- Pronouns
- She/Her
Do you not see the two sweeping bone-white things where ears are supposed to be?
Pound the Table | An X-Men Self-Insert
- Thread starter October Daye
- Start date
- Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
I thought those were pigtails.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Unfortunately for Noa, "horns and tail" is one of the worst possible physical differences from baseline human that she could have had.
Why?
Because she's Jewish. And anti-Semitic propaganda classically depicted Jews as devils with horns and tails.
- Location
- Oklahoma
Tis Very sad, and with all the hints getting dropped, going to be even sadder if its true she joins Magneto.
- Location
- USA
I'm under the impression the 'betrayal' is more like her not taking an explicit stand against Magneto, and/or her defending Magneto in court (likely successfully, considering she's still practicing law to some degree of success in that scene?)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Expect Chapter 6 to go up on either Friday or Saturday. I will not be doing any writing today or tomorrow, as today was my final day of prep for the Bar Exam, and tomorrow is the MBE (which is the multiple choice portion). Wednesday is the MEE and MPT, but after that... I AM FREEEEEEE! (assuming I pass. Which I need to wait a substantial amount of time to learn... and there is word that this July bar exam is going to be a fair bit harder than the past 2, which were made easier due to being more in the heart of COVID... FFFFUUUU--)
But come Thursday... I'm not squeezing writing time between study sessions.
But come Thursday... I'm not squeezing writing time between study sessions.
- Location
- Texas
You can do it! You can totally pass this exam!
By the way, have a nice day!
By the way, have a nice day!
Chapter Six
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Pound the Table
Chapter Six
[July 17, 1989]
My trial binders and notebooks were ready. Demonstratives and exhibits were prepared. My typed witness list and exhibit list were formatted properly, free of errors, and ready to submit to the judge. The limousine would pick me up in forty-five minutes so I could get to the courthouse when I wanted, well before anyone other than the clerk staff would arrive, and without having to brave public transportation.
I'd been late to court once (thankfully as second seat) for the utterly absurd reason that I could not push my way off of the subway. Once was enough.
I went to take a sip of my tea when I heard the familiar sound of a newspaper hitting my front door. I gave my mental thanks to the building's staff, waited about thirty seconds, then slid the door open and grabbed the paper. My glamour was already in place, but it was just too early to be polite and sociable. I plopped the paper down on the table before returning to my tea, and—
Huh. There was a special edition with the paper this morning. A separate, eight-page publication, seated atop the paper itself. I picked it up, read the headline and – what in the world?
… I don't know how exactly, but somehow, I just know this is Erik's fault.
"How's the tie?" I asked, not looking up from the papers in front of me.
"I think I got it…" St. John spoke from behind the screen, set up to let him change out of the juvie jumpsuit and into his proper, formal court attire. Moments later, I heard a curse, then the slap of fabric against the wooden screen.
"... damn it."
St. John's parents both shared a look that I couldn't quite decipher, whereas Matt was very pointedly ignoring everything around him as his fingers flowed over the braille documents set before him. I sighed, and stood up from the table to give St. John a hand. It was probably for the best that I was the one to handle this – the boy's parents were already nervous enough, and wondering how he would respond to their protectiveness.
"Here you go." It was the work of practiced motions that I pulled his tie into a double Windsor knot, though it was a little bit crooked. I frowned, and reached up to adjust the knot. Let's see, a little bit more to his right… there we go. "And now the glasses."
"Why the glasses, by the way?" Jonathan asked. "St. John doesn't need them, never has."
"It's a psychological trick." I led St. John to the table with the rest of us, and pulled out the glasses cases I kept in my briefcase. Let's see, which type would work best here… no, rimless gives the wrong look, even only half-rimmed. Maybe… I took out the horn-rimmed glasses and gave them to St. John, who thankfully put them on without much argument. "Decent enough fit. You can take them off for now, just make sure they're on before you go into the courtroom."
St. John took the glasses off immediately, all but tossing them onto the table.
"Trick?" Matt half-asked, half-murmured.
"So, as far as optimal jurors go, we especially want people who can put themselves in your shoes," I told St. John. "As callous as it sounds, we're looking for the kind of person a bully can't help but target: timid, usually small, and especially any jurors who would be an underprivileged minority in a majority-white area." I pulled a map of New York out of my briefcase, and spread it on the table.
"What kind of trick?" Jonathan muttered.
"Much as I would love to have jurors from your neighborhood," I gestured over Brooklyn with a capped pen, "odds are they won't be allowed because there's a chance they know the alleged victims by reputation, or they know of you and your family. We in particular want to keep anybody who lives or works around Central Park or the World Trade Center out – higher socioeconomic status tends to correlate strongly with stronger deeply-held prejudices, and an overall disdain for violence in the first place. As a corollary to that, we're going to try and select for—"
"Ms. Schaefer?" St. John broke in, putting a hand on top of the map. "Um… what's the trick with the glasses?"
"Hm?" The question finally filtered through my focus, and I bit back an embarrassed curse before I could voice it. "Oh, I forgot to explain, didn't I?"
"You did," Matt confirmed.
"Right," I said, brushing a lock of hair back behind my… well, ear (it looked like an ear right now at least), so that I didn't tap my pen on the table. "So, voir-dire is the first time you get to see your jury, and the first time they get to see you. That means your first impression is everything. Regarding criminal defendants, particularly those accused of violent crimes, you want your client to be wearing glasses when the jury first sees them?" I leaned back in my chair for a moment, and surveyed my audience. "Would anybody care to guess why?"
"It's harder to make eye contact with them?" Linda suggested.
"No," I said. "John. You have classmates who wear glasses. If you saw them trying to shrink into their chair, would you expect them to be capable of, say… bludgeoning somebody with a crowbar?"
"What? No!" St. John exclaimed.
"Exactly," I told them. "We tend to see people wearing glasses and assume that they're weaker, harmless, less physically dangerous. There is an immediate disconnect when you try to make the mental leap of 'person in dress clothes and glasses' to 'violent criminal offender'. It's a small thing, but we are going to exploit it for all it's worth."
"What about the rest of what we can do?" Jonathan asked. "Is there anything Linda and I can do to help?"
"I'm very glad you asked," I told them.
For the next twenty minutes, I gave them the rundown. We wanted people from underprivileged or more diverse areas – my own neighborhood, Greenwich Village, was the gold standard here, but most of Queens would also work perfectly well. We wanted to avoid people from wealthier parts of the city, with a very distinct exception: if somebody worked in the Baxter Building, we could assume they were predisposed to think positively of people with powers. The same did not necessarily go for people working at Stark Industries; the Iron Man was, ostensibly, just a man, and the need to use extreme technological prowess to match what St. John was capable of could, in a weird way, create an 'us vs. them' mentality.
What they could do to help came down to one very simple thing: watch whoever I wasn't facing, and look for anything I couldn't catch. Sneers, shrugs, guilty shuffling, etcetera. A question about a Juror A's opinion on Topic X could easily spark a reaction from Juror E. But if I was facing Juror A, I couldn't look at Juror E, and odds were everybody else would also be focused on the actual subject of my line of questioning. There was a lot people would do if they thought you weren't looking at them.
So just outsource your eyes.
"And the most important part." I pulled a very particular pen out of my briefcase and handed it to Matt. "This is the loudest pen I have. Now Matthew, jurors have the same obligation to tell the truth when we ask them questions as a witness on the stand does. However, people lie, especially when prospective jurors have an incentive to make sure they sit jury duty on a publicized case, or if the judge asks them a question and they don't want to disappoint."
"And the pen?" Linda asked as Matt took the pen.
"Do me a favor?" I asked her. "Tell me two truths and a lie, whatever order you want."
"Well…" Linda thought for a moment before answering. "The sky is blue, I grew up in Perth—"
Thunk-dunk.
"Blind people can't catch lies as easily as most, due to not being able to see facial expressions. But it's common knowledge that if you lose one sense, all of the rest become supercharged."
Disproven common knowledge, actually, but they didn't need to know that. But since Matt had supercharged senses…
"Blind people can still catch lies; they just use different methods. We tend to focus on facial expression and body language. Mr. Murdock, though, can pick out small tells in peoples' voices that we don't think to control. And when he does?"
Matt obliged by giving a good thunk-dunk of the pen.
"The prosecution can, of course, try to object if they think he's being disruptive," I explained as I flipped my briefcase closed.
"That said, what's more likely? That he can actually hear when somebody's lying? Or that he's just nervous for his first court case?"
"Good morning, members of the jury pool," Judge Andrews said by way of introduction.
The hundred-plus potential members of our jury were seated in the gallery of the courtroom, in the second rows and those further back. The only people in the first row were the Allerdyces and a few additional staff from the DA's office, on our respective sides of the courtroom, making it obvious who was there for which party.
"My name is Philip Andrews, and I am one of the judges of the New York County Criminal Court. You have been summoned as potential jurors in the case of the People of the State of New York v. S.J. Allerdyce, which is the criminal case of a minor tried as an adult, related to the assault of four persons on May 8, 1989: Micah Samuelson, James Boothe, Theodore Nielson, and Patrick MacEahern.
