Finney extended her hand. "I'm Laura Finney," she said. "I represent Rennell Price."
Sims stared at her hand as though the gesture were Martian. When she took it, her grasp was tentative and fleeting. "Rennell's on death row," Finney continued. "You probably know that."
Sims hesitated. "What you want with me?"
The query was delivered in a muted undertone, echoing the fright Finney felt just from being there. "According to the police files," she explained, "you were a friend of Eddie Fleet's. I wanted to talk with you about him, maybe to Mr. Fleet himself."
What happened next was, to Finney, deeply disturbing: Betty Sims stiffened, looking back over her shoulder, as the girl at her side cast a silent, pleading look upward—first at Sims, then at Laura Finney. In a near whisper, Sims said, "We got nothin' to say."
Finney steeled herself to persist. "Is Eddie here?"
The girl's lips parted, as though to speak. Then Sims jerked her back and, with stricken eyes, closed the door in Finney's face.
* * *
Listening, Terri felt a frisson, the shadow of her own childhood passing through her mind. Softly, she asked Finney, "What did you make of it?"
Finney's expression was a curious mix of rueful and resigned. "That Fleet was there—or some guy—and whoever it was beat her. But I never set eyes on Eddie Fleet." Finney's gaze expanded to take in Carlo, sitting beside Terri with a notebook in his hand. "Whatever Fleet's peculiarities, we never found a reason to challenge Mauriani's case—Lewis, Fleet, and the forensics. The absence of DNA evidence was the clincher."
Though she had several disturbing thoughts of her own, Terri did not question this. "About the little girl with Sims," she asked. "Do you know who she was?"
"Her niece, the neighbors said—actually her cousin's daughter by some guy named Demetrius, who was serving life for murder. His name stuck in my mind."
Cordelia and Demetrius, Terri remembered from Monk's narrative, almost like Shakespeare. It was not hard to imagine the chain of events, beginning with Monk's and Larry Minnehan's appearance in her living room, that had delivered this child to Betty Sims and whatever fate they both might suffer. But she kept this melancholy reflection to herself and turned to another subject. "What about James's failure to seek a change of venue? How did that pan out?"
"We interviewed whatever jurors we could find. They said what you'd expect—that they decided on the evidence, not on pretrial publicity. More than plausible given the trial transcript." Finney paused to gather her thoughts. "In the end, we fell back on mitigation—the absence of any prior record of violence by Rennell, or of his involvement in any sex crimes. Plus the patent misery of his childhood."
Carlo looked up from his notes. "What about that in particular?"
"The misery part was obvious. Payton and Rennell saw their mother stab their father to death, and I guess it took him a while to die. Before that, the police records make pretty clear, Dad beat Mom—at least from time to time. Some of the neighbors thought he hit the brothers as well. They tended to stay away from him—they thought he was unpredictable, or maybe a little crazy."
"What did Rennell say about him?" Terri inquired.
"Not a lot—just that 'sometimes he took a belt to us.' Even that was like pulling teeth." Finney's voice held the edge of frustration. "See Rennell once, and you've pretty well experienced his full emotional range—from sullen to merely uncommunicative, with minor variations in between."
"How often did you see him?"
"Two or three times a year. There wasn't a lot to tell him, and he sure didn't have a lot to say to us, on any subject. Let alone the tribulations of childhood."
Two or three times a year, Terri thought, was not enough to gain any trust Rennell Price might have to offer. "Still," she said, "he did have an abusive home. How did you frame the argument?"
"The theory, more or less, was that trauma, combined with drug use, diminished his capacity to make moral judgments." Finney adjusted her glasses at the bridge. "The principal proponent of that theory was the state public defender, on behalf of Payton. We more or less piggybacked on that for Rennell—given the lack of investigative money, there was no point in duplicating their work."
At this, Carlo caught Terri's eye: she could imagine him thinking, as she did, that Kenyon and Walker, like Yancey James, had never tried to separate Rennell's defense from that of his older brother. "Did you uncover any evidence that James had looked into Rennell's background? Or, for that matter, Payton's?"
