The body-cam footage shown to the jury at the start of Anthony Taft’s trial illustrated the gravity of the case. Played on two big TV screens in the genteel courtroom, the jurors saw the victim, Monesha March, slumped over on the bottom step of a wooden porch as a police officer approached. She raised her head, and a shudder went through the viewers.

Monesha’s face was reddish-purple and ballooned, her eyes mere squints above the swelling, her ears lumps of discolored cauliflower, her lips cracked. She rocked forward and back, moaning. It was December in Milwaukee and snow flurries animated the gray sky, but Monesha wore a light pullover blouse that drooped off one bare brown shoulder. After a minute of an officer’s questions, her only response her head listing to one side, a young man in a zip-up hooded sweatshirt stepped out the door of the old rundown gray house, and strolled down to where the two officers crouched before the girl.

When Monesha sensed his presence she stood suddenly, but unsteadily, and one of the officers stabilized her before she fell. The man, with red-tipped dreads and face whiskers, stood several feet from Monesha, and could be heard softly saying that he didn’t do anything. 

After the video the Assistant DA told the jury of twelve plus a reserve thirteenth that Monesha, the day after her 28th birthday, had been picked up bodily and thrown down in the street outside her house by a muscular man that fit the description of Anthony Taft, as reported by an anonymous 911 caller. The police summoned an ambulance and whisked her to a hospital, where she stayed for almost a month because of a broken ulna, two broken fingers, cracked ribs and broken foot, and deep bruising. Monesha and Anthony had been a couple for nine years, were raising two preteen kids together.

When Monesha first talked, in hesitant murmurs, to investigators at the hospital, she said she’d been jumped by three or four people down the street, beat up. But after a day with a social worker and her two older sisters she admitted it had been Anthony, had been afraid. The police returned to the house and took him into custody.

Most lawyers like juries to be good mixes, like this one: Two African-American men, one African-American woman, a man and woman of Hispanic heritage, three white women, a man possibly Vietnamese, and four white men. John Morgan, one of the white men, had never served on a jury, found it interesting, admired the graceful woodwork and the tall rustic painting of men at work in a fiery foundry, behind the judge’s bench. John Morgan looked on attentively when the ADA called forth two witnesses, Monesha’s sister, and then one of the responding police officers. John, assigned number 8 in his 30-person jury pool the day before, jotted things down in the court provided notebook.

At 4:45 P.M. the judge, the Honorable Christine Armbruster, adjourned court till 8:45 the following morning, after advising jurors not to discuss the case with anyone in person or on social media. On the drive home John could still picture the battered face of Monesha March, and it provided him a little comfort, context, that his wife’s face had never looked like that. Not even close.

He pulled into his driveway in the suburb of Franklin, parked in the garage, entered the two-story 2400 square foot colonial, and Linda, his wife, wasn’t home. He’d loved her for all of their sixteen years together, but sometimes she irritated him something fierce. He looked forward to a cold drink and decent supper when he returned home from work, in this case jury duty. “Where the hell is she?”

He opened a beer, sat and watched the evening news, the world going insane, when he heard a car door slam in the driveway, and a moment later Linda bustled through the front door, carrying a Macy’s shopping bag.

“Hi sweetie,” she said diffidently. “Sorry I’m late. I’ll get your supper.”

“Where the heck have you been?” he said mildly.

Sensing his mild tone Linda grew energized. “Out with Millie, a girl’s day out. She said I needed one. She’s taking some vacation time. Picked me up, went to Mayfair Mall and Brookfield Square. How was jury duty?”

“Okay. Interesting. Is that Millie has the short blond hair, fat hips?”

Linda nodded. “My friend in middle school? Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember I don’t really like her. Kind of an idiot. And what does she mean you need a girl’s day out?” He chuckled. “That’s crap.”

Linda’s voice lowered an octave and she softly said, “Oh, she didn’t mean anything, John. And she’s not an idiot, has a degree from Northwestern, a Department Head at Johnson Controls. You only met her the one time.”

“Big whoop. So she’s a genius. What’s for supper?”

“A roast, in the Crock-Pot all day. Can’t you smell it? Bay leaves. What kind of a jury, what’s the crime?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it.” He paused. “I’ll just say it’s about a robbery. No details.”

Linda headed for the kitchen. “What’s in the bag?” he hollered after her, when he heard a door click shut, up the stairs behind him. He turned round in his chair to look at the shadowy hall above, but couldn’t see farther than the open bathroom door. Probably Matt’s room. He’s been acting strangely, John thought to himself.