"A person charged with a crime has a right to a fair trial before a fair and impartial judge, and a fair and impartial jury. In order to ensure the selection of a properly fair and impartial jury, the law provides that the court and the attorneys for both sides may ask questions of all prospective jurors. When answering these questions, you shall be under oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
"Now, after the questioning is complete, each attorney will be allowed to excuse a certain number of you, and I may choose to excuse you for what is called 'cause'; that is to say that there is reason to believe facts you may not be privy to will impact your ability to remain impartial. Rest assured that being excused is not a strike against you, and there is no shame in being excused. I also ask that you not take any offense at any questions asked of you. While we respect all of your rights to privacy, there are things the court must know, about you as people, the lives you've led, and the opinions you hold, that might affect your ability to serve on this jury.
"The defendant, St. John Allerdyce," and here I had to hide a scowl as the judge deliberately mispronounced St. John's name – he pronounced it "Saint John" instead of "Sinjin" – again, "has been charged with one count of assault in the first degree, and three counts of assault in the second degree. Keep in mind, however, that these charges are not static, and can be added to or subtracted from. For these charges, the defendant has entered a plea of Not Guilty, which is a denial of all material allegations within the charges.
"Now, as I have already asked everybody else to introduce themselves, I would first like to ask anybody present in the jury pool that knows any of the parties present on either side of the aisle to please raise their hand. This can include knowing them personally or simply by reputation."
Rather than turn around, I reached into my briefcase to pull out my makeup compact, and flipped it open to look at the jury pool. No hands went up.
"Next," Judge Andrews continued, "I believe all of you have been furnished with both the prosecution's and defense's witness lists. If you know personally or know of any of the people on that list, please raise your hands."
Once again, all hands stayed down.
"Very well. Now, keep in mind: one thing neither attorney is allowed to do is educate you on the law. Despite this, I want all of you to be aware of some basic principles that apply to all criminal cases, and I want you to keep them in mind as you answer the questions."
Judge Andrews proceeded to speak to the jury pool, going through what was, ostensibly legal boilerplate: he detailed what the jurors needed to know, what they were to do, and what they were not to do.
"Now, with the exception of potential jurors one through twelve, we will have you wait in another courtroom. If you are a smoker, please take the opportunity to smoke now, as this courtroom is a designated no-smoking location for the duration of this specific trial. With that, I will ask jurors thirteen through one-hundred eight to please follow the deputy at the back of the courtroom."
Even as prospective jurors stood up and filed out, they murmured to each other about what they'd just heard. The one thing I could pick up, a refrain repeated again and again, was confusion as to why this courtroom was nonsmoking.
"Please tell me you can pick a smoker out of a crowd," I whispered to Matt. He choked back a snort.
"There's fifty-seven of them in the jury pool," he murmured back to me.
That was… not good news.
"Jurors one through twelve, we're going to have you all come up to the jury box for questioning. The bailiff is standing just in front of the bar of the court, he will guide you up."
The twelve of them milled to the jury box, and there was a bit of brief jockeying for positions, but all twelve of them took their seats a moment later. Judge Andrews swore them in, with the full 'truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth' means of putting it. Following that was a series of perfunctory questions: had they read any articles about this case since receiving their summons for jury duty, did they know anybody on the witness list, did they understand the English language well enough to understand everything being said, etcetera.
"Now at this time, I will be turning things over to Ms. Schaefer, attorney for the defendant. She's going to ask you some questions of her own, and while this process often ends up sounding like a conversation, I'd like everybody to wait until she finishes asking a question before trying to answer. Furthermore, for group answers mandating more than a simple raised hand to indicate yes or no, please answer in order of your jury numbers. Now Ms. Schaefer. You're up."
"Thank you, your Honor." I stood up from counsel's table and entered the well of the court, then stood before this first segment of the jury pool.
My initial judgment on the jury pool was… jurors six through ten needed to go. The five of them were older caucasian males in their fifties and sixties, all of whom were wearing sufficiently nice suits in good enough condition that I could assume they owned multiples. Two of them wore Rolexes, one had what was probably a Patek Philippe (if I still knew my watches, at least), and the other two were leering at me in a fashion that boded ill for the likelihood of them listening to what I had to say as opposed to just staring at my chest or butt.
The problem here was that I had 108 candidates to pick through, and only twenty-one peremptory strikes – fifteen for the main jury, and six for alternates. So I just needed a reason to get rid of the ones I didn't like.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you very much for your time today." I made sure to stand several feet back from the jury box, such that nobody had to look overly far down to see me, and so I didn't have to look up to make eye contact with everybody's elevated positions. "Before I address you as individuals, there are a few more general questions that I would like to ask. These are going to be yes-or-no questions; if the answer is yes, please raise your hand; if the answer is no, you do not need to do anything."
I paced to the left, putting myself in between the judge and the jury. This was, again, a small psychological trick: if they had to look at Judge Andrews, who had just put everybody under oath, they would feel more compelled to answer these questions honestly. For the individual questions, though, I wanted them looking only at me.
"Have any of you had a bad experience or encounter with a mutant?" One hand flew up almost immediately – juror two, an older hispanic woman.
I shared a look with the DA, and he stood up from his chair before I could ask.
"Let the record show that juror number two has raised her hand," I said for the stenographer's benefit. "Sidebar, your Honor?"
Judge Andrews waved us up, and when we got up there, I spoke in hushed tones.
"Your Honor, given the answer we just received, it's likely that this juror will be unable to maintain an unbiased perspective on the case at hand. Her own past experience introduces prejudice that might cause her to unfairly weight evidence against my client, simply because she conflates the victims' experiences with her own. Given this, the defense moves to strike this juror for cause."
"Any counter-argument?" Judge Andrews asked the DA.
"None, your Honor," he said. "The people see no reason to oppose the defense's argument here."
"That settles that," he said, and waved us off. Young walked back behind counsel's table on the right side of the courtroom, while I resumed my place in the well of the court. "Juror number two, the Court would like to thank you for your time. You are excused; bailiff, please escort her from the courtroom." Once she was escorted out, I continued.
"Do any of you live or work in Brooklyn?"
Four hands went up.
"Let the record reflect that jurors… three, six, eight, and twelve have all raised their hands in response to the question. Sidebar?" I asked. Judge Andrews waved us both up.
And once again, both Lou Young and I went forward for a sidebar. There wasn't even any need for discussion this time, as the judge waved us both away before I could even make my argument. But the procedure must be observed, even though it was an utterly wasted sidebar.
"Juror number three, six, eight, and twelve, the Court would like to thank you for your time. You are all excused; please follow the bailiff out of the courtroom."
Welcome to one of the reasons jury selection could take so long. See, when jury selection occurs, there are two ways to remove a potential juror from the pool: either you just outright choose to not have them on your jury, or you find a reason that they cannot serve on this specific jury. The former is known as a peremptory strike; these are essentially 'I don't want this person here', and can be used regardless of reason.
If a juror was giving you in particular the stink-eye? You can get them out. If they happen to be the type of person who wouldn't be receptive to your argument, such as someone from a perfect marriage being particularly dense over allegations of domestic violence. Peremptory strikes are a very powerful tool, but there is a limit to how many you get, otherwise no jury trial would ever actually go through.
Then there is the latter, more common method: striking for cause. When you strike somebody for cause, it is because something about that juror would bias them against either party in a case. Whether it be due to their occupation, background, demographic, personal history, or any number of other things, this person cannot serve on the jury. Jurors are meant to be an unbiased panel, listening only to the facts, perfectly objective. Obviously, this is utterly ridiculous.
But we try to get as close as possible, and one of the ways we did that was striking for cause.
The process, though, is a bit of a hassle. Whenever you want to strike somebody for cause, you ask the judge for a sidebar, and call up the other attorney to join you. The side putting forth the challenge offers their argument as to why the juror cannot remain unbiased, and then the other side gets to debate the issue. A lot of these arguments are not so cut-and-dry as the one I'd just offered regarding juror number two, and these side bars can last several minutes of back and forth between both parties.
Once it was said and done though, either the judge excused the juror, or they didn't. The process was slow, and tedious, but trust me when I say it was probably the best option.
This whole rigamarole went on for several questions more, during which I managed to excuse one more of the older men, juror seven, for cause… because he was dumb enough to rip an eight-ball of cocaine from a napkin while sitting in the jury box. Nobody believed him that it was a sneeze.
I will never understand finance people.
Regardless, this left me with two more jurors, jurors nine and ten, that I needed to eliminate. Though I was also worried about juror eleven: a middle-aged woman who reminded me of the worst examples of what I called the 'Midwestern country club mentality'. They were the type who were very quick to adopt an 'us vs. them' mindset at the drop of a hat, based purely on the first shared quality they could come up with.
Jurors one, four, five, nine, ten, and eleven remained from this first pool. Now that group questions were done, it was time to go in order.
