(1969) The Seven Minutes (50 page)

‘It is incredible, this scene on the eighth floor of the Hall of Justice,’ Reid was saying into the microphone dangling from his neck, as he faced the camera, ‘a scene the authorities were totally unprepared to handle. Some trials attract international attention because they center upon great names and celebrity, and such trials have ranged from the two-day trial of Mary Queen of Scots in Fotheringay Castle, in 1586, to the trial of Bruno Hauptmann in Flemington, New Jersey, for the kidnapping and murder of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr, in 1935. Some trials attract international attention because they have featured scandal. Such a one was the adultery trial of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn City Court in 1875 on a charge of alienation of affections. And such a one was the trial of Oscar Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895 on a charge of homosexuality. Other trials attract worldwide attention because they are politically controversial. There have been such trials in America - Mary Surratt and her fellow conspirators being tried in the old Penitentiary Building in Washington for the assassination of President Lincoln, and Nicola Sacco and Bar-tolomeo Vanzetti being tried in the Dedham Courthouse in Massachusetts as anarchists who had committed murder. There have been such trials in Europe - Emile Zola being tried in Paris for libeling the Ministry of War in his defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, and Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty being tried in the Budapest People’s Court for attempting to overthrow the Hungarian Communist government.

‘And then there are trials that attract international attention because they concern the human right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Such a one was the trial of John Peter Zenger, publisher of the New-York Weekly Journal, who was accused of libeling the tyrannical royal governor in his writings and who stood trial in New York’s city hall in 1735. Zenger had written, “The loss of liberty in general would soon follow the suppression of the liberty of the press… no nation, ancient or modern, ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.” Yet only the heroic advocacy of his aged attorney, Andrew Hamilton, won Zenger an acquittal - and won for American free speech a momentous but temporary victory.

‘Not since that milestone trial of John Peter Zenger has any trial involving freedom of speech or press been considered as important as this criminal trial involving the state of California against an unknown bookseller named Ben Fremont, who is charged with purveying obscenity in the form of a slender underground novel, The Seven Minutes, which was written by an American expatriate author dead over three decades.

‘Why has this particular trial, which might have been relegated o the obscurity of a provincial debate over just one more pornographic book, with the authorities threatening the defendant with no more than a felony charge - why has this trial caught the fancy of people everywhere, not only in the United States, but in Great Britain, Scandinavia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Mexico, South America, Japan, and elsewhere?

‘This reporter can give no single answer. No one I have spoken to of this phenomenon can explain it. At best, we can only conjecture many answers. The trial opens at a decisive moment in the history of civilized man, a moment when the future of human morality hangs in balance. Through books periodicals, television, stage, motion pictures, freedom of speech has pushed beyond all the old frontiers of acceptable decency, in an attempt to find the farthest reaches of art or in an attempt to assault and destroy the fiber of home and family and society as people in every civilized land have chosen to know it. At the very same time, the authority of religion in nations throughout the world has been challenged and weakened by those testing the outer limits ,of freedom and black-and-white definitions of right and wrong, of moral and immoral.

‘Perhaps it is that at this moment state and church foresee their possible doom unless they rally to stop the destroyers of established moralities, and unless they punish those who have gone too far, and unless they set up new limits to contain the misuses and excesses of anarchistic freedom.

‘And for the final battlefield they have selected this court of law in this sprawling southern city of the state of California. The object provoking this showdown is one with unique international appeal and incitement alike. Although written by a male, the novel about which the storm rages is entirely a woman’s novel, concerned with a single fictional female’s attitudes and feelings toward her psyche and her sex life. Since women of all countries are women first and citizens second, their interest in the fate of Cathleen in this book overcomes national boundaries. Moreover, its explicit sexuality, which the book insists is dominant in the minds of all women, appears to concern and trouble women everywhere, and to concern and worry men everywhere. Above all, because of certain passages that leaders of Western religions consider threatening - not only Catholic leaders in France, Italy, Spain, but Protestant leaders in the United States, Great Britain, Germany - passages that show sacred figures from every religion in the sexual act - the world’s

churches have quietly joined with temporal authorities in an attempt to suppress The Seven Minutes and by this example set new limitations on freedom of speech and working morality.

