reasonable doubt

Reasonable Doubt

Even years from the events of that summer, I have a hard time believing that unrelated things can be so connected, that a town can be so small, or an area so small, that everyone is truly related to each other, or connected. I mean, I was getting a PhD in Philosophy at a university in this small area. I figured that if I went over into the next county, Joe’s Bar in Saline County to be specific, to get a beer, who would notice? Or care? I was getting away from it all, relaxing, unwinding. I did it about once a month, and almost always at the end of a term, when papers from my assistantship rolled in. I was distracted; I needed to relax. I watched the locals play pool, but I did little else.

So, one time when I was called into jury duty, and it turned out to be a Saline County murder case, I thought nothing of it. Who did I know in Saline County? I knew Al, the bartender, maybe, but barely even him, and he didn’t count; he was a bartender. We were in a large room in our own Franklin County courthouse, and they explained to us that some of us would be chosen for a jury for a Saline County murder case. A notorious bully, Big Eddie Smith, was up for murder. It didn’t take me long to figure out who Big Eddie was. The prosecution, of course, called him Edward, but one of the early guys in the jury pool said, of course I know Big Eddie, he makes moonshine out on the ledges out by the river in Saline County, he said, he deals drugs and other bad stuff, and they dismissed this guy right away and told us to disregard anything anyone had just said, which just made us remember all the more clearly.

Well that was a kind of bell right there, of course it stuck in my mind, but what was I going to do? When it was my turn I didn’t lie; I just said I didn’t know him; I was hostile to the whole system, and distracted on top of that, and I didn’t bother to hide it. I’d be a lousy juror, I was trying to tell them; I had other things to do. Would I hesitate to send a murderer to his death? Of course I would; they were always sending innocent people up for murders they didn’t commit, and maybe Big Eddie would be one of them. Much to my surprise, they chose me to be on this jury. Maybe the defense liked my hostility to the whole system. Maybe the prosecutor figured that, being an academic, I’d have no sympathy for a huge, ugly, dumb hillbilly murderer like Big Eddie.

I looked more closely at Eddie. I wasn’t quite right about that dumb part; in fact I had no idea about him, smart or dumb, and tried to tell myself to be impartial, give him a chance. The other stuff might be true, judging by his appearance, unkempt hair, big muscles beneath his jail coveralls, etc., but who knows about moonshine? People make that stuff up. They’d say it about a guy like Eddie even if it wasn’t true. And he was probably a guy that always had it, whether he made it or not. And would, no doubt, share it, even if it killed someone.

A couple of days later, we were in the routine of the trial, which turned out to be quite long; give it a few weeks, they told us. I was angry, but they wouldn’t let me bring my laptop to the trial, I had to just sit there and watch, and judge the evidence. Somebody had beaten and killed Jeff Wright in his home in the town of Dover, Saline County, on the night of Saturday, May 8, 2002. He had taken Lila Cartwheeler there on that night, and she was well known to be Big Eddie’s girl, according to one of the jurors. Lila Cartwheeler was one of the state’s witnesses; we’d see her soon. Evidence from the house included blood, DNA, photographs of the body. It looked like Big Eddie was a goner. A kitchen knife had his fingerprints all over it; that knife had been found in Jeff Wright’s body. My fellow jury members, farmers, academics, a gas-station owner, a math teacher, all agreed. He looks guilty. Why was this trial in Franklin County? No way he could get a fair trial in Saline, they said; he’s too famous.

So it was early in the trial, in the testimony of the bank official; we’d seen the bank video, in which Lila came into the bank, flirted with the teller, Jeff Wright, took a very long time, trying to make her withdrawal, or whatever, and left. Shortly after that, according to the official, Jeff Wright withdrew $5000 of his own money. This made everyone jump, especially the defense attorney, who acted like he was convinced that Big Eddie hadn’t done it, but didn’t quite know who did do it, or why. $5000? This was not an ordinary date. This would provide another motive, besides enraged-ex-boyfriend-kills-suitor. But what? A business deal gone bad? Lila as go-between in some deal between Big Eddie and Jeff Wright? In cross-examination the money seemed to have disappeared; it was cash; there was no trace of it.

