The Runaway Jury (42 page)

“You do that. I’ll read about it in the newspapers.”

They didn’t finish their drinks. Cleve again left early, but this time Derrick did not chase him.

THE PARADE of beauties continued Thursday afternoon as Cable put on the stand Dr. Myra Sprawling-Goode, a black professor and researcher at Rutgers who turned every head in the depraved courtroom as she presented herself for testimony. She was almost six feet tall, as striking and slender and well dressed as the last witness. Her creamy
light brown skin creased perfectly as she smiled at the jurors, a smile that lingered on Lonnie Shaver, who actually smiled back.

Cable had an unlimited budget when he began his search for experts, so he was not compelled to use people who weren’t sharp and glib and able to connect with average folk. He had videotaped Dr. Sprawling-Goode twice before he hired her, then once during her deposition in Rohr’s office. Like all his witnesses, she had spent two days getting grilled in a mock courtroom setting a month before the trial began. She crossed her legs and the courtroom took a collective deep breath.

She was a professor of marketing with two doctorates and impressive credentials, no surprise. She’d spent eight years in advertising on Madison Avenue after she had completed her education, then returned to academia, where she belonged. Her field of expertise was consumer advertising, a subject she taught at the graduate level and one she researched continually. Her purpose at the trial soon became clear. A cynic might have claimed she was there to look pretty, to connect with Lonnie Shaver and Loreen Duke and Angel Weese, to make them proud that a fellow African-American was perfectly capable of projecting expert opinions in this crucial trial.

She was actually there because of Fitch. Six years earlier, after a scare in New Jersey in which a jury stayed out three days before returning with a defense verdict, Fitch had hatched the plan to find an attractive female researcher, preferably at a reputable university, to take a chunk of grant money and study cigarette advertising and its effects on teenagers. The parameters of the project would be vaguely defined by the source of the money, and
Fitch was hoping the study would one day be useful in a trial.

Dr. Sprawling-Goode had never heard of Rankin Fitch. She had received an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar grant from the Consumer Product Institute, an obscure and previously unheard of think tank in Ottawa which existed, it claimed, to study the marketing trends of thousands of consumer products. She knew little about the Consumer Product Institute. Neither did Rohr. He and his investigators had been digging for two years. It was very private, protected to some degree by Canadian law, and apparently funded by large consumer product companies, none of which appeared to be cigarette manufacturers.

Her findings were contained in a handsome, bound, two-inch-thick report, which Cable got admitted into evidence. It joined a stack of other exhibits as an official piece of the record. Exhibit number eighty-four, to be exact, adding to the twenty thousand or so pages already in evidence and expected to be reviewed by the jury during deliberations.

After the thorough and efficient setup, her findings were succinct and unsurprising. With certain clearly defined and obvious exceptions, all advertising for consumer products is aimed at young adults. Cars, toothpaste, soap, cereal, beer, soft drinks, apparel, cologne—all of the most heavily advertised products have young adults as their target audience. The same is true for cigarettes. Sure, they are portrayed as the products of choice of the thin and beautiful, the active and carefree, the rich and glamorous. But so are countless other products.

She then ticked off a list of specifics, starting with
automobiles. When was the last time you saw a TV ad for a sports car with a fat fifty-year-old man behind the wheel? Or a mini-van driven by an obese housewife with six kids and a dirty dog hanging out the windows? Never happens. Beer? You got ten guys sitting in a den watching the Super Bowl. Most have hair, strong chins, perfect jeans, and flat stomachs. This is not reality, but it’s successful advertising.

Her testimony became quite humorous as she went through her list. Toothpaste? Ever see an ugly person with ugly teeth grinning at you through the TV? Of course not. They all have perfect teeth. Even in the acne commercials the troubled teens have only a pimple or two.

She smiled easily and even giggled at times at her own comments. The jury smiled along with her. Her point found its mark repeatedly. If successful advertising depends on targeting young adults, why shouldn’t tobacco companies be allowed to do it?

