Wrongful Conviction

by Rachel Sinclair

  "I'm serious as a heart attack about this. Listen, this kid has no money, and if I don't go ahead and represent him, he's going to have to represent himself. Or find a jailhouse lawyer, and we know how good they are." Truth be told, I knew quite a few people who were good jailhouse lawyers, but at the same time, they weren't exactly lawyers. They were just inmates who knew their way around the prison research libraries, and other inmates hired them to try to write out their appeals. That's how most inmates actually did their appeals, because there is not a right to an appellate counsel under the Constitution, so, once you're convicted, and you’re poor, it's very difficult to find somebody to take your case, because you're not eligible for the public defender's office anymore.

  "Okay, just remember that you have a full roster of other cases right here in San Diego County, so you're not able to put too much time into this case. But, if you feel strongly that this kid is innocent, and that he didn't get a break, then, by all means, go for it.”

  I knew that Avery was going to be all for my taking this case, because of her background of being wrongfully convicted herself. It turned out that, in her case, the person who actually murdered her friend was a rich bastard by the name of Carl. He was running a sex trafficking ring, one that was well attended by very well-heeled people, and he had plenty of protection.

  Why did I think that it was going to be a similar case here?

  Chapter 2

  Jamel

  Jamel went back to his cell after he saw the white guy who was going to try to actually see if he could get him out of prison. He knew he was about to be transferred to Victorville, and, as far as he knew, white guy or no, he was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars. That was just something that he had come to terms with long ago.

  Oh, he was grateful that somebody had taken an interest in him. He just didn't think that anything was going to come of it. He knew the score. He was a black kid, disposable. In fact, he wasn't just disposable, but a lot of people actually actively hated him for the color of his skin. He knew that, within the past few years, the racism that had always been bubbling beneath the surface of this country had started boiling over. Suddenly, he was being attacked with racial slurs, almost daily, and people were always calling the cops on him for the slightest things. Such as the time that he was in the park, just laying in the grass. He had a blanket underneath him, and he was just enjoying the day. Some guy called the cops on him, apparently telling the cops that he was a homeless guy in the park, and he had to be dealt with. The cops came out and questioned him. He had to show the cops that he did actually have a home. In fact, the cops escorted him there. If he didn't have a home, he thought that he probably would have spent the night in jail as a vagrant.

  Another time, he was going into his apartment, but he had forgotten his key-card. This was when he actually had a full-time job, working construction, so he could afford a place of his own. He had since lost that job, due to budget cut-backs, and had been driving Uber ever since. On the day that he forgot his key-card, he waited until somebody else entered the building, and then went in with him. As he walked into the building, a white lady questioned him. She said that she hadn’t seen him around before, and she saw that he didn’t have a key card, so what was he doing there? He tried to show her that he had a key to his own apartment, but that didn’t satisfy her. She also called the cops, who came out to question him, and, once again, he had to prove to the cops that he had an apartment in that building.

  He knew that if he didn’t have black skin that there was no way that anyone would ever call the cops on him for simply relaxing in the park, or getting into his own building, but he also knew that lots of his friends were also having the cops called on them for no real reason. Living while black was a crime anymore, and he knew that that had gotten worse over the years, and it was just going to get worse and worse.

  So, when he was arrested for raping this woman, even though he was the one who called 911, and if it weren’t for him, she probably would've died, he knew that he was going to get convicted for it. It was a foregone conclusion in his mind. This lady was raped, there was nobody else who was going to have the crime pinned on them, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and none of that mattered. What mattered was that he couldn’t afford to hire an attorney, so he was assigned one, and the attorney that he was assigned could not have cared less about his case. In fact, Jamel had the distinct impression that his attorney just wanted to get it over with, mainly because the case had attracted so much publicity, and his attorney, Jim Stack, didn't like the glare. Which was a reason why, when it came time to ask him to put on evidence on his behalf, Jim told the court that he was going to rest. That meant that he didn't call any witnesses and he did not put on any kind of evidence on his behalf.

  What was so sad was that Jamel just kind of shrugged his shoulders about his attorney’s laziness and incompetence. He figured that that was what he deserved, in a society like this, that was not colorblind in any way, shape or form. He figured that it was just another way for a kid like him to get off the streets, not that he was ever on the streets, because, after all, he did have a job. Yes, it was a job driving Uber, so it didn't pay a whole lot. He was now living in a rented room, he was able to actually find something for only $500 a month, a tiny room in an old dilapidated house on the east side of Los Angeles, but, nevertheless, it was a home. His home. So, even though he knew that the jury had looked at him like he was a street kid, he really wasn't. He didn't deal drugs. He didn’t gang bang. His mama had taught him right from wrong and kept him away from all that.

  Yet, there he was, in jail awaiting transfer to the big house.

