Chapter 16

(Winston’s story sounds ridiculous)

In the face of all court room accepted common sense, the defendant’s battery of high-priced lawyers decided they had to risk him testifying to sway at least one member of the jury to vote “not guilty” or possibly cause a situation where the judge would be forced to call for a “mistrial”.

I had noticed that his attitude had changed of late.

Throughout most of the trial, his demeanor had been stanchly confidant and even bordering on visible boredom as if this entire exercise were a waste of time and taxpayer dollars because he was totally innocent of all charges. Some of the points scored by the prosecution had produced visible alarm and he no longer had that jaunty bounce in his step on his way to the defense table. He was no longer flirting with his beautiful female defense lawyer, Ms. Tippy Henderson in an overt manner and his head was more often than not resting on his fist held steady on the tabletop of the defense desk.

It was obvious that the strategy was not planned out well in advance because his lawyers were clueless on his testimony, and Tippy appeared fearful of the outcome.

Since I was an avid reader of many diverse crime stories, I knew the risks were immense and, if I were the defendant, I would have been shitting bricks hoping that they would change their minds.

I was unable to understand the defense strategy because the story they had laid out for the defense had so many holes in it that a puff of wind would tip it over and he would probably spend the rest of his life behind bars for the murder of his Hispanic cook and her teenaged daughter.

It struck my brain that neither the prosecutor nor the defense had spent much time talking about the victims in this case. I remembered that right at the start of the trial, we had been treated to a review of the victim’s profiles.

All the jurors, the basic twelve and the alternates, who always stayed in the background just in case of any medical or procedural problems watched the video of the victims. I paused for a moment and remembered the fact that they had both come from Guatemala a few months before the homicides and had only limited English that prevented them from finding jobs with less labor. The daughter was called Josefina and her mother called her simply, “Jo”. The mother who was a still attractive mid-thirties Hispanic woman with generous boobs and a tightly packed behind was called Maria although the prosecution was hesitant to confirm that was her real name.

Only recently, I had seen a story in the Wall Street Journal that both the victims were being stalked by a gang of Coyotes looking for payment for getting them into the country. They had been practically sold to Winston for his private use domestically which included midnight games behind the closed doors of their bedroom.

He supplied them with oodles of sexy clothing from the stores located on the East Side that carried the flashy new trends and seductive styles that made his blood run hot and horny.

One of the scenes in the video included him riding the two women as they cleaned his floors fully inserted in their rear ends and spanking them to move faster. It was humorous and shocking, but both the females were apparently enjoying the moment of film glory and displayed smiling faces. It was difficult to say if it was staged or merely a random shot of moral decay in high places.

There was no way I could mention this story to the other jurors or to the female members of the defense or the prosecution without causing my dismissal as a juror for breaking the rules of watching the television or reading the newspaper with new stories about the crime that had garnered the focus of most of the city residents in a spectacular way.

The crime scene photos were truly gory, and I remembered both women had been tortured and mutilated sexually humiliating them in death just as they had been degraded in the employ of Mister Winston Sullivan in real life.

Now, poor Winston was in the “hot seat” of the witness chair still far short of the electric chair that loomed in the background as the chains of the law tightened around his trembling body filled with justifiable fear of retribution for his outrageous behavior with his female employees. It was at that point that I was certain this little prick didn’t have the balls to murder his employees or anybody else for that matter. He was pervert and a rapist of the worst sort, but he was not the type to brutalize his victims physically because he was too much of a wimp to take the risk.

I watched Ms. Honeysuckle rip him to pieces like a female chainsaw killer with her sarcastic comments on his answers that made some of the jurors laugh at his falsehoods.

His defense lawyer Tippy was so mad she was trembling with emotion trying her best to keep seated and not jumping up and making a fool of herself in front of the court.

I was able to see the judge was astonished at the error made by the defense in allowing their defendant to put himself in the electric chair with his silly answers, and the lies dripped off his tongue like poison from a serpent’s fangs with each implicating word.

The forensic evidence piled up behind him like a trail of jellybeans sealing him into a circle of guilt that he was unable to confront with any degree of success.

Finally, the female prosecutor sat down at her table telling the judge that she had concluded her questioning of the witness. Winston stumbled back to his defense chair with a glazed look in his eyes and he was unable to voice a single word in his tongue-tied state of complete surrender.