Scott Pratt - An Innocent Client

April 12

7:00 a. m

It was my fortieth birthday, and the first thing I had to do was deal with Johnny Wayne Neal. The forensic psychiatrist I’d hired to examine him said Johnny Wayne was a narcissist, a pathological liar, and a sociopath, and those were his good qualities. He called Johnny Wayne an “irredeemable monster.” I’d asked the shrink not to write any of that down. I didn’t want the district attorney to see it. Monster or not, Johnny Wayne was still my client.

Johnny Wayne Neal had hired two of his thug buddies to murder his beautiful, heavily insured young wife. She woke up at 3:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning about a year ago to find two strangers standing over her bed. The men clumsily and brutally stabbed her to death while Johnny Wayne’s three-year-old son, who’d been sleeping with his mother that night, crawled beneath the bed and listened to the sounds of his mother dying.

It took the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Johnson City Police Department less than a week to figure out who was responsible for the murder. Johnny Wayne was arrested and charged with both first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and because of the heinous nature of the crime, the state of Tennessee was seeking the death penalty. A heartless judge appointed me to defend him. The hourly rate was a hundred bucks, about the same as a small-time prostitute’s.

The prosecutor had offered to take the death penalty off the table if Johnny Wayne would plead guilty to first-degree murder and agree to go to prison for the rest of his life. When I told Johnny Wayne about the offer a week ago, he’d reluctantly agreed. We were supposed to be in court at 9:00 a.m. so Johnny Wayne could enter his plea. I was at the jail early in the morning to make sure he hadn’t changed his mind.

Fifteen minutes after I sat down in the attorney’s room, Johnny Wayne, in a sharply creased, unwrinkled orange jumpsuit, was escorted in. He was handcuffed, waist-chained, and shackled around the ankles.

“I wanted to make sure you’re still willing to take this deal before we go to court,” I said as soon as the uniformed escort stepped out and Johnny Wayne awkwardly made his way into the chair. “Once you enter the plea, there’s no turning back.”

Johnny Wayne stared at the tabletop. His short hair was the color of baled straw, wispy and perfectly combed. He was much smaller than me, well under six feet, thin and pale. His face and arms were covered with tiny pinkish freckles. He started tapping his fingers on the table, and I noticed that his nails looked recently manicured. He smelled of shampoo.

“How do you manage to stay so well groomed in this place?” I said. “Every time I see you, you look like you just came out of a salon.”

He rolled his eyes. They were a pale green, sometimes flecked with red, depending on angle and light. They were closely set and the left eye had a tendency to wander. It made looking him in the eye uncomfortable. I never quite knew where to focus.

“The fact that I’m incarcerated doesn’t require me to live like an animal,” he said. “I’m able to procure certain services.”

“You mean a barber?”

“I have a barber, one of the inmates, who comes to my cell once a week. He trims my beard and shampoos and cuts my hair.”

“Does he give you a manicure, too?” I glanced at his fingernails.

“I do that myself.”

“Who does your laundry? All my other clients look like they sleep in their jail uniforms.” I could tell the questions were irritating him, which encouraged me to keep asking.

“My laundry is done along with everyone else’s,” he said. “I simply purchase commissary products for an individual who treats my laundry with special care.” His speech was a tinny, nasal tenor, his diction perfect. I imagined shoving a handful of horse manure into his mouth, just so he’d mispronounce a word.

“Why are you so interested in my personal hygiene?” Johnny Wayne said. “Does it offend you?”

“Nah,” I said, “I was just curious.”

His disdain for me was palpable. With each visit I could sense it growing like metastasizing cancer, but I didn’t care. I disliked him as intensely as he disliked me. He’d lied to me dozens of times. He’d run me and my investigator all over east Tennessee following false leads and locating bogus witnesses. He whined constantly.

“So now that we have those incredibly important matters out of the way,” Johnny Wayne said, “explain this deal, as you so eloquently put it, one more time.”

“It’s simple,” I said. “A moron could understand it.”

“Are you insinuating that I’m a moron?”

Answering the question truthfully would have served no useful purpose, so I ignored it.

“The deal is you plead guilty to first-degree murder. You agree to a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. You give up your right to appeal. In exchange, you get to live. No needle for Johnny Wayne. That’s it, simple and sweet.”

He snorted. “Doesn’t sound like much of a deal to me.”

“Depends on your point of view.”

“Meaning?”

“It depends on whether you want to spend the rest of your life in the general prison population where you can at least have some semblance of a life or spend the next fifteen years in isolation on death row, then die by lethal injection.”

“But I’m innocent.”

“Of course you are. Unfortunately, the evidence says otherwise.”

“All circumstantial. Or lies.”

I’d heard that line dozens of times. Like nearly every other criminal I’d represented, he’d proclaimed his innocence so many times he was beginning to believe it.

“What about the cell phone records that match exactly with the statements Clive and Derek gave the police?” I said. “The calls they say you made to check on them while they were on their way up here to kill Laura, and while they were on their way back.”

The muscles in his jaw tightened. Johnny Wayne didn’t like discussing facts.

“What about the four separate life insurance policies you took out on Laura over the past eighteen months? Three hundred and fifty grand, Johnny Wayne.”

“Lots of people over-insure their spouses.”

“Explain why Derek and Clive would say you hired them to kill Laura and promised to give them ten percent of the insurance money.”

“They’re trying to save themselves.”

“If you didn’t hire them, why’d they do it? They didn’t even know her.”

“Why? Why? Why are you asking me all these stupid questions? You’re supposed to be my lawyer.”

I should have brought up the audio tape, but I didn’t really feel like arguing with him. Clive and Derek, the thugs he hired, had both caved immediately during the interrogation. They confessed and told the police Johnny Wayne had hired them. The police outfitted them with tape recorders and sent them to see Johnny Wayne, who talked freely about the murder and the money. The first time I played the tape for him his face turned an odd shade.

“Listen to me,” I said. “Part of a lawyer’s job is to give his client good advice. And my advice is that the prosecution could bring in a trained monkey and convict you of this murder. The evidence is overwhelming, the murder was especially cruel, and your little boy witnessed it. My advice is that your chances of getting the death penalty are better than excellent.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” he said.

“Maybe not, but she’d be alive if it weren’t for you. The jury will hold you accountable.”

“So I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life in prison for something I didn’t do.”