Perfect Town, Perfect Jury

On a chilly January night two winters ago, Mykelti Williamson pulled his Jeep Grand Cherokee into the back parking lot of his ex-wife’s condo in Baldwin Hills. As he had before, the actor, best known as the shrimp-loving Bubba in “Forrest Gump,” gave two beeps--the signal to alert his ex-wife, Cheryl Chisolm, that he was waiting to pick up or drop off their 4-year-old daughter, Phoenix. For years, the two had loosely shared custody of Phoenix. Since Williamson’s remarriage, however, relations had become acrimonious, and Chisolm now was suing him for sole custody. Chisolm hadn’t seen her daughter since before Christmas and, citing her busy schedule as a flight attendant, hadn’t called on Christmas or New Year’s. After honking, Williamson watched the lights in the condo go out and saw a figure peek through the blinds. He punched in Chisolm’s number on his cell phone. The answering machine clicked on. “Come down and get your baby,” he said. “It’s time for you to have her now.”

In truth, Phoenix wasn’t in the car. She was asleep five minutes away at Williamson’s home, being watched over by his new wife, Sondra. After 25 minutes, Williamson gave up on Chisolm. Then he saw her driving away. He chased her. When he pulled up alongside, she motioned him to follow her to a strip mall parking lot, where they had a strained discussion that ended with him grabbing her house keys and driving back to the condo to confront Leroy Edwards, her new boyfriend.

Stories differ as to what happened next, but when it was all over, Edwards was trying to hold in his intestines, the actor known as Bubba was facing felony charges of attempted manslaughter, and I was about to stumble into that uniquely L.A. intersection where celebrity’s cheery sheen and the often coarse banality of real life fuse in a riveting, disconcerting soap opera.

*

When I am called up for jury service at the Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles, I am six months pregnant and have put this civic duty off for so long that I have been threatened with a $1,500 fine--something we can’t afford on my husband’s teacher’s salary.

Awaiting orientation, people sit, stare, read, sleep. Over coffee, a man says to a woman: “Our greatest threat is from outer space.” “You mean like little green people?” She waves her fingers like antennas. “Why do you assume. . . . they’re little?” I approach the reading rack--mostly fuchsia bodice-rippers by authors named Cynthia. A priest does crossword puzzles. An elderly woman reads “Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul.” Another woman needlepoints. I feel the baby kick and wonder if pregnancy is an excuse to escape all this.

The assembly room is a paneled ward with fluorescent ceiling lights and gutted chairs. Four monitors click on and TV anchorwoman Kelly Lange appears, praising us for being good citizens. After the video, we’re informed that we’ll be making $5 a day. A juror remarks that Mississippi pays $25. We’re read the rest of the rules, which include “no watching ‘Jerry Springer’ because too many jurors get into brawls.”

On the third day, I am put into a pool of potential jurors bound for the 13th floor. A cameraman is there with a reporter. A juror eating doughnuts whispers, “Media. Big trial.” I glance at the defendant, who, unlike other defendants I’ve seen, rises with his two lawyers to greet us. He smiles. He is wearing a fine suit. He and his lawyers do not sit until we are seated. The Honorable Terry Green apologizes for making us wait and reads the charges, explaining that the trial is expected to last three weeks. My heart sinks. I’m self-employed. Serving on this jury will cause financial hardship. But the thought of returning to the assembly room is unbearable.

We fill out an eight-page questionnaire asking about places we’ve lived, our experience with crime, the latest books we’ve read. . . .

The following Monday, I rush to the Criminal Courts Building, past the woman who will dog me every day with “Spare change? God bless you.” An hour later, I am selected for the jury. We are asked if we recognize any of the witnesses’ names. I raise my hand. “Forest Whitaker.” My face turns red as I think of “The Crying Game.” Judge Green asks, “Do you think that will make you so prejudiced [that] you will not make a good juror?” I say no.

We are told not to investigate the crime on our own. We are given notebooks. I am Juror #6. I glance at the rest of the jury. I recognize the needlepoint woman, “Chicken Soup” and the guy who believes in aliens. It feels like the perfect Los Angeles jury.

*

Opening arguments begin. The prosecutor, Manuel Garcia, a wiry bulldog of a D.A., tells us that Mr. Williamson stabbed Cheryl Chisolm’s boyfriend “in a jealous rage.” Williamson has two lawyers, Richard G. Hirsch and Vicki Podberesky. Podberesky presents the case, her auburn hair illuminating the courtroom. After reminding us that he is Bubba from “Forrest Gump,” she says that Williamson “went to Ms. Chisolm’s residence to discuss their child and was attacked by Leroy Edwards and, out of fear for his life, defended himself.”

