woman looked a bit puzzled by the question, but after a moment her eyes began to grow huge and a look of tremendous excitement transformed her face. ‘Yes, yes!’ she cried. ‘There was a scar on his buttocks! I remember it now! I saw it when he was done with me and getting dressed. It was jagged, like a bolt of lightning.’ As she said it, her index finger drew the shape in the air above the witness box. I could see that all of the jurors were leaning forward in the box. There were tears in her eyes and flowing down her cheeks. ‘It was on the right side.’
“Well,” said Matt, “y‘all know what happened next. The bailiff called for more backup, and right in front of the jury they dragged my fool client into the holding cell. Then they pulled down his pants and took a couple of Polaroid shots of his funky butt. Then they brought the defendant back into the courtroom and proceeded to give the pictures to the prosecutor. Both of those bailiffs were grinning like they’d just won the lottery, and when I saw that my heart fell through the floor. When the photographs were shown to the victim, she began sobbing at the top of her lungs. ’That’s the scar! Oh, my God, that’s the scar!‘ ”
The lawyers were roaring now in aching, throbbing spasms of ironic laughter. Dewilliam Magpie and others of his ilk were legendary, archetypal clients, men whose stupidity was used first as a sharp sword when they committed their awful crimes, then later as a frail shield to protect them when they were caught. Their stupidity would shield them against logic, against the tide of evidence, against the advice of counsel, and finally against the verdict and even against the sentence that would follow. It would protect them from everything but their own foolishness. Even years later Dewilliam would not be able to comprehend how it was that the victim had come to identify him in that courtroom.
Decades later, safely ensconced in the maximum-security wing of Folsom Prison, he would pass interminable hours and days blaming it all on his lawyer. His dumptruck, shyster lawyer had fucked him. Surrounded by tattooed men who declared themselves to be daring bank robbers and worldly drug traffickers, but who were, in actuality, only lewd pedophiles and compulsive mailbox thieves, he would proclaim his eternal martyrdom: “Muthafuckin’ lawyer fucked me.”
“Stupidity is always its own best defense,” said Jesse, his face caught somewhere between anger and pity. “I’ve had a hundred like Dewilliam Magpie. Five hundred.”
“Just tell us your worst one,” said Matt. “We of the defense, we of the single reasonable doubt, we of the long odds and the short end of every stick want only the finest draughts of sweet liqueur at this auspicious, albeit monthly gathering. Only the most sublime distillations of our craft are recounted here.” He raised his arm in a sweeping, evangelical gesture as he spoke.
“Do you mean,” said Jesse, smiling, “the dude who was accused of robbery and stood up in court and announced to the judge, ‘Your honor, you have to dismiss this case. I can’t identity this here victim. That ain’t the guy I robbed!’ ”
Jesse looked around the table at his laughing friends. They reminded him of his fellow soldiers in Vietnam. They had to laugh now and then and it was good that they did. Criminal defense is the emergency room of the law, and the constant pressure had to be relieved somehow. Grunts of the law, he thought, field medics performing triage in the crowded jails and holding cells behind the staid courtrooms. We tend the wounded, he thought, those who were wounded by life, by testosterone, by poverty. In this business, everyone gets wounded. Every lawyer at the table had suffered for his or her clients.
Real trial lawyers were like weary foot soldiers or sweating defensive linemen in football—tireless, maverick, and cynical. Their true skill was measured by how far they strayed from the
“Well,” said Matt, “y‘all know what happened next. The bailiff called for more backup, and right in front of the jury they dragged my fool client into the holding cell. Then they pulled down his pants and took a couple of Polaroid shots of his funky butt. Then they brought the defendant back into the courtroom and proceeded to give the pictures to the prosecutor. Both of those bailiffs were grinning like they’d just won the lottery, and when I saw that my heart fell through the floor. When the photographs were shown to the victim, she began sobbing at the top of her lungs. ’That’s the scar! Oh, my God, that’s the scar!‘ ”
The lawyers were roaring now in aching, throbbing spasms of ironic laughter. Dewilliam Magpie and others of his ilk were legendary, archetypal clients, men whose stupidity was used first as a sharp sword when they committed their awful crimes, then later as a frail shield to protect them when they were caught. Their stupidity would shield them against logic, against the tide of evidence, against the advice of counsel, and finally against the verdict and even against the sentence that would follow. It would protect them from everything but their own foolishness. Even years later Dewilliam would not be able to comprehend how it was that the victim had come to identify him in that courtroom.
Decades later, safely ensconced in the maximum-security wing of Folsom Prison, he would pass interminable hours and days blaming it all on his lawyer. His dumptruck, shyster lawyer had fucked him. Surrounded by tattooed men who declared themselves to be daring bank robbers and worldly drug traffickers, but who were, in actuality, only lewd pedophiles and compulsive mailbox thieves, he would proclaim his eternal martyrdom: “Muthafuckin’ lawyer fucked me.”
“Stupidity is always its own best defense,” said Jesse, his face caught somewhere between anger and pity. “I’ve had a hundred like Dewilliam Magpie. Five hundred.”
“Just tell us your worst one,” said Matt. “We of the defense, we of the single reasonable doubt, we of the long odds and the short end of every stick want only the finest draughts of sweet liqueur at this auspicious, albeit monthly gathering. Only the most sublime distillations of our craft are recounted here.” He raised his arm in a sweeping, evangelical gesture as he spoke.
“Do you mean,” said Jesse, smiling, “the dude who was accused of robbery and stood up in court and announced to the judge, ‘Your honor, you have to dismiss this case. I can’t identity this here victim. That ain’t the guy I robbed!’ ”
Jesse looked around the table at his laughing friends. They reminded him of his fellow soldiers in Vietnam. They had to laugh now and then and it was good that they did. Criminal defense is the emergency room of the law, and the constant pressure had to be relieved somehow. Grunts of the law, he thought, field medics performing triage in the crowded jails and holding cells behind the staid courtrooms. We tend the wounded, he thought, those who were wounded by life, by testosterone, by poverty. In this business, everyone gets wounded. Every lawyer at the table had suffered for his or her clients.
Real trial lawyers were like weary foot soldiers or sweating defensive linemen in football—tireless, maverick, and cynical. Their true skill was measured by how far they strayed from the
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