Authors: James Grippando
She was no dummy, managing her defense right up to the moment of truth. “We can talk about that later.”
Sydney took a seat and immediately started to bite her nails. Hannah gently took her hand and whispered to her about the television cameras. The talking heads on the air were surely taking note of her nerves. Sydney lowered her hands into her lap. Jack took a seat beside her, and before he could feel the full weight of all eyes upon them, the door to Judge Matthews’ chambers swung open, and the bailiff called the courtroom to order.
“All rise!”
The packed courtroom fell silent, everyone standing as Judge Matthews ascended to the bench. He instructed all to have a seat and immediately issued a few admonitions—“no in-court reactions to the reading of the verdict” and so forth. Jack was only half listening. The second-guessing had begun.
Should I have worked harder for a plea?
The charges against Sydney included first degree murder. Death by lethal injection was still on the table, so to speak. If Sydney was convicted, the sentencing phase of the trial would begin. The jury would hear additional evidence and recommend death or life imprisonment. Sequestration had immunized the jury from the constant drumbeat of hatred in the media so far, but there was no guarantee that the jury would remain sequestered for the sentencing hearing. Ultimately, the punishment would be in the hands of Judge Belvin Matthews—a former prosecutor whose impressive list of convictions on behalf of the state attorney’s office included the first woman ever to be executed in Florida. Matthews had personally witnessed her death. Since his election to the circuit bench, not a single one of Judge Matthews’ death sentences had been overturned on appeal. A verdict of guilty could well mean that Sydney would be the fourth woman sent to Florida’s death row since January—the most of any given year in the state’s history.
“Bailiff, please bring in the jury,” said the judge.
“All rise!”
Behind Jack, in the packed gallery, the bumps and thuds of the rising crowd sounded like a ragtag army on the march. Jurors in Florida courtrooms were never shown on television, so even as the jury entered, the cameras remained fixed on Jack and his client. Jack had become almost immune to the constant coverage. Sydney had never gotten used to it, having complained to Jack throughout the trial that when she looked calm, the media attacked her as coldhearted; if she cried, they said she was faking; when she flashed even the slightest smile, they declared her a sociopath.
The jury took their seats, and everyone else in the room did the same.
“They’re not looking at me,” Sydney whispered.
Somewhere—probably TV—Sydney must have heard a lawyer say that if the jurors didn’t make eye contact with the defendant as they filed into the courtroom, it signaled a guilty verdict. For Jack, a far better indicator was the number of courtroom deputies hovering around the defense table, ready to grab his guilty clients before they could make a mad dash for the door. Somehow, the deputies always seemed to know.
The judge broke the silence. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”
“Yes, sir,” the twelve answered in unison.
Jack glanced over his shoulder and spotted Sydney’s parents in the back row. Geoffrey Bennett, hands clasped and praying, was seated beside his wife. Behind them stood the police investigators who had found Emma’s body.
“Would the foreman hand the verdict form to the court deputy, please.”
A woman in the dark blue uniform of courtroom deputies approached the jury box and received the verdict form. She handed it up to Judge Matthews. He inspected it, making sure that all was in order, showing no expression as he turned page after page. Finally, he looked directly at Jack and his client.
“Will the defendant rise along with counsel.”
I know it’s going to be okay.
That was what he wanted to tell his client. But how could anyone say such a thing? How could anyone
know
?
Jack’s gaze swept the jury box. Each juror had taken the same oath to “render a true verdict according to the law and the evidence,” and the evidence against Sydney was entirely circumstantial. Cause of death, unknown. Manner of death, a matter of inference upon inference and expert opinion. No eyewitnesses. No confession from the accused. Yes, the jury had been told that in a court of law circumstantial evidence is as probative as direct evidence—a point that the prosecution hammers home in every trial. Beyond their own awareness of what they had decided, however, the jurors didn’t
know
anything more than the rest of the players in this courtroom drama. For all their forceful argument, the prosecutors didn’t know what had happened. Neither did Judge Matthews, the investigators on the case, or the experts who had testified at trial. The pundits on television sure as hell didn’t know.
“Madam clerk,” said the judge, “you may publish the verdicts.”
Not even
Jack
knew.
“In the circuit court of the eleventh judicial circuit in and for Miami-Dade County, Florida, State of Florida versus Sydney Louise Bennett . . .”
None of them knew, because they hadn’t been there for Emma’s final moments.
“As to the charge of first degree murder . . .”
What they knew was in actuality nothing more than what they believed. And what Jack believed as he stood at Sydney’s side and heard those words—“We the jury, find the defendant”—is what he would believe to his dying day: There was more than one person in that courtroom who
knew
what had happened to Emma. And Jack could have proved it.
