Disturbed Ground (35 page)

Some honestly could not leave their jobs, some lied, some were pregnant, illiterate, or in poor health. Those remaining were asked to fill out a hefty questionnaire and would be called again later. Exiting the courtroom, one man hoisted in his reluctant hands the fat pages of questions and grumbled, "This is a book we have to fill out!"

Jury selection. Some attorneys consider it the most important part
of our judicial process, claiming that a trial's outcome is determined the moment the jury is seated. Peter Vlautin certainly gave jury selection a lot of weight: "I always say, get the right twelve people, and you can sell them anything."

On November 2, 1992, the jury was a blank slate. Or more accurately, twelve empty seats. It would take many weeks of questioning before faces began to emerge as likely jurors, those dozen souls in whose palms would rest Dorothea Puente's fate.

The media converged on the story en masse. Everyone with a lens recorded as many images as he or she could. O'Mara shied away, muttering, "No comment." But the defense attorneys, always more comfortable with reporters, conceded to interviews in front of the courthouse. Kevin Clymo cautioned that they wouldn't discuss the evidence, but said that it was wonderful to finally get going, that his client was in good spirits.

Vlautin, immediately forgetting his co-counsel's caution, declared, "It's a circumstantial evidence case, and after four years the DA still doesn't have a cause of death." Further, he asserted, "The odds of someone dying from Dalmane are ten to none."

Apart from the cameras and journalists, O'Mara groused that jury selection was "boring" and nothing interesting was going to happen before trial. But perhaps he protested too much.

Away from the prying eyes of the media, the prosecutor was about to shift tactics. Perhaps Dorothea Puente wouldn't have to go to trial after all.

On Monday, November 9, another judge from Sacramento presided over plea negotiations. O'Mara’s offer was straight-forward: The state would remove the threat of the death penalty by striking the "special circumstances" allegations if Puente would plead guilty to nine counts of first-degree murder.

Clymo and Vlautin listened, appalled. That was it? Was he serious? Did the DA's office really imagine that their case was that weak? This was the hardest line the prosecution could take short of pressing for death. Why, they stood a good chance of winning far better than this from even the worst jury.

But O'Mara stuck with this niggardly offer, and after two hours of debate the hearing was adjourned without a settlement.

The defense would take their chances with a jury.

Up a winding road, surrounded by fragrant pine trees, the courthouse where Dorothea Puente would be tried was both figuratively and literally a long way from Sacramento. Few people rushed up the steps into this modem, three-story structure, and no metal detectors buzzed those who forgot to shed car keys at the entryway. The halls were mostly quiet, the elevators rarely crowded.

Strange having such a celebrated case in such a little-known setting, but this sleepy, satellite courthouse offered a vacant courtroom. It was the only one on the third floor, and it was light-years from Hollywood courtrooms—no chandeliers, no ornately carved mahogany. Except for the churchlike wooden pews in the gallery (only the truly devout could bear to sit for long), it was mostly unremarkable.

Having sorted through stacks of jurors' questionnaires, the attorneys prepared for voir dire, the questioning of potential jurors. This would be done one juror at a time so that any quirky answers would not "contaminate" the entire panel. The goal, of course, was to seat a fair and impartial jury. But each side had a strategy for seating jurors who might be a bit
more
fair, from their perspective.

For the delicate selection process the defense hired a consultant, Dr. Linda Meza, who had proven her worth during the change of venue and preliminary hearings. A scholar of human behavior, literate in the language of crossed arms and posture, of voice inflection and word choice, she would advise Clymo and Vlautin throughout.

The defense team, a solid four (including Dorothea), sat squarely at one end of the long counsel table; John O'Mara sat stubbornly alone at the other.

O'Mara was having none of this pseudo-science. He just didn't believe that "someone with a string of social science degrees" would necessarily fare any better than he would at choosing jurors. And he didn't want to even think about "the perfect juror," he said, "because you get yourself in a box" trying to match it. Besides, he insisted, "You can't know how people will process information." So the prosecutor went solo, trusting his own instincts.

The citizens trooped in, one after another, to share their views on life, death, crime, work, family, and anything else they might be asked about. They were all ages, sizes, and shapes, a range of types pulled from the American mélange.

The defense did virtually all of the questioning. They'd already
agreed on an approach: question them about alcoholism, child abuse, and our elderly. They'd scoured the questionnaires for hints of sympathy and compassion. They were looking for caregivers, those who understood the tasks of "cleaning up after sick people who spill things and mess their pants." They wanted jurors who understood the financial and emotional costs of taking care of people who could be belligerent and demanding. Most of all, they hoped for jurors with "a heart and soul," Clymo said, people who could "identify with Dorothea."

As various potential jurors cleared their throats and answered questions, they stole glances at the defendant, who looked no more sinister than a little old dumpling of a grandma. After more than four years of confinement, she was so pale that her pasty skin and white hair made her appear almost luminous. She had pale, delicate hands with well-manicured nails, and wore the classic, placid expression of the elderly. Who could believe she was accused of multiple murder?

Even law enforcement officers had trouble reconciling this docile lady with the heinous charges against her. Early on, a bailiff approached Peter Vlautin to inquire whether Mrs. Puente was an escape risk. He grinned and quipped, "Not unless you drive her to the bus station and buy her a ticket."

