Wrongful Conviction

by Rachel Sinclair

  I was shaking, I was so enraged.

  I looked around, and I saw Aisha was in the courtroom. She, like Jamel, was crying.

  "I'm so sorry, Jamel, I wanted to be here for your hearing,” Aisha was saying. “I wanted to be here, but I had to work late. Somebody called in, so I wasn't able to take off the afternoon. What did I miss?”

  "Mama, mama I'm free to go. The judge, he reversed my conviction. I'm going to be coming home, mama.”

  I turned around and took one look at Matthew's face, and I knew that he was going to be refiling the case immediately. He was just that kind of a jackass. He didn't care. All he knew was that his superiors were probably telling him that he better be pressing a case against somebody, and he obviously could not press the case against the person who did it. So he was going to have to keep coming after Jamel.

  "This is true, Christian?" Aisha was asking. “Is my son really free to go?”

  “Yes. That's true. However, I hate to say this, but your celebration might be short-lived. The prosecutor has already indicated that he wants to go ahead and re-file the case. The appellate judge in this case, he said that he did not understand why the case was filed in the first place. Yet, the prosecutor, Matthew Howard, he's determined that he's going to get to Jamel again. So, I just wanted to warn you. You can go home and celebrate. Do what you can, enjoy your time together, because I would not be surprised if Jamel gets arrested again sometime within the next week.”

  "I don't understand. I didn't think you could be tried twice for the same thing,” Aisha said, confused.

  "Double jeopardy does not apply in a situation like this. Double jeopardy would only apply if he was found not guilty by a jury. He was not found not guilty - he was found guilty. All the judge here did was reverse the trial court, and vacated your son’s conviction. He did not remand it, which means that he did not order that the case be retried. However, even if he reversed it, it does not mean that the prosecutor is going to give up. He can refile the charges. And he's going to. So, this victory will probably be short-lived.”

  Aisha nodded her head. “I understand. But, like you say, for now, we’re going to celebrate. Jamel, I got a little bit of money, let's go to Red Lobster. Your favorite place.”

  Jamel's entire face lit up. "Red Lobster? Are you sure you can afford that, mama?”

  "I've been working a lot of overtime lately, so, yes, I can afford it. Anyhow, don't you worry about that. You're my baby, and you're out of prison. You might be out of prison just for a little while, hopefully not, but maybe. But, as long as you’re free, you and I are going to make the most of it."

  Jamel went over to her, and hugged her, and she hugged him back. She squeezed him hard, tears flowing down her face. Then she turned to me. "I don’t know how to thank you. You took this case for free. I told you when you came to my place that I thought that God sent you to my life. Angels brought you down. And I feel that way. I feel that it was divine intervention that you would come to us at this time. And I can't help but think that the same divine intervention is going to make sure that my Jamel stays out of prison.”

  "Mr. Davis," Jamel said to me. "Would you like to come to dinner with us tonight?”

  I wondered if Aisha had enough money to treat me. And I knew that she was going to want to, obviously, because I took her son’s case. I knew that Red Lobster was not exactly expensive, but it was not exactly cheap, either. The last thing I wanted to do was to take her last dime, because she was too proud to not treat me if I went to dinner with them.

  “Yes, please, I should've asked you,” Aisha said eagerly. "It's the least I can do.”

  I was going to have to find an excuse not to go. "I'd love to, but I have plans this evening. You guys have fun. And I'll be in touch, when I find out what's going to happen next.”

  "Oh, if you say so. I would love for you to come, though. Thank you again. I just don't know what I can do to thank you.”

  “Please. I'm doing it for selfish reasons. I’m doing it because it gives me a good feeling to help somebody who really needs justice. I read the case online, just like everybody else did, and I knew that he had been done a great injustice. It just makes me feel good to make sure that I did my part to make sure the injustice did not stand.”

  She grasped my hand, and clutched it for a second. I could see in her eyes deep gratitude, and Jamel's as well.

  And then they were gone.

  And I hoped, and prayed, that this would be the last time I would see Jamel. That would mean that Jamel went on with his life, without getting charged again.

  But I knew that that was unlikely to happen. I knew it just by looking at that smug Matthew Howard's face.

  I was just going to have to brace myself for the inevitable.

  Chapter 13

  Matthew Howard

  Matthew Howard sat in his office, knowing what he had to do. It wasn't that he enjoyed putting an innocent man through the wringer. No, it wasn't that. It was that he understood one thing – he was going to have to button up the case of the rape of Felicity McDaniel, and he was going to have to do it without implicating the person who really was responsible. And, while he didn’t enjoy putting Jamel into jail again, which was where Jamel was going to go once he refiled the case, because he knew that Jamel did not have money for bail, he also did not mind putting him back behind bars. Jamel was a street punk, a thug, and they were all alike, anyhow. Not one of the dark-skinned guys that he prosecuted from the streets were innocent, not really. Yeah, maybe some of them were innocent of the crime that he charged them with, but he knew that every one of them was guilty of something else, something that they were not caught for. He had no doubt that Jamel was the same. He knew the type - the gang bangers, the drug dealers, the people who preyed on children, getting them hooked on drugs. They were all packing, ready to use their guns on each other at any moment. There was a part of him that just wanted them to go ahead and finish the job on each other, not try to prosecute people who were caught with illegal weapons, or dealing drugs, or just possessing drugs. If he didn't do his job, putting those people into jail and prison, they could just die off by killing each other. And the world would be a better place.

