“But this case, ladies and gentlemen, is different. This case is all about motive. The question we must answer is ‘Why?’ And the answer lies in the relations—both public and private—between black and white. Which happens to be the two colors we have sitting in the gallery, in the jury box, and standing by the hundreds outside this courthouse. Well, you lucky few are inside. And you’re going to hear a remarkable tale over the next couple of days. A brutal and tragic story. So, let me play storyteller for a few minutes and set the stage for you.”
Shad leaves the lectern and steps into the well, which is a presumptuous habit of his, and to my surprise Judge Elder doesn’t stop him.
“Who was Viola Turner?” Shad asks. “She was a woman who lived a tragic life. Though Viola spent most of her years in Chicago, she was born right here in Natchez, the former slave capital of the South. She was educated at Sadie V. Thompson High School. She married at the Holy Family Catholic Church, where she was a devoted and outstanding member of the choir. But in 1967, Viola’s husband was killed in Vietnam, before she could have any children by him. From the age of twenty-three until she was twenty-eight years old, Viola worked for the defendant, Dr. Thomas Cage. In her twenty-eighth year, in 1968, she suddenly moved north to Chicago without telling anybody why. After she moved to Chicago, Viola remarried.” Shad pauses for effect. “But not before she had a son.”
In the gallery audience, several women audibly catch their breath.
“As the evidence will show, that child was fathered by Viola’s employer, Dr. Thomas Cage, before she ever left Natchez.”
This is old news by now, but to hear it spoken in court, and entered into the record, gives the clinical fact a denser reality.
“You will hear testimony from that child,” Shad promises (like a good showman). “He is now thirty-seven and can speak for himself. But let us return to Viola. After leaving Natchez, she lived and worked in Chicago until four and a half months ago, when she returned to her hometown. Nine months earlier, she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. She began treatment in Chicago, and she exhausted all viable treatment options before she left. Make no mistake about one fact: When Viola arrived in Natchez, she knew there was no hope of a cure. Only palliative care, until the end. Viola Turner came home to die.”
The grim finality of these words deepens the silence in the courtroom.
“As soon as she arrived here, Viola placed herself under the care of Dr. Thomas Cage, her former employer, former lover, and father of her only child. The evidence will show that at least a month before her death, Viola made a pact with the defendant to help her end her life. And there, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, lies the heart of this case.
“There’s a certain perception in our community that what happened to Viola Turner was not murder at all, but what is colloquially known as a ‘mercy killing.’ I discussed this concept during the voir dire, but I want to be sure we’re all clear on this point. Legally, the act that laymen refer to as ‘mercy killing’ is known as assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is a felony, and a separate one from murder. In the simplest terms, assisted suicide means you help someone to die. Either a doctor or a layman can be guilty of this crime. If a layman hands a depressed paraplegic a loaded shotgun, or a doctor hands that same man a lethal dose of morphine, and the paraplegic kills himself, they are both guilty of assisted suicide. This is a controversial subject, and people’s deepest feelings come into the debate. Most often, religious feelings. Some people feel that assisted suicide is justified in some cases; others think it’s outright murder in every case.
“What’s important today, in this case, is that you understand that what happened in Cora Revels’s house on December twelfth of last year was not assisted suicide. It was murder. Murder in the first degree. That is the issue before the jury. You need to understand something else, too. Assisted suicide can very quickly slide over into murder. If the layman who gave the depressed paraplegic the loaded shotgun pulled the trigger himself because the man in the wheelchair was unable to do it, that layman committed murder, not assisted suicide. Likewise, if a physician in Mississippi injects a patient with a lethal drug because the patient is unable to do so, he has committed murder under the law—even if that victim desired his or her death at the time. Murder.
“Many people might sympathize with the case I just described, so I want to clarify further. Dr. Thomas Cage did not inject a dying woman with morphine because she was too helpless to do it herself. He did inject morphine into Viola Turner, as he had on almost every day prior to her death. And he did inject a lethal dose. But morphine is not what killed Mrs. Turner. Due to Dr. Cage’s severe arthritis, and probably stress, he only injected a part of the lethal morphine dose into his victim’s vein. The remainder went into the soft tissue beneath the vein, where it was rendered essentially harmless because of how slowly it would be absorbed into the patient’s bloodstream.
“The evidence will show that Viola Turner actually died of a massive overdose of adrenaline, causing a terrifying and painful death. By pure chance, or perhaps fate, that agonizing death was recorded on a computer hard drive attached to a video camera left in the victim’s room by a journalist. I can assure you that, after seeing that video, you will be under no illusions that what happened to Viola Turner could be described as a mercy killing.”