Wrongful Convictions Page 3

  “Ready for 2L?” Shannon had made her way down the walk to him and pulled him from his daydream.

  “It has to be better than 1L right?” He smiled.

  “But I am looking forward to this class.” This was a half truth. He wasn’t about to tell her about the memories of his family.

  5

  The room began to fill up as the clock drew nearer to seven. The class was titled Wrongful Convictions. Judging from the capacity of the room, there were a lot of other 2L’s who had been intrigued by the class like Marcel was. Marcel had thought that the Innocence Institute would be a nice break from the monotony of the classroom. He certainly didn’t care as much about building a resume as most of the other fifty students in the class had been. It was clear, regardless of motivation, that none of them wanted to be in a case law heavy lecture class for the next two and a half hours.

  Marcel had started law school with no real inclination of the type of law he was most interested in. Criminal law was sexy and that was what his grandfather wanted, but he had plenty of experience with the criminal justice system and none of it had been pleasant. His grandfather had wanted him to be a U.S. Attorney and prosecution did have its appeal, at least compared with corporate lawyers who sat in offices and pushed paper all day. Personal injury attorneys made bank, and they were in court a lot. The problem was that he didn’t like the idea of being an ambulance chaser. Marcel’s legal future was clouded by dreams of a middleweight title belt, and nothing else really mattered to him right now.

  Marcel and Shannon had had conversations with each other about what their futures would hold. His grandfather’s dream was the reality Marcel concocted for the sake of conversations. He had never shared his dream of being a world champion with anyone. This was a symptom of superstition where he felt as if he said it out loud the idea would vanish forever. Shannon’s version of the future was almost incomprehensible to him. One of the biggest differences in their social class was their view of what things were achievable. Shannon’s dream was to start her own consulting firm. She planned to start a business whose sole purpose was to teach other businesses how to run more efficiently. This concept was beyond the realm of Marcel’s reality. He had no ability to conceive the nuts and bolts of how to get something like that started, nor could he envision the type of people that she would work for. It was one more example of the divergent worlds they came from.

  Joanne entered the classroom at about four minutes before seven o’clock. Marcel had quickly learned that you could tell a lot about a professor based on their ability to make it to class on time. There was a small group of professors whose own arrogance prevented them from arriving to their class any earlier than the posted start time. It was especially hard for Marcel to respect anyone like that. He took pride in his own punctuality; his grandfather had ingrained in him the belief that there was no greater currency than reliability, and that one of the best ways to lay a foundation of reliability was to be punctual. Marcel didn’t really consider four minutes early punctual, but given Joanne’s status as a television personality and St. Stevens’s celebrity professor, he had figured it would have been about ten after the hour before she came strolling in.

  Joanne went to the front of the classroom, flipped on the projector, and began her introduction. There was a familiarity about her that Marcel acknowledged. He hadn’t seen her on TV much, but anyone who has seen a TV personality in person knows that make up and lighting did amazing things for people. Here standing in front of the class, familiarity was the best word to describe Joanne’s television personality. The Joanne that stood in front of the class tonight looked about twenty years older than the one he had seen a couple years ago on TV. The in-person Joanne had bags under her eyes. Those were the eyes of an addict, eyes Marcel knew well. Her lips were thinning and the lines in her face were deepening. Her skin was losing its elasticity prematurely, and anyone who knew drug people could see that Joanne Hart-Benson had a severe drug problem.

  Kids that grew up like Marcel develop an ability to see the dark side of people much easier than kids who grew up in protected environments. Marcel had thought about this often and believed it was a survival instinct, an evolutionary quality that man’s prehistoric ancestors surely possessed. A sixth sense for assessing the danger of foreign tribes. It was a sense that had been dying out in mankind as the world got smaller and life got more comfortable and safer. This was a sense now possessed only by those who grew up in a constant state of chaos and danger; certainly not by many in the room tonight. Marcel was very aware of one constant with drug addicts. They could be dangerous, especially when they held positions like the one Joanne held.

