Stanley, of course, rolled his TV table into our new venue at once. He positioned his star witness against the judge’s bench, facing the jury box, front and center in the dingy room. Stanley can barely wait to show his videotape again. He actually patted the box when he was done-stroked it-as if it were a pet.

Judge Nolan emerges from chambers in a huff, and her bird eyes dart around the room before settling on our table. They confirm what Harry and I already know. She’s not happy about her new assignment. And she knows we’re not, either.

Harry and Beatrice have a history.

When young Harry Madigan arrived in Barnstable County fresh out of law school, Beatrice Nolan took notice. That was twenty years ago. Beatrice was already ten years into her private practice. She offered to take the young Harry under her wing. Give him guidance. Show him the ropes.

The problem-one of them, anyway-was that Harry had been hired by the Barnstable County Public Defender’s office. From day one, he was a criminal defense lawyer. Beatrice Nolan’s practice was limited to trusts and estates. The only ropes she could show him, the civil side of the law, had nothing to do with Harry’s job.

Besides, Harry says, she scared the daylights out of him. Even then, when her hair was brown.

Turns out the ropes Beatrice wanted to show Harry had nothing to do with the practice of law, civil or criminal. She began cornering him at County Bar Association meetings. She started monopolizing him at the local watering hole, the Jailhouse. She stood too close, Harry says, touched him too often. She draped her arm across the back of his chair, set her hand on his knee on one occasion.

Twenty-six-year-old Harry Madigan was mature about it, of course. He hid.

Harry quit going to County Bar Association meetings, even though he’d barely begun. At the Jailhouse, he switched chairs as soon as Beatrice sat down. He stood if he couldn’t see both of her hands. One night, he says, he jumped up so fast he knocked the table over, and a half dozen people lost appetizers and drinks.

But Beatrice Nolan was not deterred. She left messages with his secretary, proposing coffee, lunch. She began parking her car next to his in the courthouse lot. She plastered notes on his windshield, suggesting after-work cocktails, a movie, perhaps. Her phone number, Harry says, turned up in the damnedest places.

He admits he panicked. And not only because Beatrice scared him. He was having difficulty meeting anyone else. Younger women fled, he says, when Beatrice made a beeline for him. She scared the daylights out of them, too.

Harry also admits-most of the time-that he didn’t handle it very well in the end.

He went to the Jailhouse one night after a long day in trial, looking for nothing more than a cold beer and a burger. He scanned the place for Beatrice, as he always did then, before he went in. He didn’t see her. So he settled on a stool at the bar.

Another newly graduated attorney, a young woman Harry had noticed around the courthouse more than once, sat a few stools away. She smiled at him when he arrived, then looked down at her glass of wine. He was planning his opening line-and it would have been brilliant, he swears-when Beatrice approached from behind. He didn’t hear her coming.

Beatrice latched on to his shoulders and massaged, Harry says, until he squirmed off the stool and out from under her grasp. The young attorney who had smiled at him left her stool too, then, and disappeared into the crowd.

That’s when he lost it.

Harry claims not to remember his exact words, but he’s pretty sure they were graphic. In essence, he says, he told Beatrice Nolan to keep her hands to herself. Then he told her to get lost-for good. And he wasn’t quiet about it. The bar crowd hushed. Beatrice froze. He blasted her.

And she hasn’t spoken a civil word to him since.

There aren’t many people who’ve worked at the County Complex for twenty years. Most county employees don’t know anything about the scene at the Jailhouse or the events leading up to it. Even the old-timers-the few who were around back then-have long since forgotten about it.

But Beatrice hasn’t.

Members of the courthouse staff comment frequently on the open animosity Judge Nolan shows toward Harry Madigan. No one can figure it out. When I first started working at the DA’s office, my coworkers routinely-and nonchalantly-referred to Harry as “that big guy Judge Nolan throws in jail all the time.” I didn’t believe it. Not until I saw it for myself.

Beatrice has always done her best to steer clear of criminal cases, but no judge in Barnstable County can avoid them entirely. During my decade of prosecuting, I tried a half dozen cases before her. In half of them, Harry Madigan was my opponent. All three times, he landed in jail.

Any criminal defense attorney worth his salt spends some time in lockup. But Harry has served far more hours than most, the vast majority at the behest of Judge Beatrice Nolan. “Insubordinate,” she calls him.

I wonder if she knows what he calls her.

Judge Nolan signals the bailiff and he leaves to summon the jury. We’re stuck. Beatrice Nolan is our judge. Worse, she’s Buck Hammond’s judge. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

Harry stares up at her for just a moment before setting his jaw and turning back to Buck and me. “Damn,” he mutters, “I wish I’d packed.”

Judge Nolan issued a stern greeting to our jurors as they took their seats and looked around the room, surveying their new surroundings. She told them Judge Leon Long had fallen ill and would be unable to continue the trial. Their faces registered concern for Judge Long, disappointment for themselves. The atmosphere in this courtroom is decidedly darker than that in Judge Long’s. And it’s not only because the room has no windows.

Stanley could barely wait to begin. He’s downright ebullient about today’s personnel change. Beatrice Nolan is his kind of judge, a courtroom drill sergeant. She consistently handles criminal defendants by the book. And then she throws it at them.

The meat of Stanley’s case came into evidence yesterday. He got all he needed to establish the elements of first-degree murder: A man is dead. The defendant killed him. The killing was premeditated. Stanley also got a rare prosecutorial bonus: it all happened on TV.

Today Stanley needed to establish one final element: sanity.

Because we’ve raised the issue, it’s incumbent upon the Commonwealth to prove that Buck Hammond was sane at the moment he pulled the trigger. Stanley closed his case this afternoon with two expert witnesses who said exactly that.

The first was Malcolm Post, a Johns Hopkins-educated psychologist who’s been in private practice for more than twenty years. Dr. Post testified that he examined Buck Hammond for competency and criminal responsibility on June 22, the day after the shooting. The doctor conducted a forty-five-minute interview, during which Buck denied suffering hallucinations or delusions. Buck told the doctor he had never been treated for a mental disorder and had never sought help from any mental health professional.

Dr. Post told the panel that Buck’s answers to questions were “straightforward, not rambling, not confused.” The doctor testified in a relaxed, nonconfrontational manner, using simple terms; no showy words, no scientific jargon. The jurors seemed to like him.

Next Stanley called Dr. Sheldon Turner, Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts Medical School. Dr. Turner testified that he examined Buck for almost three hours on October 25, about four months after the shooting. Before the examination, Dr. Turner reviewed police reports and other court documents, including our expert psychiatrist’s written evaluation. He also watched the videotape, of course.