day after the supreme court’s decision, the Oakville Sun ran a front-page headline summarizing that opinion and its castigation of the prosecutor and the coroner. Jane Pelicano immediately resigned.
The next day the governor appointed a man named Robert Merton as her successor. It was a logical decision. Merton was the chief assistant in the office, so continuity was assured, and he had not been around at the time of Felton’s trial, so the taint was removed. Still, the quick appointment made Jack suspect that the governor had either known about Pelicano’s resignation before it happened or had caused it to happen.
Merton wanted the whole Felton affair over with so he could start on a clean slate. Even though Sam Jeffries was adamant about initiating a new prosecution based on the attempted murder of Stacey Kincaid, Merton was having none of it.
“We’ve still got evidence to prosecute for the attempted murder, Bob. We can keep him in prison,” Sam told the new state attorney when he visited him in his office almost immediately after the appointment.
“And how do we explain the knife at the Brock/Diaz crime scene? Felton, who was not guilty of the Brock/Diaz murder, just wandered by and dropped it off? Do you think the court’s going to exclude evidence of what this office did in the Brock/Diaz murder prosecution when we try to introduce this knife into evidence in this new case? Of course not. This office will have yet another black spot on its reputation.
“That’s not the way I’m going to start my tenure, Sam. There’ll be no new trial and there’ll be no new prosecution. Thomas Felton is going to be released.”
Jack went to visit Felton two more times before his release. The first time was only a few days after the scheduled execution, and Felton asked some questions that Jack thought were slightly unusual.
“Everybody around here heard about my stay of execution. They all say I’m going to be released.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Jack cautioned. “I believe you will be released as well but that hasn’t happened yet.”
“Somebody said I could file a claims bill and get paid for the time I’ve been in here.”
That was the surprise. Jack had fully expected Felton to ask him to file a claims bill at some time in the future but not three days after the scheduled execution.
“You can. I’ve done it before and I’ve got the forms. It’s fairly simple. I know a few state representatives who could introduce the bill.”
“How much should I ask for?”
“How much do you want?”
“Twenty million dollars—two million for each year I was on death row. Do you think that’s too much?”
“It’s not too much to ask for as long as you understand you’re not going to get it. You are more likely to get somewhere between three and five million if they decide to give you something. It’s totally at their discretion. Asking for twenty actually gives them a little cover. No matter what they eventually give you, they can say you were asking for a lot more.”
“No matter what it is, Jack, I want you to get a third.”
“I didn’t do this for money. You can give it to Exoneration if you want.”
“Exoneration didn’t save my life, Jack. You did. I’ll give it to you. You can give it to them if you want.”
Jack thought about it for a few seconds. It wasn’t the way he wanted to do it but Exoneration needed the money. He had time, and he had the forms on his computer to get this taken care of in a day. He didn’t want to give Felton’s generosity any time to change its mind.
“Okay. How about if I do the paperwork tonight and bring it back tomorrow? That way, if you are released and as soon as you are released, we can file the claims bill.”
“Sounds great,” Felton said.
Jack returned the next day with a copy of a claims bill for Felton to keep and a contingency fee agreement for Felton to sign stating that Felton would give Jack one-third of whatever he received from the legislature as consideration for Jack’s past representation and his representation during the claims process. Jack did explain that he would most likely have to go to Tallahassee a few times to convince the legislature to do the right thing. They made a copy of the signed contingency fee agreement at the jail and Jack left Felton with a copy of that as well.