The Baker Street Jurors (6 page)

A young woman among the twelve primary jurors raised her hand. “May we tweet?”

“Tweet?” said the judge.

The defending barrister stood and tried to be helpful. “My lord, if I may—a tweet is a form of communication in which—”

“Please,” said the judge, waving him off. “As old as you may think I look, I'll have you know that my two granddaughters are still in their teens.”

He turned toward the jury. “O … M … G,” he said. “I can't believe I didn't already tell you this. When I say don't talk about the case, I mean do not communicate with anyone, in any format, by any means whatsoever, and most especially social media. Am I clear?”

All of the jurors silently nodded.

“Am I clear?” said the judge, more pointedly, and loudly.

“Yes, my lord,” said all the jurors in unison, like recruits at boot camp.

Satisfied, the judge now adjourned the court and exited to his chambers. Ms. Sreenivasan prompted the jurors to file out to the corridor.

The juror in expensive shoes rushed off on some self-important mission; the tall juror walked toward the opposite end of the corridor and paused to fumble for something in his pocket. The woman with the tattoo checked her mobile phone as she exited into the corridor; she was followed by the pensioner widow, who hesitated in the doorway for a moment, as if uncertain that the court had truly released them.

The judge's instructions regarding fraternization notwithstanding, Nigel intended to catch up with the woman with the tattoo. But she was too quick, and Nigel was delayed when the widow stopped in the doorway. By the time he got out of the courtroom, she was gone.

 

4

In his chambers, the judge took off his wig, sat down in the chair behind his desk, leaned his head back, and pushed thinning white hair back with his fingers, as though doing so might clear his head.

It didn't much.

He put the wig down in the center of the mahogany desk in front of him—which was wrong to do, at least for any length of time, because they lose their shape—and he stared at it.

He could hardly expect a jury to resist public pressure if he could not do so himself.

He had managed it this time. But perhaps, he thought, it was time for him to retire.

Physically, he felt fine. Physically, he felt as though he could carry on indefinitely, or at least until such time as the typical unexpected thing might occur.

But it was getting increasingly difficult to keep the faith.

On his desk, next to his wig, was a copy of
The Daily Sun.
He looked at the headline and he sighed. Every tabloid in the country was expressing its outrage that he hadn't granted an earlier defense motion to dismiss the charges because McSweeney claimed an alibi.

From a legal standpoint, it would have been absurd to grant the motion—even the defense didn't expect that he would do so. He had ruled that the case would proceed and it would be up to the jury to decide the weight of the claimed alibi, along with all the other evidence. And the defense had known he would rule that way; they had made the motion just to show how weak they pretended to think the prosecution's case was.

But that nuance would escape the media. All that mattered is that there was a chance to set Liam McSweeney, national hero, free to play cricket in the international championship, and the court had not done so.

Just a year before, the judge had faced quite the opposite situation. A murder case in which the crime had been so outrageous that the public, whipped into a frenzy by the media, demanded an immediate conviction—even though the case against that suspect had been supported by nothing more than the word of a jailhouse informant.

This was no way to run a justice system.

The judge knew full well that this tension between the press and the law had always existed. But in recent years it seemed to have gotten so much worse. Surely it was easier a century ago, without television cameras. Surely it was easier before the lines between news and entertainment had become so blurred, and people had begun to confuse reality TV with reality itself, and voting online for their favorite performers with voting for their government. Surely it was easier before cell phone videos and Twitter and instant communication of every little thought to everyone else in the world.

What would be next? Round-the-clock television and smart phone coverage of every trial, and juries composed of everyone who wanted to subscribe, tweeting in their verdict?

The judge suddenly realized that the court steward had knocked and entered his chambers. He looked up at her and said, “Ms. Sreenivasan, do you think it is time for me to retire?”

“No, sir.”

“I could, you know. I think I might like to step down, and spend my afternoons looking out on the garden and writing science fiction. What do you think of that?”