"Juror number one." I moved to the right side of the jury box, forcing everybody to look away from the judge in order to follow me. Juror number one was a young African-American man, probably in his early to mid 20s, wearing a dark-blue button-up shirt over a gray vest. "Where in New York are you from?"
"I'm from Harlem, ma'am," he said, looking me straight in the eye. "Lived there my whole life, ma'am."
Okay, Harlem. The Hulk's rampage had happened in 1974, meaning… it's likely the juror would remember it, at least somewhat.
"Harlem, Harlem," I started, pacing a bit closer to the jury box. "That's where the Hulk rampaged, isn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am," he replied. "Was scary as hell when it happened."
"The Hulk is now a member of the Avengers. Given what he did in Harlem, what's your take on that?"
"What went down in Harlem weren't only his fault," juror number one said. "What was he supposed to do, just stand there an' take it?"
No sound of a pen. Even just with this small amount of questions asked, I could already tell: this juror was absolutely perfect.
Which meant he would probably be eliminated by one of the prosecution's peremptory strikes. Of course.
"This juror is acceptable to the defense, Your Honor."
And with that, I moved on to the next one.
Juror number four was a Chinese woman, around my age, dressed in a smart pantsuit (which was drawing fairly continuous looks of disdain from juror eleven), and held herself with a smooth, easy confidence. As I questioned her, I couldn't quite place what was familiar about her.
It was only as she answered my third question that I remembered where I recognized her from: the trivia night hall of fame at Stonewall. She'd been banned from participating in the bar's trivia contests again, after the one time she managed to answer five back-to-back questions without letting the question finish.
The only reason I didn't have to strike her was that the two of us had never actually spoken, for which I was counting my lucky stars. I wanted this woman on my jury.
With no objections, I moved on to the next one.
Juror number five was an Italian plumber from the Bronx. I was sorely, sorely tempted to ask if he had a brother named Mario or Luigi, but that would be wasting both my time and the court's, so I refrained. Similarly to the woman before him, I couldn't find any cause to strike, and didn't have enough information to know whether he needed a peremptory strike. Which meant I had to wait until I knew more.
"Juror number nine." I approached the second to last of this batch of 'problem' jurors: the last of the older men, somewhere in his fifties, whose eyes probably hadn't been on my face the entire time I'd been before the potential jurors. "Where in New York do you live?"
"I have a small, twenty-five hundred square foot condominium in Central Park East," he said, his voice absolutely dripping with the same type of faux-humility that would consider a ten-million dollar loan a pittance.
"Hmm." I took a step towards the jury box. "Nice neighborhood, then."
"Safe neighborhood, more like," he said, a hand coming up to adjust his tie. "That's why I picked it over NoHo."
That… that was an intriguing thread. "Interesting priority. Tell me, have you ever been the victim of a crime?"
"I can safely say that no, I haven't," he said.
Thunk-dunk.
"Hmm." I stalked closer, crossing my arms under my chest, and followed his eyes. "Juror number nine. What do you consider a crime?"
"Burglary, murder, that kind of stuff," he answered, crossing his arms. "Crooks are a violent sort. Can't trust them."
"And what about white collar crimes?" I asked. "Tax evasion? Embezzlement? Fraud?"
Thunk-dunk.
The juror did not answer.
"Juror number nine, you swore an oath, under penalty of perjury, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," I said, stepping closer until I was inches from the jury box. "Now, you have an opportunity to revisit your past answer and tell the truth, absolving you of any falsehood. Have you ever been the victim of a crime?"
And still, he remained silent. His jaw tightened, and I could see his knuckles going white against the arms of the chair. Of course, I thought to myself, he wouldn't want to say anything. If he was able to afford that many square feet over Central Park, he had to be wealthy, and the way he flaunted his wealth told me he was a new money finance type.
And per Matt's message, he'd been a victim of fraud. Wire fraud? Securities fraud? The specifics didn't matter, not really.
"Sidebar, your Honor?"
The DA and I both approached the bench once we were given permission.
"I don't think we need to hear anything further from this juror to know that he should be stricken for cause," I told the judge.
"Jury questionnaire says he's a hedge fund manager," Judge Andrews said, flipping through the papers on the bench. "While your line of questioning and his response hints that he likely needs to take the Fifth, that is not the scope of this trial. And I do not want a juror willing to lie under oath for personal gain in my courtroom." The two of us left the bench, and again resumed our positions. "The Court would like to thank and excuse juror number nine. Bailiff, if you would."
With that, I was down to two.
Despite all of my best efforts, though, juror ten would not crack. He was just as problematic as the other finance-guy jurors before him, but I could not find a reason to strike him for cause. What was worse, though, is that juror eleven worried me. The looks she sent my way meant that I was stuck making a decision, one that I would rather not have had to make this soon into jury selection.
It was not a decision I wanted to make… but I had to face facts. I did not need a full jury of perfect jurors. All I needed was three, preferably four.
"The defense has no objections to these remaining jurors, your Honor," I told Judge Andrews. Jurors one, four, five, ten, and eleven remained.
"Very well, please take your seat." Judge Andrews turned towards the prosecution's table. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is now the District Attorney's turn to ask questions of you. DA Young, the jury is yours."
"Thank you, your Honor."
Lou Young stood up, buttoning his jacket as he did, and put his hands in his pockets as he strode up to the jury. He paced back and forth before the jury box a couple of times, eyes flitting between each of the five remaining prospective jurors individually. I was watching facial expressions very carefully, and saw juror one, the juror I wanted most to stay, frown as the prosecutor's eyes glided past him.
"Now I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand if the answer is yes – and keep in mind, you are still under oath." Lou Young stopped, angled so that the jury had to look at both him and the judge, like I had. "Is anybody here in the jury a mutant?"
"Objection!" I stood quickly, my chair scraping on the floor beneath me as I pushed it back. "Your Honor—"
"On what grounds, Ms. Schaefer?" Judge Andrews asked, leaning forward from his seat on the bench.
"Sir, under the Supreme Court's ruling in Batson v. Kentucky, four-seventy-six U.S. seventy-nine, the prosecution's question is a clear attempt to violate my client's Fourteenth Amendment rights under the Equal Protection Clause," I said.
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) was, as of the moment, a still-new ruling. It was a landmark case, wherein the Supreme Court ruled that the prosecution could not use its peremptory strikes to remove all members of a jury that shared an ethnicity with the defendant. The Supreme Court ruled that, although a defendant was not entitled to have members of their race as part of the jury, it undermined the whole point of the system to allow prosecutors to use their strikes to cherry pick members of a defendant's minority out of the jury in an attempt to stack the deck against them.
The original case arose when a prosecutor used his peremptory strikes to remove all of the black jurors from the pool, and an all-white jury convicted a black defendant. He challenged under both the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, and prevailed under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Now, I wasn't stupid, and neither was Lou Young. If he tried to strike a mutant juror for cause, I would argue that there are just as many reasons for a mutant to look down on other mutants, and cite an article from a year ago about a clash in Westchester, New York, wherein an open mutant attacked another, 'closeted' mutant, outing them and resulting in some serious property damage. But even though he knew the challenge would fail, the question would still have been answered.
And that left the opportunity to use a peremptory strike on the table.
"The prosecution's question clearly goes to a matter that suggests an approach identical to that under which the Fourteenth Amendment challenge in Batson arose," I continued.
"You know, I re-read that ruling myself just this morning, Ms. Schaefer," Judge Andrews began. "And Justice Powell's ruling was quite specific: the prosecution cannot exclude potential jurors solely based on their race, which is defined as their ethnic status. Being a mutant is not an ethnicity, in the same way that sexual deviancy is not an ethnicity." My jaw tightened at the implied insult, but I was careful to say nothing. "Perhaps the spirit of the text would allow your interpretation to succeed, but we are here to try a case, Ms. Schaefer, not write new law. Your objection is denied."
"Thank you, your Honor," the DA said, turning back to the jury box. "Now, I'm going to repeat my question. Is anybody in the jury pool a mutant?"
"Rest assured," Judge Andrews spoke up here, "that any confidential information revealed during the jury selection process does not leave the courtroom. Anybody attempting to disseminate private information shared during jury selection will be subject to extreme fines, lawsuits from the person whose secrets they thought to share, and as many charges of contempt of court as I think I can get to stick. I believe my record was twenty-three," he said, playing with the gavel in his hand. "So I will reiterate the prosecution's question for him. Members of the jury, you are under oath. If you are a mutant, raise your hand."
Juror number one's hand raised.
I slammed a fist against my leg.
"Thank you for your honesty," Lou Young said. "Let the record show that juror number one has raised his hand. Your Honor, at this time the prosecution would like to use one of its peremptory challenges. We ask that juror number one be excused from the jury."
"So entered," Judge Andrews said. "Juror number one, the Court would like to thank you for your time. You are excused, and the bailiff shall escort you out." The bailiff came up and took my dream juror out, with Lou Young ostensibly turning to follow his back, but instead giving me a victorious smirk that I so dearly wanted to rip off his face. "DA Young, the jury is yours."