  The tragedy was that he didn't even think that it was necessarily unfair. It was what it was.

  So, even though this white boy, this Christian Davis boy, wanted to go ahead and work his case, he didn't think that it was going to come to anything. He just figured that Christian was going to try to get him a new trial, but there was nothing that could be done for a guy like him.

  Still, he was happy that Christian was even going to try.

  Chapter 3

  The Man

  The man knew that he had a problem. He always had known that. He had been protected for most of his life by his father, and then, when he got to be in his 40s, and his father no longer wanted to protect him, he was still protected by plenty of other people. He started to believe in his mind that he was above the law. After all, it wasn't like he had ever been arrested for anything he had ever done in his life. And he knew that he had done plenty in his life, things that should have landed him prison for life, but they did not.

  For instance, when he was 17 years old, he raped his first woman. He had started to understand from an even earlier age that there was no way that he could ever attain any kind of sexual satisfaction unless there was violence involved. He started beating on prostitutes at the age of 13, and, even at that time, he was built like a brick shithouse, so he was able to overpower the woman who had been hired as a prostitute for him by his own father. She was a slight woman, only 5’2” and a hundred pounds or so, weak as a kitten. At that time, he was 6’3” and 200 pounds of sheer muscle. Now, he was 6’6” and 225 pounds of sheer muscle, so he was able to overpower just about anybody.

  That woman, he didn’t know her name then, let alone trying to know it now - she was just a whore - he had beat senseless to a pulp. He had savagely pummeled her with his fists, pulled her hair, kicked her, and she let him do it. It wasn't until he had actually finished with what he did to her that he found out why it was that she let him do it – apparently his father had paid her extra to participate in S and M games. She was paid an extra thousand dollars, so she knew that she was going to get beaten up, and so she just took it.

  That infuriated him. He hated masochists. He never wanted to be with anybody who took pleasure in the beatings that he would give to them. If a person was taking pleasure in what he was doing to them, then it took away his plea
sure, and that's all he really knew. So, when he found out his father had paid this whore an extra thousand dollars for the beating that he gave her, he knew that he was going to have to find his own whores, and not pay them anything extra, and just beat them savagely. He always made sure that they screamed for mercy. It was important to him that they screamed and begged for mercy.

  So, for several years, that was what he did – he got his jollies by picking up people, paid for by his father, because he was a minor who didn't have money of his own, and beaten them. He didn't have sex with any of them, but he did beat them.

  Then, when he was 17 years old, and he finally was not a virgin anymore, he decided to go ahead and rape women, as many women as he possibly could. He didn't even care. He didn’t discriminate with his whores. They were young, old, and everything in between. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, he never really cared. He was always very careful all of his life, however, to make sure that he found people who were marginalized in some way. Homeless people, prostitutes, people who had zero power. The reason why he did that was because he knew that people like that were disposable, and that nobody really cared if they were raped or murdered or beaten up.

  That was the way that he got away with savagely raping and beating women in his younger years. In one of the few times that he slipped up and actually found a victim who was not marginalized – such as a college girl that he raped on the UCLA campus, who turned out to have a father who was a physician at Sharp Hospital in LA – he had to make sure that his father was the one who paid everybody off to make sure that he did not stand trial for what he did to her.

  After he raped the girl, her name was, oh he forgot her name, his father took him aside and warned him not to do that again.

  "Listen, I don't really care what you do, but you have to do it to people who don't matter. You have to stay with the prostitutes, the vagrants, poor people on the streets. When you go around raping pretty little white girls on campus, your butt’s going to be in a sling next time, because I won’t be able to protect you.”

  He could say nothing to his father. He could never say anything to his father. His father beat on him savagely from the time that he was only five years old. His father would beat on him for the most minor of things, so the man knew that his father would possibly kill him if he didn't do as he was told. His father terrified him. He was like a little boy around him.

  So, from that point on, he did as his father had told him – he stuck to only preying on people who did not have the means to fight back. The people who society did not care about. And that was fine with him - he just needed to make sure that he got his sexual aggression out on somebody. He didn't really care who they were.

  Of course, Felicity was a different story.

  If it weren't for the fact that he had such a good plan in place for someone to take the fall, he knew that he would be in prison right that very second.

  He made a mistake in doing what he did to her, but she had it coming.

  That's all he really knew.

  Chapter 4

  Christian

  The first thing I did when I got to the office was to go ahead and prepare a notice of appeal. That was the first step that I had to take, and then, of course, the next step would be to throw myself into writing an appellate brief.

  I went and saw Avery, because I knew that I was going to need help with preparing this brief. I was not exactly the best researcher in the entire world, although I did have mad writing skills. So I knew that I could make this brief the best I could possibly make it.

  When I got to Avery’s office she was sitting there and she looked up at me.

  "Hey, Christian, what's going on?" she asked me.

