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Chapter 103
AFTER CAREFUL DELIBERATION, Jonah Curtis had chosen to wear a navy blue suit, a crisp white shirt, and a bright red tie. He didn’t look exactly like an American flag, but all the colors were there for the patriotic effect he intended for his opening statement to the jury.
“Gentlemen, I did not come to Eudora to make history,” he began. “I was sent here by the Supreme Court of the state of Mississippi to seek justice. If in the name of justice you reach the verdict I truly believe you must reach, the state will ask you to assign a degree of punishment that you feel is appropriate for these crimes.”
“Let us begin, though, not at the ending,” he said, “but at the beginning. A hot summer night. You know what that means, surely I don’t have to tell you. Talking to a Mississippi man about the heat is like talking to a fish about the water.”
This little joke brought an involuntary smile to two or three faces among the jury.
“So there we are on that hot summer night. Sweltering. Down in the Quarters, inside a poor man’s house.
“And here, on a bed in the parlor, an old man lies dying.
His granddaughter is tending to him, his trembles and tremors, his rackety cough.”
All the men on the jury were watching him now, even those whose expressions revealed their innate distaste for a Negro attorney dressed in a suit.
“On the porch of this home, there are two gentlemen standing guard. These are not fighters or thugs. One is an attorney, well known to the most powerful men in our nation’s capital. The other is the inventor of the Stringer Automatic Baler, the most successful businessman in Eudora—heck, let’s be honest—in all of south Mississippi.”
There was a patter of quiet chuckling; everyone in the courtroom shot a look at L.J., beaming at this description of him.
“These gentlemen have come to the Quarters on this night,” Jonah said, “because the dying man is their friend. They’ve heard rumors of trouble. They have a well-reasoned fear that some kind of tragedy is in the offing.
“Lord, it’s hot. The old man struggles to breathe. The granddaughter cannot help the tears that come to her eyes. The old man is all she has on this earth.
“Then there comes a sound, the sound of hoofbeats on the road. There are men on horses, raising a cloud of dust in the darkness.”
A couple of the jurors looked ostentatiously bored, and a man in the back row was already dozing. But the others seemed attentive, and a few were even transfixed, as if Jonah were telling them a scary story.
And that’s exactly what he was doing.
“Suddenly, gentlemen, all is pandemonium—uproar and violence and chaos. Men firing guns everywhere. Glass flying. Women screaming. Suddenly there are men all around the house, trying to shoot their way in. Trying to kill the old man. Trying to kill his granddaughter.
“The old man is terrified. The young woman throws herself over him, shielding his body with her own. The assault lasts only a few minutes, but it seems like hours and hours.”
Jonah paused. He studied the faces of the jurors, each one in turn.
Finally he spoke again, in a hushed whisper.
“Two men lie dead on the ground. One is a man who’s been a friend and neighbor to you all, all his life—Luther Cosgrove, an employee of Mr. Stringer for nearly thirty years. He lies dead in the side yard, shot in the face by the men on horseback. The other is a much younger man from out in the county, a fellow named Jimmie Cooper, who had come to that house of his own free will that night and volunteered to stand guard over that dying old man. Jimmie Cooper lies dead on the ground in front of the house.”
Jonah paused and shook his head sorrowfully, as if he couldn’t believe the price Jimmie and Luther had paid.
“But then there is a miracle,” he said. “Three of the killers are arrested. For once, they are not allowed to pull on their Klan hoods and go riding off into the darkness, unmolested, unpunished. For once, there are men who are interested in capturing the killers, in bringing them to justice—in bringing them here today, to face trial before a jury of their peers. And that, of course, is where you gentlemen come into the story.”
He turned, pointed his finger at the defendants. “There they are. Mr. Chester Madden. Mr. Henry North. Mr. Lincoln Stephens.”
The defendants put on the smirk they had evidently practiced beforehand, but they couldn’t hold it. Their nerves and the silence in the room got the best of them.
It was now time for the most difficult, delicate portion of the opening statement. Jonah and I had spent hours in the War Room going back and forth over this part, trying to find the best way to say what he needed to say.
“Gentlemen, you may have noticed there is one fact I left out of my account,” Jonah said. “You may think it’s the most important fact of all. And that is the fact that these defendants are white men. They attacked a colored family in a colored neighborhood. One of the men they killed was white. The other was black. I didn’t mention any of this to you.
“And do you know why? I’ll tell you why—because the pursuit of justice knows no color! The pursuit of justice admits only that which is fair, and honest, and true.
“This case is not about race. It is not about the black versus the white. This case is much easier than that. It’s a simple matter of justice.
“Now, as the prosecutor representing the great state of Mississippi, it will be my job to show you how these three men attacked and pillaged, how they came to the Eudora Quarters planning to kill, intending to kill. How they planned and then executed the deliberate, premeditated murder of two men on a hot, awful night in the Quarters. On a night when these three men, and all the ones who got away, were hoping that justice had taken a holiday. Well, justice has not taken a holiday here in Eudora!”