"Of course, your Honor." He turned to the jury. "In a similar vein to the last question, is anybody here friends or family with a mutant?"
No hands went up. Some part of me thought this was a blessed relief, but at the same time, it meant that jurors ten and eleven were likely here to stay.
"Well if that's the case." Lou Young took two steps forward. "Now, are there any practicing homosexuals in the jury box?"
"Objection!" I rushed to my feet, the sharp click of my heels cracking on the courtroom floor.
Once I was on my feet, though, I floundered for a half second. I couldn't try a Batson challenge again; if the last one hadn't worked for a trait we knew a person was born with, there was no way it would work for a perceived choice, even if I knew it wasn't!
All I had to work with was the reasons you wouldn't ask a witness something. Think, Noa… shit, I was running a blank. Um…
"Your Honor…"
Okay, in the absence of anything else, I had to use a fallback: Rule 403.
"Your Honor, regardless of any perceived connection between minority communities, the prosecution's line of questioning has no relevance upon the charges at hand, the defendant's status, or anything else that may be useful to determining the impartiality of the jurors!"
"Your Honor." Lou Young turned to the judge and lowered his arms into a loose spread. "The People are just trying to get to points on which a potential juror's solidarity may outweigh their rationality. After all, we remember the lengths to which protesters went during the Draft, the black vote movement, and so many others, all to protect their fellow man, and all at great cost to themselves."
"I do remember," the judge said.
Shit. Young had gotten away with the previous question on grounds that were much flimsier than the reasoning I put forth for this one. Meanwhile I was internally kicking myself for not thinking of this. Of course he'd ask this question in New York, Stonewall happened here!
God, if the judge were to let even this go through—
"... despite all that, I am inclined to agree with the defense on this one," Judge Andrews said, though from the way he said that through what seemed to be a clenched jaw, this was not a decision he wanted to make. "DA Young. I've given you mutants. I've given you friends and family of mutants. I draw the line here. Do not push your luck."
"Understood, your Honor." Lou Young turned and gave a respectful nod to the judge. "It won't happen again."
"It had best not. The jury will disregard the question," he said with a bang of his gavel.
I wanted to sink to my seat in relief, thanking my lucky stars that even Judge Andrews couldn't afford to be seen as too unreasonable. Unfortunately for me, though, one of the jurors did not disregard the DA's question, and instead seemed to have taken it as a personal challenge.
Juror four had her hand raised, and stared directly at the district attorney, daring him to act on it.
"... your Honor, at this time the prosecution would like to use its second peremptory challenge, and requests the court thank and excuse juror number four," he said, pausing briefly at the surprise of seeing juror four's hand up.
I, meanwhile, bit back another curse as I saw juror eleven, the middle-aged woman, stare at juror four with undisguised loathing.
"Very well," Judge Andrews said. "Juror four, the Court would like to thank you for your service. You are excused. Bailiff?"
When the bailiff approached, juror four maintained her distance from him, and left the courtroom without a word.
Lou Young finished up his initial voir-dire without much fanfare, and did not strike anybody else. From my impressions of five and ten, the count stood at one neutral, one bad. Not an auspicious start. As for juror eleven, though…
"The prosecution has no further questions," Lou Young said, and returned to his seat.
"Very well," Judge Andrews said. "Any further objections?"
"Your Honor," I said, coming to my feet again. "At this time, the defense would like to exercise its first peremptory challenge, and asks that the Court excuse juror eleven."
"Very well," the judge said. "Juror number eleven, the Court thanks you for your service. You are excused." Once the bailiff had escorted her out, the judge turned to the remaining two. "Juror five, juror ten, welcome to the jury. If you would please be seated in the gallery? Bailiff, bring in the next twelve, if you would."
It was many, many hours later, and several recesses for smoke breaks, that we finally had our jury. Twelve jurors, three alternates.
I saw a good five that I thought we could sway, but whether I could even win two of them depended on who the jury foreman wound up being.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a jury. The trial shall begin with pre-trial motions and opening arguments no later than nine a.m. Court is adjourned." Judge Andrews brought his gavel down, and everybody stood up, filing out of the courtroom in a jumbled mess. Linda and Jonathan took up position like I'd told them to, flanking St. John, preventing anybody from getting close. Matt stood in front of us all, his white and red cane preceding our every footstep, and I stood directly in front of St. John, head held high as I readied to make eye contact with as many people as possible.
Reporters awaited us outside, and questions rained down like wildfire.
I ignored them all, instead casting my gaze through the assembled crowd of media, making sure as many of them felt my gaze as possible. There was exactly one thing to be said to them.
"I'm afraid we cannot discuss anything about the case with the media at this time," I said, taking advantage of the first reporter who closed his mouth long enough for me to get a word in edgewise. "I would thank the press for their understanding and respect for my client's privacy in this difficult time. Thank you very much."
Everything I said was carefully constructed to make sure the press paid attention to me. 'I' instead of 'we', my emphasis on the possessive to draw attention back towards myself? All of that use of first person made the listener subconsciously pay attention to the person talking, consider them the focus.
St. John, despite being tried as an adult, was still a minor. He didn't deserve this kind of media circus surrounding him.
I, on the other hand, was no stranger to the media – it's hard to be unknown to the press when your courtroom antics have pulled front page billing, even in a rag like the Bugle. It didn't take much effort to command the press's attention, and that meant that St. John would, hopefully, not be subject to as much scrutiny.
With the more ethical reporters among them thoroughly cowed – that is to say, exactly three of the twenty or so that had ambushed us – I allowed Matt and his cane to clear a path, one hand lightly resting on his upper arm to help guide him, at least to an outside observer. An officer eventually noticed us, and decided to actually do his job, scattering the reporters entirely and taking the lead.
The officer escorted us back to the conference room, and waited outside, actually doing his job for once as he fended off those reporters ambitious and foolish enough to think they still had a chance at getting a quote.
"What happens now?" St. John asked.
"Now, we know what we're going into, and who our targets are," I said, sitting at the table, flipping through two notepads until I had the pages I wanted. "We have about two hours before the van arrives to take you back to juvenile hall."
"What're we doing until then?"
"That's simple," I told Linda with a smile. "St. John has his audience now. And we are going to direct a performance they won't ever forget."
Chapter Six
So, this is one of the points where I need to apologize in advance.
Jury selection is, unfortunately, a slow and tedious process. While it is utterly exhilarating to take part in, and about as close to 5D chess as law can get, it is also… a long, boring, incredibly drawn-out process. Even more so in high-profile cases, where you want every single juror to be completely fresh, and to have not heard a single question asked of prospective jurors before them.
If I were to do it justice and be as accurate as possible, we would have 10,000 words of individual jurors being asked the same set of questions, over and over and over, as jurors are brought in one by one.
Instead, I am taking a page from a few legal dramas, and having the panels of prospective jurors screened in groups, as opposed to one at a time. Everything else, I will attempt to keep as accurate as possible.
But this helps keep the number of line/scene breaks to a minimum, and keeps the flow going.
Jury selection is, unfortunately, a slow and tedious process. While it is utterly exhilarating to take part in, and about as close to 5D chess as law can get, it is also… a long, boring, incredibly drawn-out process. Even more so in high-profile cases, where you want every single juror to be completely fresh, and to have not heard a single question asked of prospective jurors before them.
If I were to do it justice and be as accurate as possible, we would have 10,000 words of individual jurors being asked the same set of questions, over and over and over, as jurors are brought in one by one.
Instead, I am taking a page from a few legal dramas, and having the panels of prospective jurors screened in groups, as opposed to one at a time. Everything else, I will attempt to keep as accurate as possible.
But this helps keep the number of line/scene breaks to a minimum, and keeps the flow going.
[July 17, 1989]
My trial binders and notebooks were ready. Demonstratives and exhibits were prepared. My typed witness list and exhibit list were formatted properly, free of errors, and ready to submit to the judge. The limousine would pick me up in forty-five minutes so I could get to the courthouse when I wanted, well before anyone other than the clerk staff would arrive, and without having to brave public transportation.
I'd been late to court once (thankfully as second seat) for the utterly absurd reason that I could not push my way off of the subway. Once was enough.
I went to take a sip of my tea when I heard the familiar sound of a newspaper hitting my front door. I gave my mental thanks to the building's staff, waited about thirty seconds, then slid the door open and grabbed the paper. My glamour was already in place, but it was just too early to be polite and sociable. I plopped the paper down on the table before returning to my tea, and—
Huh. There was a special edition with the paper this morning. A separate, eight-page publication, seated atop the paper itself. I picked it up, read the headline and – what in the world?
… I don't know how exactly, but somehow, I just know this is Erik's fault.
"How's the tie?" I asked, not looking up from the papers in front of me.
"I think I got it…" St. John spoke from behind the screen, set up to let him change out of the juvie jumpsuit and into his proper, formal court attire. Moments later, I heard a curse, then the slap of fabric against the wooden screen.
"... damn it."
