to me, and gets into the front seat, all smiles. He holds a small recorder and says, “Clear as a bell.”
This can be a dirty business. We are forced to deal with witnesses who have lied, police who have fabricated evidence, experts who have misled juries, and prosecutors who have suborned perjury. We, the good guys, often find that getting our hands dirty is the only way to save our clients.
If Carrie Holland Pruitt refuses to cooperate and sign an affidavit, then I’ll find a way to get her statements into the court record. I’ve done it before.
15
Our hands get even dirtier. Frankie has hired an investigator out of Birmingham to stalk Mark Carter, the man who raped and murdered Emily Broone. He lives in the small town of Bayliss, ten miles from Verona, where Duke Russell was convicted. Carter sells tractors for a dealer in Verona, and he ends most workdays at a dive where he meets some buddies for a few beers and pool.
He is at a table drinking Bud Light from a bottle when a man stumbles and crashes into the little party. Bottles fly as beer is spilled. The man gets to his feet, apologizing profusely, and the situation is tense for a moment. He scoops up the half-empty bottles, buys another round, and keeps apologizing. He sets four fresh bottles on the table and cracks a joke. Carter and his pals finally laugh. All is well as the man, our investigator, retreats to a corner and pulls out his cell phone. In a coat pocket he has the beer bottle Carter was working on.
The next day, Frankie drives it to a lab in Durham and hands it over, along with a single pubic hair we filched from the police evidence file. Guardian pays $6,000 for an expedited test. The results are beautiful. We now have DNA proof linking Carter to the rape and murder.
At Duke’s trial, seven pubic hairs were entered into evidence by the State of Alabama. They were supposedly collected from the crime scene, from Emily’s body. Duke submitted samples of his own. With great certainty, the State’s expert testified that they matched those found on the corpse, overwhelming proof that Duke raped Emily before he strangled her. Another expert testified that he also bit her several times during the assault.
There was no semen found in or around her body. Undaunted by this, the prosecutor, Chad Falwright, simply told the jury that Duke “had probably just used a condom.” There was no proof of this, one was never found, but this made perfect sense to the jury. To get a death verdict, Falwright had to prove murder plus rape. The victim was naked and had probably been sexually assaulted, but the proof was weak. The pubic hairs became crucial evidence.
In a sober moment, Duke’s lawyer asked the court for money to hire his own expert hair analyst. The court said no. The lawyer either knew nothing about DNA testing or didn’t want to bother with it. He may have assumed the court would not authorize it. Thus, the seven pubic hairs were never tested.
But they were certainly analyzed. The expert testimony sent Duke to death row, and three months ago came within two hours of getting him killed.
Now we have the truth.
* * *
—
VERONA SITS IN the center of the state, in a desolate, sparsely populated flatland packed with piney woods. For its 5,000 inhabitants, a good job is driving a pulpwood truck, a bad one is sacking groceries. One in five has no job at all. It’s a depressing place, but then most of my stops are in towns that time has passed by.
Chad Falwright’s office is in the courthouse, just down the dusty hallway from where Duke was convicted nine years ago. I’ve been here once before and would prefer to avoid it in the future. This meeting will not be pleasant, but I’m accustomed to that. Most prosecutors despise me and the sentiments are mutual.
As agreed upon, I arrive at 1:58 p.m. and give a nice smile to Chad’s secretary. It’s obvious she does not like me either. He’s busy, of course, and she invites me to have a seat under a dreadful portrait of a scowling and, hopefully, dead judge. Ten minutes pass as she pecks away at a keyboard. There are no sounds coming from his office. Fifteen minutes. After twenty minutes, I say rudely, “Look, we made an appointment for two p.m. I drove a