits one of those Ole Miss lawyers. Rusty Duncan has practiced almost every kind of law imaginable, but it’s plaintiffs’ cases and divorce work that pay his four kids’ tuition at St. Stephen’s Prep. Fifty pounds heavier than when we graduated from St. Stephen’s together, the unrepentant cynic has the lobster-red skin of a guy who spent the past week water-skiing on Lake St. John with his belly hanging over his 1970s-style cutoff blue jeans. But his appearance is deceptive: Rusty can still water-ski barefoot if challenged, and he’s got as keen a grasp of courtroom psychology as any lawyer I know.