The Jury Read Free Page A

and everything to do with constant friction in the office. He may have been harassing her, but it was because she was moving in on his position as director at the center. From all indications, Kalista Jordan knew how to play the game of office politics and she played for keeps.
    There were months of acrimony, arguments in the office, a few screaming matches between the two of them. Kalista had made a move on funding for some of Crones pet projects. What is worse, she succeeded. He had made statements to other colleagues in fits of anger, all of them aimed at Jordan, none of them quite making it to the level of a death threat.
    The surgical precision of her dismemberment has been trotted out. The inference is that this was done by someone with experience. Crone, in his medical training, had taken surgical courses. The lack of any alibi, while not pivotal, cuts both ways. The state cannot fix with precision the time of death. For that reason, we cannot provide evidence that our client was unavailable. Worse than that, he has been more than a little vague with Harry and me regarding his whereabouts on the night Jordan was last seen. And finally, there is always the clincher. In this case a damning piece of physical evidence: the nylon cable ties found in his pocket. The problem is that every day is a new surprise.
    Tannery is moving at a glacial pace, leaving neither stone nor
    pebble unturned as he scrapes the ground pushing everything in front of him.
    Crone is being presented to the jury as if he were the Aristotle Onassis of genetic science. The theory is, Jordan was dazzled by his brain. A woman seduced by gray matter, the power of intellect and a , burning ambition to succeed in her career. To this end they have presented my clients world-class academic credentials as if he were an expert at his own trial.
    David Crone is a research physician at the university. He heads up a team of scientists and plays a significant role in the human genome project. Some might call-it science by press release. The specter of some new medical treatment and the hoopla surrounding it have become the golden pathway to public funding and private grants. Isolating a gene and linking it to a specific disease, coupled with a timely press release, can produce a blip in stock values with an upward curve like Madonnas tits, and can lead a board at a biotech firm to the euphoric equivalent of a corporate climax.
    It is here on this field of play that Crone met Kalista Jordan. A recent Ph.D., she held advanced degrees in an exotic area of science I do not profess to understand, molecular electronics. Crone, like a miser guarding information in the Information Age, has grudgingly explained just bits and pieces of their work. Apparently, Jordan was not his pick of the candidates. She came as part of a sizeable corporate grant that allowed him to continue his work in genetics.
    According to him, Jordan's background made her particularly well suited to computer applications in the study of genetics. Beyond that he says nothing, claiming that patent rights and commercially protected trade secrets are at issue. According to Crone, if we press him too hard in these areas, an entire new level of litigation may spring open in our case. He warns of a wave of trade-secret and patent-infringement suits with business lawyers washing over us, companies that provided grant money and seed financing for his research and who expect a return on their investment. To them, the murder of Kalista Jordan and
    the fate of my client are mere incidentals to the bottom line in what is shaping up to be a genetic gold rush.
    Apparently, Jordan showed sufficient promise in her field to attract the attention of several other universities and a handful of corporations, all of which were vigorously recruiting her at the time of her death. Crone attributes this largely to the combination of her minority status and the fact that she was highly qualified in her field. According to Crone,