Jordan Bennett
I watched my brother take the stand.
He sat down and adjusted the microphone and looked out at the courtroom the way he looks at most things. Like he was reading it. Like he was already three steps ahead of whatever was coming.
I held Gia's hand and did not breathe normally for the next hour.
* * *
My lawyer walked me through who I was first. She wanted the jury to see the version of me that existed before any of this.
I told them about the music. The YouTube channel, the Spotify numbers, the competition I had won. The label offers from Interscope and Atlantic, both entered into evidence. The entertainment lawyer I had a meeting scheduled with.
She asked me to describe how I knew Zen.
I found him through the car community, I said. He had a reputation as someone who really knew how to build cars. I started going to his shop about a year before the shooting. He taught me. Engine work, fabrication, how to tune properly. I was there to learn. That was the whole thing for me. I wanted to know how to build the kind of cars I was putting on my channel and he was someone who could show me.
She asked if Zen ever involved me in anything outside of the shop work.
No, I said. As far as I knew he was a mechanic. A good one. I came in, we worked on cars, I learned things, I left. That was our relationship for a year.
She asked what happened the night of the shooting.
He called and said he needed me at the shop. Said it was urgent, a build that needed an extra set of hands. I had been going there for a year. I had no reason to think it was anything other than what he said. I went.
She asked the question she had prepared me for.
"Jordan, did you know Zen was involved in criminal activity?"
I looked at the jury when I answered.
"No. I did not know Zen was a criminal. I was there to learn how to work on cars. That is the only thing I ever did at that shop and the only reason I ever went."
She thanked me and sat down.
* * *
The prosecutor stood.
"Mr. Bennett, you spent a year at this shop. You were there regularly."
"Yes. To work on cars."
"And in that year you never saw anything that concerned you."
I thought about it for a real second before I answered.
"I saw things I did not fully understand. People coming and going. Conversations that stopped when I walked in. I did not ask about it. I was there for the cars and I kept my focus on that."
"You chose not to ask."
"Yes."
She nodded. Then: "Your YouTube channel. Street racing. Drifting on public roads."
I did not flinch.
"Yes."
"So you are not unfamiliar with operating outside the law."
I looked at her directly.
"I am not going to pretend to be a saint. I race cars on public streets and I put it on camera. That is the only crime I can speak to. I did not know about anything else. I was at that shop to learn how to build engines. That is all I knew and that is all I did."
She looked at me.
"The gloves found on your person."
"I work on cars. I keep gloves in every vehicle I drive. I had been at the shop earlier that day."
"The weapon in the vehicle you were operating."
"Was not my mine. I did not know it was there."
She looked at her notes. Then the last one.
"You had two major label offers and a music career that was genuinely taking off. Is it your testimony that you would risk all of that to be part of a criminal operation?"
I let it sit.
"I had everything to lose. I was weeks away from the most important meetings of my life. I was there to work on a car. That is it."
No further questions. She sat down.
* * *
I stepped down and walked back to the defense table. My lawyer leaned over quietly.
"That was good," she said.
I nodded.
I looked over my shoulder at the gallery. Rue watching me. Gia with her hands in her lap. My mom looking like she had been holding her breath the entire time.
I turned back around.
Two days, maybe three, for the jury. We would wait.
I was good at waiting now. I had learned that in the hospital. You keep breathing, you let time move, and eventually something changes.
I kept breathing