"None. As near as we could tell, James's assertion to Judge Rotelli that he offered no mitigation evidence for tactical reasons—the insinuation being that background evidence would have hurt both brothers—was a cover-up for laziness. In fact, we argued in our habeas papers that there was no indication whatsoever that he'd done any work on behalf of Rennell, whether in the guilt or in the mitigation phase." Finney paused to grimace. "As with our direct appeal," she continued, "the California Supreme Court made short work of that without a hearing—a one-page order, the gist of which was that Rennell had knowingly waived any conflict arising from James's joint representation of Payton and him. And that even if James should have offered evidence of Rennell's first eighteen years of life, nothing we offered outweighed the heinous nature of Thuy Sen's death. As you can guess, that pretty much doomed our federal habeas petition."
At this, Terri turned to Carlo. "Since 1996," she explained, "the federal habeas corpus procedure is governed by a nasty piece of legislation called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, inspired by the Oklahoma City bombing. Its purpose is to make it as hard as possible to overturn a state court denial of a habeas corpus petition. And the federal district judge in Rennell's case, Gardner Bond, pretty much views the death penalty as a form of population control."
This first mention of Judge Bond, Terri saw, ignited in Finney a spark of indignation. "We asked Bond for an evidentiary hearing," she told Carlo. "He denied it. The Ninth Circuit affirmed Bond without a hearing, and the U.S. Supreme Court turned down our petition. It was like Rennell was doomed from the time that Grandma hired Yancey James."
Which, Terri believed, was a fair summary of the truth, defective only in Laura Finney's failure to assign Kenyon and Walker its portion of responsibility. "I respect you for taking this on," Finney continued in a tone which combined rationalization with commiseration. "I wish I could see any promise in what you're doing. But the State of California wants to execute this man, and I don't see any way of stopping it."
As though hearing something in her mother's voice, the little girl came to Finney's side, silently tugging at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Evenly, Terri asked, "In the end, how did you feel about Rennell?"
Finney paused to consider this. "Except for his one mantra," she said with some reluctance, "there was no sign that he gave a damn about Thuy Sen, or us, or anyone but maybe Payton. Almost like he was already dead."
Terri thanked Finney for her time and left with Carlo.
THREE
CHRISTOPHER PAGET SAT WITH HIS WIFE AND SON. "HOW WAS your time at Kenyon and Walker?" he asked.
It was late afternoon of the following day, and a slanting sunlight grazed the waters of the bay, uncommonly serene. While Terri and Carlo had reviewed the files of Kenyon and Walker, Chris had amused Elena and Kit by taking them sailing. Now the family gathered on Chris's sailboat moored along the Marina District—Elena sprawled on her stomach reading a fashion magazine, Kit constructing an intricate fortress from Legos, and the three adults gathered around an improvised picnic. Carlo glanced at his stepmother. "According to Terri," he answered with some amusement, " 'just good enough to lose.' "
Turning to Terri, Chris raised his eyebrows. "They should stick to representing Merrill Lynch," she told him. "Assigning them Rennell's appeal was like putting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on his death warrant."
"How so?"
"Because they know enough law to raise all the issues. And next to nothing a
bout digging into a murder, or probing the lives of a dysfunctional black family in a subculture like the Bayview." Terri spread cheese on a cracker, her first nourishment since breakfast. "Laura Finney was right about this much—they made our job on a second petition as uphill as the evil geniuses who drafted AEDPA intended."
To his father, Carlo saw, this was all the explanation required: the acronym AEDPA—pronounced "edpa"—seemed to carry a totemic power. "Walk me through this," Carlo requested. "Terri mentioned it yesterday, but AEDPA's a new concept to me."
"AEDPA," his father answered promptly, "exists to keep folks like Rennell Price from delaying their own deaths. Let alone preventing them.
"The statute has two principal aims: to make state court impositions of the death penalty—no matter how biased or defective—nearly impossible to challenge; and to ensure that after the first habeas petition is ruled on, a second petition—even one based on new evidence of innocence—has almost no chance of staving off an execution."
