Kindle County, although I have taken administrative leave."
Stern brings out that both the supreme and appellate courts are what lawyers call courts of review, meaning basically that they hear appeals.
"And tell us, please, what it means to be a judge on a court of review."
My dad details the duties. Across the courtroom, Tommy Molto stands to object as my dad begins to explain that the appeal in a criminal case ordinarily does not give the judges any right to overrule a jury's factual decision.
Judge Basil Yee visibly weighs the issue, wagging his gray head from one side to the other. From downstate Ware, Judge Yee was specially assigned by the state supreme court to preside over this case after all the judges in the Kindle County Superior Court, whose decisions my father has routinely reviewed for well more than a decade, recused themselves together. He is a Taiwanese immigrant who came to Ware, a town of no more than ten thousand, at age eleven, when his parents took over the local Chinese restaurant. Judge Yee writes flawless English but still speaks it as a second tongue, with a strong accent that includes high Asian pitches, and at times he ignores some of the connective tissue of language--articles, prepositions, state-of-being verbs. His regular court reporter did not accompany him upstate and the annoying way Jenny Tilden is constantly interrupting to tell the judge to spell what he has just said has made him a man of even fewer words
Judge Yee rules for my dad, who lays it on pretty thick, just as Molto feared, making sure the jury knows they will have the last word on his innocence or guilt.
"Very well," says Stern. He coughs and grips the table to struggle to his feet. Sandy has received Judge Yee's permission to question witnesses while seated whenever he likes. In one of those can-you-believe-it consequences that medicine may not comprehend for aeons, his brand of non-small-cell lung cancer is known to cause arthritis in one knee, which has left him hobbling. Beside him, Marta, his daughter and law partner, reflexively puts her left hand with its bright manicure on her father's elbow to lend a subtle boost. I have heard about Sandy Stern's magnetism in a courtroom since I was a boy. Like a lot of things in life, it's pretty much beyond anybody's ability to explain. He is short--barely five feet six, if that--and to be honest, pretty dumpy. You would walk past Sandy Stern on the street a thousand times. But when he stands up in court, it is as if someone lit a beacon. Even though he is worn out by cancer, there is a precision to every word and movement that makes it impossible to remove your eyes.
"Now tell us if you would, Rusty, a bit about your background." Stern runs my father down his resume. Son of an immigrant. College on a scholarship. Law school while working two jobs.
"And after law school?" Stern asks.
"I was hired as a deputy prosecuting attorney in Kindle County."
"That is the office Mr. Molto now heads?"
"Correct. Mr. Molto and I started there within a couple years of one another."
"Objection," Molto says quietly. He has not looked up from the legal pad on which he is writing, but the strain shows in his chin. He sees just what my dad and Stern are up to, trying to remind the jury that my father and Tommy have a history, something they probably already know from the papers that replay the details of the first trial daily. The jurors swear every morning they have steered clear of any journalistic accounts, but according to Marta and her dad, word almost always filters into the jury room.
Judge Yee says, "Enough that subject, I think."
Still facing his pad, Tommy nods curtly in satisfaction. I tolerate Tommy Molto, with his wilting face and hangdog manner, better than I expected to. It's his chief deputy, Jim Brand, who gets me cranked. He has this bad-ass thing going most of the time, except when it's worse and he comes on as too cool for the room.
Stern takes my dad through his progress in the very office that is now prosecuting him and his eventual arrival on the bench. In his account, the first indictment and trial are never mentioned, as the judge has ordered. This is the seamless chronicle of the courtroom, where history's speed bumps are leveled.
"Are you a married man, Rusty?"
"I was. I married Barbara more than thirty-eight years