Matt, fourteen, and Becky, eleven, were their two bright children, though they hadn’t seemed themselves for the last six months or so. When he’d needed their support the most, after getting passed over again for the goddam division promotion at work, they’d grown sheepish and more drawn to their mom. Sometimes he felt Linda was trying to turn the kids against him. At Macy’s she’d bought some shorts for them, on sale. And black socks for him.

Next day in the courtroom the ADA called up Monesha March to testify. After being helped up to the witness chair by a county social worker, Monesha seemed out of it, had to be asked questions twice, before she distractedly answered. Had to be asked to speak closer to the microphone. She repeatedly twisted her hands through her long extensions and squirmed on the wooden chair. But finally, during cross-examination by the public defender, a middle-aged man, clean-shaved, good-looking, a slight spare tire, wearing a gray suit, Monesha raised her voice a little, and simply stated: “I know it was him.”

Afterward, Professionals, social workers and a nurse, were called up to explain Monesha’s condition, and their interactions with her in the hospital. Monesha possessed the wherewithal of a 3rd grader, cognitive limitations. Barely able to write her name, or read. A woman easily controlled and dominated and abused. Monesha had postulated matter-of-factly to them that all men beat women. She’d been on Disability, SSI, for several years.

During the 90-minute lunch break John walked next door, to the Milwaukee County Museum. The stately gray-pillared courthouse and the tall Safety Building and the back of the museum formed three sides of pleasant MacArthur Plaza, grass and shrubbery, walkways and flowers, and a handful of colorful little tents, dwellings of homeless people. The fourth side of the plaza, openly facing east, provided a pleasing view of Milwaukee’s vibrant downtown beneath a blue sky.

Jurors were allowed free admission to the museum during lunch breaks, identified as such by the ‘juror’ stickers on shirts and blouses. Strolling through exhibits, the autumn-like Streets of Old Milwaukee, John found himself comparing Monesha and his wife, Linda. Nothing alike, of course. Linda possessed a Bachelor’s Degree, American literature, answered far more questions during Jeopardy than he did. He’d griped once about her know-it-all self-assuredness. “The name of a snooty smartass. Who’s Linda?” She stopped answering aloud after that. She read a lot, biographies and murder mysteries, hardcovers from the library. She used to buy books till John complained about the cost. “What’d you pay for that? Are you nuts? Think we’re made of money?” She had hoped to return to school to get her Masters and become a high school English teacher, but John had flatly quashed the idea.

That afternoon a psychologist specializing in domestic abuse, who often coordinated with the police, talked about the Power and Control Wheel. The ADA projected the circular concept on the two big screens. Each of the eight pie-sections described the ways men, and sometimes women, manipulated and controlled their spouses, with threats and intimidation, ridicule and humiliation, and violence. Monesha March, just a little over five feet tall, thin in the body-cam video, a bit weak-minded, and not a saint herself, had been arrested three times, had been ground down by Anthony Taft, belittled and likely thrashed if she argued or disobeyed. That was the case the ADA, a pleasant-looking woman with an auburn ponytail, and the clinical psychologist, were presenting. John wondered what Monesha had been arrested for.

In cross-examination the public defender said none of that wheel stuff was relevant. His client wasn’t on trial for the wheel, only the events of a cold December afternoon, and the well-meaning psychologist admitted she had never met Monesha and wasn’t there that day.

On the drive home John thought about Anthony Taft. Long dreadlocks framed the ruggedly handsome whiskered face of a muscular man wearing a button-down white shirt. He slouched a bit in his wooden chair at the defense table, not revealing any emotion. John couldn’t see him most of the time because of lawyers in the way, but he met Anthony’s eyes once for an icy second. By the time John pulled into his driveway he was in a sour mood, depressed, sullen, lacking the enthusiasm he’d felt about this new adventure the day before.

Linda prepared boneless chicken thighs and wild rice and gravy and steamed broccoli for supper, and they sat in the dining room and watched Wheel of Fortune on the wall-mounted TV above the fireplace. Linda had stopped answering aloud, but she commended him when he solved one, which annoyed John because he knew she was patronizing him. The kids ate in the kitchen and retreated back into their rooms or out the back door after. John’s thoughts unnecessarily drifted to work, aversely bringing to mind his company Christmas party three years back, and how Linda had embarrassed him so badly. Flirting with Bill Jaffitz, pressroom foreman, beside the open doors to the hotel bar, had been bad enough, but when she laughed at him in front of Bill and a few others, denying she was flirting, John saw red. He gripped her by her throat and shoved her up against the wall, knocking a black and white framed photograph of the S.S. Badger askew. He muttered through his teeth not to laugh at him, ever.

