Page 24 - The Houseguest

THE TRIAL
It was a jury trial. The charges were severe due to my firm’s previous relationship and favors performed for the D.A.’s office, though none of that was of course, in writing. With her prior excessive speed offenses on record, the prosecution went with vehicular manslaughter in the first degree. As an attorney, I tried to separate my emotions in order to read the verbiage of each charge as a layperson: “He or she recklessly caused the death of another person...” Another person? I thought about the many times I had spoken that phrase to grieving parents, wives, husbands and children. The phrase “another person” once spilled without compassion from my lips as I spoke the fluent legalese of my predecessors. Now, I was the unfortunate victim who had lost “another person” – two in fact, and the words took on a different meaning.
With my connections, I was permitted to be a quiet observer, from voir dire to the prosecution’s presentation and subsequently, to the defense’s desperate rebuttal. Rachel’s defense team had cleverly manipulated questioning of potential jurors to gain a majority male selection. No one, including me, seemed to take notice of the fact that the defense attorneys, along with the defendant and even her mother from a distance, created an assemblage of attractive females. One might say in the 21st century, that fact should never, would never, matter. And one would be mistaken.
Motionless and emotionless, I sat through the gruesome accident scene photos, the honest portrayal by the prosecution of Rachel Spence as a spoiled, uncaring, selfish young woman, and the gut-wrenching exploitation of myself as the grieving father and widower. The facts
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The Houseguest by Linda Ellis www.LindaEllis.life