The Jefferson Letter is the seething force that inspired Scarborough’s historic venom. It is there, throbbing, at the heart of our case. We cannot see it, but its effect and its force are palpable.
It’s one forty-five when the wizard finally comes out from behind the curtain and takes the bench. Quinn shuffles a few papers as he looks down to make sure that Harry is really there and that it’s not somebody in a Harry mask.
Finally satisfied, he looks down at Tuchio. “Is the prosecution ready to proceed?”
Tuchio stands. “We are, Your Honor.”
“Then you may present your opening statement.”
The prosecutor circles the front of the counsel table until he is standing before the jury, no more than six feet from the alternates seated directly in front of him. His arms are folded, feet slightly apart, the power suit draped on his body. He looks at them for a few long seconds in silence, studying the twelve in the box from one end to the other before he finally speaks.
“Why are we here?”
He allows the question to linger in the air just long enough. Tuchio has a sense of timing.
“I’ll tell you,” he says.
Somehow I thought he would.
“We are here so that the People of the State of California can present evidence to you”-the volume of his voice rises now-“evidence of a heinous, cold-blooded crime, the most serious crime possible, the intentional taking of another human life, the capital crime of murder.
“I am going to tell you a story, ladies and gentlemen. It is a true story-”
I was hoping for Hansel and Gretel.
“-with evidence to support it and witnesses who, under oath, swearing to tell the truth, will sit right there.” Tuchio points with an outstretched arm toward the now-empty witness box. “Witnesses who will tell you in their own words what they saw and what they heard. You will see the murder weapon. You will see photographs of the crime scene in all its horror. You will hear experts, scientists and others, explain to you their professional opinions concerning aspects of the evidence and how they came to arrive at their conclusions.
“After you have seen all the evidence and heard all the testimony, you will be instructed by the judge on how to evaluate what you have seen and heard here in this courtroom. And then you will be asked to render a verdict.
“Your Honor, I would ask the defendant to rise.”
The judge wasn’t ready for this. Neither was I. Quinn looks befuddled, but he complies with Tuchio’s request. “The defendant will stand.”
Carl looks at me like, What’s going on?
I tell him to stand, to look straight at the jury. Don’t look away.
We both get up. Carl faces the jury once more. But this time he isn’t smiling. He looks scared.
Tuchio turns back to the jury box. “You will be asked to decide whether that man”-he turns, again with an outstretched arm, his finger pointed like a cocked pistol at Carl-“whether on July eighth of this year, the defendant, Carl Everett Arnsberg, in cold blood and with malice aforethought, murdered Terrance Scarborough.”
Tuchio drops his arm and stands there in front of them in silence. Carl is still standing, looking at the jury like a stone statue. No one is smiling at him from out of the jury box this time. I tug gently on his coat sleeve, and we both sit.
Tuchio turns and looks at us, wrings his hands a little, then starts again.
“On the morning of June fourteenth, a warm, sunny day here in San Diego, Terry Scarborough, a man of letters, an author of some considerable note, who was to appear on national television that night, was busy in his hotel room preparing to appear on Jay Leno’s show.”
Tuchio doesn’t mention that Scarborough was also a lawyer. Why risk tweaking a broad public bias?
“Mr. Scarborough had everything to live for. He had just published a new book, a book that had become a number-one national bestseller.” He nods his head, strokes his chin with one hand, and begins to move in front of the jury, pacing. “Oh, it was a controversial book to be sure. It was a book that dealt with serious issues.” He ends up at the prosecution table right on beat, and from a cardboard box on top he plucks a copy of Scarborough’s book. Then he heads back toward the jury, studying the book’s cover, opening it, fanning a few pages until he gets back to the closed cover. I have now seen this enough times that the image on the book’s jacket is burned into my brain.
The Tush and I have argued behind closed doors with the judge about whether the jury should be allowed to read the book. For the moment the answer is no, though Quinn has left himself enough room to change his mind if he chooses to. The question is whether the book is relevant. Tuchio says that it is, his argument being that it was the content of the book that formed the motive for the murder, or rather Arnsberg’s resentment of that content. The judge is not satisfied that the state has established this. He wants to see more evidence.
“Perpetual Slaves: The Branding of America’s Black Race,” Tuchio reads the title to the jury. Then he holds the book up so that they can all see the front cover.
Even from a few feet away, they can’t miss the large, rust-hued photograph, probably a daguerreotype dating to the Civil War. It is a picture of a black slave, his hands chained as he stands withered and dazed, his head lifted, looking straight ahead. Around his neck a heavy iron ring has been bolted closed. Sprouting outward from this ring, like rays from the sun, are footlong sharpened spikes, so that the man cannot even lay his head on the ground to rest. If you look closely, you can see scars on his shoulder where the lash of a whip has opened the skin like a plow turning furrows in the earth.
“This is a book about the evils of slavery.” Tuchio looks over at me as he says this, almost begging for an objection.
He knows Quinn would slap me down. As long as Tuchio doesn’t veer into argument or dally too long at the fringes, the judge will give him leeway in his opening, enough to make his case if he has the proof.
“It is a book about the burdens and brutality of an institution that many believe has left painful social stigmas. Stigmas that still divide this country, even today.”
“Amen.” A single loud male voice from the audience.
Quinn grabs his gavel and slaps it once as he looks out from behind an angry stare.
He could have the deputies start searching the aisles for the miscreant, but Tuchio doesn’t give him time.
“Among other things this book recites portions of the United States Constitution, provisions written more than two hundred years ago, provisions that allowed human beings, African Americans, to be held in bondage, owned by other Americans as slaves. Of course, most of us are aware of this, the history of slavery, the Civil War, all of that. But what’s more, this book informed the public of what many people, people who are not lawyers, did not know-that this language, the odious language of slavery written so many years ago, that this language remains to this day a part of our Constitution.” A few eyes in the jury box open up wide at the revelation.
“Oh, slavery was abolished sure enough, repealed by amendments after the Civil War. But the language of slavery was never actually removed from the text of the Constitution. Most people don’t know that,” he says. “And many are offended by it. It remains there in the Constitution as a visible stigma of what it is to be black in America.”
“Your Honor, I’m going to object.” I’m on my feet.
The judge is nodding. “I agree. Mr. Tuchio, what does this have to do-”
“I’ve made the point, Your Honor, if you’ll allow me to move on.”
“Please do.”
Tuchio thinks for a moment, regroups. “This book, and the message that it contained, was the reason Mr. Scarborough was in San Diego that day, the day he was killed. He was on a book tour, doing readings at local bookshops and sitting for news interviews on television and radio.”