Southern Lights (28 page)

“I know some of you have children. I asked you that question when we selected you as jurors. But even if you don’t have children, I know you must be shocked by these crimes. We all are.

“I have a daughter, she’s seventeen. I think she’s beautiful, and she means everything to me.
Everything
. She’s a senior in high school, and she’s going to college in the fall.” She didn’t say Princeton so as not to appear elitist. “She plays volleyball and is on the swim team, and I think she’s the sweetest kid in the world. I’m a single mom, and she’s an only child, so she’s all I have.” She paused, and looked at each one closely. She had just become human to them. She was a single mom with a child, and they could trust her. She wanted them to know that. Some nodded understandingly as she spoke. She had them now.

“Six of these eighteen girls were only children. Seven of them had single moms. Nine of them were students and had jobs to support their education and help their families. Two were oldest children whose moms had died, and they took care of their siblings. Four were outstanding students. Eight had scholarships or had had them. Eleven of them were religious and active in their churches. Five of them were engaged. They played sports, they had siblings and moms and dads, and dogs, and teachers who knew and loved them, and boyfriends and friends.
All
of them were respected and loved in their communities, and are greatly missed. And
all
of them were killed by the defendant sitting in front of you.
All
of them. Eighteen girls. We believe that’s the truth. The State believes it, eight other states believe it, the FBI believes it, and I think that when you hear the evidence in this case, you will believe it too.

“It takes a special kind of person to commit crimes like this, to be so without conscience, so unfeeling as to kill eighteen young women, while raping them, because that’s what turns you on, and you planned it. That’s a terrible way to die, and a terrible reason.

“The State believes beyond any doubt, and will prove to you, that Luke Quentin, the man at the defense table in this courtroom, raped and killed these eighteen young women, with malicious intent.

“We can’t allow people who behave this way to walk among us, to hurt our children, to kill people we love. People who commit crimes like this need to be put in prison and punished for those crimes. If not, none of our children or loved ones are safe, and we aren’t either.

“We feel sure that Luke Quentin killed these eighteen women. We can prove it, and we will prove it to you during this trial, beyond a reasonable doubt. And if you agree with the evidence, and the State, we will ask you to find him guilty of killing and raping eighteen women. It’s all we can do now for the eighteen girls who died.” She looked at them for a long moment, and then spoke softly. “Thank you.” She went back to sit at the prosecutor’s table. The jury looked shaken, and several were squirming in their seats. Sam Lawrence nodded his approval when she sat down. It had been a powerful opening statement and proved to him again she was the right person for the job.

As she sat down, Luke was whispering to his attorney, and she nodded. The defense was not obliged to make an opening statement, but Judy Dunning had decided to anyway. She knew that what Alexa would have to say would be too powerful to let it just hang in the air, without at least trying to mitigate it before the trial began. The public defender had told the judge earlier that she would be making an opening statement too.

She got up and walked to where the jury was sitting, and she looked sad, and serious as she gazed at them. She told them who she was, and that she would be defending Luke Quentin.

“I wanted you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that I’m sad about those eighteen girls too. We all are. So is Luke Quentin. Who wouldn’t be? Eighteen young lives and beautiful girls gone forever. What a terrible, terrible thing.

“And you will hear a great deal of evidence in this case, some of it very technical, of what happened, how it happened, when it happened, and who may have done it. The State believes that Luke Quentin did it. Ms. Hamilton just told you that. But we don’t believe it. Not for a minute. Luke Quentin did not kill those women, and we are going to do everything we can to prove that to you.

“Sometimes terrible circumstances come together, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, people making it look as though you did something you didn’t. It looks like you’ve done something awful, but you haven’t. All the stars and circumstances and bad luck conspire against you, and you’re blamed for something you didn’t do.”

She looked at each of them intently, from one face to another. “Luke Quentin did
not
commit those murders. He did
not
rape or kill those women. And we will prove that to you, beyond a reasonable doubt. If you believe us, or have any doubt whatsoever that Luke Quentin committed these crimes, then we are asking for an acquittal. Don’t punish an
innocent
man, no matter how terrible these crimes.” And with that, she went back to her seat. The judge called a twenty-minute recess immediately after.