The case pingpongs. Podberesky says Williamson used Chisolm’s keys to let himself into the condo complex and Edwards then let him into the apartment. Soon, she says, an angry Chisolm burst in. Edwards says he suggested that the two men “take it outside so we wouldn’t mess up Cheryl’s apartment.” All agree that when Edwards stepped outside, Williamson locked the door behind him. The defense asserts that Edwards went ballistic and tried to kick his way back in. The prosecutor says Edwards feared for Chisolm’s safety. According to the defense, when Williamson and Chisolm finished talking, he looked around the kitchen for something to protect himself with and grabbed a knife. He begged his ex to let him leave through the garage, but she refused, he says.

Cheryl Chisolm takes the stand. She is tall, with radiant skin, ankle bracelet, sundress. Her ex-husband’s eyes are flat as he watches her. When Chisolm calls him by his first name, I am confused. Is she saying “Michael T”? I realize I don’t know the actor’s name other than “Mr. Williamson.” Then an exhibit appears, and on the top it says “The People vs. Mykelti Williamson.” Mykelti. Now it makes sense.

Two older women sit apart in the courtroom. I peg them as the mothers of Williamson and Chisolm. Both are distinguished women with white hair, faces lined with pain. I imagine them at Cheryl and Mykelti’s wedding. Chisolm says she’s known Williamson for 10 years. Phoenix was born in 1994, three years after the marriage ended. Chisolm and Williamson continued to date and be intimate through February of 1997. According to Chisolm, Williamson then broke off the relationship but always led her to believe that they would get back together. She met Leroy Edwards, her first boyfriend since Williamson, nine months later.

The testimony moves to the night in question. Chisolm says that after she and Edwards arrived home from the airport, a rock hit the window, so she turned out the lights and peeked through the blinds. She says she could see Williamson yelling at her to come down and get her daughter. She says she was going to celebrate a late Christmas with Phoenix that night, but she didn’t want Williamson to think he could just show up, so she didn’t respond to him. Instead, she took a bath, as was her routine after work.

A red flag goes up in my mind. Your daughter is waiting and you take a bath?

In the jury room, #9, a pretty young woman, rushes in breathless, saying she’s so sick of her job driving a FedEx truck that she hopes the trial goes on forever. “Not me, honey,” #1 says. “I’m going to Vegas.” “Chicken Soup,” a 68-year-old alternate, tells me she won a jitterbug contest at age 16 and gave birth the next day. #11, a physicist, says, “A woman where I work wore a shirt to jury duty that said, ‘Hang ‘em all and let God figure it out.’ ” The bailiff comes to see why everyone is laughing. The older women want to fix him up with #9. After he leaves, #5 wonders if the court is going to think that we’re not taking the trial seriously. More laughter. We are buzzed into the courtroom.

We are dismissed for lunch, but I have so many questions, the main one being: When Williamson grabbed the knife, why wouldn’t she let him exit through the garage to avoid Edwards altogether? After lunch, a doctor for the prosecution testifies that there was one entry wound, and the knife probably moved around in the victim’s stomach. The doctor had removed several feet of the intestines. The defense has its own doctor a few days later, and he says that Chisolm’s testimony--she said the stabbing lasted about 30 seconds, acting it out like Anthony Perkins in “Psycho”--was implausible given the single entry wound. “It is virtually impossible to move the knife in and out of the same target.”

Hirsch begins the cross examination of Chisolm and wants to know if Edwards yelled threats. Chisolm says she doesn’t remember. She says Williamson told her she shouldn’t have any men around Phoenix, and had maintained that Phoenix had seen her and Edwards having sex. But she laughs and says she told him: “You’re tripping. Phoenix hasn’t seen anything.” Additional testimony on this point leaves me and other jurors skeptical.

In the jury room, the jitterbug lady talks about a grandson she is raising and a son she lost to gangs. “Now I keep my freezers filled with Popsicles. You act like you care about kids on your street, they’ll take care of you.”

The next defense witness is Pastor John Chambers. A heavy man in a royal blue suit, he is Phoenix’s godfather. He leads the “Believer of Authority Ministries” in Miami. In a booming voice, Chambers testifies that he called Chisolm after Christmas to ask why she hadn’t returned Williamson’s calls. “I been busy” was her answer, he says. His response: “Too busy to call your own baby? What is going on with you? Girl, you’ve got yourself a man! It’s about time!” He says she laughed and that he told her, “You need to call your child!” When asked why he came to court today, Chambers thunders, “God told me to be here!”

My husband meets me on the 13th floor and I am tempted to talk about Pastor Chambers, but I remember my juror admonition. My husband is a much better person than I. He never asks a single question, although I’m dying to spill everything.

