The Neon Lawyer (11 page)

Twenty-three

The jail floors had been freshly mopped and Brigham nearly slipped in the corridor. He was wearing a different suit, a secondhand one he’d bought specifically for the trial, and had splurged on some wingtips while at the store.

Amanda’s bandages had been removed. She had a scar on her neck. Brigham tried not to look as he sat down across from her.

They caught each other’s eyes. Brigham couldn’t help but give her a melancholy smile to let her know that he felt the pain she was feeling. She smiled back, an identical smile, and neither of them spoke for a long time.

“How are you holding up?” he said.

“I’ll be okay.”

“I’m going to have you testify. I don’t want to run through your testimony or prepare you. I want everything you say to come from the heart. Juries can see through preparation.”

“I understand.”

He looked at her hair. It had lost some of its color and appeared greasy. The roots were now a dark black. “Do you need anything?”

She swallowed. “Thank you for helping me. Even if we lose . . . I don’t know. I can just tell you care and it helps me.”

He nodded. “I bought a dress for you. Well, a woman at our office bought a dress for you, so you look good in front of the jury. We’ll have that and some makeup at court tomorrow.”

She licked her lips, which were dry and cracking. “Can I ask a favor of you?”

“Of course.”

“They cleaned out my apartment. They put everything in a storage shed. Can you get something for me from there?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“A photo. It’s of my daughter on her first day of school. She has a . . . a backpack and is smiling. Can you bring that to court for me tomorrow?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. “I will.”

She nodded slightly and rose. The guard slid the steel door open and she disappeared through it. Brigham stood up and waited until the door slid closed again before turning around and leaving.

The district attorney’s office was far from the jail—not even in the same city.
Brigham
wondered if prosecutors found it uncomfortable to actually see where they were sending people. It reminded him of something he’d read once about the Vietnam War. The ratio of rounds fired to enemy kills was the lowest of any war in American history. The soldiers knew the Vietcong were their enemy, but didn’t want to see what killing their enemy looked like. Deep down, even though reason told them what they had to do, it didn’t sit well with them.

Brigham went up to the sixth floor and waited to see Vince Dale. Fifteen minutes turned into half an hour, which turned into an hour. The secretary would apologize and tell him Vince would be right out, that he was in a meeting, or a phone consult with a detective, or screening a case that “just couldn’t wait.” It was a good hour and a half before Vince beeped his secretary and said he was ready. Just long enough to aggravate Brigham, but not long enough that he would leave. Brigham got the impression that Vince Dale knew what he was doing.

Vince’s office was as clean as Brigham remembered. Another man sat next to Vince with his legs crossed. He had a legal pad on his lap and a pen in his hand that he tapped lightly against his shoe.

“Mr. Theodore,” Vince said. “So glad you called. Please, have a seat.”

Brigham sat. “I want you to offer manslaughter, Mr. Dale. Not because I don’t want to do the trial or because I’m lazy, but because it’s the just thing to do.”

Vince smiled widely. “You sound an awful lot like a law school ethics instructor. You know why lawyers become professors, Mr. Theodore? It’s because they can’t hack it in the law. They can’t handle everything being gray and subjective. There are no right answers out in the real world and yet we have to choose an answer anyway. Some people can’t handle that. Sounds like you’re headed down that path.”

“When did it happen?”

Vince glanced to the man next to him with a grin. “When did what happen?”

“When did you lose your soul?”

The comment shouldn’t have bothered Vince Dale. But Brigham saw the flush in his cheeks and the moment—just a moment—when he fidgeted and didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Don’t get sassy with me, you little prick. I’ll bury you.”

Brigham didn’t respond. Instead, he looked over to the other man, whose eyes were darting between the two of them. “If I beat you in this trial, the news will interview me. I’ll make sure everyone knows it’s my first case as a lawyer.
Rookie takes down the great Vince Dale, the next DA.
Isn’t that election coming up, Vinnie?”

Vince’s countenance changed like a shadow had come over him. His cheek muscles tensed. “Get the hell outta my office.”

Brigham rose and began walking out.

“And Mr. Theodore. I’ll be there when they stick that needle in her arm. Just so you know.”

