From the Eyes of a Juror

  Chapter 3 – Three Horrible Hubbys, One Horrible Vision

  Wednesday morning June 4, 2008 – 5:59 AM

  Frank Newlan groggily rolled over in his bed and in one swift motion he glanced at the clock on the nightstand and leaned over to turn off the alarm just before it was scheduled to go off at 6 AM.

  From a very early age, Newlan’s eccentric persona had been more or less riddled with idiosyncrasies, and one of his many quirks was that he couldn’t stand the sound of alarm clocks. There was something about the high-pitched beeping that sent an involuntary spasm convulsing through his entire body, and the piercing chirp never failed to kick-start him into the world of consciousness every time, which, after all, is what an alarm clock was intended to do in the first place.

  Even on restless mornings when Newlan was lying in bed half-awake, and he was aware that the alarm was about to go off at any second, it would still startle him, and so he made it a point to turn the damned thing off every day, at the crack of dawn, just before it was about to kick in.

  Newlan had apparently been gifted with an uncanny ability to routinely wake himself up out of a sound sleep, at a pre-set time, without the aid of a wake-up call of any kind; it was almost as if he had a inborn alarm wired directly into his brain which was capable of rousing him up out of even the soundest sleep, under any circumstances.

  And although Newlan’s ascending prowess was certainly uncommon, one would think that with time, a person would eventually grow accustom to such a talent. But to the contrary, even after all these years of proven performance, Newlan continued to be amazed by the precision of his own internal clock. It seemed that no matter what hour he set the alarm for, he would always wake up minutes, sometimes even seconds, before it was about to go off, and yet he would still impulsively set his alarm clock every night, just in case.

  This particular morning found Newlan up a tad earlier than usual. Once again his jury duty day had arrived, which left him feeling slightly out of whack. Just the thought of a change in his normal routine was guaranteed to disrupt his brain patterns, and today was no exception. But nonetheless he still managed to get a fairly sound night’s sleep.

  As we have already begun to establish, Newlan was very much a creature of habit, and as such, he wasn’t particularly looking forward to spending the day hanging out at the courthouse. But be that as it may, once he dragged himself out of bed, he was feeling unusually refreshed and raring to go.

  Newlan figured that at least it would be a day off from work, and well “who knows what the day might bring”. Sometimes the little curve balls that come our way in life would leave him feeling both anxious and excited all at the same time. However, when he woke up this morning to an overcast sky, he could never have imagined, even in his wildest nightmares, that this would turn out to be his last restful night of sleep in a long, long time.

  Of course, at this stage in his trek, Newlan had no idea of what he might be getting himself into, and so he indifferently had his morning coffee, took a quick shower, and inattentively checked the local news before heading on out the door. He preferred to get an early start whenever he had to travel to an unfamiliar location; although, after reviewing the directions for the Middlesex Superior Courthouse in Woburn, he wasn’t too concerned, since the address was located just off the highway, a few miles north of his condo in Medford Massachusetts.

  The weather report called for an overcast, drizzly day with a chance of scattered showers in the Boston area, and the big news story of the day was that juror selection was in progress or about to get underway for three high-profile murder cases which were set to begin, coincidently enough, at the very same Woburn courthouse where Newlan was heading to. The news angle for the morning broadcast had to do with whether the courthouse in Woburn, which had just opened for business only a few months ago, would be able to concurrently handle all three “media circus” cases at the same time.

  Up to this point in the eye-opener news report, Newlan’s fascination for the headlines of the day may have been lacking, but when the TV reporter followed up with a look back at the perilously grim events that were to culminate in the three dramatic trials, she suddenly had Newlan’s rapt attention. And furthermore, his absorption was impenetrable, despite the fact that he had already become intimately familiar with the details of all three cases, having just read an article on the subject in the local Boston Record American tabloid newspaper late last week. Actually, there was almost no way he could have missed the story, seeing as how it was accompanied by a bold, attention grabbing, 20 point headline that blared:

  THREE HORRIBLE HUBBYS GOING DOWN

  And from there, the report went on to graphically outline the three scandalous trials.

  The first trial involved a miserable sex addict, originally from England, named Neal Townshend, who allegedly shot his wife and young daughter, and then fled back to his native land.

