by Marti Green
“I’m going to work from home today,” she told Melanie. “Let’s schedule a conference call for two o’clock and we’ll go over what we have. Let Tommy know, okay? Oh, and if the retainer comes in from Calhoun, call me.”
An hour later she got a call back from Melanie. “It arrived in the morning mail. George Calhoun’s retainer letter. Do you want me to call his trial attorney?”
“He wasn’t just his trial attorney,” Dani reminded her. “He handled the appeals as well. I’ll give him a call from here.”
Telling the former attorney he was being replaced always presented a challenge. Sometimes HIPP got lucky, and there was visible relief that he’d be removed from his place as the last link in the chain of events leading up to a person’s death. More often there was defensiveness, because the first avenue of review on an appeal was ineffective assistance of counsel. The judicial system afforded everyone the right to counsel. With death cases, the Supreme Court had ruled that it must be effective counsel. Sadly, there were too many instances of overworked, inexperienced, incompetent, or just plain unfit attorneys defending the accused on trial for their lives. Dani had read so many trial transcripts where the defense attorney was admonished for alcohol on her breath or prodded awake when it was his turn for questioning that she wasn’t shocked anymore. With George’s trial counsel handling his appeals, the issue of ineffective counsel wouldn’t have been raised.
Dani looked him up on the Martindale Hubbell website, the bible for lawyer résumés. Robert Wilson was a small-town lawyer with one associate and no partners. Most likely, the current associate hadn’t worked there during George’s trial. She copied his phone number, but Jonah interrupted her before she could dial it.
“I’m bored,” he whined. “Why can’t I go to school now? I feel acceptable. I miss my friends. You’re too busy to interplay with me.”
Despite his pouting lips, Jonah looked cherubic, a characteristic common with Williams syndrome children, whose faces were often described as pixie-like. Dani walked to him and placed the back of her hand on his forehead. It felt cool. She was torn. She wanted to get started with Robert Wilson. The search began with him—the recitation of facts from the man initially charged with defending his client. Did he believe George was innocent? Did he think George was crazy? What had his trial strategy been? The foundation for her attempt to save George’s life, if HIPP decided to take his case, would be contained in Wilson’s files. But she knew Jonah needed her now. He’d never been good at entertaining himself; the desire for social interaction was too strong. Now that his fever had broken, he’d become restless. A familiar feeling washed over Dani—that she was balancing on a seesaw ten feet in the air, and the slightest movement in the wrong direction would send her tumbling to the unforgiving concrete below.
Reluctantly, Dani turned away from the telephone. “Okay, Jonah, I’ll play a game with you, but just for an hour. Then I’ve got work to do.” Jonah’s face lit up, and Dani pushed aside the knowledge that she was going to play Monopoly while a man awaited his destiny on death row.
After persuading Jonah to entertain himself with computer games, Dani finally returned to George’s case. She picked up the phone in the home office, which had become a tapestry of all the threads that made up their lives. One wall contained the ceiling-to-floor built-in mahogany bookcases they’d promised themselves they’d have once they owned a house. On the opposite wall was another built-in, this one housing a Murphy bed in the center, for rare overnight guests, with large open shelves on either side. The wall opposite the two windows enclosed a twenty-seven-inch television, modest by the standards of the day, along with various knickknacks they’d collected over the years and held on to as memories of their younger days. There was the large conch shell they had found the week they vacationed at the beach in Montauk, when Jonah was a year and a half and just learning to walk. They were so happy when he finally took those awkward baby steps, the kind where he looked like a drunken sailor ready to topple over at any moment. Dani had laughed when he plopped onto the warm sand next to the shell and held it tight to his little body. “Your first shell, Jonah. You can take it home with you.”
When she put the shell next to her ear, she could still hear the waves of the ocean crashing against the sand and see the smile on Jonah’s face as he carried his prize back to the motel. On another shelf were framed photographs of Jonah at various stages of his life. During the years when Dani had stayed home with him, she dabbled in photography, teaching herself the intricacies of apertures and shutter speed, ambient light and artificial light. She set up a darkroom in the basement and experimented with black-and-white film. Jonah was her subject, her muse, and stored in the recesses of her closet were boxes upon boxes of his image.
Once, Dani had fantasized a family of five children. She was an only child and envied her friends with many brothers and sisters. Their homes were always filled with noise and clutter, unlike the serenity of her own home, but it was a pandemonium that seemed infused with joy. From an early age, she knew she wanted a career, but somehow thought she could combine that with a large family. That changed after Jonah was diagnosed with Williams syndrome. She knew the physical and emotional toll that would go into raising her son. Having more children would inevitably shortchange Jonah or shortchange his sibling, she’d thought at the time. She sometimes wondered whether she’d been right. Looking at Jonah, she rejoiced at his development and knew that the commitment she and Doug had made to him had helped him get to that point. Yet she sometimes missed having a larger family. She’d met many couples with Williams syndrome children who had other children. Not just older siblings, but younger ones as well. They’d managed—even done well. She and Doug had made their decision, though, and it was too late to look back.
