Chapter 12A

Coming close to the end, folks. The penultimate chapter is so long, I decided it made more sense to cut it in two. Here's Kate's trial, and a familiar face to those David E. Kelley fans among you.

It would've been nice if, having finished with the ordeal of dealing with Michael, Jack and his friends would've been allowed a fair amount of peace.. But less than a week after Michael began to serve his sentence, they found that they had to deal with a real trial. The Los Angeles ADA was ready to begin her prosecution of Kate.

Considering the nature of the main focus of the prosecution, Jack was more than willing to be the one who met with Alan Shore about the nature of the case. Shore had done his due diligence, and was more than willing to be forthright about what charges Kate was facing.

"First of are all of the lesser charges that Kate encountered when she was on the run," he began. "About two years after the main case, Kate returned to St. Louis to visit her mother. When her mother screamed for help, the doctor who was assisting her, a Tom Brennan drove away, and in the escapes, he was accidentally shot. Glazebrook is pushing the term by trying to charge Kate with felony murder."

"There's charges for participation in an armed robbery in New Mexico. She worked with three other robbers to steal a safe deposit box. However, when it became clear that people were about to die, she wounded her three accomplices, in order to get out of there. I was able to find some witnesses who were willing to testify to that account, so again, those charges won't be a huge problem. There are also more than a few counts of fraud, and identity theft, but they go part and parcel with a life on the run."

"Which leaves us with the main charge." Alan looked at Jack. "Wayne Janssen, Kate's stepfather, was a drunken lout who abused her mother, and at the very least, let her daughter live in an abusive environment for more than fifteen years. Kate made sure that her mother was out of the house, before she rigged it to explode with him still in it. If Kate's testimony is right, the guy was fall down drunk when he died, so my guess is he left this world feeling no pain. She arranged an insurance payout to set up her mother for life, and got the hell out of there. Her mother didn't even given her an hour to get away before she called the police."

Jack had heard bits and pieces of this from Kate and other sources for the past two years, but hearing it for the first time in full, it actually didn't sound nearly as bad as he'd built it up to be ever since he'd seen Kate's 'Wanted' poster the day after the crash. "What are her chances? Realistically?" he asked.

"The robbery charge will probably be reduced by the time we go to trial," Shore told him. "The felony murder charge is going to be a little harder to get around - Brennan had a wife and baby when he died, so Glazebrook will probably push it as hard as she can, but it's still something of a reach, and I think I can get around it. Which leaves us with the big kahuna. Wayne Janssen's murder. No way around it: it was premeditated, however bad a job she may have done in planning it. Glazebrook is going to go for Murder Two."

Jack really wished Kate had let him in a little more. "Wasn't Kate subject to abuse herself?" he asked.

"The psychiatrist that I called in to examine her thinks its pretty clear she was. But Kate won't admit it, either to me or to her. Even if there was none, there is the fact that being raised in the same house as a violent, abusive drunk is going to count as a mitigating factor. And honestly, as defenses go, I've been able to do a lot more than with what she went through." Shore took a deep breath. "Which is probably why Glazebrook is going to base her case around one witness. Diane Janssen."

Jack frowned. "Kate told me she had cancer the last time she saw her, and that was nearly three years ago."

"She still has it. The woman is coming off her deathbed to testify against her own daughter. This couldn't be more like a soap opera if I planned it."

"You don't have to sound as if you're enjoying it so much." The words were out before Jack could stop them.

"Mr. Shephard, you and Mr. Reyes are paying my legal bills, because you know about my reputation." Shore didn't even seem hurt by the accusation. "And at least part of that involves getting off criminals who are far more guilty then Kate is, or at least were far less repentant. You're right, though. I am enjoying myself. For once, I get to use my considerable skills to get a woman who doesn't deserve to be in prison out of it."

Jack looked at him. "You just gave a fairly extensive rap sheet."

