Buck takes a deep breath and holds it. He grasps the edge of our table with both hands and leans into it until his fingertips turn white. His eyes remain on the foreman, though. The two men seem unable to move, frozen in this moment of judgment.
Beatrice Nolan leans back, gavel in hand. This is her courtroom, after all. Face-to-face dialogue doesn’t often happen here. She apparently finds it unsettling. She’s poised to put a stop to it.
Finally, the foreman blinks and shakes his head. “Mr. Hammond,” he says.
This is unheard of. No foreperson addresses the defendant by name.
“The truth is…”
The foreman’s voice breaks and Buck looks sympathetic. He nods repeatedly, encouraging the weary restaurant owner to continue. I can take it, Buck’s eyes say. Whatever it is you have to tell me, I can take it.
He’s right, of course. He’s taken worse.
“We agree with Attorney Edgarton.”
Eleven heads nod in the jury box.
“We’re disappointed,” the foreman continues, “that Mr. Edgarton isn’t here. We wanted to tell him-face-to-face-that we agree with him.” I’ve practiced law for more than a decade, tried more than a hundred cases. I’ve lost before. More than once, the reading of a verdict made my eyes fill, left my vision blurry.
But not this time. This time my eyes are dry. And I’m going to be sick. I sink to my chair. I can’t help it; my knees are about to quit again.
“What Mr. Edgarton said was true, Mr. Hammond.”
I find it hard to believe that the foreman is still speaking directly to Buck.
“When you shot Hector Monteros, it was, in fact, a moment of temporary sanity.”
A low rumble emanates from the crowd.
The foreman looks at his verdict slip for the first time. “We find that the defendant, William ‘Buck’ Hammond, knew exactly what he was doing when he shot Hector Monteros. He was not insane then, and he’s not insane now.”
I tell myself to take deep breaths, to focus on the appeal. The appeal of a capital murder conviction is automatic. We’ll farm it out. An experienced appellate attorney can argue ineffective assistance of counsel. I’ve got ineffective assistance written all over me. I never even gave an opening statement, for God’s sake.
The foreman straightens his shoulders and pauses again. His eyes don’t budge from Buck’s.
Without making a sound, the gray-haired schoolteacher gets to her feet in the front row. Then the young pharmacist rises behind her. So does the construction worker. And the juror next to him. And the one next to her. The rest of the panel stands too, then, in unison.
For a split second, I don’t get it. I look up at Harry and Buck. Buck’s face is unchanged. Harry’s mouth is open, his expression a question mark; he’s not sure what’s happening either. But his hand starts thumping Buck’s shoulder.
The foreman pauses to look at each of his fellow jurors, gratitude plain on his face. Their show of solidarity spurs him on. He turns back to Buck and takes a deep breath. “We also find Mr. Hammond…”
He shakes his head, his eyes again locked with Buck’s.
No one breathes.
“Not guilty.”
Silence.
Chapter 49
The stunned courtroom stands mute for a full ten seconds. And then Joey Kelsey begins to clap.
Beatrice bangs her gavel and Joey pauses, but now Harry and the Kydd are clapping too. Buck’s prison escorts join in, and Joey watches them before staring back at Beatrice and resuming his applause. Then the whole room explodes. A spontaneous, thunderous standing ovation.
The Kydd takes Patty Hammond by the hand and leads her through the crowd to our table. Buck and Patty stand at arm’s length for a beat, both seemingly unable to move in the enormity of the moment. They melt into each other, then, and the rest of the Hammonds rush forward and embrace them as one.
Luke and Maggie jump to their feet in the front row, whooping out loud and pounding their palms together over their heads. Maggie twists around toward the back door, lets out a shriek, and pushes her way into the center aisle. “Mom!” she shouts, fighting against the tide of humanity moving against her. “Let me through. Please. It’s my mom!”
The crowd actually parts down the middle to let Maggie pass, even the press. Sonia Baker stands just inside the back door, waiflike in street clothes undoubtedly borrowed from the Barnstable County House of Correction. Her eyes grow wide as she surveys the unruly mob in the courtroom, then fill as she spots Maggie hurtling toward her. She bends to embrace her daughter, but Maggie seems to have other plans.
Maggie allows her mother only the briefest of hugs, then pulls away and presents the small white box from Pedro’s Pawn Shop. Sonia hesitates, so Maggie opens it for her and stands on tiptoes to clasp the glittering necklace at the back of her mother’s neck.
It’s Patty who begins the applause this time. Patty, then Buck, then the rest of us. The TV camera lights and flashbulbs shift to the back of the room. Sonia looks confused, embarrassed. Maggie takes a bow.
Harry appears at my side and I reach up to brush my fingertips over his left temple. A light blue bruise is taking shape there, the result of pressure from Stanley’s Stallard Arms. All at once, I realize how close I came to losing Harry, and I’m overwhelmed by the thought of it. Words fail me, though; hot tears slide down my cheeks instead.
Harry leans over and cups my face in his hands, brushing my tears away with his thumbs. “Oh, no you don’t,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine. “You don’t get to fall apart yet.”
He’s right, of course. We’ll both fall apart later. When we can.
“Break it up, you two”-it’s Geraldine-“or I’ll have you taken into protective custody.” She pauses at our table on her way out of the courtroom and takes me aside. “Stanley confessed,” she says, “before going into surgery.”
“Confessed to what?”
“All of it: Howard Davis, Judge Long.” She tilts her head back toward Harry. “Him.”
I nod, but say nothing, and she leans closer. “He told me he didn’t have a choice. He’d been sworn to uphold and protect the system. And they were destroying it, one case at a time. He said he knew I’d understand.”
“Sounds like a vigilante, Geraldine. Better put his case on a fast track.”
She frowns and tosses her head at the Kydd. “Tell the Georgia Peach I’ll have Dominic Patterson out by noon.”
“He’ll be glad to hear it.”
She starts to leave, but apparently thinks better of it and turns back to me, her green eyes intense. “Next time you shoot someone, Martha, for Christ’s sake do it right.”
Once again, I’m speechless.
Geraldine heads for the side door and as I watch her exit, I realize the bench is empty. I catch Joey Kelsey’s eye. “Where’s the judge?”
“Gone,” he says, smiling.
“Did she call a recess?”
“Nope. She just got up and left.” Joey’s smile expands, as if the judge’s departure is exactly what he wanted for Christmas.
So Beatrice Nolan just got up and left. She didn’t bother to tell us we’re adjourned, didn’t bother to tell Buck Hammond he’s free to go. She didn’t thank the jurors for their dedicated service. She didn’t even wish them a happy holiday.
We will.
If by moral insanity it be understood only a disordered or perverted state of the affections or moral powers of the mind, it cannot be too soon discarded as affording any shield from punishment for crime; if it can be truly said that one who indulges in violent emotions, such as remorse, anger, shame, grief, and the like, is afflicted with homicidal insanity, it will be difficult, yes, impossible, to say where sanity ends, and insanity begins…
We say to you, as the result of our reflections on this branch of the subject, that if the prisoner was actuated by an irresistible inclination to kill, and was utterly unable to control his will or subjugate his intellect…he is entitled to an acquittal.