  The scumbag had a gorgeous house in the affluent suburb of Weston Massachusetts, a beautiful family, and what, by all accounts, appeared to be a perfect life. And when you summed it all up, you had a surefire recipe that was guaranteed to shock and offend; a recipe that indeed contained a perfect mix of the lurid ingredients that were necessary to keep the controversy-starved public captivated for the two years that it took for the case to go to trial.

  The fact that Townshend fled to England and almost caused an international incident between the motherland and its former colony before he was returned to Massachusetts just added more fuel to the publicity fire.

  Townshend’s lawyer was claiming that the incident was an unfortunate case of murder/suicide. His theory was that Townshend’s wife shot the kid and then turned the gun on herself. The evidence didn’t seem to support such a claim, which led to even more notoriety, and anticipation for the trial had reached a fevered pitch.

  The second trial involved the aforementioned John Breslin; an apparently unremarkable, middle-aged man with no prior criminal record who allegedly hired an ex-con to kill his estranged wife’s boyfriend.

  The third trial involved a shady dude by the name of James McMahn who allegedly poisoned his wife over a number of years by ingenuously spiking her Gatorade with antifreeze; all in an attempt to collect on her sizable life insurance policy.

  “What a sorry bunch of assholes,” thought Newlan at the time he was reading the story, and he thought the same thing now after watching the latest trial updates on the local newscast.

  Newlan had a nutty idea that he should save the article, and whenever some overly concerned friend or relative wondered why he was still single, he could just pull out the clipping and say, “see, this is why…because I probably would have killed the bitch by now!”

  Even though he knew that he would never actually make such a vulgar statement, he still insisted that it would be kind of funny, and he chuckled at the thought of how his sister or one of his female co-workers might react to such a crazy pronouncement.

  Like most of us, Newlan was a complex individual; good natured and funny on the one hand, but at the same time also guarded and suspicious. However, all in all, Newlan was just a laidback, mellow, easy-going person who would endeavor to avoid conflict whenever possible, and so the idea of him using a sensationalized newspaper story as a prop in response to some annoying question was completely out of character for him. But nonetheless he still maintained that there was some validity to those old fables which insinuate that mankind’s eventual downfall will be rooted in the fertile vines of the opposite sex.

  Clearly, Newlan tended to blow things out of proportions. Although, it is no exaggeration to promulgate that every time he’d hear another breaking news story about a domestic situation that escalated into violence, it would leave him sadly dismayed over the utter disarray of our 21st century society. And yet, despite his anxieties over all things big and small, he wasn’t really too worried about the fact that jury duty selection for the three blockbuster trials was tak
ing place on the very same day that he just so happened to be reporting for jury duty. After all, he had been summoned to jury duty on six previous occasions over the years, and he had never once been selected for a trial before, so he figured that the odds were against it this time as well; at least that was his hope, because he certainly didn’t want to see his streak broken by being chosen to partake in one these grizzly murder trials.

  It might seem hard to believe based on his current mindset, but the first time Newlan got called for jury duty, he secretly wanted to get in on a trial. At the time, the youthfully exuberant Newlan had this misconceived notion that it would be an interesting experience, and he had taken quite a few law courses in college so he deemed himself to be expertly qualified to serve as a juror.

  However, as the years went by, and Newlan was exposed to more and more stories about horrific crimes and the sensational trials that followed, he changed his mind about jury duty in a hurry, and he definitively decided that he wanted no part in making a life-or-death decision on some poor sucker’s future.

  Newlan was the type of person who always cheered for the underdog in the world of sports, and in much the same way, whenever a big trial was featured on TV, he often times found himself rooting for the sad-sack defendant in the competitive arena of courtroom theatrics as well. And so when a tenacious defense attorney poked holes in what once appeared to be an airtight case, Newlan tended to presume that maybe the defendant’s story might be true (regardless of how ridiculous the defense’s version of the facts turned out to be).

  Because of this penchant for being suckered into believing anything, Newlan rightfully worried that, if he were ever selected to sit on a jury, he just might fall for some cockamamie story and let a violent killer off the hook. Even worse, he hated the thought that he might somehow be involved in convicting someone who later turned out to be vindicated.

