The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [2]
“I speculate about the reason we are all here only because I know the state’s attorney to be an intelligent man, and his experienced prosecutors can’t possibly look at the evidence they presented in this courtroom and come to the conclusion that my client is guilty. And the only reason I have slept soundly at night throughout months of this Kafkaesque trial is that I know the twelve of you are intelligent, as well. I am certain the only motive you will have in your deliberations will be to ascertain the truth. Therefore, I know the only verdict with which you can return is not guilty.”
He modulated his rich baritone for the spacious courtroom, which was paneled on all sides by stained oak and attentive reporters, three floors and another world of opulence away from the cramped bench where this same judge dispatched the cases of everyday defendants—drug dealers and addicts and thieves—who weren’t so flush with money and fame. Three national cable networks were covering the trial in real time. Reggie wore makeup specially formulated for live-television performers who must look natural both on camera and before an audience. He told his client to wear it, too. The prosecutors wore no makeup at all.
“The state has made a tremendous deal about the cruelty of this crime, and by some transitive property it hopes you will apply that awful quality to my client. The prosecutors organized a parade of experts to testify that Erica Liu continued to be bludgeoned about the head—gouged in the eye—even after she was unconscious. Yet they have not produced a weapon. As you heard from the medical examiner, they aren’t even sure what that instrument could have been! How many times did you hear those three words from prosecution witnesses, ‘I’m not sure’ or ‘I’m not certain’? Do you know? One hundred and forty-seven times. One hundred and forty-seven times, they weren’t sure. Yet somehow they are sure that my client is a murderer.”
Only in his late thirties, Reggie had been a respected and prominent Chicago litigator before Gold, the Oscar-winning composer and music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, tapped him for this case. Now he was a national star. Late-night comedians constructed terrible punch lines around his name. (“The queen of England was too ill to meet with the president this week and apparently she felt really guilty about that. She felt so guilty, in fact, that she hired Reggie Vallentine.”) Sketch comedy shows lampooned him. Glossy periodicals celebrated him. Tabloids shortened his last name to “Valli” for headline convenience. (AIN’T THIS VALLI LOW ENOUGH? read the front-page wood in the Sun-Times after his aggressive and effective cross-examinations of the victim’s father and twin brother.) Chicago magazine had just named him one of the fifty sexiest men in the city, essentially trading him for his own disgraced client, who had dropped off the list from the year before. There was not an African-American publication in the country that had not featured Reggie Vallentine on its cover at least once.
“Solomon Gold had consensual sex with Erica Liu in her apartment and again in his car after a performance in Millennium Park on the night of June fourteenth. That is the only thing the prosecution’s much-heralded DNA evidence has proved, and it is a point the defense has conceded. Her body was found in an alley, closer to the home of an ex-boyfriend than to Solomon Gold’s home in Lincoln Park. You heard detectives testify there was every indication that the crime scene represented a robbery. Erica Liu had no money in her purse, no watch on her wrist, and her own brother testified that a diamond necklace she always wore on performance nights—a gift of affection from the defendant—was missing from around Erica’s neck.
“The prosecution wants you to believe