No one else in the courtroom makes a sound. Harry waits patiently until the silence is physically uncomfortable; even Geraldine, stoic until now, succumbs to a hard swallow. “Our District Attorney charged Mr. Holliston with first-degree murder,” he says at last, pointing at Geraldine again, “a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence, a sentence to be served in the Walpole Penitentiary, a sentence that won’t end until after he draws his last breath. And for a solid year after she issued that charge, she hid a critical fact—an exculpatory critical fact—from the accused and his attorneys.”
Another hefty silence. Even Clarence is still, his fidgeting abandoned for the moment, his eyes lowered to the table.
“Bear in mind,” Harry says as he stands up straight and faces the jurors again, “our District Attorney didn’t rectify the situation voluntarily. She got caught.”
All fourteen jurors look at Geraldine now. She doesn’t look back at them, doesn’t react to Harry’s words at all.
“This is Derrick John Holliston’s trial,” Harry says as he walks toward our table, “no one else’s. But the system governing this trial belongs to all of us; don’t lose sight of that. We are responsible for our system. We are accountable for its integrity.” Harry turns and fires yet another pointed stare at Geraldine. “We are blameworthy for its lack thereof.”
She sighs and shakes her head at him, but she doesn’t speak. An objection would be pointless; Judge Gould has made that perfectly clear.
“And don’t forget,” Harry says, “we’re not only responsible for this system of ours; we’re subject to it as well. Its integrity should be of grave concern to every last one of us.”
He turns back to the panel. “You saw the crime-scene photographs, ladies and gentlemen. You don’t need me to tell you that wasn’t the scene of a robbery. It was the scene of a sexual assault. It was the scene of panic, of outrage.”
With that, Harry walks behind our table and drops into his chair. The courtroom is soundless. Not one juror moves a muscle.
Even Holliston seems almost pleased with Harry’s closing argument. “About time,” he says as soon as Harry reclaims his seat. “It’s about time you told it like it is.”
Harry doesn’t even look at him. He leans on his elbows, hands clasped, and stares straight ahead.
“You did a good job,” I whisper. “They listened. You were effective.”
He takes his glasses off and throws them on top of a legal pad before he looks at me. “That’s great,” he says, shielding his mouth from the jury with his hand. “Wrong. But effective.”
Chapter 23
“Outrage,” Geraldine says as she stands. “I find it surprising, baffling even, that the defense would speak of outrage.”
She sorts through the stack of glossies on her table, the exhibits introduced during Tommy Fitzpatrick’s testimony, and selects one. Everybody in the courtroom knows which one she’s chosen. She covers the distance to the jury box slowly, in silence, then holds the photograph up in front of the panel. “We, as a civilized society, are the ones who should be outraged.”
The jurors split evenly. Half revisit the scene of the dead priest sprawled on the slate floor of the sacristy, his blood-soaked cassock twisted, his shattered glasses nearby. Half don’t. Cora Rowlands squeezes her eyes shut tight, the set of her jaw telling us she doesn’t even want to be in the same room with that photo any longer. Gregory Harmon glances over at her and then pats her hand on their shared armrest; he looks concerned.
“That man,” Geraldine continues, still displaying the glossy as she turns to point at our table, “did this. He admits it. But he wants you to excuse him; he wants you to say he’s not responsible for what he did. Why? Because he wants you to buy into his cockamamie self-defense claim. He wants you to believe that this fifty-seven-year-old man attacked him, that the attack was so threatening, so brutal, he had no choice but to do this to protect himself .”
She turns away from them abruptly and barrels toward us. Geraldine Schilling has raised steamrolling in spiked heels to a performance art. “This man,” she says, pointing at Holliston, “wants you to believe he had to stab Father McMahon eight times to protect himself, eight times before he could get away from the middle-aged priest.”
Geraldine raises a fist in the air and slams it downward, stopping just inches from Holliston’s shoulder. He doesn’t react. “One,” she says. Again, she raises her fist and then thrusts it down at him. “Two.”
She continues the count, in no hurry to finish, each imaginary stab more forceful than the last, each number called out a little louder. Holliston doesn’t even flinch.
The blanket of silence that covers this courtroom is complete, pierced only by Geraldine’s recitation, but she’s shouting anyhow by the time she reaches seven. She stays planted in front of our table, turns away from Holliston, and delivers the final blow toward the jurors. “Eight,” she bellows.
No one moves. Not a single juror. Not Holliston. Not Geraldine. Her fist remains suspended in midair. “How many puncture wounds did it take before Father McMahon staggered backward?” she says at last. “How many times did Derrick John Holliston stab Francis Patrick McMahon before the priest dropped to the floor?”
She lowers her still-clenched fist to her side, finally, and walks back toward the jury box. “Did Father McMahon reel after the second puncture? After the third? Did he fall after the fourth? The fifth?” She stops in front of the jury box and slaps her open palms on its railing. A few of the jurors jump. “Did it take eight?”
She turns and glares at Holliston, then faces the panel again. “I think not,” she whispers. “That man,” she says, pointing at us once more, “is a murderer. And like the vast majority of murderers, he’s also a liar.”
Calling the defendant a liar is a controversial topic among prosecutors. They all argue routinely that various defendants’ claims are untrue, of course. But the use of the word liar is thought by some to be inappropriate, to demean the system. Not by Geraldine Schilling, though. She used to lecture me about it frequently when I worked for the District Attorney’s office. “If you’re going to ask a dozen people to go into the jury room and decide the defendant’s a liar,” she always said, “you damn well better have the guts to call him one in open court. But don’t bother,” she often added, “unless you can say it like you mean it.”
Geraldine can. “A liar,” she repeats. “His defense is a fabrication. It’s a story he told no one until he was arrested for the priest’s murder. It’s a story he told no one until he was confronted with indisputable evidence of his own guilt. It’s a story he told no one until he was caught, until he was trapped like a rat.”
The jurors are attentive, focused. Their faces reveal nothing.
“An entire week elapsed between Father McMahon’s murder and this defendant’s arrest,” Geraldine continues, “and he told no one of this brutal attack he claims to have suffered at the priest’s hands.”
She half laughs. “This defendant—this murderer, this liar—is trying to sell you a bill of goods, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t let him. One man—and one man only—was attacked in St. Veronica’s sacristy last Christmas Eve.” She holds up the glossy again; she’s had it in her hand throughout her argument. “This one.”
Even fewer members of the panel choose to look at the grisly crime scene this time. Geraldine doesn’t try to force the issue. She lowers the photo to her side after just a few seconds—a wise decision, I think. These jurors have about had it.