She stopped smiling when Cable moved her to the issue of targeting kids. She and her research team had found no evidence of this, and they had studied thousands of tobacco ads over the past forty years. They had watched, studied, and cataloged every cigarette ad used during the TV days. And she noted, almost in an aside, that smoking had increased since such ads were banned from TV. She had spent almost two years searching for evidence that tobacco companies target teens, because she had started the project with this unfounded bias. But it simply wasn’t true.

In her opinion, the only way to prevent kids from being influenced by cigarette ads was to ban all of them—billboards, buses, newspapers, magazines,
coupons. And, in her opinion, this would do nothing to slow tobacco sales. It would have no impact whatsoever on underage smoking.

Cable thanked her as if she were a volunteer. She’d already been paid sixty thousand dollars to testify, and would send a bill for another fifteen. Rohr, who was anything but a gentleman, knew the pitfalls of attacking such a pretty lady in the Deep South. He delicately probed instead. He had lots of questions about the Consumer Product Institute, and the eight hundred thousand dollars it had paid for this study. She told him everything she knew. It was an academic body established to study trends and formulate policy. It was funded by private industry.

“Any tobacco companies?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Any subsidiaries of tobacco companies?”

“I’m not sure.”

He asked her about companies related to tobacco companies, parent companies, sister companies, and divisions and conglomerates, and she knew nothing.

She knew nothing because that was the way Fitch had planned it.

CLAIRE’S TRAIL took an unexpected turn Thursday morning. The ex-boyfriend of a friend of Claire’s took a thousand dollars in cash and said his ex-girlfriend was now in Greenwich Village working as a waitress while aspiring to do serious work in soap operas. His ex-girlfriend and Claire had worked together at Mulligan’s and allegedly had been close friends. Swanson flew to New York, arrived late Thursday afternoon, and took a cab to a small hotel
in SoHo where he paid cash for one night and started making calls. He found Beverly at work in a pizzeria. She answered the phone in a hurry.

“Is this Beverly Monk?” Swanson asked, in his best imitation of Nicholas Easter. He’d listened to his recorded voice many times.

“It is. Who is this?”

“The Beverly Monk who once worked at Mulligan’s in Lawrence?”

A pause, then, “Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Jeff Kerr, Beverly. It’s been a long time.” Swanson and Fitch were gambling that after Claire and Jeff left Lawrence they had not kept in touch with Beverly.

“Who?” she asked, and Swanson was relieved.

“Jeff Kerr. You know, I went with Claire. I was a law student.”

“Oh yeah,” she said as if maybe she remembered him and maybe she didn’t.

“Look, I’m in the city, and I was wondering if you’ve heard from Claire recently.”

“I don’t understand,” she said slowly, obviously trying to place the name with the face and figure out who was who and why was he here.

“Yeah, it’s a long story, but Claire and I split six months ago. I’m sorta looking for her.”

“I haven’t talked to Claire in four years.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Look, I’m real busy. Maybe some other time.”

“Sure.” Swanson hung up and called Fitch. They decided it was worth the risk to approach Beverly Monk, with cash, and ask about Claire. If she hadn’t talked to her in four years, it would be impossible for her to quickly find Marlee and report the contact.
Swanson would follow her, and wait until tomorrow.

EACH JURY CONSULTANT was required by Fitch to prepare a one-page report at the close of trial each day. One page, double-spaced, straightforward, with no words beyond four syllables and setting forth in clear language that expert’s impressions of the day’s witnesses and how their testimony was received by the jury. Fitch demanded honest opinions, and had berated his experts before when the language was too sugary. He insisted on pessimism. The reports were due on his desk precisely one hour after Judge Harkin recessed for the day.

Wednesday’s reports on Jankle were mixed to bad, but Thursday’s summaries of Dr. Denise McQuade and Dr. Myra Sprawling-Goode were nothing short of magnificent. Aside from brightening up a drab courtroom packed with boring men in dull suits, both women had performed well on the stand. The jurors paid attention, and seemed to believe what they heard. Especially the men.