It was somewhere in that movie that I realized I’d seen Lila somewhere before, perhaps in Joe’s bar, so I scraped my memory- could I have been in Dover, Saline County, the night of May 8? If I was, I couldn’t remember it. But I had a vague memory of Lila, playing pool, perhaps, in Joe’s Bar. I’d seen her before. In the courthouse, she was nowhere to be seen; the place was relatively empty of people related to the case or of spectators. Big Eddie was there, of course, sullen, passive, glaring, as if he knew he was being framed. An older woman also usually was there, in the spectators’ seats- Jeff Wright’s mother?

So next was the restaurant owner and a waiter, there to verify that, yes, Jeff Wright and Lila Cartwheeler had gone to a nice restaurant that night, gone on a date, were romantically involved perhaps, but were a young innocent couple, while this glaring brute over here in the front row plotted methodically to kill the guy. My original intention was to read and think philosophy; I’d brought my Sartre book and clutched it in my hand hoping for an opening when I could just kick back and read it. But the trial itself became riveting in its own strange and twisted way. The more the prosecutor tried to make us believe that these were two normal young people, the less I believed it. The defense attorney, grasping at straws, I thought, started asking about the $5000. Any evidence of a big deal taking place? Did you ever see a large chunk of cash being passed? These questions, of course, are in my own words. But I was thinking more or less the same way as the defense attorney. Something was fishy. I didn’t know what.

As I scraped my memory for any clues, I could remember clearly that Lila Cartwheeler was no sweet innocent thing. She was playing pool at Joe’s, and a half a dozen guys were leering at her, including myself, and she was enjoying it more than a little. Now on the night that I remembered, I had gone way out to Dover to get away from my own troubles, and wasn’t about to start up more, so I just sipped my beer and watched, perhaps between pages of Sartre. So the details might be a little fuzzy there. But one thing about my memory bothered me, and as I say, I had no clue exactly whether it was May 8 or not, my memory wasn’t helping me there. But there was a detail that I did remember. At some point some man walked into the place, walked directly up to Lila Cartwheeler, and said something private to her, in her ear. And this changed her demeanor, ever so slightly; it made her colder, less likely, I thought, to become more friendly with any of the guys there who would have jumped at the chance. I remember that turn in her demeanor; I remember the guy, too, because even in the minute or so I’d seen him, it seemed he meant more to her than the others. Yet, here, at this trial, all I could hear was how everyone knew she was Big Eddie’s girl, and how, apparently, she was breaking it off with Big Eddie to go with this Jeff guy, the victim.

So now Lila herself gets called up to the stand, and the prosecutor starts in. He of course wants to prove that she went out with Big Eddie, broke up with him legitimately, and started up with Jeff Wright as any single young woman would have the right to do. He also wants to establish how long she was in his home; how it happened that Big Eddie came there; what was Big Eddie’s DNA and blood doing all over Jeff Wright’s house; how could she imagine that Big Eddie could be furious at Jeff Wright for going out with his girl; how Big Eddie could be worked up in a rage, induced by alcohol or drugs or whatever-else she could think of; and, in general, would she help lock up this mean-looking hillbilly madman, for the benefit of the citizens of Saline County.

She was having none of it, though, and gave him very few useful details. She’d gone to Jeff Wright’s house, yes, but that was to see some art he had done, and yes, she knew that was a tired old line meant to get young women up into a guy’s apartment, but she knew Jeff pretty well, and didn’t feel nervous about that. Big Eddie, she said, was also just a friend; she had no idea why his blood and DNA were all over the murder scene, no idea why he might be angry, didn’t seem to her he’d have anything against Jeff Wright at all. In the defense attorney’s turn, he brought up the money again, but she claimed to know nothing of it at all. If Jeff Wright had withdrawn it, she didn’t know; nor did she have any idea why he would do that on the night he was taking her out to eat. She knew nothing of it.

Studying her closely, I knew she knew more than she was letting on, yet I believed her; I believed that she and Big Eddie were “just friends”- and believed that she was on a casual date with Jeff Wright. She was no innocent woman; I knew that; yet, what she said, she didn’t appear to be lying. At one point she looked right at me. I didn’t know if she recognized me from that night or not. Big Eddie glared at her. She looked back with the same impassive look. She was giving nothing away. She had no emotion toward him; not hate, vengeance, contempt, nor love. Yet also she would do nothing to get him locked up. If she knew anything, she wasn’t saying.

