Wrongful Conviction

by Rachel Sinclair

  She got very quiet, and I could hear her crying. “I can’t believe I was going to do that. I was desperate, you see. Noel was calling me, 24/7, pressuring me to testify against Jamel, threatening me with violence and threatening me with blackballing me from the industry. I panicked. I’m so glad that that guilty plea never happened, though. If that guilty plea would have gone through because that poor kid was afraid that I was going to testify against him, I would have never been able to live with myself.”

  “You’ll be able to live with yourself much more if you do the right thing here,” I said, stating the obvious. “You’ll be able to sleep at night again. You’ll be able to look your children in the eye, when you have them, and you’ll be able to tell them that, when it mattered, you took the hard way, the painful way, but the right way. You’ll be able to be a role model for them. Think of it that way.”

  More silence. “Thanks, I’ll think about it. Bye.”

  At that, she hung up.

  Chapter 25

  Thursday came, and Regina and I were standing on the Los Angeles Courthouse steps, flanked by the prostitutes who were going to speak their piece, along with Jacqueline, who looked awkwardly around her. She looked like she was afraid that somebody was going to jump out of the bushes at her and assault her.

  Maybe she was afraid of that, I don’t know.

  As for the prostitutes, they all managed to clean up very nicely for this event. Several of them had called Regina, anxious about what they were supposed to wear, how much makeup should they put on, what about their hair, and Cecilia just got a new weave that looked like a bird’s nest, should she have it taken out before the presser? Regina, for her part, helped each of them choose a demure dress and the ones who were having issues because their hair was too big, or too thin, or too curly, were taken to various hairdressers, who gave all of the ones with hair issues haircuts that were flattering, yet conservative.

  At the moment, they were lined up behind Regina, many of them blonde – Noel certainly had a type, and it was tall, thin blondes – all of them dressed in conservative-ish dresses and pantsuits, all of them looking like they wanted to be anywhere but there. Several of them were staring out with wide eyes at the sea of satellite trucks, the reporters on the street with microphones, and the crowd that was gathering, no-doubt wondering what all the fuss was about. A couple of them had tears in those eyes.

  No doubt about it, the scene was building along with the crowd. I started to feel a tinge of apprehension myself, although I was sure that my sense of foreboding was nothing compared to the ladies’.

  It was 2:30, and the presser was going to begin at 3. I scanned the crowd, looking for Felicity, and I didn’t see her anywhere. Looks like she’s going to take the cowardly way out after all. Still, she didn’t rat us out and tell Noel and Vice-President Harrison what was about to happen, so I supposed that I needed to be grateful for small favors.

  I turned my back, and Samantha, one of the accusers, pointed. “Look at that,” she said. “That actress lady is here. Felicity something, she’s here.”

  I turned back around and saw Felicity McDaniel weaving through the crowd. It was difficult for her to do, of course, as everybody with a microphone was wanting to talk to her, and the people in the crowd who were fans of hers were trying to get her autograph. It was therefore slow-going.

  But she was there. She showed up.

  She finally made her way to the podium. “I’m not late, am I?” she asked.

  “No, you’re not late. In fact, it’s 5 till 3 now. So, you’re early.”

  “Early,” she said. “Nobody has ever accused me of being early to places. I guess there’s a first time for everything, huh?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I guess so.”

  She nodded her head. “Well, I couldn’t sleep last night again. And I realized that you were right. I think that my chronic insomnia has something to do with the fact that I’ve been such a candy-ass about this whole thing. My mother didn’t raise me to do things like let monsters get away with being monsters, not when I have a chance to actually do something about it. I mean, who cares if I’m blackballed from Hollywood? I came from nothing. I was working at a Starbucks before I got my first modeling gig, when I wasn’t waiting tables at various restaurants. I mean, I have skills to fall back on. I make a mean caramel latte, let me tell you. And there’s always Broadway. I get booted out of this town, and I’ll seek the lights of Broadway. If Broadway is good enough for Chris Evans and Denzel Washington, it’s good enough for me.”

  “Thank you for coming,” I said. “You don’t know how much of an impact that this is going to have, especially now that you’re going to speak your truth.”

  She nodded her head. “I feel sick,” she said. “But I went over what I was going to say, just like I go over my lines before a scene. So, I’m not going to mess up.”

  3 PM came, and I went over to the microphone. “Hello, everybody,” I said. “I suppose everybody here is curious about what this presser is all about.”

  I tried to ignore the popping flashbulbs and all the reporters who were standing right in front me, in rapt attention. Like Felicity, I started to feel nauseated. I had never in my life done anything this enormous, this nationwide, and I really felt like I was going to faint.

  Still, I pressed on. “These women that are up here with me, they all have one thing in common. They were all victims of a vicious rape by Noel Harrison. You know Mr. Harrison as the oldest son of the vice-president of the United States, Timothy Harrison. You also know Mr. Harrison as one of the most powerful studio heads in Hollywood. These ladies behind me simply know him as the man who viciously assaulted them. Several of these ladies were left for dead, including Felicity McDaniel, the legendary actress who is here today to tell her truth, along with the other ladies who are not as famous as Ms. McDaniel, but who are just as courageous. Every single woman will tell her truth, her story, and you won’t be able to look away. But you don’t need to hear me talk the entire time. You need to hear these ladies’ stories. So, I present to you Samantha Dowell.”