"And no doubt the prosecution will try to paint it as such. But I've spent a fair amount of time with Kate over the last few weeks, and everything about her seems to cry out that she wants to be punished far more than she's actually guilty. She was through more of an ordeal in her life then many of us are unfortunate to be, and that's before she got stranded on a deserted island for three months. Which is why, when I mount my defense, I'm going to try and make character an issue."

Jack had just been a defense attorney, and he still had no idea what was being planned. "How are you going to do that?"

"This is where things get difficult, Jack." Alan told him, with the first real note of solemnity in his voice. "Wayne Janssen was a monster. He beat his wife for twenty years, and most likely did the same to his daughter. If Kate had just shot him where he stood, at any point in that time, I would have an easier time with my defense. But this was planned for awhile, and unfortunately the law, while it has a certain leniency towards battered wives, doesn't seem to do the same to their relatives. And considering that Kate's first instinct was to run as far away as she could, rather than face the law, she seems to know that what she did was wrong. So arguing justification is nearly impossible, particularly as her mother seems more interested in punishing her daughter than admitting her abuse. And its hard for me to argue that she wasn't a felon, given her history of criminal behavior after the murder."

"You still haven't explained how you're going to get Kate out."

"Her best bet is for me to convince a jury of her peers that what Kate Austen did was right, and the law was wrong."

Now was not the time to tell Shore just how messy a judicial system that had turned out to be on the island. "That seems pretty close to impossible," Jack said instead.

"That's why its a good thing you've hired me," Alan Shore gave a smile that reminded him a little close to comfort of Ben Linus.. "I've done it before."

"What does Kate think of all this?"

Shore actually seemed a little more human than he had so far. "She's not looking forward to facing her mother in court. I can't imagine I would be either."

"Her mother wasn't even there when we showed up in Hawaii. But to send her daughter to prison-"

"That is despicable, and this is coming from a man with a much less accurate moral compass than yours." Shore admitted grimly. "Honestly, I think there are only two people in the world who wanted to see Kate go to prison. Unfortunately, they're both on the prosecution's team."

"You mentioned Kate's mother. Who's the second?"

"Marshal Edward Mars' partner. Honestly, you're lucky the man died in the crash. Something about him and the case makes me feel that Kate would never have lived to see trial. Too much history."

Now they were treading on shaky ground. "You going to bring that up in court?"

"It's going to come up. Mars' partner, Jerry Samuel says that he spent the better part of three years trying to chase Kate Austen down. Mars was reprimanded twice for the fact that he came so close to catching her, and kept missing her. Three times, he wanted the terms of her capture to be raised to Dead or Alive."

This part Jack had never heard. He was willing to be that Kate hadn't known it either. Then again, considering that he had tracked Kate to Australia carrying five 9 mm handguns pretty much was a giveaway that she just wasn't any other fugitive. "That doesn't mean she's any less guilty."

"The government's mainly into tracking terrorists now. There's no reason a woman with this limited a criminal record warranted this kind of obsession from law enforcement. " Shore paused. "This is a winnable case, and I am a very good attorney. Which is why I'm surprised Glazebrook hasn't come to be with some kind of plea bargain."

"I thought you wanted to try this." Jack was surprised.

"I'm a good attorney. But I can't read what a jury's going to do, much less an LA jury. And she's a beautiful, white woman in her twenties. Juries don't have a problem convicting them even if their innocent." Shore held up a hand. "I don't make the system. I just wallow in it."

"How'd the jury selection go?" Jack asked.

"I did the best I could. Problem is, there are two conflicting views on how jury trials work. Defense attorneys say, the last people you want judging your clients fate are twelve people who couldn't get out of jury duty. Prosecutors say, a good man is hard to find, but finding twelve of them in a courtroom is a miracle."

"Who do you think is right this time?" Jack tried to ask, as if he didn't care about the response.

"Two days until opening statements, and Glazebrook hasn't even tried to make an offer." Shore said. "She must feel that this time, I got the short end."

