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Guest Column: Published 7/13/00In court, Buchanan always took center stageBy Jay Coward |
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Marcellus Buchanan understood that the courtroom has always been a form of theater where the gifts of public speaking, debate and acting often tip the scales of justice in a closely argued case.
Buck worked hard to be a master in this forum. By the time I started practicing law he had perfected his role as the principal actor on the courtroom stage. You might say he was the last great judicial actor to perform in the courtroom of the old courthouse. He was more than just an actor. The victims, the defendants, the jury, the cops, the lawyers, the audience and especially the judge all knew that Buck also wrote the script, staged the props, directed the other actors, and starred at center stage. That's how he controlled the verdict. All eyes were on him every minute he was in the room, and everyone waited on his every move. When he was ready to proceed, he told the judge, and the judge told the bailiff to "open court." When he was ready to rest, the judge said, "We'll take a break, now." When he called the calendar of cases, by the way he intoned the names, you would have thought he was reading from the great judgment day book of life. If the defendants approached the bar proudly he would wither them with his haughty demeanor; if they groveled he would tell them to stand up straight and be somebody and look at the judge. His mood was the court's mood: If he was furious, the court was ferocious; if he was magnanimous the court was merciful. If it were necessary to teach someone a lesson, it was one that everyone would learn that day because he boomed it out like the leading man in a Broadway play. He stooped to sotto voce insinuations; he soared to high drama. Woe be it to any lawyer who tried to steal a scene on this stage from Solicitor Marcellus Buchanan. If he decided to make a laughingstock out of you, you would never feel more shame and the laughter would never echo longer in your brain than when he was through with you. When it was over the only form of applause was the thunderous ring of the gavel as the judge said, "Guilty!" - that and the fame that spread across the whole state that in the mountains there was a great prosecutorial orator. It was breathtaking to observe, but it was not just entertainment. He had mastered a lesson that is taught in every trial advocacy class in every law school in the land: If you control the courtroom, you control the outcome of the case. After Buck retired, I was once privileged to try a hard case with him, and I learned a lot from him. I caught him in a quiet, reflective moment one day, and he confessed that he had developed a style that suited him better than any other style, and style was simply a means to an end. He was out to achieve essential justice, as he saw it. He was the "solicitor² (he never consented to calling himself by the new-fangled name "district attorney"), and that position more or less thrust him onto a magnificent stage called the courtroom. It was his job to prosecute and win cases on behalf of the people of the state, so why not do it with a little flourish? He invited other lawyers to rise to a level where what they said and how they said it was important, where the listener felt important in hearing it, where if you made a man's spine tingle it might mean the difference in making up your mind and reaching a verdict. Early in my career, when Buck was still the solicitor, I used to hate to go to court when he was personally prosecuting cases. I always felt so brutalized when it was over. I soon learned to gear up though, to get ready, to be more prepared, to be more courageous, to be a better lawyer this time around than I was the last time. Buck knew, and I learned, that the harder fought the contest, the more likely that justice would be done. Buck made a better lawyer out of me, and a better man. That's my verdict on him: Thanks. It was great to know you. Jay Coward is an attorney in Sylva. |
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