IN THE TIME THAT IT takes for the jury to return a verdict, I sit through forty more arraignments, thirty-eight of which are black men. Micah performs six surgeries. Violet goes to a birthday party. I read an article on the front page of the paper, about a march at Yale by students of color, who want—among other things—to rechristen a residential college currently named for John C. Calhoun, a U.S. vice president who supported slavery and secession.
For two days, Ruth and I sit at the courthouse, and wait. Edison goes back to school, knuckling down with renewed enthusiasm—it’s amazing what a little brush with the law can do for a kid who’s flirting with delinquency. Ruth also has—with my blessing, and with me at her side—appeared on Wallace Mercy’s television show, via remote camera. He championed her bravery, and handed her a check to cover some of the money she had lost from being out of work for months—donations from people as close as East End and as far as Johannesburg. Afterward, we read notes that were enclosed with some of the contributions:
I THINK ABOUT YOU AND YOUR BOY.
I DON’T HAVE MUCH, BUT I WANT YOU TO KNOW YOU’RE NOT ALONE.
THANK YOU FOR BEING BRAVE ENOUGH TO STAND UP, WHEN I DIDN’T.
We’ve heard about Brittany Bauer, who is suffering from what the prosecution calls stress and Ruth calls just plain crazy. No one has seen hide nor hair of Turk Bauer or Francis Mitchum.
“How did you know?” Ruth had asked me, immediately after the debacle that occurred when Wallace brought Adele Adams to the courthouse to “accidentally” cross paths with Francis and his daughter.
“I had a hunch,” I told her. “I was looking through the neonatal screening, and I saw something none of us noticed before, because we were so focused on the MCADD: sickle-cell anemia. I remembered what the neonatologist said, about how that particular disease hits the African American community harder than others. And I also remembered Brit saying during her deposition that she never knew her mother.”
“That’s quite a long shot,” Ruth had said.
“Yeah, that’s why I did a little digging. One in twelve African Americans carry the sickle-cell trait. One in ten thousand white people carry it. Suddenly, it looked less like a wild card. So I called Wallace. The rest, that’s on him. He found out the name of the mother from Brit’s birth certificate, and tracked her down.”
Ruth had looked at me. “But it had nothing to do with your case, really.”
“Nope,” I’d admitted. “That one, it was a gift from you to me. I figured there wasn’t anything that could put a finer point on the hypocrisy of it all.”
Now, as we come to the close of the second day with no word from the jury, we’re all going a little stir-crazy. “What are you doing?” I ask Howard, who has been keeping the vigil with us. He’s been typing furiously into his phone. “Hot date?”
“I’ve been looking up the sentencing difference for possession of crack versus cocaine,” he says. “Up until 2010, a person convicted of possession with intent to distribute fifty grams or more of crack got a minimum of ten years in prison. To get the same sentence for cocaine, you had to distribute five thousand grams. Even now, the sentencing disparity ratio’s eighteen to one.”
I shake my head. “Why do you need to know this?”
“I’m thinking about appeal,” he says brightly. “That’s clearly a precedent for prejudice in sentencing, since eighty-four percent of people convicted for crack offenses are black, and black drug offenders are twenty percent more likely to be imprisoned than white drug offenders.”
“Howard,” I say, rubbing my temples. “Turn off your damn phone.”
“This is bad, right?” Ruth says. She rubs her arms, although the radiator is belching and it’s broiling in the room. “If they were going to acquit, it would have been quick, I bet.”
“No news is good news,” I lie.
—
AT THE END of the day, the judge calls the jury back into the courtroom. “Have you arrived at a verdict?”
The forewoman stands. “No, Your Honor. We’re split.”
I know the judge is going to give them an Allen charge, a glorified legal pep talk. He turns to the jury, imperial, to imbue them with resolve. “You know, the State has spent a great deal of money to put this trial on, and nobody knows the facts more than you all do. Talk to each other. Allow yourself to hear another’s point of view. I encourage you to arrive at a verdict, so that we do not have to go through this all over again.”
The jury is dismissed, and I look at Ruth. “You probably have to get back home.”
She looks at her watch. “I have a little time,” she admits.
So we walk downtown, shoulder to shoulder, huddled against the cold to grab a cup of coffee. We slip out of the biting wind into the buzzy chatter of a local shop. “After I realized I couldn’t cut it as a pastry chef I used to dream about opening a coffee place,” I muse. “I wanted to call it Grounds for Dismissal.”
We are the next to order; I ask Ruth how she takes her coffee. “Black,” she says, and suddenly we are both laughing so hard that the barista looks at us as if we are crazy, as if we are speaking a language she can’t understand.
Which, I guess, is not all that far from the truth.
—