About the only reasonable thing that the DA had done about the entire trial was agree that there were to be no cameras inside the courtroom. Shore had signed off on the motion, but had told Kate up front that it wasn't likely to make a big difference for a couple of reasons.

First, given how many trials the city of Los Angeles had lost while there had been cameras in the courtroom, it was probably another sign that they were more afraid of losing in the court of public opinion than in the actual courtroom. And secondly, given the amount of media attention that had been gathered around the courthouse when they had been walking in and out, it wasn't like the media wasn't going to be scandalously underrepresented when it came to People V. Katherine Austen.

"I did the best that I could in jury selection," Shore told Kate the night before opening statements. "But trying to find people who are completely impartial when it comes to you was going to be extremely difficult if we'd held the trial in Anchorage. We're just going to have the hope that they're going to be willing to listen."

Shore had told her that the prosecution had, for one of the rare occasions, a shorter witness list than the defense. However, when Kate had seen it, she had gotten considerably pale. They had gone through her entire history as a fugitive, and seemed determined to find everybody in her history who she had lied to, deceived, or otherwise defrauded, and she knew that it was a pretty long list. She was actually surprised that Ray Mullen, the farmer she had worked for three months in Australia hadn't been flown in. Then again, considering that after the car had crashed, she had basically sacrificed her freedom in order to make sure he was okay, probably wouldn't help Glazebrook's portrait of her as a soulless criminal.

The first witness that she did call, however, didn't help much. In all the years that Ed Mars had been chasing her, she had almost gotten to know him like a friend. But for all that time, she had never known about his partner. Jerry Samuel's testimony, was, in a colder way, much more devastating than Mars could've been. He went, line by line, through every offense and crime that Kate had been through for the past four years. How Mars had followed her trail, and completed a lengthy dossier on everything that she had lied to over the years. Even knowing about it firsthand, she was appalled hearing it. She wondered what her friends, who knew about it as well as the horrible things she'd done on the island, would think.

Shore, however, was more prepared, perhaps because he had clearly heard worse. "How long were you and Edward Mars partnered?" he asked.

"For about seven years."

"During that time, were there any other criminals that Mr. Mars formed this kind of obsession with bringing in?"

"I wouldn't call it that." Samuels seemed a little uncomfortable with this.

"Really? Defense exhibit 3. This is a reprimand that Mars received from the Marshal's service six months before his death. Would you please read it?"

:"Having expended nearly two years and half a million dollars pursuing Miss Austen, we feel that it would be in the service's best interest to move on to more urgent cases." Samuels looked like he'd swallowed a lemon.

"What day did the tip come in that Kate was in Australia?"

"August 29."

"And when did Mr. Mars finally get approval to go down to Sydney, and pick up the fugitive?"

"September 15."

"That's nearly three weeks. Why such a delay?"

Samuels shifted. "There's always a fair amount of paperwork, when an extradition request is filed."

"Really?" Shore seemed surprised. "It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the initial request was denied?"

"The marshal's service had trouble getting to pick up a dangerous fugitive? Sounds a bit of a reach, even for government work. Tell me, what was your partner's reaction to these delays?" Samuels clearly didn't want to answer. "You're under oath, sir."

"He offered to pay the airfare there and back out of his own pocket."

"That's more than fourteen thousand dollars. That's almost a third of his salary. "

"He was very devoted to his job." Samuels pushed.

"Sounds more like he bore a grudge against the one who got away." Shore told him.

The effect of the cross was pretty damaging. Unfortunately, the next group of witnesses didn't help much.

They had found Kevin, for one thing. Kate had been hoping like hell that somehow the prosecution would avoid the policeman she'd been married to for nearly six blissful months, before she'd drugged him and run away. She'd hoped that he'd been too humiliated by what had happened to him to come into court and compound it, not to mention lose his job in the process.