‘Beyond these reasons, there may be other less practical, more romantic reasons for the glamour that has surrounded…’

But Mike Barrett, although fascinated, had heard no more. Zelkin had beckoned him, and he had hurried after the others into the courtroom to help unpack the briefcases and the carton and ready himself for the looming battle.

Now, scanning the audience in the courtroom behind him once again, he finally caught Maggie Russell’s eye. He nodded to her. She nodded back in grave acknowledgment of his greeting.

Next Barrett quickly reviewed the members of the press. They were seated in folding chairs - no room for tables - the breadth of the courtroom, behind the rail at his back that separated the gallery from the actual court itself. The faces and attire of the journalists confirmed what the television commentator had been saying outside the entrance, that this had become a trial not merely of local interest or national interest, but one with international attraction. There were the obviously American newsmen, chatting, doodling on their pads, reviewing background material, and then there were journalists whose newspapers or syndicates were located in London, Paris, Milan, Munich, Geneva, Mexico City, Barcelona, Tokyo.

From the press row Barrett’s attention wandered to the rectangular mahogany double council table that belonged to the prosecution, and that in this cramped space seemed almost an extension of his own table. Peering over Zelkin’s head, he could observe District Attorney Duncan, now running his fingers through his smooth blond hair, now scratching his thin nose, now rubbing his cleft chin, as he listened to something said by his assistants, swarthy Victor Rodriguez and suntanned Pete Lucas.

His own mahogany table, Barrett noted, also held three participants, but only two of these were advocates for the defense. There was Barrett himself, in the end chair nearest the jury box, wearing a button-down white shirt and a blue tie and a navy-blue Dacron suit. Beside him, still emptying a briefcase, was pudgy Abe Zelkin. At the far end was the defendant, Ben Fremont, in his best Sunday suit, squinting up through his metal-rimmed spectacles at the six grilled fluorescent lights suspended from the ornate ceiling.

One last time, Barrett inspected the battlefield that lay immediately before him. Off to his extreme right, somewhat beyond the prosecution table, was the graying, broad-shouldered bailiff, a one-man riot squad who maintained decorum in the courtroom and served as a male baby sitter for the twelve jurors. He had been standing, listening to several members of the press, but now he took his station behind his small desk.

From the bailiff Barrett directed his attention across the heads of

the opposition to the larger rolltop desk, which partially hid the skinny, giraffish court clerk, who was hunched over his minutes. Late Friday, in the presence of judge and spectators, he had sworn in the jurors with the reminder that they must ‘well and truly try the cause,’ and soon, as the judge’s secretary in matters of the court, he would develop his minutes of the proceedings as well as accept and tag all exhibits.

In the center of the room, most imposing and formidable, rose the judge’s bench, austere despite its desk microphone, pencils, notepad, water carafe, gavel, and an eight-volume set of the California Criminal Code. Behind the bench, the high-backed leather seat of justice, and behind the seat a drape-covered door flanked by the American flat and the California state flag.

Below the judge’s bench, between Barrett and the witness box affixed to the bench, was the swivel chair, the stenotyper set on a tripod, and the desk belonging to Alvin Cohen, the court reporter assigned to record the proceedings and testimony of the impending trial. At the moment, Cohen was on one knee adjusting the tripod for the stenotyper, and he looked like a youthful associate professor trying to find a cuff link.

Above the court reporter was the witness box, its open side forming a Step-up entrance leading to a padded chair and a raised microphone. Barrett stared gloomily at the witness box, for which he and Zelkin were so ill-prepared, and then he swung himself on his own swivel chair to consider the low wall of the elongated jury box only a few feet from his elbow.

The jurors’ chairs were still empty.

Barrett’s mind traveled back to yesterday morning when Abe Zelkin had tried to fill those chairs for him by reciting the biographies and sketching the personalities of the twelve jurors who had been selected.