  On his previous jury duty assignments, Newlan got called as far as the jury box each time, and each time he was challenged (removed without cause) by one of the attorneys. Actually, except for one civil trial, it was always the district attorney. And because of this pattern, Newlan theorized that every DA he had ever encountered must have somehow been able to read his mind regarding his soft spot for the underdog, not to mention the fact that he didn’t totally trust most law enforcement officials to begin with anyway.

  “Or maybe it’s just because I don’t look like much of a ‘law and order’ type,” Newlan surmised at the time, referring to the fact that he preferred to let his stringy hair grow long before going to the local barber for a trim, even though his locks had rapidly begun thinning out many years ago.

  In reality, it was probably just his age, or his sex, or his racial profile that prompted Newlan to get kicked off the jury on those previous occasions, but he still took it personally, even though the “Juror Information” booklet specifically states not to take it personally if you are challenged and removed from a case.

  Even the civil trial that Newlan got himself discharged from, although it didn’t involve a DA, heightened his disdain for the libelous attitudes that prevail in the United States these days. That particular case pitted a rather healthy-looking young woman against a supermarket chain who she was suing because she had slipped on a patch of ice in the parking lot of one of their stores. And when the judge in the case posed the standard question; “are there any reasons why you could not be an impartial juror in this matter?” Newlan raised his hand.

  Shortly thereafter, the judge called Newlan up to the bench, and he patiently explained how a mailman had once attempted to sue his parents, claiming that he too had slipped on a patch of ice while climbing up the front stairs of their home. No one ever saw the mailman’s alleged tumble, but luckily for Newlan’s mom and dad, their insurance company offered the deceitful letter-carrier a settlement, which he gladly accepted.

  But regardless of the satisfactory outcome of his parents’ ordeal, the episode left Newlan with a bitter taste in his mouth. And yet, amazingly enough, even after pleading his case, the judge in the supermarket civil suit decided that he nonetheless met the minimum requirements necessary to serve as an impartial juror.

  In the end though, Newlan was immediately tossed from the jury by the plaintiff’s attorney, which was a smart idea, given the fact that he would have never voted to award a dime to this ambulance chaser.

  And so as Newlan made his way out the door on this dreary Wednesday morning, off to fulfill another round of jury duty obligation, he calculated that based on past experience, he’d be home by 2 PM at the latest, which would leave him a few hours to run a couple of errands later in the afternoon.

  In fact, Newlan was so certain he wasn’t going to be selected to serve on a case, that when left work on Tuesday afternoon and bid his co-workers goodnight, he informed them that he’d see them all on Thursday morning.

  Speaking of work, Newlan lived and worked in Medford, a middle class suburb about seven miles north of Boston, where he owned a condo in a fancy high-rise luxury building called the Medford River Park Condominiums; and as an added bonus, his apartment even had a beautiful view of the Boston skyline from its south-facing deck.

  Newlan was employed by Tafts University, where he worked in their Information Technology department. And while, if given his druthers, he would have preferred to have been born into wealth so that he could just hang out and play his guitar all day, he was, for the most part, relatively happy with his lot in life. Deep in his heart of hearts, he realized that he had a pretty good gig going at Tafts, and he took pride in the knowledge that he was doing OK for himself, financially speaking anyway.

  Newlan understood that he could probably be making a lot more money working in the private sector, but when push came to shove he didn’t need the hassle of commuting into Boston, working late every night, and dealing with unrealistic deadlines.

  He recognized that it sounded corny to some people, but to Newlan, “quality of life” issues really did make a difference; his office was so close to his condo that he could practically walk to work, and by car it was no more than a 15 minute commute; his hours were a steady 9 to 5, and he very rarely had to work late, so there was no burning of the midnight oil for him; his assignments were usually stimulating, and the workload was never overly taxing; and to top it all off, everyone loved him at Tafts.

  And yet, despite these perks, at times he still had the urge to quit on the spot and maybe write a book or start his own business; although, in all honesty, it’s doubtful that the risk-aversive Newlan would ever seriously consider trading in the security of a steady paycheck for such a precarious endeavor.

  To the contrary, Newlan was sensible enough to concede that he would be hard-pressed to ever leave Tafts, and as if to prove his own point, he had actually turned down a job offer few months ago for close to 20K more than he was currently making. It seems that after adding up all the pros and cons (more money meant longer hours and a longer commute) he decided that it just wasn’t worth it for him to make a change. He absolutely loved the fact that he could leave work at 5 o’clock every night and be home by 5:15; whereas if he took this new job he’d be lucky if he made it home by 6:30. Even better, he could take his sweet time getting ready for work in the morning and still make it in to the office with plenty of time to spare.