But she'd underestimated her capacity to piss people off with her action. Detective Kevin Callis had shown up in his best testifying suit, and had gone into great detail about how he'd fallen in love with 'Monica', how they'd had a whirlwind romance, how his mother had given her their grandmother's wedding ring, and how they'd been happy - before she'd disappeared without a trace. How he'd never had the nerve to tell anyone about his humiliation, and how'd he'd tried to put it behind him - until the survivors of Oceanic had shown up in Hawaii. Then the world knew who he'd gotten married to, then the reporters had tracked him down, then he'd had to turn in his detective shield - even though police work had never been the same for him after he'd learned he'd been betrayed.

Shore had wanted to go after him on the stand, but Kate had persuaded him not to, so he'd held his questions to asking why he hadn't tried to pursue Kate afterwards given his resources. Kevin's answer had been simple. "Why let myself be subjected to my greatest failure as a cop?"

The next witness had been even more painful. Lisa Brennan, Tom's wife. Shore had objected because there was no evidentiary value to her testifying - she knew next to nothing of Tom and Kate's relationship, she couldn't testify to any level of her criminal activities, she was there purely to get an emotional reaction. But for some reason - the judge seemed to have been reasonable up until this point - he let her get away with it, maybe to prove the fact that what she had done had not been a victimless crime.. Brennan's testimony was brief, and to the point - she started weeping halfway through it, and Shore didn't even bother trying to object to her being there as a beard, perhaps because he intended to try something similar when it was time to put forth his defense.

The prosecution, according to Shore, would have tried to present its case as quickly as possible. But after Tom's wife finished testifying, they adjourn for the day. Glazebrook had said she wanted to make sure that her final witness was prepared for the day's events. Shore didn't buy that for a second.

"Considering the state of your mother's health, I'd think that they'd want to have her testify before it becomes physically unfeasible for her.," Alan said bluntly. "The only reason for delay is to make sure those twelve good citizens have a day more to mull over what a bitch you are before she really gets to turn on the waterworks."

"They can pretty up the story as much as they want," Kate told her mouthpiece angrily. "It doesn't change the facts that she called the cops on me after I sacrificed everything for her"

"I know that, and you know that. But based on what you told me about the next time you went to see her, she doesn't seem to care about that. Which is going to make her very persuasive." Alan considered this for a few moments.

"When your friends hired me, they told me to do everything in my power to get you out," he said slowly. "However, right now, that includes tearing apart a dying, abused woman in a wheelchair. Now, I need to know are you certain that you want me to do that?"

Kate thought about this, especially considering that she hadn't seen her mother in nearly three years. It took a lot less time then she would have thought. "Shred her."

"There's a good chance it might kill her." If there was any conflict, Alan was being as neutral as he could.

"When Tom died, he risked everything for me to see my mother. You know what she did when she gained the strength to speak." Alan nodded at this. "One way or another, this is probably the last time I'll see her. She needs to understand what this did to me. What it was like. Do your fucking worst."

The next day, Glazebrook began her examination of Diane Janssen. Kate knew that she had to have hospital records dating back nearly a quarter of a century, detailing the abuse and brutality that Wayne had dealt upon her mother. She had to know what a huge risk that is was to put this woman on the stand, knowing what was coming on cross. Even so, what happened was truly amazing, considering what she knew.

Diane wept throughout her statement, which was remarkable considering the number of outright lies she was telling. Wayne was a good man. Sure, he had his faults, but so did her first husband. She had done her best to raise her daughter with most reasonable set of values. Of course she had loved Kate. But she had always loved her husband more. And knowing what her daughter had done had just about broken her heart. (Kate wasn't sure her mother even had one.) So she had called the marshal's on her daughter.

Yes, she loved her, and she knew what a sacrifice her daughter had made, but she knew that she couldn't lie to the police. The back and forth went on like this for nearly an hour, which was rather remarkable, considering that all Diane was saying was the same thing over and over. Her husband was flawed, but he didn't deserve to be murdered.