Those who had not seen it would hear about it Monday. The drive home from the party had been dour, though Linda had talked cheerfully, to veil her worry. John’s voice had risen that night in their bedroom, and he’d hit her, heard his daughter, Becky, crying in the hallway. But Linda hadn’t been hurt, nothing like Monesha.

John’s circumstances at the company changed after that Christmas party. He grew aware that people talked to him differently, unsurely, without the old camaraderie. His charm and sense of humor had lost its magnetism. He felt ostracized. No raise or promotion had come his way since.

The next day in court the ADA and the public defender gave their final statements, the main line of defense a suggestion that the police and others had coerced Monesha into changing her story. A number was drawn by a clerk, juror twenty-two was dismissed from the jury, and they were down to twelve. They returned with the bailiff up the dim stairway to the jury room to deliberate. Not an open and shut case, not a preponderance of evidence, a consensus among them, including John, that the police hadn’t conducted a very thorough investigation. An initial paper ballot was taken and two of the jurors expressed some doubt, uncertainty. For one thing, a middle-aged Hispanic woman asked shyly, what about the kids, were they in the house? What did they know? The police never addressed where they were or what happened to them. John had voted guilty on the first ballot and softly asked if it really mattered to the case. 

One of the black men, a loquacious, personable guy, also expressed doubt, said he absolutely believed Anthony Taft beat the crap out of Monesha, but these were very specific charges that hadn’t really been proved. The judge had suggested a similar proviso before dismissing the jury, saying they shouldn’t make emotional decisions, but had to find for the defendant strictly based upon the evidence.

John kept seeing Monesha’s pummeled face, would like to have viewed the body-cam footage again. Oh, his wife had displayed a bit of redness and puffiness once or twice, a slight black eye once, but nothing like Monesha. They didn’t reach a verdict that afternoon, and the judge dismissed them till nine the next morning.

Thursday, likely the last day of the trial, and John computed that Friday followed, and then the weekend, so only one day back to work, unless the bastards instructed him to come in Saturday. God, he dreaded returning to work. It had become intolerable there, every single person against him, judging him with prejudice. They didn’t know how irritating Linda could be, how stupid and irresponsible. Hell, she couldn’t manage money to save a house. Yeah, she was still pretty, and he loathed the looks that passed between her and other men. John, still reasonably good looking himself, despite his own spare tire and thinning hair, used to enjoy flirting with the girls on the assembly conveyors. But even they now looked at him with curiosity. 

Thursday morning, showered and shaved, he pulled on gray slacks and his old favorite pull-over blue shirt. He was slipping on his watch when Linda came silently into the bedroom, and stood smiling shyly at him.

“What?” he said.

“Oh nothing. Just hope you have a good day. How’s the trial going?”

“Should be over today. Deliberation. Know what that is?”

“Oh of course. Then it’s back to work. And then the kids go back to school soon.”

“Uh-huh. What are you getting at? You want me gone? Ah, and the kids gone, too! Interesting.”

“No, silly. It’ll just be nice to get back to normal again, you know?”

Linda smiled up at him. But something in his eyes changed, and she grew frightened.

The jury tossed opinions and questions around that morning, went one by one round the rectangular table offering reasons for a guilty verdict, mostly. John suggested it would be irresponsible, dangerous, to let that guy back out on the street. The foreman, a young go-getter named Alan, who had volunteered for the position, spoke for ten minutes. John liked him, the kid had a lot going for himself. Alan delivered a message to the bailiff, a county deputy, that the jury would like to hear the 911 call again. They were invited back into the courtroom to hear it. The ADA played the recording from her laptop over the court speakers. The jury rose and filed out again, back up the dark steps.

After another half-hour’s debate another hand-vote was taken, and unanimously a verdict of guilty was reached. John, sitting closest, pressed the yellow button beside the door, twice, to indicate a verdict had been reached. The jury seemed to relax, the grim business done, a little laughter, making fun of the artificial plant before the small grate-covered window.

John, though he smiled and chuckled with them, grew increasingly uneasy. He’d been able to forget in the business of finding Anthony Taft guilty, but now the events of that morning roared back. He’d lost his mind a little, heard Becky crying again outside the locked bedroom door.

The bailiff eventually poked his head in, and instructed the jury to follow him back to the courtroom. Judge Christine Armbruster, a rather pretty woman, fortyish, with long brown hair streaked with gray that she alternately kept tied back or flowing over the shoulders of her black robe, asked the foreman if they’d reached a verdict. Alan said yes, and passed two sheets of paper to the bailiff who presented them to the judge. Without preamble she read the charges and the verdicts aloud, guilty on all three counts.