St. John's parents both shared a look that I couldn't quite decipher, whereas Matt was very pointedly ignoring everything around him as his fingers flowed over the braille documents set before him. I sighed, and stood up from the table to give St. John a hand. It was probably for the best that I was the one to handle this – the boy's parents were already nervous enough, and wondering how he would respond to their protectiveness.
"Here you go." It was the work of practiced motions that I pulled his tie into a double Windsor knot, though it was a little bit crooked. I frowned, and reached up to adjust the knot. Let's see, a little bit more to his right… there we go. "And now the glasses."
"Why the glasses, by the way?" Jonathan asked. "St. John doesn't need them, never has."
"It's a psychological trick." I led St. John to the table with the rest of us, and pulled out the glasses cases I kept in my briefcase. Let's see, which type would work best here… no, rimless gives the wrong look, even only half-rimmed. Maybe… I took out the horn-rimmed glasses and gave them to St. John, who thankfully put them on without much argument. "Decent enough fit. You can take them off for now, just make sure they're on before you go into the courtroom."
St. John took the glasses off immediately, all but tossing them onto the table.
"Trick?" Matt half-asked, half-murmured.
"So, as far as optimal jurors go, we especially want people who can put themselves in your shoes," I told St. John. "As callous as it sounds, we're looking for the kind of person a bully can't help but target: timid, usually small, and especially any jurors who would be an underprivileged minority in a majority-white area." I pulled a map of New York out of my briefcase, and spread it on the table.
"What kind of trick?" Jonathan muttered.
"Much as I would love to have jurors from your neighborhood," I gestured over Brooklyn with a capped pen, "odds are they won't be allowed because there's a chance they know the alleged victims by reputation, or they know of you and your family. We in particular want to keep anybody who lives or works around Central Park or the World Trade Center out – higher socioeconomic status tends to correlate strongly with stronger deeply-held prejudices, and an overall disdain for violence in the first place. As a corollary to that, we're going to try and select for—"
"Ms. Schaefer?" St. John broke in, putting a hand on top of the map. "Um… what's the trick with the glasses?"
"Hm?" The question finally filtered through my focus, and I bit back an embarrassed curse before I could voice it. "Oh, I forgot to explain, didn't I?"
"You did," Matt confirmed.
"Right," I said, brushing a lock of hair back behind my… well, ear (it looked like an ear right now at least), so that I didn't tap my pen on the table. "So, voir-dire is the first time you get to see your jury, and the first time they get to see you. That means your first impression is everything. Regarding criminal defendants, particularly those accused of violent crimes, you want your client to be wearing glasses when the jury first sees them?" I leaned back in my chair for a moment, and surveyed my audience. "Would anybody care to guess why?"
"It's harder to make eye contact with them?" Linda suggested.
"No," I said. "John. You have classmates who wear glasses. If you saw them trying to shrink into their chair, would you expect them to be capable of, say… bludgeoning somebody with a crowbar?"
"What? No!" St. John exclaimed.
"Exactly," I told them. "We tend to see people wearing glasses and assume that they're weaker, harmless, less physically dangerous. There is an immediate disconnect when you try to make the mental leap of 'person in dress clothes and glasses' to 'violent criminal offender'. It's a small thing, but we are going to exploit it for all it's worth."
"What about the rest of what we can do?" Jonathan asked. "Is there anything Linda and I can do to help?"
"I'm very glad you asked," I told them.
For the next twenty minutes, I gave them the rundown. We wanted people from underprivileged or more diverse areas – my own neighborhood, Greenwich Village, was the gold standard here, but most of Queens would also work perfectly well. We wanted to avoid people from wealthier parts of the city, with a very distinct exception: if somebody worked in the Baxter Building, we could assume they were predisposed to think positively of people with powers. The same did not necessarily go for people working at Stark Industries; the Iron Man was, ostensibly, just a man, and the need to use extreme technological prowess to match what St. John was capable of could, in a weird way, create an 'us vs. them' mentality.
What they could do to help came down to one very simple thing: watch whoever I wasn't facing, and look for anything I couldn't catch. Sneers, shrugs, guilty shuffling, etcetera. A question about a Juror A's opinion on Topic X could easily spark a reaction from Juror E. But if I was facing Juror A, I couldn't look at Juror E, and odds were everybody else would also be focused on the actual subject of my line of questioning. There was a lot people would do if they thought you weren't looking at them.
So just outsource your eyes.
"And the most important part." I pulled a very particular pen out of my briefcase and handed it to Matt. "This is the loudest pen I have. Now Matthew, jurors have the same obligation to tell the truth when we ask them questions as a witness on the stand does. However, people lie, especially when prospective jurors have an incentive to make sure they sit jury duty on a publicized case, or if the judge asks them a question and they don't want to disappoint."
"And the pen?" Linda asked as Matt took the pen.
"Do me a favor?" I asked her. "Tell me two truths and a lie, whatever order you want."
"Well…" Linda thought for a moment before answering. "The sky is blue, I grew up in Perth—"
Thunk-dunk.
"Blind people can't catch lies as easily as most, due to not being able to see facial expressions. But it's common knowledge that if you lose one sense, all of the rest become supercharged."
Disproven common knowledge, actually, but they didn't need to know that. But since Matt had supercharged senses…
"Blind people can still catch lies; they just use different methods. We tend to focus on facial expression and body language. Mr. Murdock, though, can pick out small tells in peoples' voices that we don't think to control. And when he does?"
Matt obliged by giving a good thunk-dunk of the pen.
"The prosecution can, of course, try to object if they think he's being disruptive," I explained as I flipped my briefcase closed.
"That said, what's more likely? That he can actually hear when somebody's lying? Or that he's just nervous for his first court case?"
"Good morning, members of the jury pool," Judge Andrews said by way of introduction.
The hundred-plus potential members of our jury were seated in the gallery of the courtroom, in the second rows and those further back. The only people in the first row were the Allerdyces and a few additional staff from the DA's office, on our respective sides of the courtroom, making it obvious who was there for which party.
"My name is Philip Andrews, and I am one of the judges of the New York County Criminal Court. You have been summoned as potential jurors in the case of the People of the State of New York v. S.J. Allerdyce, which is the criminal case of a minor tried as an adult, related to the assault of four persons on May 8, 1989: Micah Samuelson, James Boothe, Theodore Nielson, and Patrick MacEahern.
"A person charged with a crime has a right to a fair trial before a fair and impartial judge, and a fair and impartial jury. In order to ensure the selection of a properly fair and impartial jury, the law provides that the court and the attorneys for both sides may ask questions of all prospective jurors. When answering these questions, you shall be under oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.
"Now, after the questioning is complete, each attorney will be allowed to excuse a certain number of you, and I may choose to excuse you for what is called 'cause'; that is to say that there is reason to believe facts you may not be privy to will impact your ability to remain impartial. Rest assured that being excused is not a strike against you, and there is no shame in being excused. I also ask that you not take any offense at any questions asked of you. While we respect all of your rights to privacy, there are things the court must know, about you as people, the lives you've led, and the opinions you hold, that might affect your ability to serve on this jury.
"The defendant, St. John Allerdyce," and here I had to hide a scowl as the judge deliberately mispronounced St. John's name – he pronounced it "Saint John" instead of "Sinjin" – again, "has been charged with one count of assault in the first degree, and three counts of assault in the second degree. Keep in mind, however, that these charges are not static, and can be added to or subtracted from. For these charges, the defendant has entered a plea of Not Guilty, which is a denial of all material allegations within the charges.
"Now, as I have already asked everybody else to introduce themselves, I would first like to ask anybody present in the jury pool that knows any of the parties present on either side of the aisle to please raise their hand. This can include knowing them personally or simply by reputation."
Rather than turn around, I reached into my briefcase to pull out my makeup compact, and flipped it open to look at the jury pool. No hands went up.
"Next," Judge Andrews continued, "I believe all of you have been furnished with both the prosecution's and defense's witness lists. If you know personally or know of any of the people on that list, please raise your hands."
Once again, all hands stayed down.
"Very well. Now, keep in mind: one thing neither attorney is allowed to do is educate you on the law. Despite this, I want all of you to be aware of some basic principles that apply to all criminal cases, and I want you to keep them in mind as you answer the questions."
Judge Andrews proceeded to speak to the jury pool, going through what was, ostensibly legal boilerplate: he detailed what the jurors needed to know, what they were to do, and what they were not to do.
"Now, with the exception of potential jurors one through twelve, we will have you wait in another courtroom. If you are a smoker, please take the opportunity to smoke now, as this courtroom is a designated no-smoking location for the duration of this specific trial. With that, I will ask jurors thirteen through one-hundred eight to please follow the deputy at the back of the courtroom."
Even as prospective jurors stood up and filed out, they murmured to each other about what they'd just heard. The one thing I could pick up, a refrain repeated again and again, was confusion as to why this courtroom was nonsmoking.
"Please tell me you can pick a smoker out of a crowd," I whispered to Matt. He choked back a snort.
"There's fifty-seven of them in the jury pool," he murmured back to me.
That was… not good news.
"Jurors one through twelve, we're going to have you all come up to the jury box for questioning. The bailiff is standing just in front of the bar of the court, he will guide you up."