“You do what you want. It’s not my place to judge you. God will judge you, Mr. Dale.”

Brigham left the DA’s office. On the elevator, he took off his suit coat, revealing the wet sweat marks that were expanding across his chest. He mopped his forehead with the back of his hand. As he stepped off the elevators, he saw two detectives heading up. He recognized one of them as the lead detective in Amanda’s case. Brigham nodded to him, but the detective averted his eyes and got into the elevator.

As the elevator doors closed, the detective said, “I’m sorry about your client.”

Brigham stood there a moment. “Me too,” he whispered.

Twenty-four

The night of the trial, Brigham wanted to be alone, so he slept in his apartment. The couple next door fought the entire night. Something about spending money on an item for the house that shouldn’t have been spent. Plates were broken, a hole was punched in the wall, and more than once both of them threatened to kill themselves.

By six in the morning, Brigham figured he had been woken at least a dozen times. Groggy, he got up and showered. There was no food in his apartment, so he went out to an Einstein Bagels, got an orange juice and a bagel with cream cheese, and ate alone.

When he arrived at the courthouse, reporters were lined up outside. He’d seen a few of them there for the preliminary hearing, but none of them wanted to talk to him. As Brigham made his way up the courthouse steps, he could see the reporters were huddled around Vince Dale and two other assistants or attorneys. Vince was telling them about the roles of justice and the wave of crime sweeping through the county. He was painting a picture of a massive problem, and of course he was the solution.

Brigham got to the top step before a man stopped him. He was dressed in a blue jacket and wore glasses that were tilted to the side.

“You’re the attorney for Ms. Pierce, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m with KSL. I wanted to see if you’d answer some questions.”

“Sure.”

The man hit a button on a digital recorder. “How did you have a capital case fall into your lap as your first case?”

“How’d you know this was my first case?”

“You passed the Utah Bar exam just recently.”

“Oh,” he said, glancing back to Vince, who had apparently just said something funny, “that’s right. Public information. Yes, it is the first felony I’m trying by myself. I’ve discussed that with Ms. Pierce and she understands that.”

“Don’t you think it’d be wiser to step aside and let an attorney with more experience handle the case?”

“No, no I don’t. Look, I better get inside.”

“One more question. How do you intend to defend a case where five people saw your client commit the crime?”

“Magic. Excuse me.”

As he got to the metal detectors, he immediately felt foolish. That had been handled poorly, but the tone the reporter had taken was obviously critical. It didn’t sound like that was the tone being taken with Vince.

The bailiff asked him to step out of line and scanned him with the wand. Brigham did his spin and then headed to the elevator.

Judge Ganche wasn’t out yet, and the clerks and bailiffs in the courtroom were speaking in hushed tones. They quieted down when Brigham walked in. He took his seat at the defendant’s table and the door to the holding cells opened. Amanda came out in an orange jumpsuit.

“Where’s her dress?”

“What dress?” the bailiff said.

“The dress I left here two days ago for her.”

“Hold on, I’ll check.”

The bailiff went in back. He came out five minutes later and said, “Sorry, nothin’ back there.”

“Damn it,” Brigham mumbled. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Molly.

“Hey, I’m almost there,” she answered.

“I need you to bring one of your dresses down here for Amanda.”

“What happened to the one I bought her?”

“They lost it.”

“All right. Be right there.”

Brigham sat down next to Amanda and whispered, “Don’t worry. She’s bringing a new one.”

“It’s fine, I can just wear this.”

“The jury will have already convicted you in their minds. It separates you from them. They’ll see you as an outsider. It’s important that you look like they do.”

Vince Dale finally made his way into the courtroom. A few reporters took spots in the back as he took a tissue and cleaned some dust off the prosecution table. His two assistants set up two laptops and stacks of files. They pulled out obscure legal treatises and stacked them on the table: props for the benefit of the jury.

As they waited for the judge to come out, Brigham thought of the conversation he had had with Tommy last night. With his alligator-skin cowboy boots up on his desk, Tommy took drags from a cigar and said, “Remember that words are just words. Images are what move a jury. And the most powerful are the ones they think up themselves.”

Brigham had turned that over and over in his mind all night as he listened to the couple scream at each other next door.

