Unintended Consequences (4 page)

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 informal 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.

C
HAPTER

4

B
ob 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?”

“No.”

“Did you ever tell anyone she was missing?”

“No.”

“Did you make any effort to find her?”

“No.”

“Is your daughter alive?”

The transcript noted silence by the defendant.

“I’ll ask you again: Is your daughter alive?”

More silence until the judge said, “Mr. Calhoun, you must answer the question.”

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. Calhoun, are you asking us to believe that your four-year-old daughter whom you love more than anything in the world simply disappeared, and you did nothing about it? And you don’t even know if she’s dead or alive?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” he answered, assuring his conviction by a jury of his peers.

The first reading confirmed Dani’s suspicion about Bob Wilson. His lackluster defense during the trial bespoke an attorney who foresaw an inevitable guilty verdict and expended little effort to alter that outcome. Over and over he failed to attack the prosecutor’s witnesses, despite glaring holes in their evidence, or raise objections to improper questions. But even more noteworthy was the absence of any real defense. Aside from a handful of character witnesses, the only testimony refuting the charge was Calhoun’s. Although George had sworn he hadn’t murdered his daughter and that the child found in the woods was not his own, the defense presented no forensic evidence to back up his claim. How could that be? The files contained photographs of the murdered girl, her features burned beyond recognition. Surely, given George’s insistence that the dead child wasn’t his daughter, DNA testing would have been ordered, if not by the prosecution, then by defense counsel. Dani stopped herself. Seventeen years ago, DNA testing was not routinely done.

Bob Wilson should have done more to discredit Sallie’s confession. His cross-examination of her was shockingly inadequate. Perhaps he thought she was a more sympathetic witness than her husband and that he would do more damage than good if he questioned her aggressively. He was wrong. Her testimony sealed George’s fate. If Wilson had cross-examined her more thoroughly, he might have been able to show inconsistencies in her story, create doubt in the jurors’ minds. Sallie mentioned the devil in her testimony for the prosecution. Were she and George devoutly religious? Had they ever confided to their pastor their concerns about their daughter? Dani didn’t know the answers because Wilson hadn’t asked those questions. Letting the jury hear Sallie’s testimony without his having made any effort to contradict her seemed a colossal error by Calhoun’s attorney.