She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [151]
As the trial neared, the defense settled on their trial haiku, the three points they would drill into jurors’ minds:
Celeste’s lifestyle was not evidence of guilt.
She was better off with Steve alive.
Celeste didn’t kill Steve.
Yet, DeGuerin admitted he had obstacles ahead. First, the jury had to see Celeste as a woman who loved her husband, not as a gold digger. And they had to be able to “see through” the prosecution’s case. “I don’t think Allison Wetzel is all that convinced her case is solid,” said DeGuerin, his face hard, and thoughtful. “I think she’s worried.”
Through the courthouse grapevine, Wetzel heard that DeGuerin thought he was getting to her. She was determined not to let that happen. Still, she’d griped enough about him at home that one night when he called her house, one of her sons answered. “It’s your archenemy,” he said, handing her the phone.
Deciding to make a joke of a potentially embarrassing situation, Wetzel picked up the phone and said, “Well, hello, archenemy.”
DeGuerin didn’t laugh.
On the morning of Wednesday, January 29, a panel of ninety-four potential jurors gathered in numbered seats in Kocurek’s courtroom. Behind the bench, the judge sat flanked by the Stars and Stripes and the Texas Lone Star flag. By the end of the day she was determined to whittle the panel down to twelve jurors and two alternates willing to devote the coming two months to the trial of Celeste Beard Johnson.
Celeste sat between DeGuerin and Baen. Gone was her jailhouse attire, replaced by a charcoal gray sweater set and a long gray skirt, both shades darker than the gray cloth paneling on the courtroom’s walls. The cast still cocooned her leg, and her crutches were stowed under the table. Her blond hair had grown out, leaving it long and brown at the roots. She had it pulled sternly back and, although the twins never remembered her wearing glasses, she wore oval wire-rimmed ones that made her look like an injured schoolteacher, far from the sultry femme fatale who had married five times.
Yet it wasn’t the defendant, but a figure at the far end of the defense table, who caught Wetzel’s attention: Robert Hirschhorn, a well-known jury consultant who worked many of the state’s highest profile cases. While DeGuerin asked questions, attempting to bond with the jurors, Hirschhorn would analyze the answers and look for clues in body language and facial expressions. Behind them sat the rest of the team: Matt Hennessy and DeGuerin’s law students who’d volunteered to help with the case.
It was Hirschhorn’s job to predict how each juror would react to testimony and vote once deliberations began. He needed to have twelve impaneled who could be persuaded to view Celeste as a victim, not a murderer. A bonus would be a juror who would have difficulty, under any circumstances, judging another human guilty, to hang the jury if they were leaning toward a conviction.
As voir dire—the process of truth telling—began, Wetzel introduced herself and the other attorneys to the panel, standing before an easel with a poster-size blowup of the indictment: State of Texas v. Celeste Beard. “I thank you all for coming,” she began. “This may be the most important part of the trial. We need to make sure we have a jury that will be fair to both Mrs. Beard and the state of Texas.”
Even before the questioning started, much was already known. The week before, the potential jurors had met in the courtroom and been given questionnaires. The lawyers had plumbed the most important issues of the case: How did the jurors feel about young women who married older men? Would they find it difficult to convict