  "Well, I'm going to need a researcher for my brief. You got anybody in mind?"

  "No, but there are always kids from law school who want to get some experience in. You should look there first. What about the transcript? You see anything that stands out to you as far as errors that were made by the court?"

  “Not so much errors made by the court, but I definitely have a really good leg to stand on as far as ineffective assistance of counsel. There’s lots of evidence about that. So, I think that my best bet would be to file a writ of habeas corpus, and, if that doesn’t work out, I’ll try a regular appeal, although that does not look as good.”

  "Oh, I wouldn't know a thing about that, would I?" she said with a roll of her eyes.

  I knew what Avery with thinking. She was the expert as far as ineffective assistance of counsel arguments went. Of course, Avery’s counsel in her criminal case was ineffective because she was paid to be that way. Avery served 7 years in prison for killing her best childhood friend. She found out who really did it – it was a rich bastard, of course – and she found out that her attorney in that case took a bribe to throw it.

  I wondered if the same thing was going on here. I would not be surprised.

  Then again, this case, in general, was the kind of thing that was faced by poor defendants. Poor people didn’t get the best representation, because they couldn’t afford it. They had to go with court-appointed attorneys who were often overwhelmed and underpaid. Even in death penalty cases in many states, the attorneys were under-compensated and were often inexperienced. For instance, some states paid only $1,000 to try a death penalty cases. There would be no way that the attorney could do any investigation or hire any experts for that kind of money. Even when a client had to go with the public defender’s offices, which was mostly the case with poor defendants like Jamel, the offices and the attorneys are underfunded. One attorney might be dealing with a hundred felony cases at any one time, while getting paid $40,000 a year. They were doing God’s work, as far as I was concerned, fighting the good fight and doing what they could, but when you’re that overwhelmed, mistakes are going to be made.

  No doubt about it, I knew that in this country that if you didn't have money, you were nobody in the criminal justice system. That's why so many black and brown people ended up in prison for minor crimes. That's why so many black and brown people ended up in prison for things that nobody else would go to prison for. It was the reason why rich people basically stayed out of prison, no matter what they did. I was still shocked that they were able to bring down big fish from time to time, such as Martha Stewart and Bernie Madoff but, mainly, if you had a lot of money and connections, you were above the law. Look at Jeffrey Epstein, who raped young girls for years. He finally was arrested for what he did, although look how long that took. Look at the sweetheart deal that he got in Florida, just because he had a lot of money and a lot of connections. He was raping young girls and he essentially got sentenced to house arrest, and had to go to jail for an hour a day. The rest of the time he was at his beach house in Florida.

  I was determined that Jamel was not going to be just another statistic. He was not going to be just another black boy who went to prison for something that he had nothing to do with. If it was the last thing that I did in this life, I was going to make sure of it. I knew that there were millions of other kids who looked just like him, kids being harassed on the street, and put into prison for non-violent crimes or crimes that they had nothing to do with, like Jamel. Some of these innocent people were on death row. I knew that I could not save them all. But I was going to save this one, and maybe that could earn me some modicum of peace in life.

  I knew that I was going to not only have to get a law student to do the research for me, but I was also going to have to get Regina on the case to see if she could find out who really did this.

  So, I called her. "Hey, Regina, it's Christian."

  She chuckled a little. “Hey, Christian, I hear you got a good appellate case. What can I do you for?“

  “Well, I need for you to try to find out who really did it. With any luck, I’m going to be able to get a new trial for this kid, and then if I do get a new trial for him, obviously I want to hit the ground running. If we can find out who really raped this woman, we can go a long way t
owards showing the jury that Jamel should’ve never been in prison in the first place.”

  “OK, where do you want me to begin?”

  “I hate to do this to you, but you’re probably going to have to go to her house in Los Angeles, and take a look around. I’ll go ahead and get an order from the judge to allow you to do that. You’re also going to have to talk to the people that she knew.”

  “Well, I guess I can probably try to straighten it all out. Just give me a few days, I’ll try to get a few leads. In the meantime, what are the chances that you’re going to be able to get an appellate court to overturn the verdict?”

  “I’d say it’s probably about even. In reading the transcript, I can tell you that there were a lot of mistakes that the defense attorney made. Like, a lot of them. That’s going to be the only way that I’m going to be able to get this guy off, I think.“

  “Well, good luck.“

  “Thanks. Hey, what’s going on with you and Aidan?“

  I knew that Regina had finally decided to give Aidan a chance. I felt so badly for him because he had been mooning over her for so long. Everybody knew he had been, not that he knew that everybody knew. As far as Aidan was concerned, nobody knew about the way he felt about her. Of course, that was bullshit. Obviously, he was infatuated with her. But, she never wanted to give him the time of day, mainly because of her background. She hadn’t had good luck with men in her past, to say the very least.