He had brought documentation. He had brought audio recordings. He had brought three years of text message records that he had preserved on an encrypted backup drive. Which suggested that some part of him had always known this day was coming and had made quiet preparations for it.
Naomi had been informed of this before she entered the courtroom. She had read the summary that Crest's team prepared. She had set it aside and come to court anyway. Because the case did not rest on Pruitt's cooperation, and she had not built it as if it did.
"Officer Voss," she said.
He looked up. His eyes met hers across the courtroom. The room held its breath.
"You will have the opportunity to respond to this evidence in the course of these proceedings. That opportunity will be full and fair, because that is what this court provides."
She paused.
"Even when the people before it did not extend that same courtesy to others."
His attorney touched his arm. He looked away.
The afternoon testimony ran four hours. Leon Briggs took the stand and was on it for two of them.
He spoke in a steady, unhurried voice and looked at the jury when he spoke. Not at Voss. Not at the gallery. Not at the attorneys. He looked at 12 citizens and told them what he had seen, and what he had written down, and what he had failed, for three years, to do about it.
And the honesty of that last part was more damaging to the defense than anything else he said. Because it was the kind of testimony that cannot be coached.
At 4:55, Chief Judge Harold Sutton submitted his resignation to the federal district's administrative office. His statement cited personal health reasons.
Dana Crest texted Naomi during the recess. Crane in custody. Sutton's cooperating. The union rep goes tomorrow.
Naomi read the message. Closed her phone. Walked back into the courtroom.
Sentencing was set for 30 days out. Every seat in the gallery was already claimed.
Sentencing day arrived on a Thursday in late November, gray and cold. The kind of morning that arrives without apology and asks nothing of you except that you meet it honestly.
The courthouse steps were crowded before 7:00 a.m. Not with protesters. The two opposing crowds of the trial's early days had long since resolved themselves, as crowds do when the facts become sufficiently clear, into a single gathering of people who had come simply to be present for something they understood to matter.
They stood in the cold with their hands in their pockets and their breath making small clouds in the air, and they waited.
Naomi arrived through the main entrance. She always did now.
The courtroom was filled to capacity. Every bench claimed. Every press seat occupied.
Dana Crest sat in the gallery's front row with her team. Leon Briggs was there in a plain dark suit, seated near the middle, his hands clasped between his knees.