The judge came out just as Molly ran into the courtroom with a black dress. The bailiff took Amanda back to change as the judge turned on his computer and flipped through a few documents.

“No cameras, gentlemen,” he said without looking up.

The two reporters in the room whispered to their cameramen, who went outside as the reporters pulled out spiral notebooks and pens instead.

Judge Ganche looked at the two attorneys. “Counsel, any chance this is resolving today?”

“No, Your Honor,” Brigham said, rising to address him.

Another long silence descended before the bailiff brought Amanda out. She’d applied some makeup and her hair was pulled back with a clip.

The judge watched her hobble across the courtroom and sit down before he addressed her. “Ms. Pierce, do you understand that you are forgoing any plea options and moving forward with a jury trial today?”

“I do.”

The judge nodded. “Okay. Well, let’s bring the panel out.”

The bailiff bellowed, “All rise for the jury.”

A jury panel of thirty people filed out of the back of the courtroom. The lawyers turned around as the panel was placed in the audience seating. Sheets of paper were handed out with each juror’s name and where they were sitting. Brigham glanced through the names quickly.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the judge began, “thank you for joining us today. You have been impaneled . . .”

The judge spoke for nearly half an hour. He went over the criminal justice process, what they would be doing that day, the type of case they would be hearing, when they would be taking breaks, and then had the lawyers introduce themselves and ask if anyone on the panel knew them.

The jury selection process, known as
voir dire
, was the aspect of trial that attorneys hated the most. It could take more than two days, especially on civil cases where millions of dollars were at stake, and at the end of it, it proved nothing. Human beings were unpredictable. All the research Brigham had done showed him that you could not predict how someone would view new information based on old information about that person.

“Counsel will now begin with their voir dire. Mr. Theodore,” the judge said.

“No questions for the panel, Your Honor.”

Vince and the judge stared at him. The courtroom was quiet for a moment. The judge finally said, “Counsel, approach.”

Brigham hiked to the judge and waited for Vince. He leaned against the judge’s bench. Both men were staring at him like he was a child about to be scolded.

“Mr. Theodore, I know you haven’t done many of these, but it’s customary to thoroughly question the panel. You may have someone on there you don’t wish to have.”

“I understand, Judge. But I don’t have any questions for them.”

“All right, well, Mr. Dale, I assume you do?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Proceed.”

Brigham sat down and watched as Vince spoke to the panel. He began asking them about their criminal convictions, about how many of them had been through the legal system, family members, their favorite TV shows.

“What just happened?” Amanda whispered.

“I don’t want to ask them questions. Five people saw you commit this crime, Amanda. If you want an unpredictable verdict, you need an unpredictable jury. I want as little known about them as possible.”

Vince joked and laughed and talked about the criminal process. He was using this time with the jury to get them to like him rather than find out anything about them. But once that was established, he began grilling them about every minute area of their lives. He even asked whether any of the jury panel had ever had any sexually transmitted diseases.

Another forty-five minutes passed. By the time the panel was finished with the questions, they looked like they’d been through a polygraph test. Brigham studied their faces. One of the older women smiled at him, a man in a Levi’s jacket gave him a dirty look, and another man with dreadlocks looked like he was high. None of which, Brigham guessed, said anything about how they would find on this case.

When Vince was done with his questions, another sheet of paper was passed back and forth between Vince and Brigham. It had the jurors’ names on it with a space next to the names. Each attorney was to consider if each particular juror should be stricken for cause, meaning they were unfit to be on the jury. Brigham passed the sheet back without writing anything. Vince struck six people. Brigham didn’t object. Then they each had four peremptory challenges, where they could strike whatever jurors they wanted. Again, Brigham left it blank. The jury was chosen after the people Vince struck were excluded. There were twelve jurors on a capital case. Six women and six men, mostly white.

The judge then called a ten-minute break before opening statements. Brigham went out into the hall with Molly. Scotty was there too, shuffling around the halls and peeking into the various courtrooms. He came back to where Brigham was sitting and said, “Vince looks really confident. I wouldn’t want to go up against him.”

“Thanks, Scotty.”

