The Runaway Jury by John Grisham Read Free Book Online Page B

greatly facilitated the selection of the jury. While Rohr asked questions inside the courtroom, dozens of people elsewhere examined the written answers and marked names off their lists. One man’s sister had died of lung cancer. Seven others had close friends or family members with serious health problems, all of which they attributed to smoking. At least half the panel either smoked now or had been regular smokers in the past. Most of those smoking admitted their desire to quit.
    The data were analyzed, then put in computers, and by mid-afternoon of the second day the printouts were being passed around and edited. After Judge Harkin recessed at four-thirty on Tuesday, he again cleared the courtroom and conducted proceedings on the record. For almost three hours, the written answers were discussed and debated, and in the end thirty-one additional names were removed from consideration. Gloria Lane was instructed to immediately phone these newest deletions and tell them the good news.
    Harkin was determined to complete jury selection on Wednesday. Opening statements were scheduledfor Thursday morning. He had even hinted at some Saturday work.
    At eight o’clock Tuesday night he heard one last motion, a quickie, and sent the lawyers home. The lawyers for Pynex met Fitch at the offices of Whitney & Cable & White, where another delicious feast of cold sandwiches and greasy chips awaited them. Fitch wanted to work, and while the weary lawyers slowly filled their paper plates, two paralegals distributed copies of the latest handwriting analyses. Eat quickly, Fitch demanded, as if the food could be savored. The panel was down to 111, and the picking would start tomorrow.
    THE MORNING belonged to Durwood Cable, or Durr as he was known up and down the Coast, a place he’d never really left in his sixty-one years. As the senior partner for Whitney & Cable & White, Sir Durr had been carefully selected by Fitch to handle the bulk of the courtroom work for Pynex. As a lawyer, then a judge, and now a lawyer again, Durr had spent most of the past thirty years looking at and speaking to juries. He found courtrooms to be relaxing places because they were stages—no phones, no foot traffic, no secretaries scurrying about—everyone with a role, everyone following a script with the lawyers as the stars. He moved and talked with great deliberation, but between steps and sentences his gray eyes missed nothing. Where his adversary, Wendall Rohr, was loud and gregarious and gaudy, Durr was buttoned up and quite starched. The obligatory dark suit, a rather bold gold tie, the standard issue white shirt, which contrasted nicely with his deeply tanned face. Durr had a passion for saltwaterfishing, and spent many hours on his boat, in the sun. The top of his head was bald, and very bronzed.
    He once went six years without losing a case, then Rohr, his foe and sometime friend, popped him for two million in a three-wheeler case.
    He stepped to the railing and looked seriously into the faces of 111 people. He knew where each lived and the number of children and grandchildren, if any. He crossed his arms, pinched his chin like a pensive professor, and said in a pleasantly rich voice, “My name is Durwood Cable, and I represent Pynex, an old company that’s been making cigarettes for ninety years.” There, he was not ashamed of it! He talked about Pynex for ten minutes, and did a masterful job of softening up the company, of making his client warm and fuzzy, almost likable.
    Finished with that, he plunged fearlessly into the issue of choice. Whereas Rohr had dwelt on addiction, Cable spent his time on the freedom to choose. “Can we all agree that cigarettes are potentially dangerous if abused?” he asked, then watched most of the heads shake in agreement. Who could argue with this? “There, fine. Now since this is common knowledge, can we all agree that a person who smokes should know the dangers?” More nodding, no hands, yet. He studied the