  So no, he did not feel a tinge of guilt about refiling the case against Jamel. After all, if he did not put Jamel away for this, it would only be a matter of time before he would be putting him away for something. Might as well just save time, and get the real perpetrator off the hook at the same time. Everybody wins.

  He got a phone call. It was his boss. His superior. He was going to have to answer for the fact that Jamel was currently out and free as a bird. He was going to get yelled at, and he knew it. He was just going to have to suck it up.

  "I need to see you in my office, right now.”

  His boss, Michael Christie, did not sound happy in the least. Of course he didn’t. Matthew lost the case. It was an imperative that he not lose the case, but, at the same time, he kind of knew going in that he was a dead man walking. But what did they expect? They were the ones who made sure that the case was assigned to a drunk. They were gambling that once Jamel went down, he was going to stay there, because nobody would bother to take his case. They certainly were not banking on some do-gooder deciding that he was going to take Jamel's case for free. Christian Davis spoiled everybody's plans, and he was going to have to pay for it. Later. For now, Matthew was just going to have to go down to get his ass chewed. As much as he hated it, he knew that it was coming, so he might as well just face the music. Pay the piper. Get it over and done.

  He reluctantly went down to Michael's office. He felt like a dog that was about to be punished. He felt like a prisoner who was about to be taken to the execution.

  "I hear you lost in court yesterday," Michael said. "What the hell happened?”

  "What do you think happened? Listen, what happened yesterday was because we were far too cute by half. What did you think was going to happen when we got a guy like Jim Stack defending Jamel? Did
you think that a writ of habeas corpus was not going to be given when a guy like Jim was defending Jamel? Did you actually think that a case like that would not be reversed?”

  "I know what you're saying, but we were supposed to have taken care of Christian before the hearing. Why didn’t that happen?”

  Matthew knew what Michael was saying, and he also knew that what Michael wanted was not going to happen. At least it was not going to happen on Matthew's watch.

  “Listen, I did what I could. I sent Felicity over to talk to him, and it didn't do any good. Felicity told him about the stakes, and he still went ahead.”

  "Well, what are we going to do now?”

  "I'm going to go ahead and refile it, of course.”

  Michael shook his head. "And then what? We have a flimsy case, at best, and we had the best chance possible when we had that nigger in jail. We were home free, and you fucked it up. Now, I want to know what you're going to do about the next step. I mean, Jamel is going to get a new trial, obviously. We can't necessarily count on a wastoid like Jim Stack taking his case. In fact, we can't count on that at all. Probably that Christian, that damn do-gooder social justice warrior Christian, he'll probably be on the case again. He'll do all the investigation that Jim didn't do. He'll do all the cross-examination that Jim didn't do. He will make sure that there are people of color on the jury. And, he will put on an active defense. He will do everything that Jim was supposed to have done if he was a halfway decent attorney, and he's going to win the case. You’re just going to have to figure out some way to get rid of Christian, once and for all.”

  "Listen, I hate to tell you this, but Jamel is going to be eligible for another public defender, if I refile the case. So, even if Christian does not take the case, he's going to get somebody else to take it. I mean, we can't force that office to hire another loser like Jim Stack, can we?”

  "We didn't force nobody. We simply threatened to expose the dirty little secrets of the lead public defender, and he saw the light in hiring that guy. That's all we did. There was no forcing involved. And I don't want to hear you say that there was.”

  Matthew supposed that that was true, but it was a distinction without a difference. The lead public defender, Robert Donahue, was having an affair, and his wife was very wealthy. Michael found out that Robert had a very strict no-adultery clause in the prenuptial agreement that he signed with his millionaire heiress wife, Marissa, and if Marissa ever got ahold of the pictures that Michael’s private investigator took of Robert and the man he was having an affair with, he was going to be divorced and cut off without a penny. Yes, he was having an affair with a man. That was another dirty secret that he was dying to keep hidden from his wife, and from everybody else.