Dani shook her head over her procrastination and punched Robert Wilson’s number into the phone. After the third ring, a pleasant-sounding female voice answered. “Law office of Robert Wilson. Marion Boland speaking. How may I help you?”
Her formality, especially in a small-town law office, caught Dani by surprise, but she quickly explained that she represented George Calhoun and asked to speak to her boss.
“I’ve been expecting your call,” were the first words she heard when Wilson answered. He had a deep voice, with a gruffness that bespoke annoyance at the interruption of his work.
“Good. I hope that means George told you he’d contacted HIPP.”
“Not exactly, but I knew he felt desperate, and when I told him I couldn’t do anything more, I figured he’d go fishing for one of you guys.” His tone suggested disdain, though Dani didn’t know whether it was for Innocence Projects in general or specifically for their mutual client.
“George signed a retainer letter for our services, and with the execution coming up so quickly, I’d like to get a copy of your files as soon as possible,” she said. “Of course, I’ll fax you the retainer for your records.”
“Sure, sure. You go ahead and spin your wheels. I’ll have my secretary overnight them. But you’re wasting your time.”
“Why? Because you believe he’s guilty, or because you don’t think we’ll be able to stop the execution?”
“Oh, he’s guilty, all right. No doubt about that. But I meant the legal stuff. I’ve done all the appeals, even tried twice to get the Supreme Court to hear the case. I’ve managed to drag it out this long, but there are no more buttons to push. I’ve wasted plenty of time on him, believe me, and I sure wasn’t getting rich off it. Barely covered my expenses. You know how it is.”
She did know. Wilson might be right—there might no longer be any basis for appeal—but Dani’s gut told her he hadn’t pushed himself too hard on this case. If Wilson believed his client was guilty, she suspected, he’d taken whatever money Calhoun had but hadn’t work himself into a sweat on his behalf.
“Tell me, Mr. Wilson—”
“Oh, call me Bob. We’re inform
al here.”
“Okay, Bob. I’ve only read the facts from the appellate decisions. I’m still raw on this. What evidence did the prosecution have besides the wife’s confession?”
“Besides the confession?” he exploded. “What goddamn else did they need? Neither one ever gave me an explanation for what happened to their daughter. You think a four-year-old just picks herself up and walks away?”
“Is it possible she died in her sleep? Maybe from sudden infant death syndrome? And they panicked, afraid they’d be blamed, and buried her in their yard?”
“Listen, sweetheart, when a jury comes back and hands you a death sentence, you don’t clam up because you’re afraid you’ll be blamed for something you didn’t do. You’re already blamed for it. It’s been over nineteen years and still not one blessed word about where his daughter disappeared to. Just, ‘That girl wasn’t my daughter,’ over and over again. The guy’s screwy.”
Dani’s ears pricked up. “Do you think he’s disturbed? Does he ever appear disoriented or delusional to you?”
“He’s crazy like a fox—you know, just about this dead girl. On everything else he’s as sane as I am.” Bob laughed. “Well, who knows how sane I am? I stuck with this crazy case long after I should have.”
After she hung up, Dani thought to herself that Wilson was right. He had stuck with the case longer than he should have. A convicted murderer claiming innocence should have had a lawyer who believed in him. She didn’t know yet whether she was that lawyer. That decision would have to wait until she got the records and met Calhoun.
CHAPTER
4
Bob Wilson kept his word. The next day piles of boxes were stacked in a corner of HIPP’s conference room, all with the return address “Law Firm of Robert Wilson, Esq.”
“You take the appeals, I’ll take the trial transcript and exhibits,” Dani said to Melanie. It would take days to go through everything thoroughly, and they’d both be working well into the night and over the weekend. But Dani could do the work from home, accessible to Jonah, who felt well enough to go back to school. “As you go through the papers, see if you can find anything on these questions: Was an autopsy performed on the murdered child? Did they match the child’s DNA to the parents? They found the body in Indiana; the Calhouns lived in Pennsylvania. Did anyone else recognize them along the way?”
“I assume you want me to chart out the issues already appealed and summarize the decisions?” Melanie asked.
“Yes, and also if there were any dissenting opinions, summarize those separately.”
“Sure. How quickly do you need it?”
“Yesterday would be good.”
“And six more months on the clock would be nice too.”
They both felt the pressure of what lay ahead. Sitting on the floor, they each attacked a box, looking for the documents they needed. Dani found the transcripts in the second box she opened. They were the record of everything said during trial: every question, every answer, every comment, even the arguments made at the bench outside the jurors’ earshot. Usually, she skimmed through the transcripts first, getting the broad picture quickly, and then started again from the beginning, painstakingly searching for appealable errors. After Melanie collected the appellate briefs and left, Dani settled back into her chair and began her perusal.