Finally they brought Big Eddie himself up to the stand. He took forever getting there, and his oath to tell the truth was entirely unconvincing. But once they started asking questions he opened up a little. He repeated Lila’s claim that he and Lila were just friends. Yes, he had been in Jeff Wright’s apartment; he had helped him cook dinner, and had cut himself. That’s why there was blood. That’s why his prints were on the knife.

The time of course was a question. But Jeff and Lila had been at dinner at about 6. Lila had left Jeff’s, or so she said, at about 9. Big Eddie said he got there at about 11, left at about 12, and Jeff Wright was alive and well when he left. Alive and well, that’s right, yes sir.

Now a number of suspicions came to the surface, as Big Eddie was notorious for moonshine, illegal substances, and other things. Eddie denied them all; he was in the apartment merely for dinner, and to talk to Jeff Wright; he had no business deal going whatsoever, did not come and go with any illegal substances of any kind, or have any kind of business, other than the dinner, with Jeff Wright whatsoever.

At one point they gave us a break, maybe between prosecutor and defense, and I remember being a little surprised by my jury mates. A big ornery moonshiner would come over to this gentle bank teller’s apartment, at 11 pm, just to cook? And cut himself in the process? They were angry, furious that he’d try to pass off a story like this. And then what, somebody sneaks in, and kills this nice friendly bank teller quick, the minute Big Eddie leaves? And there would be a plausible reason for this? They had no doubt he was a liar. They were ready to send him up on the spot. The judge was impatient also, as if he didn’t want to hear such tripe in his courtroom.

The defense attorney, sensing trouble here, tried to draw out Eddie’s testimony, make it seem more plausible, and show us the human side of Eddie. I myself was baffled. If he’d come to rob Wright, why did he have to use Wright’s knife? Why was there no evidence of the five grand, anywhere? A polished dealer makes people come to him, at home or another location, but doesn’t go wandering up to bank teller’s apartments; what was the story here?

But as the attorney walked us through, Big Eddie stuck with what he’d said. He seemed like a guy who had been blamed for every bad thing that had ever happened, and had merely obliged everyone by doing just about every bad thing, and was in the habit of being blamed, and when he just did something normal, he wasn’t surprised he was being blamed again. But he stuck with his story. If they were going to send him up for cutting his finger cooking onions, so be it.
In the concluding arguments the prosecutor stressed the knife: the blood, the DNA, the evidence that Big Eddie was there; Jeff Wright was killed; put two and two together, would you please. The defense came up with possibilities to make us have reasonable doubt. The judge reminded us that reasonable doubt meant that the state had to prove he was guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt.

I hung that jury on the basis of that idea. I wasn’t sure he’d done it. I couldn’t argue about the rest of his life, or his reputation, or anything else; I didn’t know him. But what I saw didn’t make sense. His own story didn’t make much sense either, I had to admit, but him just plain robbing the guy, or killing him because he’d gone out with Lila, killing him in a rage, I just couldn’t see it. And then, leaving the knife? This isn’t what a premeditated murderer would do. Actually I’ll say that people in the jury agreed with me to some extent, they just concluded that they should send him up just because who else could have done it? The evidence they saw was enough for them. They pressured me for a while, but then they gave up, willing to blame me for refusing to send him up. They didn’t feel strongly enough to get angry or really twist my arm. It was a hung jury; he was free.

Now I took my Sartre book back to Franklin County and tried to finish my PhD, but it wasn’t easy. The characters of that trial haunted me; not so much the jurors, who were all nice to me, in spite of what I’d done, but the others, in particular, Lila, Eddie, and the old woman, presumably Jeff Wright’s mother. And the other guy who kept coming to my mind was the evil man in the bar, who had whispered in Lila’s ear; a guy who had never been mentioned, as far as I knew, even once. If he was Lila’s true love, then they certainly hadn’t said it. If he had said something of any importance, and it was the same night, which I doubt, then I could only guess at what it was. I’d tried to eliminate him from my consideration during the trial, and consider Eddie’s guilt only on the basis of what I saw. But after the trial, I thought of this evil guy. I didn’t like him at all; he was a plotter, unlike Eddie. I realized, later, that I’d considered him guilty all along. I weighed whether I wasn’t influenced unfairly by knowing something I shouldn’t have. But in fact the entire jury was influenced by the reputation of Big Eddie himself, whose shadow stretched two counties and whose name rarely appeared in sentences that weren’t about crime, dealing, or other suspicious activities. Sure, I had seen something, and had decided based partly on instinct. But I also decided based on what I had heard, and I hadn’t heard enough.