The twelve of them milled to the jury box, and there was a bit of brief jockeying for positions, but all twelve of them took their seats a moment later. Judge Andrews swore them in, with the full 'truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth' means of putting it. Following that was a series of perfunctory questions: had they read any articles about this case since receiving their summons for jury duty, did they know anybody on the witness list, did they understand the English language well enough to understand everything being said, etcetera.
"Now at this time, I will be turning things over to Ms. Schaefer, attorney for the defendant. She's going to ask you some questions of her own, and while this process often ends up sounding like a conversation, I'd like everybody to wait until she finishes asking a question before trying to answer. Furthermore, for group answers mandating more than a simple raised hand to indicate yes or no, please answer in order of your jury numbers. Now Ms. Schaefer. You're up."
"Thank you, your Honor." I stood up from counsel's table and entered the well of the court, then stood before this first segment of the jury pool.
My initial judgment on the jury pool was… jurors six through ten needed to go. The five of them were older caucasian males in their fifties and sixties, all of whom were wearing sufficiently nice suits in good enough condition that I could assume they owned multiples. Two of them wore Rolexes, one had what was probably a Patek Philippe (if I still knew my watches, at least), and the other two were leering at me in a fashion that boded ill for the likelihood of them listening to what I had to say as opposed to just staring at my chest or butt.
The problem here was that I had 108 candidates to pick through, and only twenty-one peremptory strikes – fifteen for the main jury, and six for alternates. So I just needed a reason to get rid of the ones I didn't like.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you very much for your time today." I made sure to stand several feet back from the jury box, such that nobody had to look overly far down to see me, and so I didn't have to look up to make eye contact with everybody's elevated positions. "Before I address you as individuals, there are a few more general questions that I would like to ask. These are going to be yes-or-no questions; if the answer is yes, please raise your hand; if the answer is no, you do not need to do anything."
I paced to the left, putting myself in between the judge and the jury. This was, again, a small psychological trick: if they had to look at Judge Andrews, who had just put everybody under oath, they would feel more compelled to answer these questions honestly. For the individual questions, though, I wanted them looking only at me.
"Have any of you had a bad experience or encounter with a mutant?" One hand flew up almost immediately – juror two, an older hispanic woman.
I shared a look with the DA, and he stood up from his chair before I could ask.
"Let the record show that juror number two has raised her hand," I said for the stenographer's benefit. "Sidebar, your Honor?"
Judge Andrews waved us up, and when we got up there, I spoke in hushed tones.
"Your Honor, given the answer we just received, it's likely that this juror will be unable to maintain an unbiased perspective on the case at hand. Her own past experience introduces prejudice that might cause her to unfairly weight evidence against my client, simply because she conflates the victims' experiences with her own. Given this, the defense moves to strike this juror for cause."
"Any counter-argument?" Judge Andrews asked the DA.
"None, your Honor," he said. "The people see no reason to oppose the defense's argument here."
"That settles that," he said, and waved us off. Young walked back behind counsel's table on the right side of the courtroom, while I resumed my place in the well of the court. "Juror number two, the Court would like to thank you for your time. You are excused; bailiff, please escort her from the courtroom." Once she was escorted out, I continued.
"Do any of you live or work in Brooklyn?"
Four hands went up.
"Let the record reflect that jurors… three, six, eight, and twelve have all raised their hands in response to the question. Sidebar?" I asked. Judge Andrews waved us both up.
And once again, both Lou Young and I went forward for a sidebar. There wasn't even any need for discussion this time, as the judge waved us both away before I could even make my argument. But the procedure must be observed, even though it was an utterly wasted sidebar.
"Juror number three, six, eight, and twelve, the Court would like to thank you for your time. You are all excused; please follow the bailiff out of the courtroom."
Welcome to one of the reasons jury selection could take so long. See, when jury selection occurs, there are two ways to remove a potential juror from the pool: either you just outright choose to not have them on your jury, or you find a reason that they cannot serve on this specific jury. The former is known as a peremptory strike; these are essentially 'I don't want this person here', and can be used regardless of reason.
If a juror was giving you in particular the stink-eye? You can get them out. If they happen to be the type of person who wouldn't be receptive to your argument, such as someone from a perfect marriage being particularly dense over allegations of domestic violence. Peremptory strikes are a very powerful tool, but there is a limit to how many you get, otherwise no jury trial would ever actually go through.
Then there is the latter, more common method: striking for cause. When you strike somebody for cause, it is because something about that juror would bias them against either party in a case. Whether it be due to their occupation, background, demographic, personal history, or any number of other things, this person cannot serve on the jury. Jurors are meant to be an unbiased panel, listening only to the facts, perfectly objective. Obviously, this is utterly ridiculous.
But we try to get as close as possible, and one of the ways we did that was striking for cause.
The process, though, is a bit of a hassle. Whenever you want to strike somebody for cause, you ask the judge for a sidebar, and call up the other attorney to join you. The side putting forth the challenge offers their argument as to why the juror cannot remain unbiased, and then the other side gets to debate the issue. A lot of these arguments are not so cut-and-dry as the one I'd just offered regarding juror number two, and these side bars can last several minutes of back and forth between both parties.
Once it was said and done though, either the judge excused the juror, or they didn't. The process was slow, and tedious, but trust me when I say it was probably the best option.
This whole rigamarole went on for several questions more, during which I managed to excuse one more of the older men, juror seven, for cause… because he was dumb enough to rip an eight-ball of cocaine from a napkin while sitting in the jury box. Nobody believed him that it was a sneeze.
I will never understand finance people.
Regardless, this left me with two more jurors, jurors nine and ten, that I needed to eliminate. Though I was also worried about juror eleven: a middle-aged woman who reminded me of the worst examples of what I called the 'Midwestern country club mentality'. They were the type who were very quick to adopt an 'us vs. them' mindset at the drop of a hat, based purely on the first shared quality they could come up with.
Jurors one, four, five, nine, ten, and eleven remained from this first pool. Now that group questions were done, it was time to go in order.
"Juror number one." I moved to the right side of the jury box, forcing everybody to look away from the judge in order to follow me. Juror number one was a young African-American man, probably in his early to mid 20s, wearing a dark-blue button-up shirt over a gray vest. "Where in New York are you from?"
"I'm from Harlem, ma'am," he said, looking me straight in the eye. "Lived there my whole life, ma'am."
Okay, Harlem. The Hulk's rampage had happened in 1974, meaning… it's likely the juror would remember it, at least somewhat.
"Harlem, Harlem," I started, pacing a bit closer to the jury box. "That's where the Hulk rampaged, isn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am," he replied. "Was scary as hell when it happened."
"The Hulk is now a member of the Avengers. Given what he did in Harlem, what's your take on that?"
"What went down in Harlem weren't only his fault," juror number one said. "What was he supposed to do, just stand there an' take it?"
No sound of a pen. Even just with this small amount of questions asked, I could already tell: this juror was absolutely perfect.
Which meant he would probably be eliminated by one of the prosecution's peremptory strikes. Of course.
"This juror is acceptable to the defense, Your Honor."
And with that, I moved on to the next one.
Juror number four was a Chinese woman, around my age, dressed in a smart pantsuit (which was drawing fairly continuous looks of disdain from juror eleven), and held herself with a smooth, easy confidence. As I questioned her, I couldn't quite place what was familiar about her.
It was only as she answered my third question that I remembered where I recognized her from: the trivia night hall of fame at Stonewall. She'd been banned from participating in the bar's trivia contests again, after the one time she managed to answer five back-to-back questions without letting the question finish.
The only reason I didn't have to strike her was that the two of us had never actually spoken, for which I was counting my lucky stars. I wanted this woman on my jury.
With no objections, I moved on to the next one.
Juror number five was an Italian plumber from the Bronx. I was sorely, sorely tempted to ask if he had a brother named Mario or Luigi, but that would be wasting both my time and the court's, so I refrained. Similarly to the woman before him, I couldn't find any cause to strike, and didn't have enough information to know whether he needed a peremptory strike. Which meant I had to wait until I knew more.
"Juror number nine." I approached the second to last of this batch of 'problem' jurors: the last of the older men, somewhere in his fifties, whose eyes probably hadn't been on my face the entire time I'd been before the potential jurors. "Where in New York do you live?"
"I have a small, twenty-five hundred square foot condominium in Central Park East," he said, his voice absolutely dripping with the same type of faux-humility that would consider a ten-million dollar loan a pittance.
"Hmm." I took a step towards the jury box. "Nice neighborhood, then."
"Safe neighborhood, more like," he said, a hand coming up to adjust his tie. "That's why I picked it over NoHo."
That… that was an intriguing thread. "Interesting priority. Tell me, have you ever been the victim of a crime?"
"I can safely say that no, I haven't," he said.
Thunk-dunk.
"Hmm." I stalked closer, crossing my arms under my chest, and followed his eyes. "Juror number nine. What do you consider a crime?"
