The staked Goat

blue suit, white shirt, and dark tie. He’d had a haircut but looked pale as a ghost after his six months in jail.
    The officers led him to the defense table, unshackled him, and took up positions to his right and behind. At least his lawyer had had sense enough to move that his client not be seated in the dock. The dock is a square, isolated, and elevated box which some say gives jurors a pejorative impression of the dangerousness of the defendant whose fate they decide.
    The judge was announced and entered from a different side door. I did not recognize him, but he was about sixty, white-haired, and judgelike. D’Amico’s case was called by the clerk. Nancy, her compatriot (who did not introduce himself), and Smolina approached the bench and exchanged preliminaries. The judge asked for witness lists. Nancy handed the prosecution’s to the clerk. Smolina, looking perplexed, excused himself and scurried back to his table. He began flipping nervously through his file. Joey looked back at Marco, whose head was down and shaking left to right. Smolina closed his file, apologized to the judge, and said that his only witnesses would be several members of the D’Amico family and ”Jerry” and ”Emma” Cooper. The judge lectured Smolina on the need for full names and addresses now so they could be read to the jury during selection. Smolina said of course, of course but...
    At which point Marco stood up and said, ”Judge, if it’ll help, I can give you everybody’s name and address.”
    The judge was off-balance for a moment, then said, ”Who are you?”
    ”I’m Marco D’Amico, the defendant’s brother, and I live at 767 Hanover Street, North End.” Marco went on to list his other family and a priest, speaking the names and addresses slowly enough for the clerk to transcribe them. Marco concluded by saying, ”And by the way, the first names of the Coopers are Jesse and Emily and they live at 230 Beech Street, Dorchester.” I felt Emily tense and shudder beside me as we all realized Marco had their names and address memorized. When Marco finished, the judge thanked him and told Smolina he should be as prepared as his witnesses. As Marco sat back down, he turned his head toward us and smiled unpleasantly. I could sense Jesse and Emily grasping each other’s hands a little harder. I was thinking of Marco’s throat.
    The trial, or more accurately Smolina’s attempted defense, was laughable. The jury was picked within twenty minutes, Smolina forgetting which side got to challenge prospective jurors first. Nancy’s superior, whose name was McClean, made an opening statement that persuaded half the jurors without seeming to press them. Smolina waived an opening, and several jurors looked at each other with surprise. McClean presented my contact, who barely arrived in time, and Smolina asked him no questions.
    McClean then put on Harvey Weeks, a miserable, flabby man, with a bald head and hom-rimmed glasses. Weeks described his retention of Joey. Smolina objected a few times, unsuccessfully. Then Smolina cross-examined Weeks, with McClean objecting frequently and usually successfully. The judge even began to suggest questions to Smolina (”Mr. Smolina, why don’t you ask him...”) to try to move the case along. Smolina’s thrust seemed to be toward getting Weeks to say he’d hired someone other than Joey.
    When Weeks left the stand, I was called. I told my story in response to McClean’s nicely paced questions. I’d had a year of evening division law school, and Fd been in a lot of courtrooms for Empire, but McClean was the best I’d ever seen. Why he was taking something around forty thousand from the DA instead of four or five times that from a downtown civil litigation firm was beyond me.
    When Smolina began his cross-examination, the defense ”strategy” began to unfold. He was trying to create the impression that I was the arsonist Weeks had hired, and that D’Amico had been in the neighborhood, seen the open window and gone in to investigate, only to be framed by me. Instead of objecting, McClean let Smolina go on, and I sensed that the jury was nearly as incredulous as I was.
    After Smolina finished, McClean on redirect asked me one question. ”Have you ever been convicted of a crime, Mr. Cuddy?”
    I said, ”No.”
    ”Thank you,” McClean said, smiling at Smolina, ”no further questions.”
    After I left the stand, the police lab expert testified. As he described the blood-and-hair