*

On Monday, I am nauseous. It’s a hundred degrees outside. Leroy Edwards is summoned. He is sharply dressed in a suit, his dreadlocks pulled back in a ponytail. According to Edwards, when Chisolm asked for her keys back, Williamson told her to shut up. He says he went to see if Chisolm was OK and Williamson snarled, “Don’t stand up over me, cuz,” later warning that he was “an original gangster.” “I told him, ‘Hold up, Slim.’ Then he said, ‘Slim? Who you calling Slim?’ ”

We are dismissed for lunch. I feel so sick that I go to the assembly room to stretch out on a broken couch. I wonder if this trial will have any effect on the baby, who seems to kick more often as the testimony grows more gruesome. When we are back in court, #5 offers me her pillow. On the stand, Edwards admits that he may have called Williamson a “California punk ass bitch.”

He says he was about 25 feet away when Williamson charged at him and that Chisolm had yelled, “He’s got a knife.” Edwards says he saw it in Williamson’s right hand, and then “I recall the knife being embedded in my stomach. He was making stabbing motions. I got up and ran down the walkway, feeling a wet, warm bag on my stomach.” I watch the court reporter, a serene woman lightly tapping the keys, eyes closed. What is going through her head? We are dismissed. I walk up the hill with other jurors as Edwards rushes past, dreadlocks untied and free.

The next morning, juror #2 tells stories about working at the L.A. County Jail. “This one time,” she begins, “a man came into the jail, wanted us to arrest him. We ran a check and he was clean. So the deputy goes, ‘For us to arrest you, you got to do something.’ The man says, ‘Oh yeah?’ Then he punches the deputy.”

*

Outside, rooftops shimmer in the heat. I ask #4 what he does for a living. He says, “I’m the guy who sends jury summonses.”

#1: “Don’t be sending me any more for a while, you hear me?”

#5: “Nobody make me laugh today or I’ll have to go to the bathroom again.”

Actor Delroy Lindo, who has appeared in “Clockers” and “Get Shorty,” is the next defense witness. He says he has known the defendant since the fall of 1996. They go to church together, he says. He says he’s never heard Williamson use the words “cuz” or “original gangster.” One of Chisolm’s neighbors testifies that she heard pounding on a door and a male voice challenging someone to come outside. The defense calls Sondra Williamson, a composed woman, visibly pregnant. #5 whispers, “She’s the marrying kind, while Cheryl’s more like a playgirl.” Sondra explains she’s been married to William-son for a year and a half and had been dating him since February of 1995. And Williamson broke it off with Chisolm early in February of 1997?

Sondra testifies that Phoenix was with her and Williamson from Christmas Eve until Jan. 5. The prose-cution notes that the car seemed to be especially clean after the incident, and Sondra explains that they always wash the car, including the interior, every week after church. I can’t remember when I last cleaned out the interior of our car, and they do it weekly?

When the trial goes beyond the three weeks the judge had estimated, we lose Juror #1 to Las Vegas. (“Bye!,” she says. “I know you all are gonna do the right thing.”) “Jitterbug Chicken Soup” becomes the New #1. Our next witness is one of Chisolm’s neighbors. It’s clear he would rather be anywhere than on the stand. To each question, he responds, “huh, uh,” until Judge Green reminds him, “We have a reporter here who can only take down words, not sounds.” Garcia asks, “You say the shiny object in the defendant’s hand was either a gun or a knife. Why wouldn’t you have said . . . . say. . . . a shiny harmonica?” The witness pauses. “It wasn’t a situation that called for no harmonica.” The courtroom explodes with laughter. Even Judge Green is amused.

A close friend of Chisolm’s takes the stand wearing a blue suit and a sad expression. “My main concern is Phoenix,” she says. She says that Chisolm told her that if Williamson had gone through the garage, the stabbing could have been avoided, but she didn’t want him to see Edwards’ clothes and car.

*

My husband goes back to work, so we hire a baby sitter at $35 for the first day--seven times more than I’m making as a juror. I line up friends to sit for the rest of the week and cancel another prenatal appointment. The heat has crescendoed to the low 100s by 9 a.m.

Forest Whitaker takes the stand. He testifies that he has known Williamson since they worked together in TV years ago. “No,” he answers, “I’ve never heard him use the words ‘cuz’ or ‘original gangster.’ ” Then he adds, “To be honest, I can’t imagine it would scare anybody, saying, ‘Hey, I’m a gangster.’ ”

The courtroom is filled with friends who’ve come to show support, including Ving Rhames, whom I mistake for a professional athlete. The guy jurors clearly are jazzed by his appearance. He and Williamson embrace. After lunch, Williamson takes the stand. I wonder if he’s approaching this as another acting role. He repeatedly folds a white handkerchief into an origami square. His voice is soft, his answers peppered with “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” Chisolm’s friend regards him through narrowed eyes. Williamson says, “I call Phoenix ‘Coconut,’ because when she was born, her head was the shape of a coconut.” When asked about his life and career, he says, “I started acting when I was 9 at church theater. . . . I have a child on the way, and my wife and I are so excited, and. . . .”