"Burglary, murder, that kind of stuff," he answered, crossing his arms. "Crooks are a violent sort. Can't trust them."
"And what about white collar crimes?" I asked. "Tax evasion? Embezzlement? Fraud?"
Thunk-dunk.
The juror did not answer.
"Juror number nine, you swore an oath, under penalty of perjury, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," I said, stepping closer until I was inches from the jury box. "Now, you have an opportunity to revisit your past answer and tell the truth, absolving you of any falsehood. Have you ever been the victim of a crime?"
And still, he remained silent. His jaw tightened, and I could see his knuckles going white against the arms of the chair. Of course, I thought to myself, he wouldn't want to say anything. If he was able to afford that many square feet over Central Park, he had to be wealthy, and the way he flaunted his wealth told me he was a new money finance type.
And per Matt's message, he'd been a victim of fraud. Wire fraud? Securities fraud? The specifics didn't matter, not really.
"Sidebar, your Honor?"
The DA and I both approached the bench once we were given permission.
"I don't think we need to hear anything further from this juror to know that he should be stricken for cause," I told the judge.
"Jury questionnaire says he's a hedge fund manager," Judge Andrews said, flipping through the papers on the bench. "While your line of questioning and his response hints that he likely needs to take the Fifth, that is not the scope of this trial. And I do not want a juror willing to lie under oath for personal gain in my courtroom." The two of us left the bench, and again resumed our positions. "The Court would like to thank and excuse juror number nine. Bailiff, if you would."
With that, I was down to two.
Despite all of my best efforts, though, juror ten would not crack. He was just as problematic as the other finance-guy jurors before him, but I could not find a reason to strike him for cause. What was worse, though, is that juror eleven worried me. The looks she sent my way meant that I was stuck making a decision, one that I would rather not have had to make this soon into jury selection.
It was not a decision I wanted to make… but I had to face facts. I did not need a full jury of perfect jurors. All I needed was three, preferably four.
"The defense has no objections to these remaining jurors, your Honor," I told Judge Andrews. Jurors one, four, five, ten, and eleven remained.
"Very well, please take your seat." Judge Andrews turned towards the prosecution's table. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is now the District Attorney's turn to ask questions of you. DA Young, the jury is yours."
"Thank you, your Honor."
Lou Young stood up, buttoning his jacket as he did, and put his hands in his pockets as he strode up to the jury. He paced back and forth before the jury box a couple of times, eyes flitting between each of the five remaining prospective jurors individually. I was watching facial expressions very carefully, and saw juror one, the juror I wanted most to stay, frown as the prosecutor's eyes glided past him.
"Now I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand if the answer is yes – and keep in mind, you are still under oath." Lou Young stopped, angled so that the jury had to look at both him and the judge, like I had. "Is anybody here in the jury a mutant?"
"Objection!" I stood quickly, my chair scraping on the floor beneath me as I pushed it back. "Your Honor—"
"On what grounds, Ms. Schaefer?" Judge Andrews asked, leaning forward from his seat on the bench.
"Sir, under the Supreme Court's ruling in Batson v. Kentucky, four-seventy-six U.S. seventy-nine, the prosecution's question is a clear attempt to violate my client's Fourteenth Amendment rights under the Equal Protection Clause," I said.
Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) was, as of the moment, a still-new ruling. It was a landmark case, wherein the Supreme Court ruled that the prosecution could not use its peremptory strikes to remove all members of a jury that shared an ethnicity with the defendant. The Supreme Court ruled that, although a defendant was not entitled to have members of their race as part of the jury, it undermined the whole point of the system to allow prosecutors to use their strikes to cherry pick members of a defendant's minority out of the jury in an attempt to stack the deck against them.
The original case arose when a prosecutor used his peremptory strikes to remove all of the black jurors from the pool, and an all-white jury convicted a black defendant. He challenged under both the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, and prevailed under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Now, I wasn't stupid, and neither was Lou Young. If he tried to strike a mutant juror for cause, I would argue that there are just as many reasons for a mutant to look down on other mutants, and cite an article from a year ago about a clash in Westchester, New York, wherein an open mutant attacked another, 'closeted' mutant, outing them and resulting in some serious property damage. But even though he knew the challenge would fail, the question would still have been answered.
And that left the opportunity to use a peremptory strike on the table.
"The prosecution's question clearly goes to a matter that suggests an approach identical to that under which the Fourteenth Amendment challenge in Batson arose," I continued.
"You know, I re-read that ruling myself just this morning, Ms. Schaefer," Judge Andrews began. "And Justice Powell's ruling was quite specific: the prosecution cannot exclude potential jurors solely based on their race, which is defined as their ethnic status. Being a mutant is not an ethnicity, in the same way that sexual deviancy is not an ethnicity." My jaw tightened at the implied insult, but I was careful to say nothing. "Perhaps the spirit of the text would allow your interpretation to succeed, but we are here to try a case, Ms. Schaefer, not write new law. Your objection is denied."
"Thank you, your Honor," the DA said, turning back to the jury box. "Now, I'm going to repeat my question. Is anybody in the jury pool a mutant?"
"Rest assured," Judge Andrews spoke up here, "that any confidential information revealed during the jury selection process does not leave the courtroom. Anybody attempting to disseminate private information shared during jury selection will be subject to extreme fines, lawsuits from the person whose secrets they thought to share, and as many charges of contempt of court as I think I can get to stick. I believe my record was twenty-three," he said, playing with the gavel in his hand. "So I will reiterate the prosecution's question for him. Members of the jury, you are under oath. If you are a mutant, raise your hand."
Juror number one's hand raised.
I slammed a fist against my leg.
"Thank you for your honesty," Lou Young said. "Let the record show that juror number one has raised his hand. Your Honor, at this time the prosecution would like to use one of its peremptory challenges. We ask that juror number one be excused from the jury."
"So entered," Judge Andrews said. "Juror number one, the Court would like to thank you for your time. You are excused, and the bailiff shall escort you out." The bailiff came up and took my dream juror out, with Lou Young ostensibly turning to follow his back, but instead giving me a victorious smirk that I so dearly wanted to rip off his face. "DA Young, the jury is yours."
"Of course, your Honor." He turned to the jury. "In a similar vein to the last question, is anybody here friends or family with a mutant?"
No hands went up. Some part of me thought this was a blessed relief, but at the same time, it meant that jurors ten and eleven were likely here to stay.
"Well if that's the case." Lou Young took two steps forward. "Now, are there any practicing homosexuals in the jury box?"
"Objection!" I rushed to my feet, the sharp click of my heels cracking on the courtroom floor.
Once I was on my feet, though, I floundered for a half second. I couldn't try a Batson challenge again; if the last one hadn't worked for a trait we knew a person was born with, there was no way it would work for a perceived choice, even if I knew it wasn't!
All I had to work with was the reasons you wouldn't ask a witness something. Think, Noa… shit, I was running a blank. Um…
"Your Honor…"
Okay, in the absence of anything else, I had to use a fallback: Rule 403.
"Your Honor, regardless of any perceived connection between minority communities, the prosecution's line of questioning has no relevance upon the charges at hand, the defendant's status, or anything else that may be useful to determining the impartiality of the jurors!"
"Your Honor." Lou Young turned to the judge and lowered his arms into a loose spread. "The People are just trying to get to points on which a potential juror's solidarity may outweigh their rationality. After all, we remember the lengths to which protesters went during the Draft, the black vote movement, and so many others, all to protect their fellow man, and all at great cost to themselves."
"I do remember," the judge said.
Shit. Young had gotten away with the previous question on grounds that were much flimsier than the reasoning I put forth for this one. Meanwhile I was internally kicking myself for not thinking of this. Of course he'd ask this question in New York, Stonewall happened here!
God, if the judge were to let even this go through—
"... despite all that, I am inclined to agree with the defense on this one," Judge Andrews said, though from the way he said that through what seemed to be a clenched jaw, this was not a decision he wanted to make. "DA Young. I've given you mutants. I've given you friends and family of mutants. I draw the line here. Do not push your luck."
"Understood, your Honor." Lou Young turned and gave a respectful nod to the judge. "It won't happen again."
"It had best not. The jury will disregard the question," he said with a bang of his gavel.
I wanted to sink to my seat in relief, thanking my lucky stars that even Judge Andrews couldn't afford to be seen as too unreasonable. Unfortunately for me, though, one of the jurors did not disregard the DA's question, and instead seemed to have taken it as a personal challenge.
Juror four had her hand raised, and stared directly at the district attorney, daring him to act on it.
"... your Honor, at this time the prosecution would like to use its second peremptory challenge, and requests the court thank and excuse juror number four," he said, pausing briefly at the surprise of seeing juror four's hand up.
I, meanwhile, bit back another curse as I saw juror eleven, the middle-aged woman, stare at juror four with undisguised loathing.
"Very well," Judge Andrews said. "Juror four, the Court would like to thank you for your service. You are excused. Bailiff?"
When the bailiff approached, juror four maintained her distance from him, and left the courtroom without a word.