  “Good evening, my name is Joanne Hart-Benson, this is my tenth year teaching Wrongful Convictions at St. Stevens.” Her voice was crisp and captivating.

  Marcel could instantly understand why she had been so successful as a litigator. Confidence flowed from this woman and Marcel was compelled by a force deep within himself to turn off his danger indicator and allow himself to be mesmerized by her voice.

  “Before coming to St. Stevens I worked to establish the first Innocence Institute at Cardozo School of Law in New York. Since that time, two hundred seventy two people have been exonerated because of DNA evidence. Seventeen of those people were sitting on death row.” Joanne was now in full stride.

  “The average sentence served by those two hundred seventy two innocent people was thirteen years. Take yourself back thirteen years, what were you doing? Some of you were in Junior High, some of you may have even been in elementary school. For some of you that is more than half your lifetime.”

  Marcel gave a quick glance around the room. His colleagues were as captivated as he was.

  “How does this happen? How can we prevent these things from happening in the future? What can be done about those innocent people currently incarcerated right now? Those are the questions we are going to explore this semester in Wrongful Convictions.”

  It was clear to everyone, Marcel included, that Joanne was in her element. It was of no consequence that this was an audience of future lawyers rather than jury. A live audience was her canvas and the facts of the case were her oils. A live audience was different than a television audience. With a live audience, Joanne could build a relationship with the men and women in front of her. That wasn’t the case with a television audience. She worked the inflection of her voice. Her tone and tempo were such that the people sitting in front of her not only believed what she was saying, they couldn’t help but liking the woman as she said it. Marcel could feel her passion fill the entire room; it was like a gas that would overtake them all and eventually suffocate their good sense. He wondered how many jurors over the years had been won over simply by her style, evidence be damned. When class was over, everyone in the room would find in favor of Joanne on this night.

  “On July 25th, 1984, nine-year-old Dawn Hamilton was kidnapped in Baltimore, Maryland. She was raped, her panties were flung into a tree and her neck was stepped on, strangling and killing her. Her body was left in some woods in a working class suburb of Rosedale. A grizzly murder, with the most innocent of victims.” Joanne was really ramping up now.

  “The narrative of a case always put the police under the gun to find a suspect in a hurry. This case was no different. Luckily they had witnesses.” She paused and surveyed the class to ensure she had everyone’s attention. She was about to lay out her case.

  “There were two boys who were near the woods before little Dawn was killed. They saw her with a man they described as about six foot five inches tall, white, with flaming red hair and a mustache.” She started to move about the room, injecting more emotion.

  “A man named Kirk Bloodsworth, a commercial fisherman from Cambridge, Maryland, had been working near the woods where the little girl’s body was found at a furniture store. Bloodworth was only six foot tall and on the heavy side; he did have flaming red hair and a mustache, however.” Marcel and the rest of the class hung on
her every word.

  “The police put together a composite sketch and a tip came in that a man working at a nearby furniture store matched the description. Police brought Bloodsworth in for questioning, where he steadfastly denied the charges. Nonetheless, his picture was used as part of a photo lineup. One of the witnesses said that Bloodsworth looked similar but had a different hair color.” She paused so the jury could digest point number one.

  “The other witness was not able to identify a photo in the lineup. This was the basis for an arrest warrant.” Marcel could feel the reasonable doubt dancing around the room.

  “Police were under a lot of pressure to solve the case and decided Bloodsworth was their guy. They brought him in and put him in a lineup. Again one of the witnesses was unable to identify anyone. The second picked out a police officer from the lineup. This, ladies and gentlemen, was not enough to cast doubt in the eyes of the police. No, the police had their man.” Joanne’s voice marching toward a crescendo.

