Sycamore Row - John Grisham

“Naw, gotta work. Ya’ll expectin’ a crowd?”
“You never know. Civil trials tend to be fairly dull. We may start off with some
spectators, but I suspect they’ll disappear quickly.”
Dell topped off his coffee and said, “The place’ll be packed and you know it. We
haven’t had this much excitement since the Hailey trial.”
“Oh, I forgot about that one,” Jake said and got a few laughs.
Bill West said he’d heard the FBI had just raided the offices of two supervisors down in
Polk County, a notoriously corrupt place, and this ignited a round of condemnation
from almost everyone but Jake and Dell. It also changed the subject, and for that Jake
was grateful. At that moment, facing a long weekend at the office, all he wanted was
breakfast.
Portia arrived around 9:00, and they had a coffee together on the balcony as the town
came to life around them. She reported that she’d had an early breakfast with Lettie,
who was nervous, even fragile, and terrified of the trial. Lettie was exhausted from the
strain of living in a house packed with relatives, and of trying to work part-time, and of
trying to ignore the fact that her husband was in jail for killing two boys. Add a pending
divorce and a gut-wrenching will contest, and Lettie was understandably a wreck.
Portia admitted she was exhausted too. She was working long hours at the office and
sleeping little. Jake was sympathetic, but only to a point. Litigation often required
eighteen-hour days and lost weekends, and if Portia was serious about becoming a
lawyer she needed a good dose of the pressure. In the past two weeks, they had pushed
each other into memorizing all ninety-seven names on the jury list. If Jake said “R,”
then Portia responded, “Six. Rady, Rakestraw, Reece, Riley, Robbins, and Robard.” If
Portia said “W,” then Jake responded, “Three. Wampler, Whitehurst, Whitten.” Back
and forth, the mental contests raged throughout each day.
Jury selection in Mississippi was normally a one-day ordeal, at most. Jake was
continually fascinated by trials in other states where it took two weeks or a month to
pick a jury. He could not fathom such a system; neither could Mississippi judges. They
were dead serious about selecting fair and impartial panels; they just didn’t waste time.
Speed would be crucial. Quick decisions would be required. The lawyers on both sides
would not have much time to think about names or to look them up in some batch of
research. It was imperative that they know the names and quickly put them with faces.
Jake was determined to know every single juror, and their ages, addresses, jobs,
education, churches, as much info as they could gather.
Once the ninety-seven names were filed away, Portia was given the task of wading
through the courthouse records. She spent hours in the deed books and land records
searching for transactions over the past ten years. She combed the court dockets,
looking for plaintiffs and defendants, winners and losers. Of the ninety-seven, sixteen
had gone through a divorce in the past ten years. She wasn’t sure what that meant in
the course of a trial over a will, but she had the knowledge anyway. One gentleman, a