  Robert, despite the fact that he was doing God's work, or, that's what he would tell everybody, for not a ton of money, really did have some pretty champagne tastes with his beer bottle pocket. He really enjoyed going out on Marissa’s yacht, and he could not do without the long vacations taken at her sun-soaked beach house in Crete. He was surprised about how much he had come to rely on his wife's money, so, when it was threatened that he was going to be cut off, he did whatever he could to make sure that did not happen. And that included hiring Jim Stack, a man that nobody else would touch. He hired him mainly to try this particular case, but he also knew that Jim would come in handy in other cases, where things were as delicate as they were with this one. He knew that Jamel was a fall guy, and he knew that there would be other fall guys in the future. The monster who raped Felicity McDaniel slipped up when he raped her, because usually he raped people who did not matter in society, and Robert knew that he would slip up again in the future. That would mean other fall guys for his crimes. That would mean other defense attorneys who were going to have to completely sleepwalk through cases. That was the reason why he wanted Jim on the staff, so he was very disappointed when Jim decided to go ahead and quit and go into private practice. Jim was very useful to him. He was just going to have to find someone else like him. Some other stooge who lived in a bottle, and who could be counted on to blow off any case that he got.

  "I know you don't want to use the term force, when we talk about the public defender's office hiring Jim Stack, but that's really what it was,” Matthew told his boss, stating the brutally obvious.

  Michael drummed his fingers on the desk. "Okay, here's what we’re going to do. We are going to take care of Christian, one way or another. He cannot be the trial attorney for Jamel. Jamel has to stay in prison. And you know why.”

  Of course Matthew knew why. They had no other suspects for the case, and, once the case went cold, the police were going to start investigating again, to try to find out who really did it, and then their investigation was going to probably lead them to the real culprit.

  And that certainly could not happen.

  Chapter 14

  Christian

  That night, after Jamel was freed, I went back to my home in San Diego and went for my nightly run along the Embarcadero. When I was home, I took the same route, every single day, because I'd mapped it out on my GPS, and I knew that it was exactly 6 miles. I would start out on the Embarcadero, wind my way up through Little Italy, and on up through Baker's Hill, and would end up in the Hillcrest area, before running back. It was something I did all the time to clear my head, and also because I really loved the old neighborhoods there were between my condo and the Hillcrest area. Some of the houses in the Baker’s Hill area were built around the turn-of-the-century, and I always tried to imagine what they looked like back then, and what the area itself looked like. San Diego was a fairly new city, when you compared it to some of the cities in the Midwest and back East, so there weren't a lot of historical neighborhoods, but Baker’s Hill was one of them.

  As I ran, I thought about what had happened that day. I was excited, because Jamel’s case turned out better than I could have ever dreamed, but at the same time, I was very apprehensive. There was something that was nagging at me. It wasn't just the fact that I knew for a fact that Jamel was still imperiled. It was something else. It was the words that Felicity said to me when she came to my office. The warning. What did she mean?

  I knew what she meant. I didn't really want to look at it, but I knew what she meant. She meant that if I pursued Jamel's case, I was going to be putting myself into danger. And, if there was somebody, or something, that I really cared about, like children, I would've played along. If I had kids, and they were threatened, I would've done what Felicity had asked. But, it was only my own self that was being threatened. I kind of felt that I could take care of myself. I was a grown-ass man. Besides, nobody had ever truly threatened me before. I mean, I had had death threats before, just like most defense attorneys do sooner or later. Kooks were legion, and so were trolls. I couldn't get scared every time a troll threatened me, otherwise I could never leave the house.

  I ran up the sidewalk and passed the enormous three-story homes that were built with brick, with their wraparound porches and turrets, and then proceeded up the hill towards Hillcrest. Hillcrest was known as the gay area of town, where the annual pride parade snaked, with its wide array of drag queens with three-foot tall wigs, along with an endless supply of people trying to sell insurance behind a banner. I used to go to the parades, just because I found them entertaining, but after a little while, they got pretty boring. There were only so many boring banners with boring people marching that one could watch without the entire thing becoming extremely uninteresting. The drag queen floats, unfortunately, were few and far between, so I just stopped going to the parade. But I still enjoyed the Hillcrest area, mainly because some of the best restaurants in town were in this area, along with a Whole Foods, one of only two in San Diego County. I actually really liked Whole Foods, in spite of the inflated prices on things, because nobody could beat their selection of organic groceries. Sometimes when I made my run up to Hillcrest, I would carry a backpack with me, and haul some grass-fed steaks and wild-caught King Sa
lmon home.

  I ran up the street, passing by a large park that had a building in the middle that was advertising bridge games, as the sun was going down. From the corner of my eye, I saw that there was a guy who was coming up on my right, and he was running very fast. I got further to the left of the sidewalk to let him pass, thinking how rude it was that he was passing me on the right, instead of on the left, when I tripped and fell on the sidewalk.

  I felt a metal object bash against the back of my head.

  And that's the last thing I remembered.

  Chapter 15

  I woke up in the hospital, and I saw that I was hooked up to a machine. I had no idea how it was I got there, or why I was there. It seemed that I had been going on my usual run, and then – what happened?

  I looked to my left, and saw that Avery was sleeping in a chair. "You're awake!” she said excitedly. "Let me go get the doctor.”

  What was she talking about? Why was she so excited about my being awake?