Both Jack and Sam congratulated Alexa on her opening statement and its impact on the jury.

“Judy’s wasn’t bad either,” she said fairly. She didn’t have much to work with, and would have even less as the days wore on, but at least she had raised a question in their minds. Alexa knew it was the best she could do.

They went to get coffee out of the machine, drank it quickly, and were back at the prosecution table when Judge Lieberman rapped his gavel and brought the court to order again. He told Alexa to call her first witness.

She called Jason Yu from the forensics lab because he was personable and would make the DNA tests easier for the jury to understand. Afterward she would call experts, whose information would be harder to digest. With Alexa questioning him, he explained the DNA tests that had first linked Quentin to the bodies in New York. She had him on the stand for close to an hour, and then the judge called a recess for lunch. Jason Yu had done well, and she thanked him. Judy was going to cross-examine him after lunch.

Sam, Jack, and Alexa went out to lunch, but Alexa was too nervous to eat. She was running on adrenaline and spent most of the lunch hour making notes and jotting down additional questions. The two men chatted about sports while she worked, and then they went back to the courtroom.

The public defender’s cross-examination of Jason Yu was weak. She tried to confuse him, unsuccessfully, and make his information and tests sound unreliable and inconclusive, but each time he explained his material more precisely and more clearly. She was starting to look foolish and dismissed him, and said she had no further questions. Neither did Alexa.

Alexa called one of her expert witnesses after that, and his testimony was long, drawn out, and potentially confusing. But there was nothing she could do. The evidence he presented was important to their case. She knew there would be many witnesses like that from several states. And she was afraid it would bore the jury, but they each had something important to contribute.

On the whole, the first day went well, and so did the first week. Despite the heinousness of the crimes, there was little emotional testimony in the case. It was all very technical. There were no eyewitnesses, the parents had no testimony to give.

The most emotional factor in the courtroom was the enormous section of seats cordoned off for the relatives of the victims. There were a hundred and nine people in those seats, watching the proceedings intently and many of them crying. Instinctively, the jury knew who they were and looked at them often. Alexa had referred to them once, so they’d know, and Judy had objected. But by then the jury knew, and it was too late. Charlie sat among them with his family, who had come to see justice done.

Mostly the case involved the presentation of technical forensic data that systematically linked Luke Quentin to each victim and her death. Cross-examination involved refuting that evidence, and the public defender didn’t have the skills or evidence to do it. It was a hard case to beat. Alexa and Sam met with Judy on Friday afternoon after court was recessed for the weekend.

“I just wanted to suggest to you again,” Alexa said calmly, “that you get your client to plead. We’re all wasting our time here.”

“I don’t think we are,” Judy Dunning said stubbornly. “People make mistakes in DNA tests. Sometimes all they do is exclude one group of people without accurately pinpointing others. I think the cops in every state pinned every unsolved murder they had on Luke. If there was one mistake made, just one, if one of those cases was wrong, or poorly handled, it will raise a reasonable doubt that could overturn all the others.” It was a long shot, but the only one she had. And investigation teams in nine states and the FBI had seen to it that there were no mistakes. Alexa thought she was being foolish and committing legal suicide for her client in open court. “He has nothing to lose and he has a right to a trial,” Judy said darkly, as though she were watching an innocent man be crucified, instead of a merciless killer being brought to justice. She still believed in her client’s innocence, that much was clear. She wasn’t just doing a job, she was leading a crusade, for a lost cause. Judy seemed painfully naïve to Alexa.

“He has a lot to lose,” Alexa pointed out to her. “The judge is going to be much tougher on him if he wastes everyone’s time. No one is going to be sympathetic to him, or give him a break. He’d be a lot better off if he strikes a deal now, before we go through weeks of trial. The judge is going to get pissed,” Alexa warned her, and Jack agreed with her completely, and felt that a good attorney would have forced Luke to plead. Judy was too weak to do it, and too enthralled by Luke. “If I were his attorney,” Alexa said quietly, “I would make him plead.” The judge might give him concurrent sentences instead of consecutive, which could extend far beyond Luke’s lifetime. Concurrent sentencing was the best he could hope for.