  “Police continued their pursuit of Bloodsworth; they questioned him relentlessly. They showed him pictures of the crime scene, including a picture of a bloody rock. When in a later questioning Bloodsworth made mention of the bloody rock, police took it as an admission of guilt. He was the easiest target: he had no alibi, he worked in the vicinity and had a vague resemblance to the initial identification.”

  “Despite their inability to identify the man in either a photo lineup or an actual lineup both witnesses, boys, testified at trial he was the man. Prosecutors failed to disclose that there were other possible suspects and no biological evidence was offered. He was convicted on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to death.” She paused again. Marcel could tell she was waiting to bring it home.

  “On the evidence we just discussed, Bloodsworth was sentenced to death.” She let it sink in and then continued.

  “He appealed his case, all the while sitting in isolation on death row.”

  Marcel couldn’t help but think of his own father sitting in prison and how his life ended in one violent moment. Marcel thought about his father often, more often than he thought about his dead mother. This was a fact that burdened him with guilt. His mother had done nothing to deserve her fate while his father was a man filled with evil and consumed by violence. Yet he had no memories of her. He did, however, have memories of his father even though he only saw him behind the glass partition of a maximum security prisoners’ visiting center.

  Marcel realized he had drifted off and tuned back into Joanne’s narrative.

  “...a book named Blooding, anyone ever hear of it?” Joanne posed the question to Marcel and his classmates. Shannon and a few other’s raised their hands.

  “Tell us about it, Ms. McCarthy.” Joanne passed the baton.

  “Written by an ex police officer named Wambaugh, Jim Wambaugh maybe.” Shannon furled her brow trying to recall the author’s first name. Marcel admired that quality of hers, the never ending quest for precision.

  “Anyway, it’s all about how the British were using DNA to solve crimes, the book depicts the first uses of DNA for solving crime.”

  “Very good, Ms. McCarthy. Bloodsworth wrote his lawyer because the little girl’s panties contained a semen stain. The FBI had originally found nothing of use on the panties and in most cases the evidence would have been destroyed in the eight years Bloodsworth sat in prison since it wasn’t shown to be useful originally. Serendipitously in this case it wasn’t. It had been sealed up and boxed away.”

  Marcel wondered how often the world breaks the right way for people like Kirk Bloodsworth. He knew how often it broke the right way for him. Marcel could not help but feel a kinship with Kirk Bloodsworth. His story was a caricature of Marcel’s own greatest fears.

  “...stress this, it is important for all of you to understand that the Innocence Institute is not a job. It isn’t a civil litigation firm where you are serving a dual purpose, doing some good, but also making a windfall of cash. No ladies and gentlemen, the Innocence Institute is a passion.” She paused to emphasize her next point.

  “Bloodsworth’s lawyer took ten thousand dollars out of his own pocket to pay for the testing.”

  Another pause and Marcel was back into the swirl of his own thoughts again. He was trying to imagine what it would be like to be able to go to a bank to withdraw $10,000 to put towards someone else. Neither Marcel nor anyone he had ever known had more than enough cash on had to do anything more than buy groceries for the next few weeks. In these moments he felt isolated from his classmates, proof he was from a different world.

  "...the arrogance of the prosecutors in the case was on display in 2000, in an interview with CNN. They continued to doubt Bloodsworth’s innocence, coming up with nonsensical alternative theories.” Joanne’s disdain for government attorneys was on full display for the class. Marcel instantly felt a contempt for the woman in front of the class, as if she were disrespecting his grandfather.

  The thing most of his classmates, like Shannon McCarthy, could never understand about guys like Marcel was that when people struggled to make ends meet, respect became the prevailing currency. In some places that currency was so valuable people would kill for it.

  “...in 2004, Bloodsworth was completely vindicated and the DNA evidence was used to convict Kimberly Ruffner of the crime. Ruffner had been convicted of an unrelated crime a month after Bloodsworth’s initial conviction and was serving forty-five years in a cell directly below his own. The irony of the criminal justice system is very, very real.” Most of the crowd joined Joanne in a good chuckle. Marcel however, couldn’t escape his own circumstances. First hand experience with trials and prison, a murdered mother and brother and a father who spent time in prison and finally met with a violent end himself. He shuddered.