"All Rennell's got left," Terri interjected, "is a second petition—under AEDPA the dregs of habeas corpus, bristling with restrictions." Preparing another cracker, she continued, "A claim presented in a first petition, however badly, is barred in a second—no matter how skimpy Kenyon and Walker's underlying inquiry. Habeas lawyers can be as lousy as they care to be."
At the corner of Carlo's vision, a seagull was creeping closer along the bow, perhaps preparing to snatch Terri's cracker in his bill. "Mind shooing him off?" he asked Kit. With far too much good cheer, Kit attempted a roar. But only when he half-rose, imitating a scarecrow, did the bird retreat.
"Impressive," Carlo assured his half brother and turned back to Terri. "Go on."
"Second, if Rennell is making an argument that the law has changed—for example, that we no longer execute the retarded—it can be based only on a Supreme Court ruling, and then only if the Court expressly held that it should apply to inmates who've already filed a habeas corpus petition. Otherwise, it's too late—the state can execute you, even if everyone who comes after you in a similar position would be saved—"
"Timing," Chris interjected dryly, "is truly all."
With this, both Terri and Chris fell silent, allowing Carlo to absorb what he had heard. He saw Terri's attention shift to Elena, still lying alone on the bow of the boat. It was a source of real guilt, he knew, that the unrelenting demands of an eleventh-hour death penalty petition all but deprived Elena of a mother. And the facts of this case, should Elena ever learn of them, surely deepened Terri's apprehension. A long moment later, Terri suspended her contemplation of Elena, turning back to Carlo. "Even as to innocence," she told him in a softer tone, "any new evidence must be so 'clear and convincing' that no reasonable jury would have convicted Rennell of murder. 'Reasonable doubt' is out the window—under AEDPA, the presumption of innocence has become a presumption of guilt."
"I had no idea the law of habeas corpus was that bad."
"No one does, except the lawyers who do this work. For the most part, the rest of America sits there, secure in our boundless fairness, believing that we coddle the condemned." Terri sipped from a can of cranberry juice. "We could find compelling evidence that Rennell is innocent," she continued, "and still end up witnessing his execution. Simply because some of the evidence was raised before, however badly. Or could have been raised before. Or because the trial was technically a fair one, even if the verdict was wrong. Or because the possibility of innocence is only fifty-fifty. Or maybe"—Terri picked up a cracker—"just because a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals is in a crummy mood and won't give us leave to file a second petition under AEDPA. In which case we won't have to bother with all those other problems."
Chris and Carlo fell briefly silent. "How's Elena doing?" Chris asked.
"All right," Terri answered tiredly and then amended, "Not quite all right—there're some problems with her girlfriends. Thirteen's hard, even if you're not her."
"Want me to take her out for Mexican food?" Carlo asked. "We haven't done that in a while. And I've got street cred—she doesn't have to take it on faith that I used to be a teenager."
For a moment, Terri smiled, and her body, slumping slightly, seemed to relax. "That would be great," she told him. "Even if you're ducking work. You can meet us later."
"Who's 'us'?"
"Me. An experienced investigator, Johnny Moore. A Ph.D. in anthropology, Tammy Mattox—she's a mitigation specialist, and her job is putting together an entire social history of Rennell Price and his family. A psychiatric expert, Dr. Anthony Lane. All working around the clock until and unless, God forbid, the clock runs out."
Rising from his Lego fort, Kit crawled into his father's lap, his bare legs dangling above the deck. "I'm cold," he said.
Kissing the crown of Kit's head, Chris took off his windbreaker and draped it over the boy's shoulders. "We'll be going soon," Chris promised.
Such moments, Carlo reflected, summoned his earliest memories of his father. Except that Kit, his brother, looked so like Teresa Peralta. "Death cases are painful," she told Carlo. "I've learned to redefine my notions of success. So should you—because Rennell Price is very likely to die. It helps to believe two things. First, that your client is on death row because of what life dealt him, and he deserves to have that story told. The Attorney General's aim is to ensure that story is never told—to the judge, or to the public. Your job is to make sure he fails."
"What's the second thing?"
"That your client deserves each day of life that you can give him. No matter what he's done, or who he seems to be."
