Chapter 5

Tuesday January 29

At the security checkpoint at the courthouse yesterday, after examining my purse in the X-Ray machine, a round middle-aged female guard took it to a table for a manual inspection. She removed many of the contents, including the half-roll of duct tape I had brought. She didn’t remove the vibrator; she just winked at me while she put everything back in and handed the purse back to me. I gave her a nod of appreciation.

Matt was the only one of my fellow jurors who had tried my duct tape challenge, and he confirmed my claim that it can’t keep you from speaking. That was good enough for a couple of them, but others were still skeptical, claiming he probably didn’t do it right.

Semi-bald-pervy-guy was the biggest doubter, so I invited him to cover my mouth with duct tape. He could press as hard as he wanted to. So with everyone watching, that’s what he did. His big calloused hand pushed the tape pretty hard into my face, and I couldn’t help wondering what kind of fantasies he was living out just then. When he was done, I simply opened my mouth. The tape stuck to my upper lip, while my lower lip and jaw moved free. To demonstrate my verbal agility, I sang the first measure of an old show tune: The Major-General’s Song from The Pirates of Penzance.

That seemed to satisfy most of them, but then Jewish-granny mused, “I wonder if posture matters? The young woman was lying down, with her head pulled back,” she explained, grabbing her own hair and pointing her chin toward the sky. “That might make it harder, yes?”

“Hmm,” I said. I took off my blazer and lay on the edge of the table with my arms behind me. “She was like this, right?” Everyone agreed so I stood up and wrapped a strip of tape twice around my knees.

“Someone want to tie my hands?” I asked, and held my hands behind me.

Semi-bald-pervy-guy reached for the tape and looked at me like a wolf looks at a sheep. He stepped behind me, but Jewish-granny said authoritatively, “That won’t be necessary - just the mouth.”

Pervy-guy mashed another strip of tape onto my face, and then I took position on the table again, with my arms behind my back and my head tilted back as far as it would go. I don’t know where everyone’s eyes were, but in that position, with heels, my pencil skirt must have looked pretty tight on my ass. I waited a moment in case anyone wanted to say anything else, and then I opened my mouth again, and spoke, before getting up.

The fact that Lina was free to speak or scream swayed some people, but not everyone.

Homeschool-mom surprised us by suggesting, “Maybe we should watch the video again.” She explained: “When I was watching it before, I was so sure she was being abused. It think it would help to see it with new eyes.”

So the foreman asked the bailiff to show us the sex video again. This time I watched the jurors more than the video. There were a lot of hands in laps. A lot of shifting hips. A few people subconsciously licked their lips. I entertained myself by imagining various pairings of jurors reenacting the scene, dry-humping each other here on the table in pursuit of justice.

People stopped arguing about the video, and so we started talking about the accident itself.

“It doesn’t matter if she was a willing participant,” black-granny claimed. “He created a dangerous situation. He made choices that interfered with her ability to drive. He should have known that it was dangerous, but he did it anyway. That’s what the judge said was needed to convict.”

“But we don’t know for sure that he did,” I countered. “The server logs show that he tried to activate her vibrator at the time of the accident, but we don’t know that it actually happened. She might have disabled remote access.”

“It’s probably not that easy,” Matt said skeptically.

“It is,” I explained. “Big green button on the home page of the app. He would have never known that his commands weren’t going through.”

“What makes you think that?” Matt challenged.

I smiled with a touch of guilt. “I bought one this weekend,” I told them. “I experimented. It’s actually pretty fun.” I pulled the vibrator out of my purse and set it on table.

I wished I could have shown them the app, but the bailiffs had taken our phones at the start of the day. I explained the basics, sketching the UI on some note paper, and walking them through what I had learned about how the remote system passes messages to the vibrator.

The bailiff said we should break for lunch soon, so we all went down to the cafeteria, got our food, and sat down in the special jury lunch room. All of the guys, plus Courtney and homeschool-mom, wanted to sit with me.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Matt began, “but are you a porn star or something?” I laughed. “It’s just that none of the girls I know would ever do these things that you do.”

“How do you know?” I asked. That hit Matt like a hammer. “Who knows what hidden depths there are to your highschool sweetheart’s sex life. Or your sister’s. Or your mother’s. I mean, have you ever asked?”

