Page 65 of The Devil's Advocate

He shivered on the porch. It wasn’t the temperature – it was the physical relief of being free of Korn’s presence. He couldn’t wait to be free of his stink. Protecting Avery land was his life’s work. He wondered what he would be prepared to do to keep it.

He sat down in the chair, picked up the copy ofTo Kill A Mockingbirdand placed it on his lap. Absently thumbing the pages, he wondered now at the choice before him. Soon he might have to choose between his good name and his farm. There didn’t seem to be much of a choice to be made. His son, of fourteen years, lay sleeping in Taylor’s old room upstairs. This land was his son’s birthright, and he told himself he would have to do whatever it took to protect it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

EDDIE

It was hard on Andy, bringing him back to court the day after he got out. I wanted more time for him to settle, so we could talk more easily, but the court had made its demands. At least this time Andy was in a decent set of clothes. New ones. Well, almost new. Using her savings, Patricia had bought Andy a suit from a second-hand store. It would have fitted him once, before he was arrested. Now it looked like two Andy’s could live in that suit. The shirt wasn’t much better. It looked like Andy’s neck was a brush pole sticking out from the collar.

‘Now, don’t you look fine,’ said Patricia.

Andy sat nervously in front of her, at the defense table. He turned around, gave her the thumbs up. He knew she had spent her last dime on this get-up, and he wasn’t about to taint that for her. It was Patricia’s way of helping. She made sure Andy looked well for court. Like the decent young man he really was.

Patricia sat in the front row of the gallery. There weren’t too many people in the courtroom that day. Some reporters, some interested citizens in white tees and beige chinos including Brian Denvir, this time without his AR-15. The father of the victim was in court. Kate pointed him out to me, discreetly. He wore a blue button-down shirt and black pants, and his face told a story of great pain that no one would want to bear. He caught my eye, stared.

I nodded, but didn’t smile.

The pain that boiled behind his eyes turned into something else and aimed it in my direction. Now there’s a man who would stand on my throat given half a chance. It was hard to blame him. He’d been told by law enforcement that Andy Dubois killed his little girl, and no matter what happened in the courtroom, that thought might never change.

At the defense table I had Harry on my left, Kate on my right. Andy sat beside Harry, who was taking great care with the kid. Harry never had children, but the affection he showed for this young man made me think Harry might have regretted it.

Kate was ready with a folder full of notes on potential jurors. I’d flicked through it that morning, after a sleepless night. It was good work. Better than I could do.

Korn was already at the prosecution table, a few assistants beside him. I looked around the court, but I didn’t see the sheriff. The judge, Chandler, entered the court and we stood to attention. The judge announced that this was thevoir direhearing for jury selection in the case of Sunville County v Dubois.

‘There are over one hundred prospective jurors waiting in the wings, counselors. I expect you both to work fast. In my court, I make the ruling on death qualification, and I don’t need you to spend more than five minutes with a juror before I make up my mind. Is that clear, Mr. Flynn?’ said the judge.

I nodded.

This was my first death-penalty case, but I knew the pitfalls already. In this town, it didn’t much matter who was sitting on that jury. None were likely to be open to the prospect that Andy might be innocent until proven guilty. And there was another problem – jury selection in a death-penalty case was different to any other jury selection process in the criminal justice system.

In a capital-murder case, the jury has to be ‘death-qualified’. They have to be willing to impose the death penalty if the defendant is convicted. The questions jurors are asked in these cases tend to be about whether they would impose the death penalty, or whether they would never impose such a sentence even if the defendant was guilty. This skews the case in favor of the prosecution right away. Most women, minority groups, Catholics, and liberal-minded people are opposed to the death penalty and would never bring home such a sentence, even if they were to find someone guilty. This means they don’t get to serve on juries in capital-murder cases. The consequence is most death-qualified juries have little racial diversity, and it’s a majority of white, Protestant, male Old-Testament dudes who would just as soon take the defendant out into their backyard and shoot them in the head before a word is spoken in court.

The fact is a death-qualified jury is more likely to convict. Period.

And considering the question they are most asked at the start is whether they would pass a death sentence, this sends a message to even unbiased jurors that eventually they are gonna have to consider imposing that sentence. So the jury is not thinking about whether the prosecution has proven its case, all they’re thinking about is if can they kill the defendant. The effect is a cloud of guilt that haunts the defendant from jury selection to verdict.

Andy had the worst case stacked against him, on all fronts. And there didn’t seem to be too much we could do about it.

‘Remember,’ said Kate, pointing to a list of names she’d written down, ‘we’ve got to bump these jurors no matter what.’

Kate had been through the answers to the jury questionnaires that had been completed in advance. She had picked out twenty-five jurors that we had to avoid, based on their answers.

The judge called in fifteen potential jurors and gave them an introduction to the process. To cut through the ‘bull’, as Judge Chandler put it, he asked if any of them felt so strongly against the death penalty that they would never impose it. Four reasonable citizens of Sunville County raised their hands, and they were summarily dismissed.

He began probing the remaining eleven more closely on the question, and another five were jettisoned.

‘We may as well not be here at all,’ said Harry as Chandler dismissed another juror.

I was surprised that he’d gotten rid of so many jurors already. Historically, the death penalty was favored by the country as a whole. The population of the United States has been polled about the death penalty every year since the late 1930s. The very first year that a majority of Americans said they were against the death penalty was in the 2019 poll. For ninety or so years, most Americans thought executing their fellow citizens was a good idea.

Four p.m., and ten jurors were on the stand. Two more were required. We had used all of our ten pre-emptory challenges, which allowed us to kick jurors without any reason being stated. We could still challenge for cause, but that was going to be tough in front of Chandler. Kate was on her feet, questioning a dairy farmer called Taylor Avery.

‘You have read news articles on this case?’ asked Kate.

‘That’s correct, ma’am.’

‘You have watched news reports on the case?’