Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green Page 0,65
day. She informed the others and they headed back to the hotel to extend their reservations.
“What’s your assessment?” Tommy asked as they walked to the Holiday Inn.
Dani shrugged. No matter how well or poorly she thought a hearing had gone, the decision often surprised her.
“I thought Getty’s closing was pretty weak,” Melanie said.
“She made some good points,” Dani said. “But it only matters what Smithson thinks. His reputation is good—smart, fair to both sides instead of a prosecutorial bias. But I’m worried. If he doesn’t rule in our favor, we’ll need to get a petition in to the court of appeals fast. Melanie, we’ll have some time tomorrow. We should get started on that just in case.”
Dani knew they were fighting an uphill battle. The chance of getting a convicted killer freed on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel was small. Of the one hundred and seven death sentences handed down in Indiana since 1977, when the United States Supreme Court reinstated it as a potential penalty, only two men had been exonerated of their crimes, one of them two weeks before the scheduled execution and the other three days before. Yet she knew that many more on death row lacked the money to pay attorneys proficient in capital cases and lacked the resources to hire experts to refute those put forth by the prosecution. It wasn’t the color of their skin that was the biggest hurdle to obtaining justice; it was the color of money.
They arrived at their hotel and, after arranging to extend their stay, retreated to their separate rooms. Each of them focused on preparing for the next task: getting a court to allow them to exhume the little girl’s body. Hours went by until the ring of her cell phone interrupted Dani, who’d been absorbed in her work.
“Ms. Trumball?” the voice at the other end asked.
“Yes.”
“This is May Collins, Judge Smithson’s secretary. He’d like you to be at his court 10 a.m. tomorrow. He’s going to read his decision from the bench.”
“Thank you. We’ll be there.”
She hung up and wondered what it meant. Had Judge Smithson reached his decision quickly because their case was compelling or because he wanted to give them enough time to appeal? She called Melanie and Tommy to let them know. “Melanie, this means it’s especially important to have our papers ready in case we need to appeal. It goes to the court of appeals in Chicago, so we’ll need to overnight the papers as soon as they’re ready. That is, if we lose tomorrow.”
Melanie was chipper. “I really feel we’re going to win.”
“Well, just in case, get the appeal ready.”
“Gotcha, chief.”
Dani worked through dinner, ordering room service instead of joining Melanie and Tommy, but by 9 o’clock she was bushed. It was just as well; it was honeymoon hour. She called Doug.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“I’ll find out tomorrow morning. The judge will have his decision then.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m exhausted. Not just physically. Emotionally, too.”
“It’ll be over soon.”
“Yes, but how? That’s what’s draining me. I know he’s innocent, I just know it. Only I don’t know if there’s enough time to save him.”
“We have an imperfect system. As long as there’s a death penalty, some innocent men and women will die.”
Suddenly, the combination of her fatigue and worry overwhelmed her and she burst into tears. “It’s wrong, it’s so wrong,” she said through her sobs.
Doug let her cry herself out. “It’s better now than it used to be,” he said after she calmed down. “At least in some cases there’s DNA evidence to clear an innocent person. That wasn’t always the case. Maybe twenty years from now there’ll be some new scientific advance that can conclusively tell when a person is being truthful or lying. Maybe fifty years from now genome mapping will be complete and scientists can figure out whether a person’s genes make him capable of murder. Maybe if those things happen, or others that we can’t even imagine, maybe then there won’t be any innocents sitting on death row. In the meantime, you can only help one prisoner at a time. And for now, that prisoner is George Calhoun.”
Dani dabbed her eyes with the napkin from her dinner tray. “If only we’d been able to find some evidence that Angelina had been left at the Mayo Clinic.”
“And you’re convinced she was?”
“Yes. Absolutely convinced.”
“Then Calhoun is lucky he has a lawyer who believes in him.”
“Now if he only has a judge who feels the same way.”