Free No Way to Treat a First Lady by Christopher Buckley Page A

testify, visualize a snowball. Now visualize the same snowball in hell."
    Boyce smiled. "I am at the mercy of Your Honor's wise and learned judgment."
     

Chapter 10
    There are few spectacles more pathetic than a roomful of otherwise responsible people trying to squirm out of a civic duty enshrined in Magna Carta as one of the signal boons of democracy. On the other hand, who in his right mind wants to serve on a jury?
    Impaneling a jury for United States v. Elizabeth MacMann was more daunting. When the prospective jurors entered Judge Umin's courtroom with the downcast shuffle of the damned, most of them took one look at the judge, Boyce, and the deputy attorney general and uttered the same silent cry: Oh God, no — not that case!
    Boyce and his jury consultant studied their faces intently. It was easy enough to spot the ones who were horrified at the thought of spending the next year in some ghastly motel with seventeen of their "peers."
    Others positively radiated delight, either at the thought of becoming part of history, or at the prospect of all those lucrative book deals. Juror Number Five: My Story. Film rights to Warner Brothers for seven figures. A top New York publisher had been quoted in the Times saying that a book by the first juror to be dismissed would fetch at least $1 million. But a juror who held out against the other jurors, either for or against conviction— that juror, the publisher said, could go start pouring the concrete for that dream house.
    "This is a capital murder case," the judge began on the first day of jury selection. "Capital means that conviction carries a potential penalty of death. Normally a case like this could take months to try." Groans came from men and women in expensive suits who looked as if they measured their time in minutes. "But this is not a normal case, so it is difficult to predict. It could take up to one year. It could take more. Especially"—he glanced sideways at Boyce—"since an extensive witness list has been submitted by the defense." Gasps, groans, chests were clutched, bottles of nitroglycerin tablets rattled.
    Boyce and his jury consultant watched the faces of the jury pool. Boyce's jury consultant was a man named Pinkut Vlonko. Before going into the lucrative business of advising trial lawyers on jury selection, "Pinky" Vlonko had been for over twenty years the CIA's top psychological profiler. His job was to figure out which of the CIA's top people were most likely to be selling secrets to the Russians or Chinese; also, to determine whether Saddam Hussein was technically a malignant narcissist or simply a fruitcake. Pinky had worked with Boyce on many cases. Between them, they had the best juror "radar" in the business. Boyce was fascinated by psychology. After being dumped by Beth, he had taken a master's degree in applied psychology.
    The two of them had prepared a juror's questionnaire extensive even by their standards. It consisted of eight hundred questions. Number 11: Did you vote for President MacMann? Number 636: Are you regular at bowel movements? During his years at the CIA, Pinky had discovered that defectors and moles—switchers of allegiance—tended to be constipated.
    The questionnaire had occasioned another heated session in Judge Dutch's chambers. Ms. Clintick, the DAG, had pronounced it an abomination. Boyce had thereupon produced a questionnaire used by the attorney general's own pollster when he had run unsuccessfully for governor years ago. It was 120 questions long. He'd waved it in the DAG's face. A compromise was struck. Boyce's questionnaire was trimmed to 650 questions. This was more or less the number of questions he and Pinky wanted to begin with. Boyce's rule since childhood had always been, Ask for a lot more than you need so that you end up with what you want.
    Boyce's amiable but relentless grilling of the jurors, carried live on TV—Judge Dutch had decided it would be more complicated not to allow cameras in the court—led