  But on the other hand, Newlan wasn’t about to let anyone at Tafts in on how comfortable he was working there. He preferred to leave his colleagues under the impression that he might be considering a job change at any moment. His thinking was that it never hurt, come salary-increase time, to keep his superiors on their toes and guessing about his future plans. He wasn’t the type to brag, but he really was quite proficient at his job, and he knew full well that his skills far surpassed the majority of his co-workers. More importantly, he realized that the management team at Tafts recognized his value as a top performer, so they always did their best to keep him happy moneywise, which was a fa
ir enough deal as far as he was concerned.

  Newlan sincerely respected the diverse staff at Tafts, from the janitors right on up to the VPs; although, he had to admit that some of his colleagues did get on his nerves from time-to-time (and for the sake of full disclosure, we are compelled to divulge that he occasionally got on their nerves as well).

  One of Newlan’s co-workers who fell into the above category was a gentleman by the name of Bob Parant.

  Parant was a crusty old-timer who was pushing 70 years old. But despite his advancing age, he had no intentions of retiring anytime soon. Parant was the type of person who wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he didn’t have a job to occupy his time, although, to be perfectly honest, he didn’t actually do much work. The running joke around the IT department was that Parent came in to the office everyday solely to socialize with his peers, and if he ever did decide to call it a career, the assumption was that he’d drive his poor wife crazy.

  Every once in a while, just to be an instigator, Newlan would grill Parant regarding his employment status and his future plans.

  “Bobby, when the hell are you gonna quit this place and put yourself out to pasture?” he’d ask. And every single time, Parant would comeback with the same reply.

  “I’m having too much fun hanging out with you guys to ever retire, Frankie.”

  Not only was Parant constantly fraternizing with his co-workers when he was suppose to be hard at work, but he somehow seemed to know everybody’s business, and so in a mock ceremony a few years back, Newlan dubbed him the unofficial office crier.

  In his speech, Newlan quipped that Parant reminded him of Cliff Clavin on the old Cheers TV sitcom because he deemed himself to be an expert on any subject you could ever think of. Whenever a rumor was making the rounds, or if there was a debate over some obscure sports trivia question, Newlan would, as a rule, declare, “Let’s check in with Parant, he’ll know what’s going on.”

  For some inexplicable reason, Parant was a diehard New York Yankees fan, even though he had lived within the outskirts of Boston his entire life, and this would be cause for lots of good-natured ribbing between him and the rest of the office staff. As is the case with most people who grow up in the greater Boston area, Newlan and his co-workers were all rabid sports fans and they religiously followed all of the local teams, so having a traitor in their midst was good for plenty of heated discussions, which helped to kill the time during a boring day at the office.

  All in all though, Newlan considered Parant to be good people, even though he could be a pain in the rear end every now and then.

  Parant worked on the university’s HR system which probably wasn’t a good idea for a busy-body like him. Parant would regularly log into the system and check out everyone’s salary, and while he was at it, he would also garner up confidential details such as who was out on disability, and who was signed up for same sex benefits. Worse than that, Parant enjoyed gossiping about these juicy little tidbits of information, and he didn’t seem to care whether anyone found out.

  Parant figured that at 68 years old, if Tafts decided to can him then so be it; at least he would be likely to collect a tidy little lump sum settlement on the way out the door. And if truth be told, unless he came down with a serious illness, or if he was forced to leave for whatever reason, Newlan and company were probably stuck with him for the duration, since it was unlikely that he was ever going to retire on his own.

  A few days after Newlan received his summons letter, he made the mistake of telling Parant that he was scheduled to go on jury duty again, and so for the next two and a half months he had to endure daily doses of legal analysis from Parant, as well as constant reminders informing him that his civic duty was coming up soon.

  Not surprisingly, Parant was up-to-date on everything and anything that you could ever possibly want to know about the “big three” murder trials, and so of course as June 4th approached, he kept Newlan fully informed as to the latest happenings in the blockbuster trials as well. However, since Newlan also tended to keep up with current events, the daily updates weren’t entirely necessary, seeing as how he was already well aware of the gory details surrounding the “three horrible hubbys”.