Garcia can’t take it anymore. “Objection!” Judge Green reminds Williamson to stick to the questions asked. The defendant begins describing the attack, which, he says, moved from the condo’s balcony to a walkway out front. “I was being hit and kicked. I cut his punches with the knife and he backed me against the railing. One hand was on my throat. He was reaching for the knife with the other. I could feel myself going over the railing, and that’s when I jabbed him with the knife.

“I thought,” Williamson cries, “I was sticking him in the thigh!” We learn that the knife has not been recovered. The jury is dismissed for the day; my stomach contracts in the furnace of heat. I pray that I won’t have this baby early.

Under cross-examination, Williamson holds a fresh handkerchief. Garcia is ready to attack. I’m sick of exhibits, U-turns and this fight over Phoenix. Although I know I’m not supposed to come to any conclusions, I’m seeing this as a trial where nobody is innocent except Phoenix, the pawn. We break for lunch. Danny Glover enters the courtroom and #5 whispers, “You see who that is? I didn’t recognize him, he’s getting so old. Guess we all are.”

That afternoon, all the toilets in the courthouse are out of order. #5 says, “$5 a day doesn’t cover my bladder.” The next day, New #1 tells me her daughter died during the night. I am stunned. She’s already lost a son to gangs and now she loses a daughter? She explains that her daughter had a life-threatening illness and says, “Don’t you feel bad. She’s in a better place. As long as this is over by Friday, I’ll be fine. . . . How are you feeling being pregnant?” During the break, #7 passes around a sympathy card for us all to sign for New #1.

The next morning, Hirsch concludes his closing arguments by saying, “This man’s life is in your hands.” Garcia begins his rebuttal: “It is not your duty to show compassion or sympathy.”

After lunch, we are sent to the jury room. #8 is chosen as foreperson and says we shouldn’t express an opinion yet, but #9 interrupts: “He’s not guilty!” #8 looks pained.

#1 bristles. “Whole thing is about sex! Mykelti hides behind women. If my daughters brought home either of those men, I’d kill ‘em both, and I don’t mean the men!”

#2: “What Leroy did in front of that baby? If he’d a done what he did to any of my babies, I’d have finished him off in the corner.”

#3: “I was on Mykelti’s side until he started to talk. Nobody’s that good.”

#4: “I question Mykelti not being able to go through the garage. Why didn’t he just push Cheryl out of the way?”

#9: “When you call someone ‘a punk ass bitch,’ that’s fighting words.”

#10: “I didn’t believe anyone.”

The deliberations go on all afternoon until the bailiff tells us we need to go home. Arguments break out. #7 gets irritated with the foreperson, a teacher who has fallen into that role. #7 yells, “Let people talk! You are not the moderator!” Outside, the temperature screams to 105.

*

I cancel another prenatal appointment as deliberations go on all day. Tensions increase by the hour. Still, everyone votes Williamson not guilty on the attempted manslaughter charge. On the second charge, assault with a deadly weapon, it’s 7 to 5 to convict. Everyone says that his being an actor has nothing to do with anything. This trial is about machismo, egos and power plays. Arguments go round and round until #7 yells, “The hell with this! Let’s decide.” A unanimous vote of not guilty is reached by late afternoon. We go back into the tension-filled courtroom. The first verdict is read; nobody breathes. The second verdict is read and people break into cheers. Sondra sobs. Chisolm disappears. Edwards never even showed.

Out in the hallway, New #1, “Jitterbug Chicken Soup,” walks up to Wil-liamson. Although she’s half his size, she pokes a finger in his face, warning, “God has given you a second chance and I want you to take it.” He replies, “Yes, ma’am.” When #1 reveals that her daughter died the day before, Sondra breaks into shaking and witnessing. We all take the elevator down. Sondra and I compare our due dates. It’s so strange to talk to them now. As we get off the elevator, reporters and cameras greet Williamson and I slip away with the other jurors, who plan a potluck. The heat has broken; it’s in the 80s. A cool purple washes the sky, and although I know we won’t get a thunderstorm, I can breathe again. On the news at home, Williamson talks about his acquittal. When I give my husband the highlights, he replies, “Just like in ‘Gump.’ Only it was Bubba trying to hold his intestines inside.”

“I guess so,” I reply, crawling into bed. I should make a prenatal appointment. The baby kicks. I wonder where Phoenix will be tonight.

We are told not to investigate the crime on our own. We are given notebooks. I am

Juror #6. I glance at the rest of the jury. I recognize the needlepoint woman, “Chicken Soup” and the guy who believes in aliens. It feels like the perfect Los Angeles jury.