Molly rubbed Brigham’s back as he stared at the jurors filing in and out. The attorneys weren’t allowed to speak to them. Even a casual comment could result in a mistrial.

Vince came out, too. He gave a few statements to the reporters hanging around and then made a call. He winked at Brigham before going back into the courtroom.

“You okay?” Molly asked.

He took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. “Not really.”

“You’ll be fine. Tommy wouldn’t give this to you if he didn’t trust you.”

When they went back into the courtroom, the judge was already seated. He was leaning back and staring at the ceiling as though he had been waiting hours. Brigham realized Amanda hadn’t been allowed to move.

The attorneys took their seats facing the judge, and the twelve jurors took their seats in the jury box. Brigham’s hands were trembling so badly he had to force them under the table.

“Mr. Dale,” the judge said, “all yours.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” he said, standing and facing the jury. “And thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, for your service here today. And make no mistake, this is a service.” Vince paced in front of the jury and then planted himself near the box, one hand placed on the wooden banister. “On July twelfth of this year, a Friday, Amanda Pierce woke up, she had breakfast, she took a shower, and then took a forty-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol out of a gun safe in her home. She got into her car and drove down behind the courthouse—this very courthouse that you’re sitting in now. A man was being escorted down the stairs. Ms. Pierce lifted her weapon, and pulled that trigger seven times.” Vince stopped and one of his assistants put up an enlarged autopsy photo of Tyler Moore on plasterboard. It must’ve been taken right after the autopsy, because he was pure white with blue holes in his head, neck, and chest. “She could have shot and killed two innocent sheriff’s deputies, she could have killed any number of innocent bystanders, but she didn’t care. She wanted to kill this man so badly that she just didn’t care if anyone else got hurt.”

A long pause.

“I’m not going to stand here and tell you that Tyler Moore was a good man. He was facing charges for the murder of Tabitha Pierce, the defendant’s daughter. Did he actually commit the crime? Well, he wasn’t convicted because”—Vince pointed to Amanda and stepped closer to the defense table—“she didn’t give him his day in court. She didn’t allow it. She was judge, jury, and executioner. And no one else was allowed to have a say.”

Vince paused and looked each member of the jury in the face.

“You will hear from five witnesses who will tell you they saw the defendant shoot and kill Mr. Moore. Five witnesses. I understand that some of you might be thinking, ‘well, vigilante justice is still justice.’ Is it? For those of you thinking that, I ask you this question . . . What if Tyler Moore was innocent?”

Another long pause.

“The evidence in this case is irrefutable. The defense will play games and try to find excuses. They may even come right out and try to justify murder. But there is no justification. Amanda Pierce took the law into her own hands, and killed a man. When you go back to that jury room, you must find her guilty. You tell her that she is not allowed to kill whenever she feels like it.” He stepped close to the jury box and slapped both hands on the banister, leaning over the jury. “You tell her that murder is wrong.”

Vince took a few moments before he sat back down. Brigham sat still. He didn’t move even a muscle. Every part of him felt as if it was frozen in a block of ice. Amanda reached over and lightly touched his hand. He turned and faced her. Their eyes held for a moment before he rose. He reached behind him to the few things he’d had Scotty bring to court, and lifted a large photo of his own, three feet by four feet.

Brigham walked over to the photo of Tyler Moore and placed his photo over it. It was of Tabitha Pierce on her first day of school, the same photo he had gotten for Amanda out of storage.

“This is Tabitha Pierce,” he said. “Her favorite show was
Sesame Street
, and her favorite food was pizza. But not with pepperoni, because she thought pepperoni made you fart.”

The jury laughed. Even the judge smirked. Vince held a cold, steely gaze on him. Brigham knew he wanted to object, but objecting during his opening statement while he was talking about a young girl might alienate the jury.

“She was supposed to start first grade in August of this year. She never got to. Tyler Moore didn’t just kill her. In the back of his filthy van, for three hours, he . . .”

Brigham stopped. He looked to her photograph and didn’t move. Ten seconds went by in silence. No one spoke, coughed, or cleared their throat. Twenty seconds went by. No one said anything. Finally, Brigham looked up at the jury. He wanted them to picture it. He wanted them to paint the canvas, not him. And they had painted.