  Not only was Parant overindulgently well-informed, but he was a bit of a prognosticator to boot, and so on Tuesday afternoon, just before leaving work for the day, Parant announced to the entire office staff that Newlan was going to wind up on the Breslin trial.

  “How’d you come up with that prediction, Bobby?” wondered Newlan, and Parent mischievously replied that he had done some scientific research and analysis on the subject. He deduced that since the Townsend trial only needed to fill a couple of more juror seats, and since he had heard that the McMahn case might be delayed for a day or two, by process of elimination, this meant that Newlan would end up sitting on the Breslin jury.

  “Come on, Bobby,” replied a skeptical Newlan, “I’m sure there are lots of other lower-profile trials going on that I could get picked for. And besides I never end up getting on a case, so I’m not too concerned.”

  But regardless of Newlan’s unbelieving attitude, Parant remained stubbornly convinced that he was an odds-on-favorite to end up on the Breslin case.

  Just to shut Parant up, Newlan finally conceded that it was a possibility, but with one caveat; “Well you could have at least put me on the Townshend trial.”

  Newlan figured that if he had to pick one of the three high-profile cases to serve on, it would most likely be the Townshend case. From the trickle of details that had been revealed by a variety of news sources, Townshend seemed to be the most obviously guilty of the three men, so it would be an easier and less worrisome decision to convict him. Plus, it was also the highest-profile of the three cases, so Newlan schemed that maybe he might have a chance to become some sort of minor celebrity for a few days.

  In Newlan’s twisted mind he was felicitously thinking that, “who knows, maybe I’ll finally get my 15 minutes of fame which was promised to everyone by the late Andy Warhol.”

  And just like that, Newlan suddenly convinced himself that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all to be on the Townshend case, and get away from the office for while. For the most part, he didn’t really like being taken out of his normal routine, but then again, he suddenly rationalized that maybe once in a while a change could be good, especially if it was only for a few weeks. He suddenly had some sort of misguided inkling that maybe it would be kind of stimulating to get himself placed on the jury for one of the “big three” murder trials. He suddenly felt torn between whether he preferred to keep to his daily grind, or to be pulled into some out-of-the-ordinary adventure.

  But then out of the blue, an aberrant vision of gunshot victims and bloodshed streaked across Newlan’s mind like a shooting star, and just as suddenly he was shocked right back into reality

  For pretty much most of his life, Newlan had been plagued by freakish bouts of bizarre, unexplainable apparitions which clouded up his brain when he least expected it. And even though these premonitions rarely, if ever, came to be, he still took them seriously…very seriously.

  And on the infrequent occasions when one of these random thoughts had some life to it, Newlan would try to explain it all away as a coincidence. But deep in his mind he wondered what was going on inside his head. Perhaps he was under the false impression that he had a gift which could be used to his advantage; a gift that just needed to be fine-tuned. Or perhaps someone or something truly was providing him with glimpses of things to come, and it is the skeptics amongst us who need to come around to his way of thinking.

  But regardless of the origins behind Newlan’s afflictions, and even though he couldn’t quite make out the identity of the bloodied faces, the vision was so strong and the colors were so sharp that he was forced to grab hold of his desk for fear of falling over. The picture in his mind was so detailed that he anxiously declared to Parant and the rest of his colleagues;
“on second thought, I definitely want nothing to do with being on the Townshend trial…or any other trial for that matter.”

  And as it turned out, Newlan would soon find out that he’d much rather be at work, any day of the week, than to be a juror on a murder trial. He wouldn’t wish that stress upon anyone, even his worst enemy.

  Newlan’s analogy for his jury duty experience was to compare it to a trip to the dentist’s office. He was deathly afraid of dental work, and it was a surefire bet that he’d become hysterically claustrophobic whenever he found himself stuck in the dentist’s chair, what with the extraneous hands in his mouth, and the scent of tooth enamel being drilled from his teeth, and the chair being pushed back so low that he had trouble breathing due to his sinus problems.

  But nevertheless, for the rest of his days, however precious few of them there might be, Newlan’s nonnegotiable declaration to anyone who would listen was that he’d much rather have a root canal than to be saddled with the all-encompassing power and responsibility of deciding someone’s fate. And as fate would have it, in the weeks to come…jury duty would turn out to be…the least of his worries.