Defending Jacob(78)
When the judge finally did take the bench a little before ten, we were stiff from sitting.
Everyone stood at Ernie’s recital of the familiar “Oyez, oyez, oyez, the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is now in session,” and Jacob fidgeted right through to the end: “All ye having business before this court come forward and ye shall be heard.” His mother and I both put a hand on Jacob’s back to reassure him.
The case was called, Jonathan gestured to Jacob, and the two of them crossed the bar and took their seats at the defense table, as they would every morning for the next two weeks.
This would be Laurie’s view of the entire trial. From the front row of the gallery benches, she would sit impassively for hour after hour, day after day, staring at the back of Jacob’s head. Poised on that bench, my wife looked very pale and thin among the spectators, as if Jacob’s case was a cancer that she had to endure, a physical struggle. And yet, no matter how she withered, I could not help seeing in Laurie the ghost of her younger self, the teenaged girl with a lovely, full, heart-shaped face. I have an idea that this is what enduring love really means. Your memories of a girl at seventeen become as real and vivid as the middle-aged woman sitting in front of you. It is a happy sort of double vision, this seeing and remembering. To be seen this way is to be known.
Laurie was miserable sitting there. The parents of young defendants have been consigned to a peculiar purgatory in these trials. We were expected to be present but silent. We were implicated in Jacob’s crime as both victims and perpetrators. We were pitied, since we had done nothing wrong. We had just been unlucky, lost the pregnancy lottery, and been stuck with a rogue child. Sperm + egg = murderer—something like that. Can’t be helped. At the same time we were despised: somebody had to be responsible for Jacob, and we had created the boy and raised him—we must have done something wrong. Even worse, now we had the gall to support the killer; we actually wanted to see him get away with it, which only confirmed our antisocial nature, our bone-deep badness. Of course, the public view of us was so contradictory and jumped-up with emotion that there was no way to answer it, no right way to act. People would think what they wanted, they would imagine for us whatever sinister or suffering interior life they chose. And for the next two weeks Laurie would play her part. She would sit there at the back of the courtroom as still and expressionless as a marble statue. She would watch the back of her son’s head, trying to interpret the tiniest micromovements. She would react to nothing. It did not matter that once she had held that baby boy in her arms and whispered in his ear, “Sh, sh.” At this point, nobody gave a shit.
When he finally took the bench, Judge French scanned the room as the clerk read out the case: “Number oh-eight-dash-four-four-oh-seven, Commonwealth v. Jacob Michael Barber, a single count of murder in the first degree. For the defendant, Jonathan Klein. For the Commonwealth, Assistant District Attorney Neal Logiudice.” The judge’s handsome, grave face settled briefly on each of the players, Jacob, the lawyers, even us, conferring on each a momentary significance while we were in his gaze, which vanished as soon as his eyes swept on.
Over the years I had tried many cases before Judge French, and although I thought he was a bit of an empty suit, I liked him well enough. He had been a football player at Harvard, a defensive lineman. In his senior year he had fallen on a fumble in the end zone against Yale, and this singular brilliant moment had stuck with him. He kept a framed picture of it on his office wall, big Burt French in his crimson and gold uniform lying on his side on the ground, cuddling the precious egg he’d found. I suspect the picture struck me differently than it did Judge French. To me, he was the sort of guy such things happened to. Rich and good-looking and all the rest, no doubt opportunities had always presented themselves like so many footballs lying in his way and he had merely to fall on them, all the while presuming his good fortune was the natural product of his talent. One wonders how a charmed man like him would have been affected by a father like Bloody Billy Barber. All that ease, all that naturalness, all that credulous self-confidence. For years I had studied men like Burt French, despised them, copied them.
“Mr. Klein,” the judge said, slipping on a pair of half-glasses, “any preliminary motions before we begin the voir dire?”
Jonathan stood. “A couple of things, Your Honor. First, the defendant’s father, Andrew Barber, would like to enter an appearance in the case on the defendant’s behalf. With the court’s permission, he is going to second-chair me at the trial.”
Jonathan went to the clerk and handed her the motion, a single sheet announcing that I would be part of the defense team. The clerk handed the sheet to the judge, who frowned at it.
“It’s not really my decision, Mr. Klein, but I’m not sure it’s wise either.”
“It’s the family’s wish,” Jonathan said, distancing himself from the decision.
The judge scribbled his name on the sheet, allowing the motion. “Mr. Barber, you can come forward.”
I came around the bar and sat down at the defense table beside Jacob.
“Anything else?”
“Your Honor, I have filed a motion in limine to exclude scientific evidence based on an alleged genetic predisposition to violence.”
“Yes. I have read your motion and I am inclined to allow it. Do you wish to be heard further before I rule? As I understand it, your position is that the science has not been established and, even if it was, there is no specific evidence of a violent propensity, genetic or otherwise, in this case. Is that the gist of it?”