Zelkin had been shrewd in his selection of jurors from among those who had survived the peremptory challenges and dismissals for cause by the District Attorney. It was not merely each juror’s occupation and way of life, nor even his opinions and prejudices that had influenced Zelkin’s selections; it was the juror’s mannerisms, his use of language and inflections of speech when replying to questions, even the newspaper or magazine he carried under his arm. For this was a censorship case, and knowledge of a juror’s sophistication, education, literary interests was all-important.

Zelkin had felt that out of the twelve jurors there were at least five who showed definite promise of being in empathy with their cause, and he had only hoped that the other seven were honestly impartial about the issue at stake. Zelkin had felt that they had a good jury. But then, thought Barrett, he was sure Duncan felt equally confident of his own approval of these jurors.

Thinking of yesterday’a last-minute preparations, Barrett’s attention strayed back to the witness stand, and he recalled that all

of Sunday afternoon they had brought their witnesses into the office and privately discussed their testimony with them and made suggestions and taken notes. He thought of the one added disaster that had occurred. Kimura had delivered to them Saturday, directly from International Airport, a witness in whom they had invested considerable hope. This was da Vecchi, the Florentine artist who had met Jadway in Paris in 1935 and who claimed to have painted him once in Montparnasse. Da Vecchi had proved to be a stunted, elderly Italian with the shifty eyes of a Roman pickpocket. For appearance on the witness stand, Barrett had prayed for a Titian or a Carpaccio, but instead he had someone reminiscent of a garrulous Old World shoemaker who always forgot to make the right change.

Da Vecchi, it turned out, had met Jadway only three times - but, although the artist’s memory had clouded, he did remember several of Jadway’s remarks made while the author had been writing his novel, and these attested to Jadway’s integrity - and in one of the three meet ngs, da Vecchi had done a painting of Jadway. In Zelkin’s office, da Vecchi had prepared to unveil the portrait. For Barrett it had been a suspenseful moment, the moment before seeing the real defendant in the case for the first time. Da Vecchi had thrown aside the burlap to reveal his oil, and Barrett’s heart had sunk. For the painting was a cubist abstract, a ridiculous crossword puzzle of cones, squares, and perpendicular and horizontal lines dabbed in blue and yellow and crimson and brown. If the canvas depicted a countenance at all it was that of a dominating centaur’s head constructed of nursery-school blocks. The painting was valueless, and da Vecchi not much better, and Barrett sighed once again - beggars cannot be choosers. Da Vecchi would take the stand for the defense in due time.

Brooding, Barrett cast one more sidelong glance at his opponent. The District Attorney was surveying the audience and waving to someone. Barrett wondered how Duncan had spent his Sunday. With Christian Leroux, defamer of Jadway, no doubt, and possibly with Jerry Griffith. And then he wondered whether Jerry Griffith had seen Duncan. Of course, Maggie would know, but he would not ask her. He stared at his rival, envying him his witness wealth, and then he turned around again to see the time.

The wall clock read half past nine.

Two buzzes sounded through the room, and Barrett saw the hefty bailiff jump to his feet and hasten to the doorway leading upstairs to the jury room. Immediately Barrett sensed that both the press and the spectators understood, for their chatter had begun to subside and everyone was alert.

Suddenly the twelve jurors, eight men, four women, were filing into the courtroom, and they were finding their places in the jury box. As they did so, Abe Zelkin tugged Barrett’s sleeve and cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Take a look at the five I told you about, the ones

I have hopes for,’ he whispered. Zelkin had once taken a memory course, in an attempt to match Barrett’s natural gift, and now he played one of its games in order to fix the five in Barrett’s mind. ‘Juror number two, the woman who looks like Mao Tse-tung, very good. Number three, the banker who looks like Uncle Sam, pretty good bet. Number seven, the girl who looks like Greta Garbo, real cool. Number ten. The Joe Louis type. He’s a teacher. Twelve. The foreman. Twin for Albert Schweitzer. Name’s Richardson. Big architect. Got them?’