Years later, I was proven right, I believe. Aspen Victor McGrath III, who had disappeared from the town of Dover around May of 2002, was found much later on Big Eddie’s land; he’d been dead for years. Big Eddie was now being arrested for some other crime, a smaller one, but one he was clearly guilty of. Eddie now confessed to killing Aspen McGrath III, but claimed also that it was McGrath that had killed Jeff Wright on that night, to the best of his belief.

I was now a cab driver in a nearby town, and I’m sure you’ll chuckle at that, me with my PhD, my Sartre book, my hung jury, I’m driving a cab around, and philosophizing. I thought, well, I realize I’m a walking cliché, but there it was, the truth is the truth, just like Lila and the art prints. So I had plenty of time to listen to the radio and hear the whole story unravel, and also to hear what random passengers said about it, if they cared to comment. In this town we were mostly going to the airport, which was a few miles out of town, and gave plenty of time to hear news reports about Big Eddie and the murder of Aspen McGrath III, whom somehow, nobody had ever missed.

But what never surfaced, really, was what Lila’s role was; Eddie wasn’t saying. He confessed to McGrath’s murder, and to various other crimes; apparently he was guilty of all of them. He claimed that McGrath’s murder had happened on the same night as Wright’s murder, that Lila was there but had no part in it, that he’d buried the body on his land, and that was the end of it. He didn’t give a reason. He didn’t end up with $5000, mysteriously. He had nothing to show for the murder; he didn’t know where Lila had gone. If the press managed to find her at about this time, they didn’t say anything either; she’d changed her name and disappeared, more or less. Maybe the police got a statement out of her, but information about her whereabouts never surfaced in radio, television or newspaper accounts.

I know this because, being a cabdriver, I could listen to radio frequently, and was able to read newspapers and watch television the rest of the time. It wasn’t that I was obsessed; but I did this kind of stuff anyway, and was interested naturally. One of my fares said that he was getting what he deserved, and had probably killed Wright too; quickly I looked in the rearview mirror to see if he had been on the jury. Occasionally I’d get a Saline County official in the cab, and have more serious discussions about what had happened; they knew little more than me, and there wasn’t much forthcoming about Big Eddie. He had a long criminal record; his enemies were vindicated now that he was guilty of McGrath’s murder and was off to jail; but, I was vindicated that, apparently, he was not guilty of the murder he had been charged with, so many years ago. As for McGrath, no family surfaced to demand justice in anger and horror; they had apparently died years ago, though he was young.

Still a couple of years later, I was in a pawn shop, when a diamond-engraved broach caught my eye. I asked to see it, but the owner reflexively objected, knowing I couldn’t afford it. Don’t ask me why I was in this shop, it’s not about my life’s downward spiral, though I must say writing has helped me out. In any case he was right, I couldn’t; however, its case had dust on it, and it glowed anyway, and shone as I looked at it in the afternoon light. What moved me to hold it in my hands, I still don’t know to this day. But, as I turned it over, and saw the engraved letters A.V.M. in the back, I rolled those letters over in my mind until I realized that I was looking at the answer to the case, in my hands. It was small enough, diamonds inlaid, clearly something Wright would have paid $5000 for, though I wasn’t an expert by any means, clearly a family heirloom of a family now gone. The pawn shop owner stared at me; perhaps nobody had touched this broach in years, though he had thought, perhaps, that it would sell quickly. I gave it back to him, and felt like washing my hands. This pawn shop was more or less in the shadow of the courthouse, but I walked the other direction, glad that my life, as destitute as it was, had never come to anything like theirs. My Sartre book, still on my end table, had notes deep inside, that I had taken from that trial. I should throw away the book, but I don’t.

5-09