“I wish you were a porn star,” semi-bald-pervy-guy said. “I would buy all your films.” I rolled my eyes. I chose not to mention that there are actually a number of sex videos of me out there on the net, pretty easy to find.

Once the mundane nature of eating lunch drove people to sit at other tables, Courtney whispered to me, “Do those things work on virgins?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. “Well, er, if there’s a hymen, I would think...”

“Not that kind of virgin. I just mean if a girl hasn’t experienced, you know, one of them.”

“Oh!” I whispered back. “Well, if the operator is gentle and attentive, then sure!”

She didn’t say anything but sort of looked at me enviously.

Back in the deliberation room, we continued talking about the accident.

“It doesn’t matter if their relationship was good or bad,” black-granny stated again. “He distracted her by buzzing her vagina. He knew - or should have known - that that was dangerous. That’s what the judge said was required to convict. I don’t see how we have a choice!”

“But we don’t know that he actually distracted her,” I argued. “We don’t know that his commands got through - only that he sent them. She might have disabled remote access, or the battery might have run out.”

Matt challenged me. “If that were the case, why wouldn’t she have taken it out? Why was she still wearing it?”

Homeschool-mom came up with the answer to that one. “Where would she put it?”

Matt looked at her dismissively. “In her purse, or backpack, or whatever!”

Homeschool-mom looked at him like an impatient parent. “Something like that, you’re going to clean it before putting it in your purse. That means soap and water. I don’t know many women who’d be comfortable washing one of those in the ladies’ room. Her hoo-ha might have been the most convenient place to store it.”

Semi-bald-pervy-guy spoke up: “Well something caused the accident.”

Jewish-granny argued: “Maybe she had a seizure. Maybe she spilled her coffee? Who’s to say?”

“If she spilled her coffee, don’t you think the EMTs would have noticed?” Matt asked.

“Except we didn’t hear any testimony from the EMTs,” I told him. “Or the police who responded. We don’t have any evidence at all about what caused the crash - only that the crash happened. It’s all conjecture.”

Semi-bald-pervy-guy was unimpressed. “She happened to have a seizure at the same moment that her boyfriend is trying to cyber-diddle her? Don’t you think that’s a pretty big coincidence???”

“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “It’s a stretch. But it’s not unthinkable.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a seizure. I like the coffee idea,” Courtney muttered.

“Maybe the vibrations are what caused her to spill the coffee,” Jewish-granny mused.

“But then we’re right back to him being culpable!” Black-granny said.

Courtney asserted herself. “Okay, say for sake of argument that it was turned on, had enough power, and that he did start playing with her. Lexi, you’ve used one of these things. Do you think that would be distracting enough to cause an accident?”

“Well, maybe,” I answered. “When my friend turned it on for the first time he didn’t know what he was doing and he jammed it at full power. That sucked. That could cause an accident. But pretty soon he learned to tease me, coax me. He built me up until, oh my god, I was just begging to come!” I paused and looked around the room. Eleven men and women were staring at me. “Sorry. In that case, it was gradual enough that I definitely would have pulled my car over and found a safe place to sit. By that point in the day I’m sure Trent would have known how to be gentle with her.”

“Unless he really was a sadist...,” biker-guy observed.

“Oh, now we’re back to that again?” Homeschool-mom groaned. The whole room started talking at once.

Once things settled down, I made my final plea. “Guys, we will never know the whole truth of this matter, and that’s infuriating. I doubt any jury ever does. What we have to decide is, based on what we do know, are we sure beyond a reasonable doubt that Trent caused the accident? It’s possible he did - maybe even likely. But ‘likely’ is not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’.”

It still took us a half hour to harmonize after that, but eventually we gave a not-guilty verdict to the judge.

It felt surreal leaving the court house. I felt like I had changed.

Courtney and Matt were standing in the parking lot, laughing and talking. When I approached, Matt nudged Courtney and said, “Show her!”

Courtney, looking embarrassed, showed me a piece of paper with a doodle. It was a cartoon of me, tied up and bent over the table in my business clothes. I was looking at the viewer with duct tape over my mouth, but there was a speech balloon that read, “If the tape does not stick, you must acquit!” Cartoon me looked pretty sexy.

“Can I post this online?” She asked.

“Go for it! It’s your art!” I told her.

Courtney put the paper in her messenger bag. Then she looked like she had a sudden realization. “Oh my god, that song you sang! What was that?”