Eight

At the courthouse for his jury duty, Mr Nice Guy found it hard to be himself.

People weren’t nice there. He’d felt the tension from the start, during the tedious jury selection process: the prosecutor and the defense lawyer pretended to be polite but everyone could see they were snippy. And the judge was openly disdainful; he kept pulling off his glasses and rubbing red spots on his nose where the frames bit him, looking the other way, as if he didn’t give a damn for the show. All the potential jurors reacted nervously to their questions—in the oaken courtroom, with the clock ever so slowly grinding on the wall, they felt on trial themselves. The ones who wanted to get out of serving had to justify why. And those who didn’t want to get out of duty had to prove that they had no biases, that their mind was a blank slate. What at first seemed like ordinary statements, by the end of the examination sounded fishy. When one wrinkled woman with a back brace grew confused and started shaking her head and crying under questioning, her fingers twitching on her lap, they told her not to worry, she could come back and answer them all again tomorrow.

When it was Mr Nice Guy’s turn, in response to whether he felt apt to serve in regard to the crime of homicide and would be in no way prejudiced or of compromised judgment or under the influence of outstanding religious conviction or of racial or gender presuppositions that might interfere with his ability to apply, if necessary, the penalty of death by electrocution or lethal injection, Mr Nice Guy paused.

Then he said, “I’m here because I hope to be a good citizen.”

On the bench the judge’s head jerked; he twisted his neck toward the jury box. The prosecutor hesitated, then turned to the defense counsel, a balding young man with pink rabbitish eyes who nervously licked his lips. The attorneys approached each other and began to murmur, occasionally casting glances in his direction.

The questions that followed were of a different order. Did Mr Renfrow hold a position in a political organization that might dictate his judgment? Did he actively contribute his time to any group that may be described as having a particular stand on judicial procedures, sanctions or appeals? Had he himself been tried or did he possess any contestatory notions about the courts, which, if he did, it would be illuminating if he communicated them now …

Mr Nice Guy shook his head. “No. I’m as busy as the next fellow but I just thought you people might need me.”

The courtroom buzzed, and he wondered: What did I say? What did I say?

There were other questions (not too friendly, either), and during the lunch break in which the prospective jurors got a free chicken dinner in the courthouse cafeteria, he had the distinct impression that something had gone wrong, that he had failed a test and would not be selected. Oh, it’s just as well, he told himself, what with Zohra’s birthday coming up …

To his surprise, however, he did make the final cut, and arrived in the courtroom the first day of the trial with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety that he hadn’t experienced for years: what would he see? Would he know how to act? It felt like the first day of school. Mr Nice Guy fingered the buttons of his jacket and noticed that he wasn’t the only one to have dressed up. The other jurors, too, and especially the attorneys, had studied their appearance. The prosecutor wore a ruffled blouse under a gray wool suit, a confusingly sexy wide leather belt above her perfectly cylindrical skirt; the defense sported a blue three-piece suit with a subdued yet noticeably shiny burgundy silk tie, and thin-soled shoes with buckles: he looked like one of those clergymen who tried to appeal to young people.

Everyone stood when the judge entered, but the real excitement came after they sat down, and after some preliminary remarks, when the defendant arrived under police escort. Bulbs flashed, Mr Nice Guy blinked and saw blue sparkles—this was the only moment the judge had authorized cameras. All the jurors shifted their bottoms and craned their necks, trying to get a better look. This was the first time anyone had seen him except in the newspapers.

“The accused may be seated.”

Randall “The Angel” Hutchinson was charged with murdering his mother with a hammer. The judge and the lawyers, of course, referred to him as Mr Hutchinson; it was the newspapers and television that had dubbed him The Angel, based on neighbors’ accounts of his life.

Almost 40, Randall was a draftsman who’d divorced a few years earlier and subsequently moved back to live with his mother. Everyone who’d come into contact with the Hutchinsons commented on the son’s consideration and devotion to her, including an elderly upstairs neighbor who’d told a Channel 8 Action-Cam reporter that until she’d learned that he’d been arrested on the charge of inflicting fatal blows to his mother’s head with a hammer, she’d always thought he was “an angel.”

And from then on, the name stuck. News headers proclaimed: “The Angel of Death” or “(Really An?) Angel.” Every detail about the Hutchinsons’ lives together, about how he’d done all the shopping and washed her hair and gone to church with her (sometimes), about the surprise Christmas party two years previously (fudge baked himself), about his faithful fetching of his mother’s prescriptions (“he was never late,” the pharmacist was quoted as saying, “not once”)—all these were paraded out in the days and weeks following his arrest, all these along with a question, formulated in many different ways but always the same: how could a man do this to his mother?

The judge and lawyers had warned the jury that they were supposed to forget anything they’d heard about him before the trial, and make their judgment solely on the basis of what they learned in the courtroom, which Mr Nice Guy sincerely intended to do, but try as he might, he couldn’t get one detail out of his head: The Angel had always brought his mother, who had a sweet tooth, her favorite peanut brittle. Year round, no special occasion required, and from the same specialized candy store where Mr Nice Guy sometimes purchased imported chewing gum supplies. Maybe they’d passed each other in the shop without even knowing it! He’d read about The Angel’s habit one day while scanning the newspaper columns, as was his custom, for inspiration about potential services he could render, and trivial though this detail was, it was precisely this piece of information that came to his mind during the hush as the defendant walked down the courtroom aisle. The best peanut brittle in town. Guilty or no, he thought, a nice gesture …

The Angel sat in the front row in a plain brown suit, a man with short curly hair and a round face which showed no emotion while the prosecutor, Mrs Madison, described the crime, the place, the time and the et cetera. Mr Nice Guy reminded himself that the accused must be presumed innocent, and once, when The Angel glanced at the jury, Mr Nice Guy smiled at him, for reassurance. He wasn’t sure if The Angel noticed, but told himself: a fellow in his situation must feel pretty low. He should know that the jury isn’t automatically rooting against him.

What the prosecutor recounted, though, sounded very bad. Confusing, too. According to the police, Mr Hutchinson had called them late on the evening of January 11 to inform them that he’d killed his mother. The police went to their address on Ingersoll Avenue and found the body of an elderly Caucasian female who Mr Hutchinson claimed was his mother (though neighbors and her church minister were unable to identify her the next day, due to the condition of her face). Subsequent tests and dental records confirmed within 48 hours that the deceased was indeed 73-year-old Mrs Charlene Hutchinson.

But at that point Randall Hutchinson changed his story. From his jail cell he suddenly proclaimed his innocence. The blood on his shirt and pants and shoes, and on the walls, he said, came from having cut himself while opening a can of peaches.

The courtroom had been silent except for Mrs Madison’s voice and now, with each pause as she wrote dates and times with a squeaky magic marker on a whiteboard, the room grew, somehow, even more silent. Again the defendant looked over at the jury, and though it was harder now, Mr Nice Guy did his best to smile. This time The Angel noticed him. His chin jerked slightly, and he stared at Mr Nice Guy who, still smiling, redirected his gaze at the prosecutor, who said:

“Tests on the defendant’s clothes confirmed, however, that the blood was not his own but the victim’s. And upon being confronted with these facts, the accused changed his story again, admitted that he did commit this heinous act. The reasons he gives, as you will see, are as improbable as his previous excuses. We shall let the evidence speak for itself.”

The prosecution’s introductory remarks thus completed, Mrs Madison snapped the cap back on her magic marker, and they adjourned for lunch.