“Then he’s lucky you aren’t his attorney,” Judy said firmly and stood up, looking huffy. “I’m his lawyer, counselor, and he’s not pleading.” Alexa nodded, thanked her, and she and Jack left the room without comment.

“See you Monday,” she said as she left him in the hall.

Four policemen helped her down the courthouse steps into a waiting police car, and two stood outside her apartment all weekend. They were back in court on Monday.

The technical testimony went on for three weeks, and was impressively conclusive, beyond a reasonable doubt, Alexa thought. Again it was less emotional than she would have liked. And the photographs of the victims were absolutely awful, because most of them had been found later and the bodies had been badly decomposed. The jury had been warned that they would have to view them. They looked sick when they did, but the photographs were evidence in the trial, and part of the State’s case.

After three weeks of testimony, the prosecution rested and turned the case over to the defense. Alexa had produced volumes of expert testimony and DNA testing that couldn’t be refuted. All Judy could do was try to confuse it, which she attempted, without much success. And the most damning element in her case was that Luke wasn’t going to take the stand in his own defense, because of his previous convictions and criminal record. He could have, but it would have been foolish in the extreme. Even Judy wouldn’t risk it, so he said nothing in his own defense, which spoke volumes. Instead he sat in the courtroom for three weeks looking arrogant and without remorse, as the victims’ families cried.

The case for the defense took less than a week, and then the public defender rested her case. Alexa called only two defense witnesses for rebuttal and made hash of them. They were incompetent, and it showed. And then Judy made an emotional closing statement, begging the jury not to convict an innocent man, and hoping that she had convinced them he was. The jury looked stone-faced as they watched her.

Alexa’s closing argument summed up the evidence for them, reminded them of each case and instance when Luke Quentin had been linked conclusively to one of the women, as their murderer. She went down the list of proofs, both simple and complicated, that should convince them that the defendant was guilty of all of these crimes. She then made a brief emotional speech reminding them of their responsibility as jurors to bring criminals like Luke Quentin to justice and convict, not an innocent man, but a man who had been
proven
to have raped and killed eighteen women. She thanked them for their attention during the long trial.

The judge then instructed the jury for their deliberations. The foreman had already requested charts and evidence that had been presented during the trial. Throughout the trial the judge had warned the jury that they were not to read anything in the press about the proceedings, but he had not sequestered them.

They would be taken to a hotel that night, however, if they had not reached a verdict, and for as many nights as it took. The jury left the courtroom, and Alexa let out a long sigh. Her job was done. Sam and Jack looked at her with admiration.

“You did a hell of a job,” Sam said, somewhat in awe of her strength and precision. Watching Alexa in court was like watching ballet. She had an amazing way of making complicated information sound simple and reasonable to the jury, as she questioned witnesses and asked them to explain in simple terms what they’d said before. It was a very clever way of not confusing a jury with overly technical details.

As she stood up, Luke Quentin was led away in handcuffs by the four deputies who had been with him throughout the trial. He looked at her in open hatred this time. He knew too that it hadn’t gone well. He said nothing to Alexa and moved on, but if he could have murdered her with a look, she would have been dead on the spot. She was more than ever grateful that she had sent Savannah away. Until he was behind bars in a maximum security prison for life, she didn’t feel safe.

Sam, Jack, and Alexa had to stay near the courtroom but not in it while they waited for the jury to deliberate. They were all available on their cell phones, and decided to go back to Alexa’s office. It was hard to believe it was almost over. Alexa hoped they’d convict, and it was difficult to imagine they wouldn’t. But juries were unpredictable and quixotic. If they had a “reasonable doubt,” even if they had been too confused to assimilate the information, he’d go free. They had all seen it happen.