Lou Young finished up his initial voir-dire without much fanfare, and did not strike anybody else. From my impressions of five and ten, the count stood at one neutral, one bad. Not an auspicious start. As for juror eleven, though…
"The prosecution has no further questions," Lou Young said, and returned to his seat.
"Very well," Judge Andrews said. "Any further objections?"
"Your Honor," I said, coming to my feet again. "At this time, the defense would like to exercise its first peremptory challenge, and asks that the Court excuse juror eleven."
"Very well," the judge said. "Juror number eleven, the Court thanks you for your service. You are excused." Once the bailiff had escorted her out, the judge turned to the remaining two. "Juror five, juror ten, welcome to the jury. If you would please be seated in the gallery? Bailiff, bring in the next twelve, if you would."
It was many, many hours later, and several recesses for smoke breaks, that we finally had our jury. Twelve jurors, three alternates.
I saw a good five that I thought we could sway, but whether I could even win two of them depended on who the jury foreman wound up being.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a jury. The trial shall begin with pre-trial motions and opening arguments no later than nine a.m. Court is adjourned." Judge Andrews brought his gavel down, and everybody stood up, filing out of the courtroom in a jumbled mess. Linda and Jonathan took up position like I'd told them to, flanking St. John, preventing anybody from getting close. Matt stood in front of us all, his white and red cane preceding our every footstep, and I stood directly in front of St. John, head held high as I readied to make eye contact with as many people as possible.
Reporters awaited us outside, and questions rained down like wildfire.
I ignored them all, instead casting my gaze through the assembled crowd of media, making sure as many of them felt my gaze as possible. There was exactly one thing to be said to them.
"I'm afraid we cannot discuss anything about the case with the media at this time," I said, taking advantage of the first reporter who closed his mouth long enough for me to get a word in edgewise. "I would thank the press for their understanding and respect for my client's privacy in this difficult time. Thank you very much."
Everything I said was carefully constructed to make sure the press paid attention to me. 'I' instead of 'we', my emphasis on the possessive to draw attention back towards myself? All of that use of first person made the listener subconsciously pay attention to the person talking, consider them the focus.
St. John, despite being tried as an adult, was still a minor. He didn't deserve this kind of media circus surrounding him.
I, on the other hand, was no stranger to the media – it's hard to be unknown to the press when your courtroom antics have pulled front page billing, even in a rag like the Bugle. It didn't take much effort to command the press's attention, and that meant that St. John would, hopefully, not be subject to as much scrutiny.
With the more ethical reporters among them thoroughly cowed – that is to say, exactly three of the twenty or so that had ambushed us – I allowed Matt and his cane to clear a path, one hand lightly resting on his upper arm to help guide him, at least to an outside observer. An officer eventually noticed us, and decided to actually do his job, scattering the reporters entirely and taking the lead.
The officer escorted us back to the conference room, and waited outside, actually doing his job for once as he fended off those reporters ambitious and foolish enough to think they still had a chance at getting a quote.
"What happens now?" St. John asked.
"Now, we know what we're going into, and who our targets are," I said, sitting at the table, flipping through two notepads until I had the pages I wanted. "We have about two hours before the van arrives to take you back to juvenile hall."
"What're we doing until then?"
"That's simple," I told Linda with a smile. "St. John has his audience now. And we are going to direct a performance they won't ever forget."
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- Masculine
...Fisk wrote an Op-Ed...
HA! Well... that is a thing! Now to relax and listen to this.
Edit: Daaaaamn. This was exceedingly entertaining for one fascinated by such proceedings. I agree with Frozenchicken. Excellent work putting all that detail and accuracy into play. I can only imagine how rough it is when it goes by singular members rather then groups. Oh the joy and tedium... heh.
Felt like something out of a mutant files version of Law and Order.
Well fucking done indeed. Looking forward to more. Because this will get interesting.
Looking forward to what is coming!
HA! Well... that is a thing! Now to relax and listen to this.
Edit: Daaaaamn. This was exceedingly entertaining for one fascinated by such proceedings. I agree with Frozenchicken. Excellent work putting all that detail and accuracy into play. I can only imagine how rough it is when it goes by singular members rather then groups. Oh the joy and tedium... heh.
Felt like something out of a mutant files version of Law and Order.
Well fucking done indeed. Looking forward to more. Because this will get interesting.
Looking forward to what is coming!
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frozenchicken
Does not have a custom title.
I love that you put so much effort into legal accuracy here.
RyubosJ
Person that hates Mega Evolutions.
- Location
- UK
Im sorry what? Seriously? Seriously? That's how people pronounce St. John? Sinjin?
Otherwise cool chapter. And nice to see one of the villains of the story having principles, weak as they are.
frozenchicken
Does not have a custom title.
I just looked it up myself. (Scroll down to the second answer.)
In short, it's the influence of French upon English linguistics. Have a French person call themselves 'Saint Jean' then have an English person try to repeat that in an English accent, and you end up with something like 'Sanjin'.
In short, it's the influence of French upon English linguistics. Have a French person call themselves 'Saint Jean' then have an English person try to repeat that in an English accent, and you end up with something like 'Sanjin'.
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- Location
- Texas
Well, Sinjin and his parents are most likely feeling quite a bit better now that Noa has started pulling out and explaining all the little tips and tricks that she knows to better defend her client.
Still probably a bit worried, but most likely not to the degree they were before.
And Holy F****** S***, that prosecutioner is enraging. The judge is as well for allowing the first two questions.
Also that lady that identified herself as gay... I will applaud her metaphorical brass balls for admitting that she is gay in the... what 80s? That takes guts, but wow, you could not have picked a worse time to stand up for your right to be gay. At least for the kid we are defending.
Well... I have to get ready for work, thank you for the chapter, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
Still probably a bit worried, but most likely not to the degree they were before.
And Holy F****** S***, that prosecutioner is enraging. The judge is as well for allowing the first two questions.
Also that lady that identified herself as gay... I will applaud her metaphorical brass balls for admitting that she is gay in the... what 80s? That takes guts, but wow, you could not have picked a worse time to stand up for your right to be gay. At least for the kid we are defending.
Well... I have to get ready for work, thank you for the chapter, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
TimEd
Meteor maker
Well,
I do hope this does not mean she plans to try grandstanding again, especially since her boss already told her to her face that winning the case is not enough for senior patnership of the firm.
So does that mean of the 12, only 5 are more neutral? And not even 2 are what she considers good eggs?
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- She/Her
If you'd like an example... jury selection for Derek Chauvin's trial took over 40 hours, spread over multiple 7-9 hour days.
An important thing to remember is that your opponent in a court case isn't just opposing counsel's case-in-chief and evidence. It's also the attorney representing them. If you can get under the opposing attorney's skin, trip them up, make them lose their cool? That can tip the scales in your favor.
As for juror number four... sometimes, a personal attack is one too many.
Noa thinks that, of the 12 jurors, she can win 5 of them over to her side. However, of those five that she thinks she can win over, two of them appear to be particularly vulnerable to peer pressure.
Keep in mind that this is a criminal case. For a guilty verdict to be handed down, it requires a unanimous decision. In theory, you only need to sway ONE person.
In reality, if only one or two jurors votes against conviction, the jury foreman will inform the judge that one or two jurors have deadlocked the jury. This could be just one particularly ornery person and the other juror they've become a decent friend with/managed to sway. When this happens, the judge will likely declare a mistrial, meaning that everybody's time has essentially been wasted, and the prosecution gets a Mulligan.
When there's three or more, out of a panel of twelve? That's 25% or more. That's enough that a prosecutor will generally decide they don't want to go for the same result again, and just... drop all charges.
The magic number Noa wants is four, as opposed to just three. This is because (1) anti-mutant sentiment is all too easily weaponized, and (2) DA Young is a political animal, and now that he knows all the cards his opponent has on the table, he has everything to gain by going for a Mulligan.
Wait doesn't he need a victory to advance his career? Isn't that why this was all set up? Why would a mistrial be preferred?
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- She/Her
Oh he wants a win. But IF HE LOSES, and the options are dismiss the charges or accept a mistrial and try again, he's going to take the mistrial and then try again.
TimEd
Meteor maker
Especially since the media is probably still starstruck with Captain America's return.
She makes a point of having said I instead of we but she did say we. Could be a typo.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
Noa Schaefer, Esquire (in SKETCH form!)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So as I believe has been mentioned, Noa's appearance is based off of (translation: outright ripped wholesale from) my character on Final Fantasy XIV.
As a present to myself for finishing the bar exam, I ordered an art commission of my character, who... well, since she looks exactly like Noa, I may as well just share it here as an exemplar.
Therefore... BEHOLD! MYSTUFF PROTAGONIST.
As a present to myself for finishing the bar exam, I ordered an art commission of my character, who... well, since she looks exactly like Noa, I may as well just share it here as an exemplar.
Therefore... BEHOLD! MY
- Location
- Oklahoma
Very Final Fantasy, Very Nice, Wow, Pretty!
In all seriousness, Looks super cool. Didn't think a Final Fantasy character could rock a suit that well tbh