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Since K and Scott Blair were the only ones on the beach that night, there are only two people who know what happened. Scott Blair, the defendant. And K, the complainant. This case will depend almost entirely on who the jury believes more.
Will it be Scott Blair? A champion swimmer born and raised in Neapolis. A local boy expected to put his hometown on the map by winning big at the next Olympics. Many people in this town are rooting for Scott, and they’re vocal about their belief that he’s been falsely accused. Others see him as a sexual predator.
Or will the jury believe K, the teenage girl who says that Scott Blair raped her? The girl with the bright smile and big dreams of becominga physiotherapist before the events of last October brought her world crashing down. K has had to move schools. Twice. She’s now being homeschooled. She’s been attacked on every front. Her morals have been questioned. Her motives for accusing Scott Blair have been questioned. She’s lost friends. There are people in this town who won’t talk to her family. She can’t even leave her house because in a town like this, everyone knows, everyone stares.
K can’t defend herself publicly. She’s a material witness in the trial and she can’t say a word until after she testifies, due to the risk it could damage the prosecution’s case. She and her family have had to take all the abuse being directed at her without being able to say a single word in her defense.
Tomorrow, K will finally have her chance to speak. She’ll take the stand and provide the most crucial testimony of the trial. And the most harrowing.
To remind you, K is only sixteen. Yet she will have to relive every single thing that happened to her that night. She’ll have to do it in public. To a room full of strangers. In excruciating detail. She’ll be asked the most intimate questions imaginable. How many times he penetrated her. Where. How. And so on. Think about that for a second. She’s a teenage girl.…
If that’s not horrible enough, then K will have to do it all over again during cross-examination. Defense attorney Dale Quinn will try to trip her up. Twist her words. Do everything that he can to damage her credibility, to portray her as a liar. Or a fantasist. Or both. He’ll put on his best manners. His softest voice. He’ll be considerate. He will feign concern.
Let there be no doubt that it will be ugly. Dale Quinn’s job is to defend his client. The sad reality is that the only way he can do that effectively is by decimating K’s testimony.
That’s how trials work. It’s medieval. It’s not about getting to thetruth. It’s about who can put on a better show. And Mitch Alkins and Dale Quinn are among the best showmen around.
Scott Blair, incidentally, gets to choose whether he testifies. He could get through this entire trial without ever opening his mouth. It’s up to his lawyers to decide whether he takes the stand, or never utters a single word in his own defense. The decision of whether he testifies will likely depend on how damaging K’s testimony is.
Most defense lawyers prefer their clients not to testify. Their reasoning is that it’s the prosecutor’s job to make the case. The defense doesn’t have to make any case at all. So why put their client on the stand and risk something damaging coming out during a brutal cross-examination? That’s the logic anyway.
So we have this unfair disparity in rape cases where the victim gets—let’s call it what it is—violated. Twice. The first time in the attack. The second time in court.
Meanwhile, the defendant—the man accused of perpetrating the brutal crimes against K—well, he does not have to make a peep. All he has to do is turn up in court each day with a solemn face and the shell-shocked demeanor of the falsely accused.
K will not have an easy time of it on the stand. She will likely spend hours testifying for the prosecution. She may spend even longer being grilled by the defense. Her testimony will be put under a microscope. It will be poked and prodded by Scott Blair’s formidable legal team as they look for lies, or inconsistencies. Anything to damage K’s credibility. Anything to get their client acquitted.
The process is so awful that it makes me wonder why a teenage girl would go through this nightmare experience if her accusations are false. If she is making it up.
I’m Rachel Krall and this isGuilty or Not Guilty,the podcast that puts you in the jury box.
38
Rachel
The dark outlines of fishing trawlers moved slowly against a pink-tinged sky as Rachel did hamstring stretches by a bench overlooking the sea. Dawn was breaking over Neapolis on the most important day of the trial.
Rachel should have been fast asleep in her hotel room bed, given that she’d gone to sleep at midnight after working late in the recording studio. Instead, she woke before dawn and dressed in running shorts and a sleeveless Lycra top for a brief morning jog along the boardwalk to clear her head before spending the day in court. Kelly Moore was due to take the stand in what was expected to be an intense and emotional day of testimony.
Rachel finished her stretches and then shuffled into a jog, gradually speeding up until she was running down the boardwalk in long, smooth strides. As she ran, she veered away from her intended route and crossed the road, heading toward downtown Neapolis, a few blocks away. She passed a row of shuttered shops, pursued by the clatter of a garbage truck emptying Dumpsters behind her.
She ran past the cafe next to the library, where a waiter wasopening yellow umbrellas at outdoor tables while a barista wearing a black cloth apron picked up a crate of milk cartons that had been left outside the cafe door. She ran across the road to the city park, where the hiss of sprinklers forced her off the grass and onto a bicycle path that led to the heritage section of Neapolis. Rachel passed the dark and silent courthouse and continued running through a maze of side streets until she reached the gloomy entrance of the cemetery.
It was only when she checked her watch as she approached the cast-iron cemetery gate that she admitted to herself that, deep down, she’d always intended to be at the cemetery that morning. Renata’s flower arrangement would be delivered to Jenny Stills’s grave by a special courier at 8:00A.M.sharp. The delivery time was very specific. It made Rachel think that someone was turning up at the cemetery to place the bouquet on the grave. Rachel hoped that person would be the elusive Hannah, who hadn’t been in touch for days.
Rachel should have been getting dressed, reviewing notes, eating a filling breakfast to sustain her through the long day ahead. The last thing she should have been doing on the morning of the most important day of the trial was running to a cemetery to watch flowers being delivered to the grave of a girl who had died decades earlier, in the faint hope that Jenny’s grieving sister might appear.
The cemetery gate creaked sharply as Rachel pushed it open and walked past a row of ivy-covered gravestones. The air was cool and still as she moved through the labyrinth of crumbling tombstones down the sycamore tree–lined path that connected the old and the new sections of the cemetery.
When Rachel caught sight of Jenny’s grave, she stepped off the path and hid among the trees, watching and waiting as the rapid beat of her heart returned to normal.
A young man arrived at 8:00A.M. sharp. Right on time. He held a black motorcycle helmet under his arm and carried an elaborate bouquet of flowers. He strode to Jenny’s grave, where he casually tossed the bouquet, and walked away, putting on his motorcycle helmet as he disappeared through a rear service gate.
Rachel heard the roar of a motorcycle as he drove off. She waited ten minutes. And then fifteen. It was twenty-five after eight in the morning and nobody had arrived. She couldn’t wait any longer. She had to return to the hotel to get ready for court or she’d never make it in time.
Suddenly, Rachel heard footsteps coming from the direction of the old cemetery. Someone was walking toward her. She slipped farther into the trees as the crunch of gravel became louder. She was so far inside the foliage that her view was blocked by thick-leafed branches. Rachel couldn’t move to a better vantage point without crackling leaves underfoot and forcing branches to sway. Not wanting to draw attention to herself, she waited in frozen silence, holding her breath as the footsteps briefly paused.
She detected a hint of hesitation before the steady pace passed her hiding spot. She didn’t move at all until the footsteps became more distant and she could tell the visitor was heading toward the new section of the cemetery. Toward Jenny’s grave. Rachel moved closer to the path so that she could see the visitor. She was surprised to see that it wasn’t Hannah at all. It was a dark-haired man in a navy suit.