If only Sydney had wanted him to.
N
ot guilty!”
The shout from atop the courthouse steps carried across the street and all the way to the jurors’ parking lot, loud enough for most of the sunbaked crowd to hear. Silent and filled with anticipation, many of the onlookers were following a slightly delayed Internet live stream on smartphones and electronic devices, which just a moment later confirmed the verdict. Those not stunned into speechlessness erupted in anger.
“What?”
“How?”
“That jury must be nuts!”
By default—not a seat to be had in the courtroom—Theo had made himself part of the outdoor vigil, conspicuously taller and darker than the predominantly white, female crowd around him. The shade of an oak cut the glare on his iPhone. BNN was covering the trial live, and their on-screen graphic summarized the verdict. First degree murder: not guilty. Manslaughter: not guilty. Criminal child neglect: not guilty. Sydney was convicted on one count of providing false information to police investigators. Essentially, the jury believed what the defense lawyers had said about their own client: She was a liar, not a murderer. Television cameras captured her fighting back tears of relief, propped up by Hannah Goldsmith. The camera cut to Jack as the court polled the jurors, and Theo was glad to see that Jack wasn’t flashing some cocky lawyer’s grin and slapping high fives with everyone around him. One by one, each juror verbally confirmed that this was his or her verdict.
“Unbelievable,” was the running commentary from BNN’s anchor. Through his earbuds, Theo heard the judge thank the jurors and dismiss them. Then the BNN anchor said it again, this time with attitude: “Simply
un—be—lievable
.”
Theo glanced around him. The crowd was becoming more vocal, their expressions of anger and despair making it hard for him to hear the TV coverage. Theo increased the volume, then lowered it. Faith Corso was on a rant that needed no amplification.
Corso, a tough former prosecutor turned TV personality, had spotlighted the Sydney Bennett case from the beginning. It had started with a desperate, monthlong search for a missing two-year-old girl—but without the usual sympathy for the mother. Police quickly pegged Sydney as a liar about everything, from her place of employment to her whereabouts on the day of Emma’s death. She’d led her parents to believe that she was holding a steady day job as a bookkeeper at a Key Biscayne resort. In fact, she was a “shot girl” at a popular South Beach nightclub—one of the scantily clad young women who roamed through the crowd with a bottle of tequila in one hand and a tray of shot glasses in the other, cajoling drunk young men into spending ten bucks for a shot and quick squeeze of the shot girl.
Sydney’s biggest deception, however, was in what she
hadn’t
said.
“What mother fails to report the disappearance of her own child if she isn’t covering up a homicide?” asked Corso, her voice laden with disgust. “And what kind of mother goes out partying the night her daughter goes missing, parties again the next night, and the night after that?”
Corso had been asking those questions for three years. The prosecutor had put them up in bold letters on a projection screen during closing argument. Corso, the prosecution, the crowd outside the courthouse, the millions of viewers on television—all had expected the jury to answer with a verdict of guilty.
Theo’s iPhone flickered, but the Internet connection remained strong enough for him to hear something about the scheduling of a sentencing hearing on the “false information” conviction. The judge announced that Sydney would remain incarcerated until then. Corso quickly explained to her viewers that the maximum sentence for the conviction on the lesser count was one year. Because Sydney had already spent three years behind bars awaiting trial, she would likely serve no additional time.
“Shot Mom will be free and back to her wicked ways in a week,” said Corso. Dubbing her “Shot Mom”—a play on “shot girl” and “hot mom”—was one of the signature devices that Corso had used throughout the trial to express her contempt for Sydney Bennett.
Corso checked with one of the BNN reporters on the scene: “Heather, what’s the reaction outside the courthouse?”
“Faith, it is way beyond disappointment. People here are genuinely heartbroken. I’ve spoken to a group of mothers who traveled all the way from Arizona, college students from New Orleans, retirees from New York. All of them filled with a sickening sense that there has been no justice for Emma.”
Theo suddenly sensed an echo. He looked up from his iPhone and realized that he wasn’t just hearing the roving reporter’s voice on television through his earbuds. Heather Brown and the BNN cameraman were standing just fifteen feet away from him. She was suddenly coming his way, speaking into her microphone.
“Faith, let me see if I can get a word with the man who brought defense lawyer Jack Swyteck to the courthouse today. Sir!”
Theo froze. “Me?”
“Yes, can I have a quick word with you, please?”
Being six feet six and black in this crowd had definitely proved to be a liability. “You must have me confused with someone else.”
