Worship You

Chapter Twenty - Verdict

 The recess hadn't done the DA much good. He had very little new to offer and he didn't call Cassie back to the stand. I guess he figured he had more to lose and nothing to gain. 

Finally, he was reduced to muttering a long confused string of random phrases that never turned into a question.  

Caldwell gently objected and asked the judge if maybe we weren't finished here. The judge just looked at the DA until he nodded and said, "The State rests, Your Honor." 

Cassie's lawyer was great in summation. She was almost as good as Cassie had been on the stand. She reminded the jury of the abuse that Cassie had suffered at her father's hands in such dramatic terms that she had a woman on the jury sobbing at one point. She even did me the favor of including me in the general sympathy she whipped up over Cassie's tragedy. 

Goff wasn't bad either. He painted a picture of Cassie's father as a bully, a rapist and a drunk. A man that was so sick, so guilty he imagined every ordinary contact Cassie had with the outside world as a threat. 

The DA was stuck with his original line to Cassie and I killed her father in order to be free. His heart wasn't in it and the jury fidgeted much of the time. 

The judge took a long time telling the jury what they were supposed to do and how they were supposed to do it. The things they could think about and the things they couldn't think about. How they should consider some testimony and how they were supposed to forget they had ever heard other things.  

He gave them choices of verdicts: Murder in the First Degree (a premeditated murder); Second Degree, (a killing not preplanned but caused by dangerous conduct or a lack of concern for life. My personal best bet.)  

The judge also said they could find me guilty of manslaughter. The judge explained that it could be voluntary manslaughter, an intentional killing without malice aforethought (for instance, a crime committed in the heat of passion.  Sounded good to me.) Or involuntary manslaughter, (basically an accidental killing. During the fight Mr. Cioukowsky just happened to be killed, but killing him was never my intention.) 

As the judge explained the various ways that the jury could put me in jail or end my life, he hardly looked at me. The one time he did there was pity in his eyes and disgust, as if I were not all that bright and not really aware of what was going on. I think my refusal to testify had something to do with that. Also my suit still didn't fit, and made me look a little "special." The short bus kind. 

As far as Cassie was concerned, (since the prosecution presented no physical evidence tying Cassie to the crime) the judge said the jury must decide if she was my accomplice in the murder. This means: Did she persuade me to do it? Did she help in any active way to commit the crime (e.g., Did she let me into the house? Help me to entrap her father? Provide me with a weapon? Etc.) She was even legally my accomplice if she simply knew that I was going to kill her father but didn't tell anyone. The judge said that if the jury found that Cassie was my accomplice, she was equally responsible for her father's death and could suffer the same penalty as the person actually committing the killing. That would be me. 

It was a lot more complicated than that and the judge talked practically all afternoon. But these were basically the choice.  

One-Way had entered a last-minute plea of self-defense and the judge allowed it. 

"It may seem a little opportune on Mr. Goff's part to enter this plea for his client, but the laws of this state allow it.  

"However. This is not Florida. Mr. Harper was not in his own home. And by the laws of this state, Mr. Harper was obligated to attempt to retreat and avoid confrontation with Mr. Cioukowsky. You must believe that Mr. Harper tried this but was given no choice but to defend himself from an attack by Mr. Cioukowsky.  

"So now, if you believe that Mr. Harper acted in self-defense, if you truly believe that the evidence supports that conclusion, you may find him not guilty." 

Everyone could see that, even though he'd allowed it, the judge thought a self-defense plea was totally bull shit. I think he killed my chances on that score. From what I heard later on the news, the jury never even discussed it. 

So it was all going to come down to whether the jury believed Cassie's testimony or not. Was I defending her from her evil drunken rapist father? Were we just two naïve kids dealing with a monster? Or were we the monsters? 

The judge finished saying just about the same thing in lawyer talk and sent the jury away to deliberate our fate. 

Then the twelve citizens with nothing better to do, stood up and marched off to the jury room to make up their minds whether we lived or died. 

They didn't take very much time deciding. We were called to come back to the courthouse in less than an hour. They were going to take us one at a time and Cassie went first.  

Cassie stood up and faced them. The foreman of the jury smiled, declared her not guilty and now everybody actually did applaud. It was the most popular decision in that county since the new casino on the Indian reservation was approved. 

With me, it was a little different. They found me guilty, of course. But since the death happened in the course of a fight and in the heat of the moment, they decided that I had no intent to kill Cioukowsky. They found me guilty on one count of manslaughter. And, because I been tried as an adult, they sentenced me to twenty years in state prison. They had to. It was the law. 

However, the judge showed clemency and commuted my sentence to five years in a juvenile detention facility where I would receive psychotherapy and rehabilitation and if everything went well I could be out in a year or two.  

Cassie had played them like an orchestra. 

It was practically a pat on the back.