First part of this series: link.
As it happened, Jesse McKie’s grandfather went to the same church I did, the Unitarian Universalist church in Concord, Massachusetts. He came up to me once during social hour one Sunday, and said, “Are you on a jury in Middlesex County Superior Court in Cambridge?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised.
“I’m Jesse McKie’s grandfather,” he said.
I told him since the trial was still going on, we could not talk about the trial, or anything to do with it. So he showed me sketches he had made while he was sitting watching the trial. I remember one quite good drawing of the judge — I no longer remember her name. After the trial was over, we really didn’t talk about it. We would smile at each other and say hello, and that was about it. He died a couple of years later. What could we have said.
I still remember the expressions of the faces of the defendant’s mother and stepfather when we returned the verdict of “Guilty”: expressions that you might have when the nightmare that has you moaning in your sleep suddenly gets much, much worse.