“Wait a second, I know that man,” said Corso, and Theo could hear her in his earbuds. “Viewers may recall that, a few years back, I did a BNN special investigative report on capital punishment, and one case we featured told the story of how Jack Swyteck used his family name to pull strings and get Theo Knight off Florida’s death row.”
If by “pull strings” you mean DNA evidence . . .
“Heather, ask Mr. Knight if he—”
“Gotta go,” said Theo as he broke away.
“Mr. Knight!”
Theo was off like a running back. It had taken Jack four years to prove Theo’s innocence. Twice he’d come so close to the electric chair that they’d served him a last meal, sent him to the prison barber, and shaved his head and ankles for placement of the electrodes. Theo had nothing to prove to anyone—ever again.
“Mr. Knight, please!”
The reporter tried to follow, but the crowd closed around her and the cameraman. Theo pushed all the way to the street in front of the courthouse, past clusters of angry onlookers, around several other reporters who were delivering up-to-the-minute reports. His cell rang, and he made the mistake of answering. It was Faith Corso.
“Mr. Knight, where will Shot Mom go from here?”
Theo did a double take. “Are we on the air? And how did you get my number?”
“There’s an app for that. Would you answer my question, please?”
“I have no idea where Sydney is going.”
“You’re the defense team’s driver, are you not?”
“No.”
“Apparently you’re about as truthful as Shot Mom. We caught you on camera driving Jack Swyteck to the courthouse today.”
“That doesn’t make me his driver, Miss Daisy.” The film reference was probably lost on her, but Morgan Freeman was one of Theo’s favorites. “Are we on the air or not?” he asked.
She wouldn’t answer. “When Shot Mom is released, will you be the one driving her wherever she plans to go?”
“I got nothin’ to say about that.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nope.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that the same thing you told police when they found a convenience-store clerk dead on the floor and your hands in the cash register?”
Theo held his tongue. “I’m hanging up now.”
“No, wait! People have a right to know. Where will you be taking Shot Mom? Hollywood for a movie? New York for a book deal?”
“You need to ask Sydney that.”
“What about your buddy, Jack Swyteck? What’s his cut of the blood money?”
“I got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about turning the tragic death of an innocent little girl into profit. Isn’t that the next move for Shot Mom and her lawyers?”
Theo almost hung up, but Corso’s hold on him wouldn’t allow it.
“Mr. Knight, people have a right to know the truth.”
“All right,” said Theo, “I’ll give it to you straight. But only if we’re on the air.”
“Of course we’re on the air,” she said, her voice rising with excitement. “And for my friends in the viewing audience, you’re watching another BNN exclusive. I am speaking on the telephone with one-time death row inmate Theo Knight, a close personal friend and former client of Shot Mom’s lawyer, Jack Swyteck. Go ahead, sir. Tell us what business deals are in the works now that this astounding verdict has left Shot Mom completely unaccountable for Emma’s tragic death.”
Theo wasn’t a news junkie, but Jack had told him how the Sydney Bennett circus had pushed BNN’s ratings into the stratosphere—and how, in particular, Faith Corso’s stature as a TV personality skyrocketed every time she uttered the words
Shot Mom
.
“I can only speak for myself,” said Theo.
“Yourself?”
said Corso. “So even the driver for Shot Mom’s lawyer has his eye on a deal of some sort? This ought to be good.”
“Oh, this deal is beyond good. As soon as we hang up, I’m going straight to your Web site and I’m buying two of those ‘Rot in Hell, Sydney’ snuggies for just nineteen ninety-five, plus shipping and handling. And if I order in the next three minutes, I get a free ‘I heart the death penalty’ bumper sticker.”
Theo could hear the hiss of anger in her next breath. “That is so typical of the way the defense team has treated this entire tragedy,” said Corso. “A joke, a complete mockery of our system of jus—”
Theo hung up, reeling in his anger. He continued away from the courthouse, stepping outside the ring of frenetic reporters with way too much hair and makeup for the ninety-five-degree heat, beyond the reach of microphone-toting assassins who seemed eager to interview anyone who was willing to say something outrageous on camera. He stopped at the street corner and wiped the sweat from his brow.
Lashing out at Corso on national television wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done. Of course she wasn’t actually selling snuggies or giving away bumper stickers, but she’d pushed him, and it was Theo’s nature to push back. The exchange was sure to be replayed many times over, and the last thing Jack needed was to be coldcocked by the BNN broadcast. He knew Jack didn’t have a cell phone inside the courthouse, so Theo shot him a text for later.
Heads up. Thx 2 yer driver, they wanna kill us both.
Theo’s gaze turned back to the crowd outside the courthouse. No one was leaving. If anything, folks were only getting more worked up.
After they kill Sydney.