John observed Anthony for a moment, slouched in his chair at the defense table, no visible reaction. Probably expected it. There were a few people behind the sturdy glass partitions that separated the locked business section of the court from the visitor section. Anthony’s relatives? Monesha’s?

A little microphone, clipped to the front rail of the jury platform, hadn’t been there before. The judge spoke to the jury, thanking them and then asking each juror a question. The first two answered yes. When she called “Number eight?” John stared dumbly, hadn’t heard the question. He felt beyond foolish, his standing among his fellow jurors plummeting. 

“Repeat?” he said lamely. The judge zeroed in on him and patiently asked whether he agreed with the verdicts arrived at.

He said yes.

Twenty minutes after returning to the jury room, Judge Armbruster stepped in to thank them again, and answer any questions. John thought her vibrant, dynamic, in her robes. One of John’s colleagues asked her why they bothered tacking on the third charge, disorderly conduct, to the much graver charges, seemed pointless.

Judge Armbruster shrugged, said it was added to almost every criminal indictment, wouldn’t make much difference in sentencing, which she said would be in October. Their phones were returned to them, (collected during deliberation) and the jury was set free. They marched toward the elevators. John walked five flights down a polished granite stairway by himself, walked a block to his car in the underground parking garage, turned on the ignition and the AC, and sat. Two O’clock on a hot summer afternoon. He felt numb, reality returning. Tears welled in his eyes. He vigorously rubbed them and cursed, man up! 

He stopped at a tavern a mile from home. Never been there. Never went to taverns anymore, with or without Linda, boring places. But he needed a drink. The friendly bartender, a kindly grandma with short gray hair, brought him a double scotch on ice, and then, sensing he didn’t want to gab, left him alone. There were three other lost souls drinking in the afternoon.

“What am I doing?” he muttered to himself, and one of the other customers cast a furtive glance. The scotch was just what he needed. He had another and left a five-dollar tip for the bartender. A little drunk now, he concentrated on his driving and drove a bit under the limit, angering other drivers.

Entering his neighborhood, he turned onto 90th street and saw two police cars in front of his house. “Oh Jesus.” He slowed to about fifteen. Thoughts raced. Have they been there since morning? Waiting? Aside from three young kids sitting their bikes on the sidewalk, no one else was in sight. His front door and screen door stood open. John fuzzily debated accelerating away, driving out to his sister’s house in Pewaukee. But he pulled into the driveway, heart thudding. He left his car door open in pretended haste, and hustled through the front door.

“What’s happened?” he hollered. Stopped short in the small foyer by a stocky police officer, who asked, “John Morgan?” John replied and asked again what happened and the cop said, “You’re under arrest, sir. Don’t make this difficult. You have the right to remain silent…”

While the rest of his Miranda Rights flew over his head, John looked at his wife Linda, slumped over on the couch across the living room, bookended by his two kids, his sweet daughter Becky looking at him with tigers in her eyes. He took a step into the carpeted living room, the cop vigilantly edging aside and instructing John to place his hands behind his back. John felt his wrists being manacled, and he felt nauseous.

“What happened?” John said again. “Linda?”

Her head rose. She looked at him through puffy slits, her face swollen red and purple, a great yellow lump on her forehead. Monesha!

“Oh God Linda!” He turned to the nearest officer. “I didn’t do this.”

“Yes you did, daddy!” Becky cried. “We know you did.”

Another officer, an African-American fellow with a gray flattop, came down the creaking stairs, giving John a hard look.

“Linda,” John whimpered, “tell them I didn’t do this. This is a mistake. Who did this?”

Matt, their fourteen-year-old son, spoke softly. “You’re sick, dad. Something’s wrong with you. You didn’t used to do this.” He said to a policewoman beside Becky. “He never used to be like this. He’s gonna kill my mom if this keeps on.”

“Linda?” John said gently.

She lifted her head again, and spoke haltingly with barely moving lips. “I’m sorry, John. I can’t anymore. It’s got to stop. I tried, but I can’t.” She was crying as she spoke. “I’m pressing charges. Matt’s right. You need help.”

An ambulance had arrived in front of his driveway. Two of the officers guided John out the door and EMTs threw severe looks at him on their way into the house. John wondered when they had called the cops, why it had taken so long for an ambulance, when the thought struck him that at least he won’t be going to work tomorrow.

“They’re all against me,” he growled to the cops, “even my own family.”