Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green Page 0,66
does. You’ll find out tomorrow.”
By ten o’clock her eyelids started drooping. She said goodnight to Doug and got ready for bed. As she set the alarm, she felt prepared for whatever would happen tomorrow and each of the remaining days until Calhoun’s execution date.
“I’m going to read my decision into the record,” Judge Smithson said after they were all assembled in his courtroom. “Defendant has come before this court on a habeas corpus petition claiming that he received ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the state and federal constitutions. This proceeding is the first time he has raised such a claim, but it is not unexpected, as his trial and appellate counsel were the same. The burden is on the defendant to show that his lawyer’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness and that there is a reasonable probability that the results of the proceedings would have been different if not for his attorney’s errors. In looking at the reasonableness of the attorney’s conduct, we must view it in light of the circumstances at the time of the proceedings. We may not apply subsequent knowledge or conduct to a prior period. Defendant claims that his attorney failed to perform a proper investigation into the facts during the pretrial stage. Yet defendant’s own conduct led to such failure. Defendant’s wife asserted the dead child was their own, and although defendant denied such was the case, he steadfastly refused to inform his attorney as to the whereabouts of his daughter. Given those facts, it was not unreasonable for his attorney to forgo an investigation. Nor was it unreasonable for him to not seek exhumation of the child’s body twelve years later in order to conduct a DNA test. Once again, the defendant’s conduct over those twelve years would lead a reasonable attorney to believe his claim was ‘grasping at straws.’
“The remaining claims of ineffective assistance do not rise to the level of prejudicial conduct. For these reasons, defendant’s petition is denied and he is to be remanded back to Indiana State Prison.”
Dani’s hands shook. She willed herself not to cry. It wasn’t over yet, she kept telling herself. Not for thirteen more days.
CHAPTER
24
Indianapolis was home to the state court of appeals. Dani felt as if they’d come full circle from their visit there just a few short weeks ago. Their case wasn’t scheduled until the afternoon, so she’d decided to visit Sallie once more at the Indiana Woman’s Prison. Dani was already seated in the interview room when the door opened and Sallie entered, still gaunt, still lifeless.
“Hello, Sallie. Do you remember me?”
She nodded. Like she’d done during the first interview, she stared down at the table.
“I’ve been speaking to George, your husband.”
She looked up. “Is he still alive?”
“Yes.”
“Tell him I’m sorry,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“Sorry for what?”
“He’ll know.”
“Sallie, George told me what happened to Angelina.”
Tears started to roll down Sallie’s cheeks. She remained silent as she rocked back and forth. Finally, she said, “We killed her.”
“How did you kill her, Sallie?”
“George knows.”
“George told me Angelina was sick, that she had cancer. Do you remember that?”
“We killed her.”
“But how, Sallie?” The frail woman sitting across from Dani looked ghostly, with her white pallor and skin so translucent that her bones showed. She believes she killed Angelina. She’s so cut off from reality that she can’t tell the difference between murder and abandonment. Unless George lied to us. Could they have killed her out of a misguided sense of mercy? To spare her more suffering? “Do you remember that Angelina’s cancer came back?”
Sallie stopped rocking. “They wouldn’t help her. We couldn’t pay them, so they wouldn’t help her. How could they do that? How could they turn a child away?”
“They should have treated her. It was cruel.”
Sallie nodded. “You see. You understand.”
“Yes, I understand. You had no choice. Tell me what you did.”
Suddenly, a wail of anguish erupted from deep within Sallie. She wrapped her arms around her body tightly. “We were supposed to care for her. We were her parents. She needed our comforting, our little baby, our precious little girl. She needed us.”
Dani said nothing for a while and left Sallie alone with her memories. When her rocking stopped, she asked, “Did George kill her to end her suffering?”
“We didn’t end her suffering. We did worse, much worse.”