“WHAT ARE WE going to do now?” I say to Barry. We are in one of the private courthouse consultation rooms. I sit slumped in a chair at a small conference table, the knot of my tie pulled down so it hangs around my head like a noose. I stare at the carpet, a dark burgundy, with large, even darker stains. I imagine this is a spot where many a man’s stomach has upended onto the floor. I for sure feel like that could be me any moment. I have been lower in my life, but this is pretty damn low.
Barry stands in front of me, arms folded, and gives a big smile. “Why, we put on our defense, of course!” he says, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. “A vigorous, spirited defense!”
“As in the best defense is a good offense?”
“No,” Barry says, frowning. I am clearly getting on his nerves. My act is growing stale, even with him. “That’s one of the dumbest things someone can say. The best defense isn’t a good offense. Why do people say that? The best defense is a good defense. Offense is offense and defense is defense. Saying the best defense is a good offense is like saying the best polar bear is an ostrich. They aren’t the same thing at all. One is a flightless fowl and the other is a massive, carnivorous mammal.”
“Like Tom Arnold,” I say.
Barry ignores me and plows forward. “Now, our defense is multipronged, the first prong being that it’s going to be a very lengthy, very thorough defense.”
This sounds wretched. Thirty minutes ago I dared to imagine my freedom, the possibilities for a reborn man, my second rebirth, and now my own lawyer is telling me that even if we win the trial, victory is in the distant future. Barry continues.
“One thing our defense will do is make them forget the offense ever existed. We will erase their memories of those coroner’s pictures and the victim’s mother sobbing so hard she couldn’t manage to answer any questions, and those ear-witness accounts claiming that you yelled ‘die motherfucker,’ (this is not true, by the way) either right before or right after pulling the trigger, and of the six bullets that were recovered from the victim’s body. Certainly the prosecutor will try to remind the jury of these things in his closing, but they will be so distant they will sound more like rumor than fact, as in, ‘I think I heard that, but it can’t be right, can it?’”
Barry warms to the task, more animated than I’ve ever seen him. The cool courtroom customer has been replaced by something different, something giddy. He must’ve been rooting against his own motion for dismissal.
“The second prong is putting you, your life, your times, the very moment you killed that man in context. Right now, what does our jury know and think about you? Untalented, successful, bad husband and father.” Barry ticks the items off on his fingers, one by one.
“Also you shot someone. Six times. In alleged self-defense. They look at your life and think, ‘I would never do that.’ They say, ‘I have more self-respect than to build an entire career around a silly gimmick.’ They think, ‘I couldn’t possibly do to my child what he did to his.’ They cannot imagine pulling the trigger and ending another human life, all of which, I don’t need to remind you, are things you’ve done. In order to put your actions in context, we are going to make your defense a veritable This Is Your Life.
“We are going to tell your story in the present tense to give it a sense of urgency, to put them in your shoes. We are going to give them all of the context. With context, not only will we cause the jury to understand why you have done things, why you snuffed out a life, why you were a bad husband and father, why and how you have reaped huge monetary rewards doing something trivial, we will have them believing that under the same circumstances they would have done the exact same things. Maybe even that you should be celebrated for having done these things. Perhaps, just possibly, if we really nail this thing, if we tie this bitch up in a bow, that you should be emulated in doing these things.” Barry knocks his knuckles against the table, emphasizing the final part of the sentence. “We want to make them recognize that we are all the sum total of our traumas and our triumphs. It doesn’t matter if they like you. They just have to understand you, why you are what you are—and not to get too ‘Kumbaya’ on you—that you and they are the same. You are they, we are us, us is them. Do you see the what I’m saying?”
I do, but I don’t want to.
“Once we tell your story, the jury may not like you, but they will understand you. You may not have their sympathy, but you will have their empathy. They will walk several miles in your shoes and then we will put them in that alley that rainy evening, face-to-face with that man with the gun, which then somehow winds up in your hands, and we will ask them, ‘given what you know, given what you’ve experienced, what would you have done?’ and their answer will be, ‘the exact same thing.’ ‘I would have shot that man, disarmed, on his knees, allegedly begging for his life, six times, allegedly.’ In the abstract, people think they would never do that. We want to make them feel like they’d definitely do that.
“If I recall correctly,” he said, continuing, “Mr. Prosecutor said early on that he ‘wants to make an example of you,’ so that’s what we’re going to do. It’s just not going to be the example he’s looking for.”
I am deflated, one of those Mylar balloon animals sunken from ceiling to floor. I cannot see the path from here to there. It is an impossible task. If I had this life to do over again I’d be hardpressed to think of anything I would do the same way. Untalented, bad husband and father, successful. These things are undeniably true and yet also not. I have done horrible things, but I also have done wonderful things. I have loved with all that a person is capable of. I have tried my best; there are countless poor choices littering the path behind me, but is this so different from anyone else? The thought of getting total strangers to feel what Barry proposes is out of the question at this point. I am not deserving of empathy or sympathy. I have been branded. Everyone knows me. The focus group said so.
The phrase mercy of the court pops into my head and I have a vision of getting up, leaving the room, walking down the corridor to the judge’s chambers, knocking softly, entering and saying, “I throw myself at the mercy of the court,” and I will crawl on my hands and knees to the judge until I am at her feet, her beautiful feet with the stylish pumps …
“It’ll never work,” I say. “I’m a monster, aren’t I?”
Barry perches a single buttock on the table and looks both ways even though we both know we are alone and no one can hear us before he leans toward me, so close that our noses almost touch. I can smell his lunch, egg salad. “Let me tell you a secret,” he says.
“What?”
“We’re all monsters.”