“I'll put it on next year's calendar, if you like.”

“Yes,” said the judge. “I think I'll call it
Hashtag: Guilty.
I'll explain it later, if you like.”

“No need,” she said. “I'm pretty sure I can guess it all from the title. Let's hope it remains fictional a while longer. Are you ready?”

“Give me one more moment,” said the judge.

The steward exited, and the judge had one more minute alone with his thoughts.

And his main thought was this: he loved juries. He loved juries almost more than he loved the law.

In America, a jury had convicted John Gotti despite threats to their safety that were very real. What sort of courage did that take?

But never mind the very rare situation where jurors had to actually worry about their physical safety. What sort of determination and mental focus must it take to listen only to the evidence at trial and ignore everything that politicians and pundits and media and the street might say? What sort of courage did it take to make an unpopular decision and go home and acknowledge it to one's own friends and family?

It was quite annoying, in this judge's view. Every time an unpopular verdict comes in, there are calls to get rid of the jury. Or to not allow them anonymity. But the purpose of the jury is not to render popular verdicts. The purpose of the jury is not to do what the crowd in the street wants done, any more than it is to do what the prosecuting authority wants done or what the media pundits want done. The purpose of the jury is to be just, according to the evidence presented to it. Nothing more nor less than that.

Leave the bloody jury alone, thought the judge.

And he put his wig back on and returned to the courtroom.

 

5

Nigel took the underground back to Baker Street. It was midafternoon now, not yet time for the full commuter rush, and although the tube was hardly empty, it felt spacious compared to the crowd that he had been in this morning.

This wasn't Nigel's usual time to be on the tube. As he came out of the Marylebone station, he missed the live music that he normally heard during the busier hours. He entered the Dorset House lobby at Baker Street, heading directly for the lift—but Hendricks at the security station waved him over.

“Listen to this, Heath,” said Hendricks, with the joy of a man seeing his strongest opinions vindicated in print. He read to Nigel from a tabloid. “‘If Mr. Justice Allen thinks the English people will stand for the persecution of a man of Liam McSweeney's caliber, whose alibi is as certain as rain in April, then—.'”

“Please,” said Nigel, putting up his hands to interrupt. “No need to give me updates, Mr. Hendricks, if you don't mind.” Nigel tried to say it nicely, but Hendricks looked surprised—and perhaps a little offended. It couldn't be helped. The jury was anonymous. Nigel could hardly tell Hendricks that was the reason he didn't want to hear the Liam McSweeney news.

Nigel took the lift to the second floor. Lois was at her station and caught him as he got out. “You're back early,” she said enthusiastically. “Does that mean they rejected you?”

“No. I'm on a jury.”

“Oh. I'm so very sorry,” said Lois, but Nigel could tell she didn't mean it. She was practically breathless with anticipation. “Which one is it?” she said. “Oh. You're not supposed to tell me that, are you?”

“No.”

“Just a hint?”

“No. You wanted me to do my duty, Lois. And now I'm doing it, and I'll do it properly.”

“Oh, of course,” said Lois. “I was just testing you, you know.”

“Uh-huh.” Nigel went into his office and closed the door. He looked at the work piled on his desk—three living-will documents to finish drafting, two purchase contracts to review, and several other detailed tasks almost as exciting as those.

He sighed. Was this why he'd gone into law?

 

6

Nigel got to the Old Bailey on time the next morning, but there was a delay in getting into the courtroom itself. There were competing legal priorities, and they posed an architectural dilemma. On the one hand, the trial was public—like any trial in the Crown Courts criminal justice system. That was mandatory.

On the other hand, this jury had to remain anonymous.

There were seats in the main area of the courtroom, behind the lawyer's tables, available for family of the defendant and for the press. But there was also a gallery for the general public—essentially a balcony, overlooking the entire courtroom. A screen had to be set up that shielded the jury from both those views, but still allowed the jurors to see the defendant, the judge, the witnesses, and the lawyers, unimpeded.

