Sycamore Row

great distances to spend time with them, and no one knew this better than Wade Lanier. An expert from Tupelo would have their attention, while one from Memphis would be even more believable. But bring in the same guy from California and the jury would hang on every word.
    For $10,000 of Wade Lanier’s money, plus expenses, Dr. Niehoff explained to the jury that he had spent the last twenty-five years researching and treating pain in cancer victims. He was well acquainted with the tumors under discussion and did a thorough job of describing their effects on the body. He had seen patients cry and scream for prolonged periods of time, turn deathly pale, vomit uncontrollably, beg for medications, pass out, and even beg for death. Thoughts of suicide were quite common. Actual suicide was not rare. Demerol was one of the more popular and effective treatments. Here, Dr. Niehoff ventured off script when he lapsed into a bit of technical jargon, as happened so often when experts couldn’t resist the temptation to impress their listeners. He referred to the drug as meperidine hydrochloride, said it was a narcotic analgesic, an opiate pain reliever.
    Lanier stopped him and brought his vocabulary back in line. Dr. Niehoff told the jury that Demerol was a powerful pain reliever and highly addictive. He had worked with the drug for his entire career and had written numerous articles about it. Doctors prefer to dispense it in the hospital or in their clinics; however, in a case like Seth Hubbard’s,it was not unusual to allow the patient to take it orally at home. The drug was easy to abuse, especially for a person in severe pain like Seth.
    Jake rose and said, “Objection, Your Honor. There is not a shred of evidence that Seth Hubbard abused this drug.”
    “Sustained. Stick with the facts, Doctor.”
    Jake sat down, relieved to have finally received a favorable ruling on something.
    Dr. Niehoff was an excellent witness. His descriptions of the tumors, the pain, and the Demerol were detailed, and after forty-five minutes on the stand it was easy to believe Seth was suffering greatly and his pain was relieved only by massive doses of Demerol, a drug that practically knocked him out. In his expert opinion, Seth Hubbard’s judgment was so adversely affected by the daily dosages and cumulative effects of the drug that he could not have been thinking clearly in his final days.
    On cross, Jake lost even more ground. When he tried to make the point that Dr. Niehoff had no idea how much of the drug Seth was taking, the expert “guaranteed” Jake that anyone suffering like Seth would be desperate for Demerol.
    “If he had access to a prescription, then he was taking the pills, Mr. Brigance.”
    After a few more pointless questions, Jake sat down. The two doctors had accomplished precisely what Wade Lanier had intended. At that moment, in the minds of the jurors, and practically everyone else in the courtroom, Seth had been disoriented, dizzy, drowsy, lightheaded, and unable to drive so he asked Lettie to do it.
    In summary, he lacked testamentary capacity.
    After a ten-minute recess, Lanier continued when he called Lewis McGwyre as a witness. Because the Rush firm had made such an ungraceful exit from the case, and was thus cut out of the fees, McGwyre at first refused to testify. So Wade Lanier did the unthinkable: he subpoenaed another lawyer. In short order, Lanier established that McGwyre had prepared a thick will for Seth in September 1987. That will was admitted into evidence, and McGwyre stepped down. As much as he wanted to hang around and watch the trial, his pride wouldn’t allow it. He and Stillman Rush hurried from the courtroom.
    Duff McClennan took the stand, took the oath, and proceeded to explain to the jury that he was a tax lawyer with a three-hundred-man firm in Atlanta. For the past thirty years he had specialized in estateplanning. He drafted wills, thick ones, for wealthy people who wanted to avoid as much of the death taxes as possible. He had reviewed the inventory of assets filed by Quince Lundy, and he had reviewed the handwritten will signed by Seth Hubbard. Lanier then flashed onto a large screen a series of calculations, and McClennan launched into a windy explanation of how federal and state death taxes gobbled up the unprotected estate. He apologized for the intricacies, the contradictions, the mind-numbing banalities of “our dear tax code,” and apologized for its complexities. Twice he said,