Tim Green - False Convictions

“Everyone likes the chief,” Marty said quietly, going for his ear, then dropping his hand when he saw she was looking.

“That’s okay,” Casey said. “He’ll get over it.”

Marty directed Ralph to his family’s law offices on Genesee Street and got out in front of a sandblasted redbrick building with tinted glass windows and a wooden sign that read BARRONE & BARRONE in Old English characters.

Marty got out and rapped a knuckle on her window. Casey rolled it down.

“You don’t think I should go with you to the DA’s?” Marty asked. “He can be a little rough.”

“I’ll get along fine,” Casey said.

“He can’t hear out of his right ear so don’t talk to that side,” Marty said before she could get the window closed.

Casey just stared.

“Something you should know,” Marty said. “I just thought. I don’t mean to…”

She nodded and signaled Ralph to go. The DA kept his offices just up the street in the old Cayuga County Courthouse, a towering Greek temple with half a dozen three-story Ionic columns. Casey climbed the steps and passed through a metal detector before she was directed to the DA’s offices. A marble bench rested outside the door and Casey ran her hand over the smooth curve of its armrest as she turned the handle. A secretary appeared at the front desk and led her through a maze until she came to a large corner office. The secretary asked if she’d like coffee before she let Casey in and Casey declined. The DA, Patrick G. Merideth, sat working at his desk with a nail clipper and a small file. He dusted his fingers against his gray suit and shook Casey’s hand, offering her a large wing chair beside an unused fireplace.

“Marty parking the car?” the DA asked, taking the chair on the other side of the fireplace and accepting a saucer and cup of coffee from his secretary.

“Marty’s working on a brief,” Casey said.

“Should we wait?” the DA asked.

“I think I can handle it,” Casey said. “We can talk.”

The DA sniffed and nodded. He was a short round man with a crooked nose and even more crooked teeth.

“This is a courtesy call,” Casey said, “so I apologize up front if I don’t sound very courteous, but we’ve got a major problem already.”

“You’re trying to set a convicted murderer and rapist free after twenty years,” the DA said, taking a fussy little sip of his coffee. “A teenage girl bleeding to death in her daddy’s arms. Didn’t you expect some major problems?”

“My problem is your problem, too,” Casey said. “You’ve got a police department destroying evidence.”

The DA stiffened and furrowed his brow and said, “Evidence from twenty years ago, or last week?”

“You know I’m here for the Hubbard case,” Casey said. “It wasn’t on your watch, so I thought we could cut through the usual bullshit. I’m not here to hurt anyone or cause trouble. My job is to correct an injustice from a long time ago. I’ve got a man whose defense lawyer didn’t even subpoena his alibi witness. No one looked into a white BMW my client saw near the scene. Things that smack of racial profiling and a black scapegoat. This didn’t have anything to do with now, or you, or anyone’s career. That was, until I went down there today and found out those clowns destroyed the evidence from this case.”

“And lots of others, too,” the DA said, replacing his cup with a clink and setting the saucer down on a side table. “There’s no requirement in this state to preserve evidence once the appeals run out.”

“Too bad they targeted this case,” Casey said.

“How would they even know you were coming?” the DA asked, incredulous.

“Small town, right?” Casey said. “You think Marty Barrone didn’t spill the word about the Freedom Project on its way here? The cops caught wind and they went to work.”

“Pretty serious accusation,” the DA said.

“That’s why it’s your problem.”

“What makes you say they targeted your case?” he asked.

“This case got tried in 1989,” Casey said, “before DNA was used. There was a knife they found, allegedly with the victim’s blood. The type was a match, but if we’re right, that knife would clear my client. Half of the evidence from that year was destroyed. The problem is that 1988 is still on the shelf.”

The DA raised his eyebrows.

“I’d like you to begin a formal investigation of the officers involved as well as the chief himself,” Casey said.

A smile curled the right corner of the DA’s lips as he stood. “That’s not going to happen. Now I’m beginning to see why Marty isn’t here. I know you’re a famous lawyer from Texas-everything’s bigger in Texas, you mix it up with senators and serial killers, I know-but this is a small town and we are a little old-fashioned. You don’t come in here and start dictating. You save that for your next movie of the week. If there’s no evidence, then there’s really nothing anyone can do. There isn’t a judge living or dead who’d overturn a conviction on a missing witness or a phantom BMW. I’m sorry you wasted your time coming up here. We had the district attorneys’ national convention in Dallas two years ago, so I know it’s a long haul.”

Casey stared hard at the DA for a moment before she calmly said, “You know, I just found out I have an interview with American Sunday at seven o’clock tonight, and they want to talk about this case. You want to play it like this with me? Fine. Get ready for a shit storm.”

Casey stood up.

“Thanks for the courtesy call,” the DA said, striding to the door and flinging it open and waving her through with sarcastic drama. “And tell your husband good luck.”

“My husband?” Casey said, passing through and turning to face him.

“He’s suing you for slander, right?” the DA said with a smirk. “Yeah, my wife gets People magazine. I guess he says you’re a real bitch, but after meeting you I find that really hard to believe.”

Casey’s ex-husband had filed a lawsuit against her and Lifetime for their portrayal of him in the movie of the week that seemed to haunt Casey, a movie about her successful defense of an old law school professor, a serial killer who she later helped capture.

“A bitch?” Casey said. “I just might cry. You better get your shit together, Merideth. Come tomorrow, you’ve entered the big leagues and that diploma up on the wall from Touro College won’t help a bit.”

IF JAKE CARLSON COULD have gotten off the plane, he would have. If he didn’t have a contract coming up in four months and if his son, Sam, wasn’t at sleepaway camp until the end of the week, he would never have agreed to fly up to Syracuse in the first place. But Jake had recently had a run of stories that, while interesting to him, had fallen flat with the network executives, and the president herself was hot for an American Sunday profile on Robert Graham. As they finally took off on a bumpy ride through the thunderclouds, Jake wondered whether it was the turbulence or the thought of Graham that was making him queasy.

After they landed, Jake helped the woman next to him with the bag that had managed to crush his jacket during the flight, then bolted for the rental car counter. He took the GPS, even though he knew the surrounding area pretty well, having spent some of his earlier years in television in the local market and more recently having broken a national story on a corrupt politician and his ties with the Albanian mob operating out of central New York. By the time he arrived at the Holiday Inn in Auburn, it was just past nine. His field producer, Dora Pine, waited for him in the front with her cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Jake pulled the big Cadillac into one of the ten-minute unloading spots and got out, smoothing the wrinkles in his jacket before buttoning up his shirt.