He seemed perfectly willing to excuse anyone with a legitimate concern, but this proved not to be the case. When he asked about conflicts with work, a gentleman wearing a coat and a tie stood and said he simply could not be away from the office. He was a district manager for a company that made steel buildings, and was clearly an executive taken with his own importance. He even hinted he might lose his job. Judge Atlee’s lecture on civic responsibility lasted five minutes and scorched the gentleman. He ended with “If you lose your job, Mr. Crawford, let me know. I’ll subpoena your boss, put him on the stand here, and, well, he’ll have a bad day.”

Mr. Crawford sat down, thoroughly chastised and humiliated. There were no more efforts to skip jury duty on account of work. Judge Atlee then moved to the next issue on his checklist—prior jury service. Several said they had served before, three in state court and two in federal. Nothing about those experiences would alter their ability to deliberate in the case at hand.

Nine people claimed to know Jake Brigance. Four were former clients and they were excused. Two ladies attended the same church but felt as though that fact would not influence their judgment. They were not excused. A distant relative was. Carla’s schoolteacher friend said she knew Jake well and was too close for any objectivity. She was excused. The last was a high school pal from Karaway who admitted he hadn’t seen Jake in ten years. He was left on the panel, to be dealt with later.

Each lawyer was introduced again, with the same questions. No one knew Wade Lanier, Lester Chilcott, Zack Zeitler, or Joe Bradley Hunt, but then they were out-of-town lawyers.

Judge Atlee said, “Now, moving along, the last will and testament in question was written by a man named Seth Hubbard, now deceased, of course. Did any of you know him personally?” Two hands were timidly lifted. A man stood and said he had grown up in the Palmyra area of the county and had known Seth when they were quite a bit younger.

“How old are you, sir?” Judge Atlee asked.

“Sixty-nine.”

“You know you can claim an exemption from service if you’re above the age of sixty-five, right?”

“Yes sir, but I don’t have to, do I?”

“Oh no. If you want to serve, that’s admirable. Thank you.”

A woman stood and said she had once worked at a lumber yard owned by Seth Hubbard, but it would not be a problem. Judge Atlee gave the names of Seth’s two wives and asked if anyone knew them. A woman said her older sister had been friends with the first wife, but that had been a long time ago. Herschel Hubbard and Ramona Hubbard Dafoe were asked to stand. They smiled awkwardly at the judge and the jurors, then sat down. Methodically, Judge Atlee asked the panel if anyone knew them. A few hands went up, all belonging to old classmates from Clanton High. Judge Atlee asked each one a series of questions. All claimed to know little about the case and to be unaffected by what little knowledge they possessed.

Tedium set in as Judge Atlee went through page after page of questions. By noon, twelve of the fifty had been dismissed, all of them white. Of the thirty-eight remaining, eleven were black, not a single one of whom had lifted a hand.

During the lunch recess, the lawyers met in tense groups and debated who was acceptable and who had to be cut. They ignored their cold sandwiches while they argued over body language and facial expressions. In Jake’s office, the mood was lighter because the panel was darker. In the main conference room over at the Sullivan firm, the mood was heavier because the blacks were sandbagging. Of the eleven remaining, not one admitted to knowing Lettie Lang. Impossible in such a small county! There was obviously a conspiracy of some nature at work. Their expert consultant, Myron Pankey, had watched several of them closely during the questioning and had no doubt that they were trying their best to get on the jury. But Myron was from Cleveland and knew little about southern blacks.

Wade Lanier, though, was unimpressed. He’d tried more cases in Mississippi than the rest of the lawyers combined, and he was not concerned about the remaining thirty-eight members of the pool. In almost every trial, he hired consultants to dig into the backgrounds of the jurors, but once he saw them in the flesh he knew he could read them. And though he did not say so, he liked what he had seen that morning.

Lanier still had two great secrets up his sleeve—the handwritten will of Irene Pickering, and the testimony of Julina Kidd. To his knowledge, Jake had no idea what was coming. If Lanier managed to successfully detonate these two bombs in open court, he might just walk away with a unanimous verdict. After considerable negotiating, Fritz Pickering had agreed to testify for $7,500. Julina Kidd had jumped at the offer of only $5,000. Neither Fritz nor Julina had spoken to anyone on the other side, so Lanier was confident his ambushes would work.

So far, his firm had either spent or committed to spending just over $85,000 in litigation expenses, moneys the clients were ultimately responsible for. The cost of the case was rarely discussed, though it was always in their thoughts. While the clients were troubled by rising expenses, Wade Lanier understood the economic realities of big-time litigation. Two years earlier, his firm had spent $200,000 on a product liability case, and lost.

You roll the dice and sometimes you lose. Wade Lanier, though, was not contemplating a loss in the Seth Hubbard case.

Nevin Dark settled into a booth at the Coffee Shop with three of his new friends and ordered iced tea from Dell. All four wore white lapel buttons with the word “Juror” in bold blue letters, as if they were now officially off-limits and beyond approach. Dell had seen the same buttons a hundred times, and knew she should listen hard but ask no questions and offer no opinions.

The thirty-eight remaining jurors had been warned by Judge Atlee not to discuss the case. Since none of the four at Nevin’s table had ever met, they chatted about themselves for a few minutes while looking over the menus. Fran Decker was a retired schoolteacher from Lake Village, ten miles south of Clanton. Charles Ozier sold farm tractors for a company out of Tupelo and lived near the lake. Debbie Lacker lived in downtown Palmyra, population 350, but had never met Seth Hubbard. Since they couldn’t talk about the case, they talked about the judge, the courtroom, and the lawyers. Dell listened hard but gleaned nothing from their lunch conversation, at least nothing she could report to Jake in the event he stopped by later for the gossip.

At 1:15, they paid their separate checks and returned to the courtroom. At 1:30, when all thirty-eight were accounted for, Judge Atlee appeared from the rear and said, “Good afternoon.” He went on to explain that he would now continue with the selection of the jury, and he planned to do so in a manner that was somewhat unusual. Each juror would be asked to step into his chambers to be quizzed by the lawyers in private.

Jake had made this request because he assumed the jurors, as a group, knew more about the case than they were willing to admit. By grilling them in private, he was confident he could elicit more thorough responses. Wade Lanier did not object.

Judge Atlee said, “Mr. Nevin Dark, would you join us in my chambers, please?”

A bailiff showed him the way, and Nevin nervously walked past the bench, through a door, down a short hallway, and into a rather small room where everyone was waiting. A court reporter sat ready to transcribe every word. Judge Atlee occupied one end of the table and the lawyers crowded around the rest of it.