Free The Laws of our Fathers by Scott Turow Page B

lost color. The same things I would say about myself.
        'Mr Molto,' I ask, when I regain myself, 'does the court's prior acquaintance with defense counsel have any impact on your position regarding my presiding?'
        Molto stands with small nail-bitten hands folded before him, exhibiting his customary impatience. We have been over the issue now half a dozen times.
        'None,' he says distinctly.
        In the meantime, my eyes cheat back to Seth in the jury box. What's he doing here? I've finally wondered. But the answer seems obvious. A column. About coincidence. And serendipity. He will write about the strange whims of fate, how the figures from his past have reappeared with everyone written into odd new roles, as bizarrely misplaced as the characters in a dream.
        'Your Honor,' says Turtle. 'My motion? I take it Your Honor saw this morning's Tribune?' The news I get generally comes to me on NPR on the three mornings I drive the kindergarten car pool. Sometimes late at night, in moments of supreme indulgence, after Nikki is bedded down, I'll take a glass of wine in the bathtub and turn the pages of the Tribune or the national edition of The New York Times. Most evenings, though, I am too burned out for more than rattled reflections on the day that's passed and the hundreds of tasks undone at home and in court, counted, instead of sheep, as I drift off.
        Now as I open the paper that's been handed up, I confront a headline stretching across the top ofthe front page, state: pol's son meant to kill him, not mom. Trial Starts Today, the kicker reads. The byline is Stew Dubinsky's. Exclusive to the
         Trib. I scan: 'Sources close to the investigation… murder conspiracy trial of Nile Eddgar starting today… Prosecuting Attorney's Office plans to offer evidence that the intended victim of the plot was not the Kindle County Superior Court probation officer's mother, June Eddgar, who was gunned down by gang members on September 7, but his father, State Senator Loyell Eddgar… mistake in identity is believed to have occurred when Mrs Eddgar borrowed her former husband's car that morning.'
        By now, I've piled a hand on my forehead. God, the calculations that accumulate. Eddgar! I find this news unsettling, most of all perhaps, because in a single stroke it feels far more likely that the strange young man before me may actually be guilty. At last, I nod to Hobie to proceed.
        'Your Honor,' he begins in a resonant courtroom bass; he grips the podium with both hands. The impression is of some opera star about to hit a booming note. 'Your Honor, I have been trying cases for twenty-some years now. And I have seen devilish conduct by prosecutors in that time. I have been sandbagged and back-doored and tricked. But to have leaked this kind of incendiary detail to the press on the day we are trying to pick a jury, knowing that this news concerning a prominent citizen is bound to become a page 1 headline and irreparably prejudice the venire against my client -' Hobie does not finish. He smacks his hand against an extra copy of the paper, which he has held up for illustration, and tosses his large head about in embittered disbelief. He goes on to paint a vivid tableau of dozens of citizens in the jury room in the main building, forming firm impressions of the case even as we speak. Most of them, he predicts, with time on their hands and a peculiar interest in what's occurring in the courthouse today, will have read this one-sided account of the state's evidence in the very papers which, ironically, are provided to them free. His rhetoric is overheated, but I have little doubt he's correct and that most of the potential jurors will have seen this story.
        'Your Honor, really,' he concludes, 'how can this man get a fair trial? I must, I have to, I have no choice but to move to dismiss this indictment.' He punctuates his request with a grunt of continuing outrage.
        Molto,