The words on the pages became a movie reel in her mind and she became an observer, no longer in her office, but sitting in the courtroom, watching the trial unfold. She visualized the prosecutor as a tall man, his bearing erect, dressed in his finest navy striped suit. She saw him walk to the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are going to hear about a horrific crime. You are going to see shocking pictures, images that no person should ever be asked to view. But you are here today because someone killed an innocent child, a four-year-old girl.
“Any murder is hateful, and any murder of a child is abominable. But for you to understand the full extent of how monstrous this act of murder was, you will need to see pictures of her burned body, found after she was callously buried in a forest. And when you see those pictures you will understand why the perpetrator must be found guilty and must be punished with death.
“I know how difficult it will be for you to sit through this trial and hear the testimony about this little girl’s death, but it will be easy for you to decide who committed this atrocity. It was the defendant, sitting over there in that chair. And the little girl he brutally murdered was his own daughter.
“How will you know it was that man who committed the crime? Because his own wife will tell you what happened. You will hear her say that she watched her husband kill their daughter, set her on fire, and then bury her in the forest. Ladies and gentlemen, when you go back to your room to deliberate after you’ve heard all the evidence, you will know beyond any doubt whatsoever that George Calhoun deserves to die.”
Dani skimmed through Bob Wilson’s opening statement. He made some valid points about the lack of forensic evidence, but in the movie running through her mind, she saw the jurors’ eyes glaze over.
She read quickly through the testimony in the prosecutor’s case. The most damning evidence was Mrs. Calhoun’s confession. As Dani read the transcript, she envisioned the jurors listening with rapt attention as Sallie said, “My husband beat our daughter unconscious. He poured gasoline over her body and set her afire. I watched him do it and I did nothing. I didn’t stop him. He wrapped her body in a blanket and we drove to Indiana. I was with him in the car. He pulled off the road when we came to a forest. I stayed in the car while he carried our daughter into the woods. He came back without her and we drove away.”
“Why did George do this to your daughter?” the prosecutor asked.
“She had the devil inside her. George said we had to do this to get the devil out.”
Bob Wilson limited his cross of Sallie to attacking her credibility. “Mrs. Calhoun, during the two years between your husband supposedly doing this to your daughter and the police knocking on your door, did you ever notify the authorities?”
“No.”
“Did you ever tell any friend or relative what your husband had done?”
“No.”
“And isn’t it a fact that you’ve been given a sentence of life imprisonment instead of facing the death penalty in exchange for your testimony?”
“They just told me to tell the truth and that’s what I did.”
After reading Sallie’s testimony, Dani needed a break. Her whole body felt dirty, as if even considering taking on George’s case had blackened her. She poured a cup of coffee and headed to Bruce’s office.
“Have a moment?” she asked as she walked in and made herself comfortable in the chair opposite his desk. It was just as threadbare as the one in her office.
Bruce looked up and smiled. “Do I have a choice?”
“I’m not feeling so good about this case.”
“Okay. Don’t take it then.”
Just like Bruce. Always pushing his staff to make decisions. Most of the time she liked that. Today she wasn’t so sure. “I’m not finished reviewing the transcript, but already it gives me the willies.”
Bruce fixed his eyes on hers. “You shouldn’t take the case if you think the guy is guilty, no matter how many mistakes were made at trial. But if those mistakes got in the way of the truth, he deserves to be heard. Your personal feelings about the nature of the crime are irrelevant. Only the truth matters. And it’s your job to find the truth. So, have you read enough to know what the truth is?”
“No, I haven’t even gotten to the defendant’s case.”
“Well, then two things might happen. The defendant’s attorney could have done a bang-up job and convinced you doubt existed about his guilt or left you certain after hearing both sides he was guilty, or—”
She didn’t let him finish. “Or he did a lousy job and I need to conduct
my own investigation, right?”
“You got it, girl.”
She thanked Bruce and went back to her office to finish reading the transcript. After Sallie’s testimony, the prosecutor entered into evidence photographs of the burned and battered body of the murdered child, despite objections about their inflammatory nature. Side by side with one gruesome photo was one of Angelina Calhoun, a pretty toddler with blond hair framing her face. The contrast was designed to enrage the jury, as it no doubt did.
The prosecution then ended its case, and the judge sent the jurors home for the day, leaving them with the sickening images of the corpse to linger in their thoughts overnight.
Wilson began his defense the next day with George Calhoun’s testimony. Once again, Dani’s mind turned the words on the page into a movie of the trial. She saw George take the stand, saw him swear to tell the truth. Wilson took him through the preliminary testimony: where he lived, where he worked, how far he’d gone in school—meaningless questions to get him comfortable with testifying. Then, “Mr. Calhoun, did you murder your daughter?”
“No sir, I did not. I loved my Angelina more than anything else in the world. I would never hurt her.”
“Then how did that little girl get in that grave?”
“I don’t know. She’s not my daughter.”
“Your wife says she is.”
“My wife’s not thinking right.”
“No further questions,” Wilson said as he turned and walked back to the defense table.
The prosecutor easily discredited George on the stand.
“Where is your daughter?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ever report her missing?”