Indeed, the elderly woman with the frosty hair and crinkled skin seemed so mild, so harmless, that on more than one occasion everyone seemed to forget about her. During breaks, the judge left the bench, the clerk left her desk, the attorneys wandered away, and the bailiff popped out for just a moment, leaving Dorothea Puente, alleged murderer of nine, alone and unattended. She sat quietly at the defense table, with nothing to do but wait.

Still, O'Mara's most formidable opponent might be Dorothea Puente herself.

Each side, of course, thought they were at a disadvantage. Anyone either strongly in favor or strongly opposed to the death penalty would not be seated. So, from the perspective of the defense, all the best jurors—those who opposed the death penalty—had already been excluded. And from the prosecution's standpoint, eliminating "all the really good people"—those who supported the death penalty, particularly in the case of nine premeditated murders—left a "skewed group."

With both sides dissatisfied, perhaps this was close to fair.

Clymo and Vlautin were hoping for a team, not just people to "occupy a seat," but people who would stand up for their beliefs and inspire others to vote with them. And they needed only one person, just one stubborn holdout, to have a hung jury. (The Solomon case, with that particular jury hung by a Vietnam vet, was still fresh in the minds of both Vlautin and O'Mara.)

Now Peter Vlautin peered at a solidly built Army sergeant, noticing his gold chain. To Vlautin, this meant the Vietnam veteran was "unconventional." He speculated that this serviceman might be the "wild card that the DA won't be able to predict."

After questioning, the sergeant left the courthouse, climbed into his shiny red pickup truck, and drove away, leaving in his exhaust the receding image of his personalized license plate: XREM1ST.

CHAPTER 37

John O’Mara hustled his bulky displays out of his car’s trunk, through the rain, and into the courthouse. It was Monday, February 8, 1993, the day before opening statements. The attorneys were only meeting with Judge Virga to take care of last-minute details, so they hadn't expected the media to be here—sniffing out camera positions, laying down cables—as they spilled out of the elevator in decidedly unlawyerlike garb: Clymo in a sweater and a rakish "Indiana Jones" hat; O'Mara in long, baggy shorts, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap. Their outfits prompted some friendly joshing, a counterpoint to the seriousness ahead.

Beneath the lighthearted banter, the attorneys kept eyeing each other like rival suitors. This was it. After all the years and man-hours of preparation, the trial was finally getting under way.

The next morning, they took their seats in the somber suits and ties that were their uniform. Clymo and Vlautin bracketed Dorothea Puente on the left, a trinity of varied hues: Clymo, sallow, mustachioed, with his shining dome; Vlautin, ruddy and bespectacled; Dorothea, paler than ivory, her white hair neatly coiffed, a deep blue shawl
draped over her plump shoulders. The classic little old lady. On the right sat the solitary prosecutor, his graying temples and mustache contrasting sharply with his dark hair.

Press-pool cameras focused in from the back. A crowd of media people perched in the gallery. Reporters exchanged information, business cards, cynical jesting. Two British journalists snickered that Puente looked just like the landladies back home.

Someone wondered aloud, "Do you think she really did it?"

Another asked, "Do you think she'll take the stand?"

Then the jurors began to file into the jury box, looking squeaky-clean and serious, and all eyes turned to watch. Mainly in their thirties and forties, these jurors belied the myth that only retirees have the time and resources to sit for months of jury duty. All worked, putting on hold their jobs with Smucker
’
s, Wells Fargo Bank, the post office, Pacific Bell, and Gallo. Two worked at Schilling, the spice company in Salinas, which realized too late that it had released two employees for the same lengthy trial. The oldest, Marjorie Simpson (mother of seven, none named Bart), had a good twenty years on most of the others, and at sixty-five she was a year older than Dorothea but looked an easy decade younger. Two were servicemen at Ford Ord, including the youngest, twenty-seven-year-old Earl Jimerson, an infantry squad leader, and forty-two-year-old Gary Frost, Army sergeant and self-proclaimed XREM1ST.

"All rise," intoned the bailiff, and Judge Michael J. Virga swept in wearing black robes and a cordial expression. As he addressed the jurors in avuncular tones, his face seemed a wise, creased map of all he'd seen. Then he read the nine counts of murder charged against the defendant, one after another, and they tolled through the hushed courtroom like requiem bells through a valley.

It was time for the prosecution's opening statement, and John O'Mara popped out of his seat. "Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen," he said as he began pacing off what would become miles of oratory.

"In the ordinary case," he explained, "the opening statement would be quite perfunctory." But this case was far from ordinary. This was like trying nine separate murder cases, and the jurors had to make a decision on each count. He had some 280 witnesses under subpoena, but he would try to limit testimony—since "the mind can only take in what the seat can endure"—and hoped to conclude 75 percent of his case before Easter.

The jurors had been prepared for months away from their normal lives. If they resented this schedule, it didn't show on their faces.

O'Mara was worried less about time than about getting these well-scrubbed, hardworking, healthy jurors to identify with Dorothea Puente's down-and-out tenants. This had been the problem from the start. Alcoholic street people don't easily inspire empathy.

"Most of us lead a very patterned life," O'Mara began. "We leave the house at a certain period of time. We go to a certain location. Perhaps we go out to lunch. At the end of the day, we go home. The life we lead leaves a pattern, sort of like a fingerprint. One can look back and see where a person has been from day to day, moment to moment, hour to hour."