Grisham Could Not Have Written Better
I
went down to watch one of our little local trials this afternoon. One of the
government witnesses was being cross-examined. The lawyer doing the cross is
one of the best defense lawyers in the country. He's very high energy, and was
pretty aggressive with the guy. Polite, but he kept hammering away at tiny
little details.
A
lot of times the prosecutor would object (a youngish guy and deceptively
low-key -- he wouldn't even stand to object. He'd just very quietly say
"objection" and sometimes why he was objecting, but never got excited
about it) and W. (the defense lawyer) would rephrase the question a couple of
times, and then move on.
Eventually
there was a break for the jury while the lawyers argued about a few things in
front of the judge, and then the jury came in for a little bit longer while the
prosecutor talked to his witness again, clarifying some stuff that had come up
in the cross.
Most
of what they were talking about didn't make much sense to me, because I've only
caught little bits of the trial.
Like
if you read every 25th page of a long novel.
Anyway.
Around
4:30 the jury was dismissed for the day and most people had left the courtroom
when...
One of the other lawyers
for the government (who looks like a movie star, a tall and slender blond)
walked up to the stand in front of the judge and started talking to her, and
suddenly everyone left in the room whipped their heads around, because he was
talking about W.!
What
followed was like a scene from the movies or a Grisham novel.
The
The
attorneys who wandered in to see how the trial was going suddenly sat down to
watch, or moved to get better seats.
All
the attorneys involved in the case were watching the two in the dispute.
W.
came up and started demanding to know What, Exactly, He Had Done.
He
talks in capitals a lot!! With lots of exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!
So
he went on for quite a while, all excited and riled up, and demanding to see
motions in writing so he could Answer Specific Allegations, Because He Would
NEVER!! and so on.
Somebody
should have been selling popcorn.
Then
I think perhaps the lead prosecutor said a few words, still totally mild-mannered seeming (he's the one
who remained seated when he objected to questions).
By
the way, the whole mild-mannered thing?
IS
A COMPLETE FRAUD.
That
man is very, very, very Eliot Ness.
The
judge was about to start saying something, after W. had another go, when
a voice piped up from the other side of the courtroom.
"Your Honor?"
We
all looked over and it's this old guy who's the lawyer for the co-defendant.
And
I say old, because he promptly said, "I have more experience than anyone
else in this room..."
And
then he started lecturing the room about how lawyers should never attack each
other personally, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth. All true, of course.
The
blond attorney (really, QUITE good looking, and I’m afraid I completely missed
his name) went back to the podium and quietly insisted that he was not making a
personal attack, he respected Webb quite a lot and thought he was the best
lawyer in the room -- I thought that was laying it on a bit TOO thick, but what
have you -- but he really thought there was a problem with how he was asking
questions and would the judge please do something.
To
which her honor said, file your motions. Thank you and goodnight.
As
we left those of us in the audience sort
of looked at each other as though to ask,
"Have
you ever?"
It
was AMAZING.
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