Nigel waited in the corridor for Court 13, along with his fellow jurors and alternates. The group atmosphere was different now than during the jury selection. The urgent suspense of getting selected or not selected had been replaced with a more subdued sense of expectancy for what might come next.

Nigel saw the young woman with the tattoo, but was unable to talk to her. She was on her mobile the whole time.

The steward opened the courtroom door and called them in. The lawyers were at their places in the center front of the courtroom, with papers and binders stacked at their tables. But there were no spectators yet.

Ms. Sreenivasan guided the jurors to their seats, behind the eight-foot cloth screen, with a partial overhead awning that shielded the view from the gallery. After just a few moments, Mr. Walker told everyone to rise, the judge entered, and the court was called to order.

The judge invited Mr. Slattery to open for the prosecution. Slattery stood up from behind his table.

“Thank you, my lord,” he said. And then he cleared his throat. He tucked in a lock of gray hair that had obstinately protruded below the back edge of his wig. He turned his head to look toward the jury. And then, catching sight of Nigel in the alternate jury section, Slattery remembered to look down and make sure that he had zipped his fly.

He had. All was in order. He put his hand on his chin and pretended to think for a moment.

Nigel wondered whether he was getting ready to waste the jury's time with gratuitous flattery in the opening statement. What Nigel personally needed, more than flattery, was a beverage. A water. Or, better, another coffee. Just thinking about that made him want to clear his throat.

Slattery approached the jury box, still apparently deep in thought. Then he raised his head and began. “It is a difficult thing to lose our heroes,” he said.

Good move, thought Nigel. Get right to it. And now Nigel did clear his throat. Quite unintentionally.

Slattery may have heard it, but if he did, he showed no obvious reaction.

Sorry about that, thought Nigel. But nice opening.

“It is a difficult thing to lose our heroes,” said Slattery again. “We don't want to see them fall. Oh, the tabloids might enjoy it well enough, just to capture our ten pence, but we don't enjoy it, not really. We want our heroes to remain worthy of our admiration. And though we know that success in their athletic endeavors must someday yield to the ravages of time, we don't want to see that happen to their character. We don't want to see that at all, and we quite understandably resent it when anyone tries to insist that we do so.

“But you know and I know that we are all human. We are all fallible. And we all must be held accountable when our failures—our willful, intentional wrongs—do harm to another. That is justice. That is what our legal system is about.

“And I will ask you to remember that, as I describe for you the events that have brought us here today.”

He paused. He was about to turn and look back at the defendant in a deliberately timed move for the jury.

Don't do it, thought Nigel. Not yet, not with this defendant. Everyone still loves him. Prove he's not a hero first, before you look at him.

But no—Slattery did it—he looked.

Nigel, almost subconsciously, shook his head and made a short note in his notebook.

The jurors, following the prosecutor's lead, were all now looking at McSweeney.

McSweeney—perhaps nudged by his own lawyers, Nigel was watching for it, but couldn't quite tell—looked back at the prosecutor, and then at the jurors—with a calm, reproachful expression that fairly reeked of innocence.

“Aww,” said a juror in the back row of the main section, very softly, as though about to pat a puppy.

Slattery obviously heard it; he turned and put himself between the jurors and their view of the defendant.

“We shall,” he said loudly, “through both forensic evidence and witness testimony, show that the defendant killed his own wife, from a motive as old as mankind, and as reprehensible and deserving of punishment now as it has ever been. He killed her because he thought he owned her. He killed her because he learned he could no longer possess her. And he killed her because he thought he was so much above the law that he could murder his own wife in a brutal, bloody, jealous rage—and get away with it.”

Slattery paused just long enough to let the jurors form that image in their minds. Then he said, “In our society, no man is allowed to do that. Not even the greatest cricket player in the world.”