Nancy Grace - The Eleventh Victim

The patient who followed was one of the sweetest and the loneliest…Hayden Krasinski, an incredibly talented graphic designer just over twenty years old and already worn out with the world.

Somebody sat rudely on their car horn outside. Hailey instinctively looked out the sliver of window that faced the street.

She couldn’t help but smile as she watched Karen, with the perfect form of an Olympic sprinter, aggressively pursuing a cab back to work. In her full-length neon pink coat and loaded down with a staggering briefcase and jumbo-size shoulder purse, Karen displayed serious agility and beat a guy in his early twenties to the pass, nabbing the taxi herself.

“You go, Karen,” Hailey whispered aloud, followed quickly by, “James, you big idiot.”

Atlanta, Georgia

BALANCING AN ARMLOAD OF RESEARCH, LAW CLERK JIM TALLEY knocked on the door of Judge Clarence E. Carter’s chambers.

“Come in.”

The Judge-“C.C.” to his political cohorts-eyed the stack of documents suspiciously. “Son, what is that you’ve got with you? I hope it’s the Sports section from the Telegraph .”

Jim exercised immense self-control in not rolling his eyes and reminded himself that a thousand third-years would give their eye teeth to get a spot with the State Supremes.

Jim might have graduated first in his class at Mercer University, one of the oldest law school in the state, but he had received the coveted appellate-court clerkship purely through connections.

Upon learning his class ranking, the judge quickly informed him that grades didn’t matter. “It’s not what you know, son. It’s who you know and how you use it. Remember that, son, and you’ll go far.”

The judge had dispensed that advice a hundred times, and Jim wholeheartedly believed it.

After all, his father was on the boards of two major corporations that contributed heavily to the judge’s campaign…a campaign that was never fully waged because of C.C.’s surprise appointment to the bench, rendering voters unnecessary. Jim happened to know that for reasons mysterious and unspoken, the judge held on to all the campaign money to create his “war chest,” as he called it.

“Sorry to say it’s not the sports page, Judge,” he told C.C. “It’s the research for that opinion pending on the docket.”

The judge looked momentarily blank.

“You know,” Jim prodded, “the one we talked about? The death penalty appeal.”

Ah. The light dawned in C.C’s eyes.

“Son, I’m going to let you handle that on your own. It’s time you took on more responsibility and I think you’re ready for it. I’ve taught you what I know on the subject. Make me proud, boy.”

Maybe Jim should have been thrilled with the idea of changing the course of legal history by writing the judge’s opinions totally unsupervised. But the truth was, he didn’t want to be responsible for a political hot potato.

Still, if Jim did as he was told, he figured the clerkship with Judge C. could set him up for an associate position over at Lange and Parker, the South’s premier law firm, the crown jewel of the Georgia Bar.

His Mercer Law Review cronies would be livid.

“So, Judge, we affirm, right?”

With shifting support for the death penalty, Jim thought he should at least get Carter’s okay before taking the judge’s usual hang-’em-high position and affirming the death sentence. He’d worry about finding a legal basis later.

“Son, which slimy SOB is it this time? These days you got to be a real bastard to get the chair.”

“It’s the chef. You know, the Atlanta chef that posed all those hookers after he strangled them.”

“Shit, son. He must’ve been one mean son of a bitch to get a death sentence out of a bunch of intellectual left-wing snoots and all the rest… Well, you know who sits on Atlanta juries. They wouldn’t even give Wayne Williams the chair. He strangled how many boys…twelve, before they caught him?”

“No sir. Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one what?” It had clearly been a rhetorical question because C.C. had no idea what Jim was referring to.

“Wayne Williams allegedly murdered twenty-one little boys and teens before they got him, based on fiber evidence. But Williams still says he didn’t do it…that he was set up.”

“Set up? Son, you scare me when you talk like that. Allegedly. Allegedly, my ass. A jury convicted him.”

“So, Judge, we affirm?”

“Did you say he says he was set up? Set up by who? God? Sit in jail long enough, and they all think somebody set ’em up.”

“The chef, Judge, you want to affirm the DP on the chef, right?”

“Hell, yes, affirm it, by God,” Judge Carter bellowed, slapping his beefy hand on the desk so hard the obligatory framed family photos rattled. “You want me to lose my spot on the bench? The voters would burn down the Court if we let that one go. He’ll never see nothing but the inside of the bus on the way from Reidsville Prison to Old Sparky at Jackson.”

“Sir, just to be clear-it’s a constitutional challenge to the use of DNA without obtaining an additional warrant on each separate murder charge. They also claim overzealous prosecution against the State. It was Hailey Dean again.”

“Son, you’re botherin’ me, now. You know I have to affirm…both the guilty verdict and the death penalty sentence. It ain’t the liberals keeping me on the bench, son. Remember that.”

“But the DNA-”

“I’m fine by DNA and there is no such thing as overzealous prosecution. Unless it’s against me. That’s a joke, son. Lighten up.”

Jim nodded woodenly, but managed to laugh at just the right volume and with just the right amount of heartiness.

“Yes, sir. It’s affirmed. He’s headed to Old Sparky.”

“That’s right, son. It’s between him and the Lord now. And son,” the judge added, dipping his right hand back into his top drawer, “could you bring me that Sports section? I wanna find out how the Dogs look for the weekend.”

“Will do, sir.” Jim closed the door behind him and exhaled. C.C. wouldn’t know the law if it jumped up on the bench and bit him right in the neck.

He headed down the quiet hall outside the judge’s chambers to his own office.

Well, that was done…the appeal was over. The death sentence was affirmed.

The prosecution at trial could rest easy.

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?” CRUISE SPIT THE WORDS through the wall of glass that separated him from Leonard.

The attorney’s lips curved into a thin smile. “Not happy to see me? What’s wrong, Clint? I thought you’d be happy. Come on, show some enthusiasm…it’s not like you’re flooded with visitors.”

If it weren’t for a wall of thick plate glass that separated them, Cruise would have made a lunge for him. As it was, all he could do was sit here, chained in shackles, waiting for his useless lawyer to say whatever he had to say and make Cruise read or sign whatever he had to read or sign.

Useless. That was what Cruise thought of Matt Leonard and his weak, pathetic performance at trial. Damn him, the way Hailey Dean walked all over him. Cruise knew the deal. Leonard wanted the celebrity of being the big-time death penalty hero, but he just couldn’t deliver. Cruise had read up on him, found out his firm was rolling in federal and state grant money for the so-called Death Penalty Project.

Cruise didn’t know exactly how much money, but he did know both Leonard and even his paralegal drove Mercedes. Thanks to Google and the penitentiary law library Internet, he also knew Leonard lived in a huge three-story on Habersham near the governor’s mansion. Leonard’s crapper was probably bigger than Cruise’s whole cell.