INSIDE/OUT
Back when I was engaged to my future ex-wife, she asked me one
evening if I would serve as a juror in a mock trial at her law
school. The mock trial was part of Melinda's finals, she explained,
and 12 students were chosen at random to bring a loved one to serve
on the jury.
Her performance in the trial would count for a third of her grade.
"What kind of case is it?" I asked.
"A murder trial!" she said happily. "A death-penalty case! You get
to send two people to the chair!"
"Oh, what makes you so sure I'll convict them?"
Melinda smiled mischievously. "Because I'm the prosecutor."
Two weeks later found me sitting in the jury box with a panel of
11 other significant others -- husbands, wives, girlfriends,
boyfriends of the students, plus a 74-year-old retired construction
worker named Earl, who was the grandfather of the "public defender."
Melinda had stressed to me that the trial would be an elaborately
authentic undertaking, the facts of the case taken from actual case
law and the students presenting their arguments exactly as they would
in real life. But what she hadn't anticipated was that only the law
students would take the proceedings seriously. For everyone else, it
was comic theater.
The "judge," a professor from Melinda's criminal law class,
observed the opening arguments while seeing how high he could flip
his gavel in the air and still catch it. The "bailiff" -- a petite
blond girl in a U2 T-shirt and jeans -- openly flirted with the one
of the "defendants." The "jurors" passed notes and snapped gum and
took turns nudging Earl, who kept drifting off to sleep.
But no one took the proceedings less seriously than the
"defendants," who made funny faces at the jurors and who broke into
paroxysms of laughter when "Prosecutor" Melinda described them as "a
pair of murderous scoundrels with not an ounce of common decency
between them."
It was a bit surreal, really, given the gravity of the crimes of
which the defendants were accused: On the night of such-and-such,
Melinda explained in her opening remarks, defendant "Smith" and
defendant "Wesson" were in the act of robbing a convenience store
when Sheriff's Deputy "Fife" walked in to buy some Twinkies.
Defendant Smith immediately shot Fife point-blank with a
"Saturday-night Special," then the bandits fled the store and rode a
cross-town bus to their apartment, where they were arrested a few
hours later after their landlady overheard them bragging about the
shootings. Found inside the apartment were a Saturday-night Special,