Carlo glanced toward Elena, still reading: noting her isolation, he wondered if she somehow knew about the nature of the case and, if so, how she felt about Rennell's lawyers—her own family. Which, once again, caused him to ponder how Terri would deal with Elena while representing Rennell Price, and with what Carlo knew to be Terri's ineradicable guilt. "Doesn't seem like Rennell can help us much," he said at length.
Terri shook her head. "Neither Yancey James nor Laura Finney tried to build a relationship with him. They just took it as a given that Rennell was sullen and uncooperative, a kind of sociopath. It never seems to have occurred to them that maybe he was frightened, or confused, or just plain couldn't help them because he really doesn't know what's going on. And never did."
"That's our biggest hope," Chris opined. "Proving that Rennell's retarded. It means that he could be manipulated and confused by the police, unable to assist his own defense, unable to knowingly waive James's conflict or comprehend the trial, and prone to look unfeeling to a jury when he didn't know what was happening all around him."
Glancing at Elena, Terri stood, ready to leave—perhaps, Carlo guessed, to sublimate through action some thought too painful to express. "More than that," she told both men, "it's the gateway to explaining his entire life, and our excuse for trying to jam in all the new evidence we can find." Looking down at Carlo, she finished, "If Rennell's still alive in forty-eight days, it'll be because we succeeded. So take Elena to dinner, and then we'll get to work."
FOUR
AT EIGHT-THIRTY THAT NIGHT, THE HABEAS CORPUS TEAM GATHERED in a booth at Terri's favorite steak house, Alfred's—from past experience, she knew them to be carnivores.
Terri sat across from Carlo. To her left was Johnny Moore, bearded and grizzled, a sixtyish former FBI agent turned investigator. On her right sat Tammy Mattox, the mitigation specialist, a Buddha-faced Alabaman with an ample belly and raucous laugh, so tenacious in her gathering of evidence that she claimed—credibly—to know the layout of every trailer park in America. On the drive over, Terri had told Carlo a story that typified Tammy's zeal: learning that the family of a death row inmate held an annual reunion deep in the hills of Arkansas, Tammy had simply shown up with a fresh-cooked ham and a basket of biscuits. When, three hours later, somebody finally asked who she was, her answer didn't much matter; by then she was family herself.
"The thing about retarde
d folks," Tammy told Carlo, "is people expect them to be slack-jowled and bug-eyed. Otherwise they're a real disappointment."
Sitting beside Carlo, Dr. Anthony Lane nodded his agreement. He was both a neuropsychiatrist—an expert in organic brain damage—and a specialist in retardation, and it would be his job to examine Rennell Price for impairments in mental functioning. Lane was a large black man with thick glasses, so big that Carlo would have thought of him as hulking but for the benignity of his gaze and the gentleness of his manner. "The retarded," he observed, "are as complex as the rest of us, and as varied. Assuming that Rennell is impaired, we have to make sense of what he tells us, and what he did. Even if it seems to make no sense at all."
Tammy sipped her mineral water. She did not drink the cabernet Terri had ordered for the table; years ago, when her drinking had become commensurate with the stress of her job, she had quit cold turkey. "Retarded folks," she told Carlo, "develop all sorts of strategies to keep from looking dumb. Do you know about masking?"
"No."
"Like anyone," she explained, "the retarded want to fit in. One way is to be agreeable, respond to cues the way they believe they should. A Rennell Price—if he is impaired—still wants to be part of the crowd, and may be smart enough to know he can't be. So he tries to cover up. Like he may have with Monk. But instead of seeing Rennell as sullen and resistant, as the cops did, consider the possibility that he was just trying to keep up, to give the answers Monk expected from him. That may be why his responses about Thuy Sen were so ambiguous."
"Except for his bottom line," Carlo said. " 'I didn't do that little girl.' "
Lane touched his arm. "I'll tell you a classic story, Carlo. In a pilot program, a number of retarded people were discharged from an institution and allowed to seek work. During job interviews, the great majority tried to conceal their hospitalization by claiming that they'd been in prison. They thought that sounded better." As Carlo smiled, Lane added, "Anyhow, I find it interesting that Rennell was so adamant about his innocence. No matter how hard Monk tried."
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