  6

  Joanne felt good when the lecture had finished. Recently success was a more fleeting proposition than it had been when she was younger. Her audience tonight had been captivated. They had asked pertinent questions, and she knew that she had been dazzling. She felt like the star she had been in her thirties, charming the hell out of the juries and winning acquittal after acquittal. She had tried only one case in the last two years and had lost. That defeat was excruciating. It was after that adverse verdict that she had really amped up her drug usage. She always had a taste for cocaine, but coke never dulled the pain - at least not like narco. But damned if narco wasn’t the most addictive shit she had ever been around, at least until she met Narcodone. Narcodone had all the benefits of oxi but for half the cost. With coke she could always take it or leave it, but not with narco. Narco was like the all seeing eye; a hostage taker that even the best trained negotiator couldn’t deal with. The sort of captor that a woman like Joanne could fall in love with and she had certainly developed Stockholm Syndrome in this case.

  At first she used drugs to quiet an unexplored pain; that fact was stipulated to by all parties. Eventually, the pain was silenced and was replaced by the siren’s song of the medicine. For Joanne, simply getting out of bed was an act that now required medication. If she was really being challenged and was also being honest at the same time, she would admit that it was the narco more than her disdain for the last loss that prevented her from taking new cases. She always had the common sense to know that the quickest way to disbarment was being doped up during a trial. With coke it was no problem, but with narco she wasn’t sure she could make it through a trial clean, so rather than risk it she quit taking cases. It was easier than to quit taking the dope. Despite Joanne’s addictive personality, she certainly wasn’t addicted to the courtroom, not anymore. Out of law school, the court room had been her addiction, but that was before the television mess and before narco.

  Joanne was now at a crossroads. She had an amazing opportunity in front of her. Earlier that day her protégé, Tavian Springs, had come to her office with a case that had the possibility to turn everything around. Tavian was just out of law school and had a good legal instinct, but unlike most yo
ung guns, knew that he wasn’t ready for a case of this caliber yet. It was a death penalty case in Texas. The death penalty was right in Joanne’s wheel house and this particular case had all the makings for a grand return to the big stage for her. The defendant in the case was Esteban Diaz. Diaz had been convicted of killing another teenager, the son of a Texas State Patrol officer, as part of a gang initiation in Brownsville, Texas. Diaz’ public beating by police in the aftermath of his arrest had made headlines but had not spared him from a trip to death row in Texas. The case had initially sparked outrage because of the beating, but it continued to linger in the press because of his claim of innocence. Diaz had produced three separate alibi witnesses, two of whom were discredited by the prosecution. The third was killed in an altercation with police after a traffic stop in what appeared to most outside observers as nothing more than a government sanctioned hit. The officer who had pulled the trigger had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, the witness was buried, and Diaz was sentenced to die. Diaz had made contact with Tavian and Tavian had brought the case to Joanne.

  Tavian had a hard time masking his excitement when he first approached her about the case. He had yet to handle a murder case, much less a capital case, and was anxious to get his feet wet. Joanne had not actually seen Tavian in court but he had developed a reputation of being diligent and ruthless. In the time she had known him, Tavian had made an impact on her. He was the hardest working young man that she had ever come across. He had a singular focus when he was tasked with a project. Joanne knew she could count on him to put in the legwork. Before even approaching her, he had already begun the investigative work; it was this vigor that had convinced her to get back into the game. However, the real draw to her was the proposition of getting back into the limelight and resurrecting her once prominent career. Tavian was well aware of her thirst to get back to center stage in the war against the death penalty, and she knew this was the real reason he had brought it to her. In all things, Tavian was loyal. Loyalty to Joanne was very important.