Free The Sonderberg Case by Elie Wiesel

it, he’s with Charles Stone.
    “So, how’s our legal reporter’s baptism going?” Paul asks.
    “Talk about experiences, this sure is one,” I say. “You’re right, it’s theater, but in a category of its own. Everyone is improvising, more or less, including the judge. Every kind of surprise is allowed. And I feel like an intruder.”
    I tell them about my first court hearing. Paul smiles.
    “You don’t hold it against me that I forced you into volunteering?”
    “It’s too early to answer yes or no.”
    “Beware, you sound like your young defendant.”
    “Except I haven’t killed anyone. Not even in my theater reviews.”
    “I’m waiting for your piece,” Charles interjects. “I need it by eight p.m.”
    “I’ll tell Judge Gardner to hurry up.”
    I go home to have lunch with Alika. She seems displeased with my excitement.
    “Don’t forget, your first love is theater, after all, not law.”
    “My first love is you.”
    “Come and eat.”
    The afternoon session is devoted to the selection of the twelve-person jury, men and women.
    They begin by drawing lots: a peculiar lottery. Each potential juror is presented for approval to the prosecution and the defense. All members of the jury are required to be objective, neutral, devoid of prejudices, and incapable of being moved by anything but reason, a sense of equity and truth. A saint would fit the description.
    One of the first potential jurors is an elderly Jewish tailor who is probably religious as he is wearing a yarmulke. In order to get rid of him, the prosecutor questions him on his attitude toward Germany and the Germans.
    “Do you think you can be completely objective with respect to the defendant?”
    “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    “Because you’re probably attached to the past of your people.”
    “So? Why would my loyalty to the past cloud my judgment in this particular case?”
    “Because you’re you and the defendant is who he is.”
    “You mean I’m Jewish and he’s German, which should predispose me to hate him, is that it?”
    “No, no, that’s not what I meant.”
    “Fortunately, sir. Because I happen to be against theprinciple of collective guilt. Whether German or Muslim, only criminals are guilty; the children of murderers are children, not murderers.”
    Dismissed.
    As for the attorney Michael Redford, he makes use of his right to dismiss two prospective jurors peremptorily.
    The next person to be considered is an elegantly dressed woman, in her early forties, intelligent, and wearing light makeup. For some reason, I see her as the wife of a banker, as a lover of Greek and Roman art and of contemporary music. The prosecutor objects to her and dismisses her.
    Three sessions will be required for the judge to finalize the jury selection. For the other reporters these sessions are uninteresting, rather repetitive, and devoid of surprises. Not for me. Each one is a discovery leading to a confrontation between the defendant and the eight men and four women sitting in the jury box, to the left of the judge’s platform. I have trouble taking my eyes off Werner Sonderberg as I try to guess what he is feeling. After all, his life is in the hands of these individuals more than in those of the judge. He knows—his lawyers have told him—that the vote of the jury has to be unanimous for him to be convicted. All that’s needed is one dissenting voice and he can walk away free. I wonder who among the jurors might save him. Astonishingly, he seems preoccupied by something else entirely. He seems indifferent to the jury.
    But then what is he thinking of with a look of such concentration?
    ——
    My first articles seem to be well received.
    “You see? I was right,” Paul remarks. “It’s because you have no understanding of legal issues that you succeed in making the reader interested. You connect on a dramatic, personal level.”
    Charles agrees. “There’s a freshness in your writing that you don’t find in the articles of