Still, Fitch was not consoled. He had never felt worse at this point in a trial. The defense had lost one of its most sympathetic jurors with the exit of Herrera. The New York financial press had suddenly declared the defense to be on the ropes and was openly concerned about a plaintiff’s verdict. Barker’s column in
Mogul
was the week’s hottest topic. Jankle had been a disaster. Luther Vandemeer of Trellco, the smartest and most influential of the Big Four CEO’s, had called with harsh words during lunch. The jury was sequestered, and the longer the trial dragged on, the more blame the jurors would heap upon the party now calling the witnesses.

* * *

THE TENTH NIGHT of sequestration passed without incident. No wayward lovers. No unauthorized trips to casinos. No spontaneous yoga at full volume. Herrera was missed by no one. He had packed in minutes and left, telling the Sheriff repeatedly he was being framed and vowing to get to the bottom of it.

An impromptu checkers tournament began in the dining room after dinner. Herman had a braille board with numbered spaces, and the night before, he’d whipped Jerry eleven straight games. Challenges were issued, and Herman’s wife brought his board to the room and a crowd gathered. In less than an hour, he took three straight from Nicholas, three more from Jerry, three from Henry Vu, who’d never played the game, three straight from Willis, and was about to play Jerry again, this time for a small wager, when Loreen Duke entered the room in search of another dessert. She’d played the game as a child with her father. When she beat Herman in the first game, there was not the slightest trace of sympathy for the blind man. They played until curfew.

Phillip Savelle stayed in his room, as usual. He spoke occasionally during meals at the motel and during coffee breaks in the jury room, but he was perfectly content to keep his nose in a book and ignore everyone.

Nicholas had tried twice to reach him, to no avail. He would not suffer small talk, and wanted no one to know anything about him.

Thirty-one

A
fter almost twenty years of shrimping, Henry Vu seldom slept past four-thirty. He got his hot tea early on Friday, and with the Colonel gone he sat alone at the table and scanned a newspaper. Nicholas soon joined him. As he often did, Nicholas hurried through the pleasantries and asked about Vu’s daughter at Harvard. She was the source of immense pride, and Henry’s eyes danced when he told of her last letter.

Others came and went. The conversation turned to Vietnam and the war. Nicholas confided in Henry for the first time that his father had been killed there in 1972. It wasn’t true, but Henry was deeply touched by the story. Then, when they were alone, Nicholas asked, “So what do you think about this trial?”

Henry took a long drink of heavily creamed tea, and licked his lips. “Is it okay to talk about it?”

“Sure. It’s just me and you. Everybody’s talking,
Henry. That’s the nature of a jury. Everybody but Herman.”

“What does everybody else think?”

“I think most of us have an open mind. The most important thing is that we stick together. It’s crucial that this jury reach a verdict, preferably unanimous, but at least a vote of nine to three one way or the other. A hung jury would be disastrous.”

Henry took another drink and pondered this. He understood English perfectly, could speak it well though with an accent, but like most laymen, natives and immigrants alike, had little grasp of the law. “Why?” he asked. He trusted Nicholas, as did virtually all the jurors, because Nicholas had studied the law and seemed incredibly adept at comprehending facts and issues the rest of them missed.

“Very simple. This is the mother of all tobacco trials—Gettysburg, Iwo Jima, Armageddon. This is where the two sides have met to unload their heaviest ammo. There’s gotta be a winner, and there’s gotta be a loser. Clear and decisive. The issue of whether tobacco companies are to be held liable for cigarettes has to be settled right here. By us. We’ve been chosen, and it’s up to us to reach a verdict.”

“I see,” Henry said, nodding, still confused.

“The worst thing we can do is hang ourselves, split down the middle and have a mistrial declared.”

“Why would that be so bad?”

“Because it’s a cop-out. We’d simply be passing the buck to the next jury. If we get hung up and go home, it’ll cost each side millions of dollars because they’ll have to come back in two years and replay the whole thing. Same judge, same lawyers, same witnesses, everything will be the same but the jury. We will, in effect, be saying that we didn’t have enough
sense to reach a decision, but the next jury from Harrison County will be smarter.”

Henry leaned to his right a bit, in the direction of Nicholas. “What’re you gonna do?” he asked, just as Millie Dupree and Mrs. Gladys Card entered giggling and went for the coffee. They chatted with the guys for a moment, then left to watch Katie on the “Today Show.” They just loved Katie.