Alan Shore just sat still for a few seconds, trying to figure out where to begin exactly. Finally, he started with a laugh. "I apologize, your honor. It's just that Mrs. Janssen has had nearly five years to come up a defense for what she did, and that was the best she was able to come up with."

"Objection" Glazebrook said.

"Really? I'd save your strength for later. You're going to have a lot to object to in the next few minutes."

"Your Honor!"

"Careful, Mr. Shore."

"The day your daughter came to see you, you had a bruise on your elbow. Do you recall how you got it?"

"Not really. I think I may have banged it against the counter."

"That happened a lot, actually." He went over to his table, picked up a folder, and presented her with a dossier nearly four inches thick. "I haven't bothered to mark all these defense exhibits, because, well, we'd be here until the next week going over them one by one. But let's just take these three examples: May 15, 1992: you came to a hospital with a black eye. June 13 1993, a different hospital, you had two broken ribs. October 17, 1994, the defendant brought you into yet another hospital, because she had found you lying on the floor with a nose that wouldn't stop bleeding. In all three of these cases, you refused to say how you received the injury, all three times you checked yourself AMA, and the last two times, we have your daughter practically begging you to press charges." He handed them to Diane. "This is your signature, correct?"

Her mother's expression never changed. "That's right."

"I never knew that being a waitress could be nearly as dangerous a profession as being a stuntwoman. Withdrawn." Alan waved his handed, at the rising Glazebrook. "We have nearly two dozen of these reports in nine different hospitals in the state of Missouri, and that, of course, doesn't include all the other injuries that just weren't serious enough for you to need to be checked out. I can't believe I have to be the one who actually raises the question: did your husband beat you?"

Kate expected Glazebrook to leap into the air. She was frozen. Perhaps she finally realized that there really was no good way to object to this, without making herself seem like the monster.

Diane looked pale and withdrawn, and like it was taking her all her energy to remain stoic. Nevertheless, her expression didn't change. "That has nothing to do with it."

"Answer the question, Mrs. Janssen." All the coyness was out of Alan's voice was gone now; there was nothing but predator present.

"She didn't have any right to do what.."

"Instruct the witness to answer the question, your Honor."

"Miss Janssen..."

"I loved Wayne. He was everything to me."

"Yes. I know. You were married to another man before Wayne, a Major Samuel Austen. Yet you were having an affair with Wayne well before you divorced him."

"Objection. Relevance." Melissa Glazebrook was up again.

"A little latitude, your Honor." Alan said.

"You're treading a thin line, Mr. Shore, but so far, you haven't crossed it." The judge overruled the objected.

"I have a deposition from Major Austen that he filed for custody twice, but you refused to grant it, on multiple occasions. What exactly was your thinking there, Miss Janssen?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Your daughter, Miss Janssen, the one you seemed willing to send to prison. Do you love her?" Alan seemed a little curious now.

"Of course I do."

"Then why on earth would you want her to stay in this house? What kind of atmosphere does it mean for her if she had spend her childhood living in the same house as an abusive, wife-beating drunk?"

"Objection. Calls for speculation."

"Oh come on." For the first time, Alan sounded genuinely angry. "You're not going to contest the abuse, are you? Make me call to the stand two dozen doctors and God knows how many nurses to confirm what we all know really happened?"

"Your honor."

"She knows there was abuse! The doctors knew! Her friends knew! The defendant knew because she lived there! The only person who didn't seem to know or care about the abuse was you!"

"I LOVED HIM!" Diane's control finally broke. But unlike all the courtroom dramas Kate had seen, her resolve - and denial - remained firmed. "We can't help who we love! And she took him away from me! She had no right to do that!"

"And when did that right go away, Mrs. Janssen? Until your husband decided to turn his attention to your daughter? Or did that never enter your thinking at all?" Alan held up his hand. "You don't have to answer that. I'm not going to suborn perjury."

"Objection!" Glazebrook now sounded extremely tired herself.

"Withdrawn. I have nothing further."

The judge called for a recess. It probably didn't matter much, because the prosecution had no further witnesses.