  Samantha came to the podium, and she took the hand of the lady standing next to her and gripped it tightly. She took a deep breath and proceeded to tell her story.

  One by one, the ladies took the podium, got up to the microphone, and told the crowd and throngs of reporters what had happened to them at the hands of the vicious and sadistic monster known at Noel Harrison. They told stories of being beaten, kicked, and raped. Several of them ended up in the hospital due to their injuries. Several of them told the reporters and crowd about how they were affected by what had happened to them.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m used to rough treatment,” said Clarissa, a 33-year-old prostitute who was currently working a street in North Hollywood. “But this was something else. This was the vicious work of somebody who is violent and who hates women. Hates them. He wanted to kill me. I know that he did. I only survived because I got to the hospital on time. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here today.”

  Every woman told the same type of story. They worked the streets, and they always knew that they were taking their lives into their hands. But they never had encountered somebody quite like Noel Harrison.

  Jacqueline then told her story. I decided to put her next to last, with Felicity being the last person to speak. The crowd got quiet as she approached the microphone. “My name is Jacqueline Foster,” she said. “And I was an 18-year-old freshman at UCLA when Noel Harrison raped me. I was walking home from a party one night. Maybe I had had a few. I was by myself when a man leaped out from behind some bushes and put his hand over my mouth. He dragged me off of the sidewalk and into a wooded area. There, he pulled down my jeans and raped me. He beat me after he raped me, and left me for dead. I played like I was dead so that he would leave me alone, and he did, thank God. After he left, I managed to drag myself out of the woods and hail a passing car. They took me to the hospital. I had a concussion, contusions on my face, my left
eye was swollen shut. I had internal injuries from being kicked in my abdomen, again and again.

  Since that time, I have been unable to have a normal life. I have not had a normal relationship with a man since that time. I have nightmares every single night. I’ve tried to commit suicide twice. I’ve suffered from drug addiction and alcoholism, both of which I’ve kicked with the help of my mother and father and with help from the Almighty. I’ve managed to finish my PhD, so I’m an associate professor at UCLA, but finishing this degree has taken every ounce of spare energy from me. I don’t think that I will ever marry, have children, or be able to sleep through the night without waking up screaming. My physical wounds have healed, but my mental ones will never do the same. This man is a monster, and he needs to be stopped.”

  At that, she faded back with the others, and she gripped hands with two of the other ladies. Every lady was, by this time, holding hands with each other, both as a show of solidarity and as a comfort.

  Finally, it was Felicity’s turn to speak. She looked uncomfortably out into the crowd, but she took the microphone into her hand and brought it to her mouth. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Felicity McDaniel. Most of you might know me from my movie roles and my Netflix series that I’ve done. My story is much the same as these other ladies. Noel Harrison was somebody who actually stalked me for some time. He would always show up at my home, at all hours of the night, and I couldn’t get rid of him. I always thought that he was harmless, however, and my agent told me that I needed to not ask him to leave. I needed to be accommodating of him when he showed up, because if I wasn’t accommodating, I would lose my status in Hollywood. Noel Harrison had the power to break me if he wanted to. He still does. So, as I speak to you right now, know that I’m doing this at the risk of losing my career. I have everything to lose by doing this, so you all know that I’m speaking the truth.

  You’ve read about what happened to me. Everybody knows about how I was raped, beaten and left for dead next to my pool. How I was in the hospital for weeks, without a memory of what had happened. But that’s not entirely true. I did have a memory of what had happened, but I was too afraid to speak it. Too afraid that if I stuck up my head, I would get it chopped off. Too afraid of what was going to happen to me if everybody knew the truth. So, I was silent when an innocent 18-year-old boy was taken into custody for raping me. I was silent when that same boy was convicted for my rape. I pretended that I didn’t know who raped me, so that boy, Jamel Jackson, was just as likely as anybody else to have done it, so who was I to speak up and tell the world differently about him?”

  Felicity took a breath and wiped away some tears. “That was a lie. I knew that Noel Harrison was the man who raped me. I remembered him doing it. I will never forget that day, never in a million years. The way he viciously pummeled my face while screaming, over and over again, about how angry he was that I wouldn’t take him as my lover. He called me a whore, a slut, a dirty woman. He bit me on my breast, taking out a chunk of flesh. He anal-raped me, and I had never been penetrated there, so the pain was excruciating. After he was finished, he left me there. If it weren’t for Jamel Jackson showing up when he did by that pool, I would be dead. Of that, I’m certain. As it was, I was near-death when I got to the hospital. I had lost a great amount of blood and I had massive internal injuries. I was in surgery for 7 hours while the doctors heroically did all they could to make sure that I didn’t bleed out, either internally or externally. All the while, I knew who did this. I knew who did this, yet I stood by and let an innocent boy take the fall.

  I could never live with myself if I didn’t do something to make sure that that boy did not get convicted again of my assault, and if I never told my story when I had the chance. I never felt that I had the chance to tell anybody about what had happened to me, because I was afraid of what Noel would do to me if I did tell. I was terrified that I would never work again if I said anything. I feared for my life. It was only when I was told that these other women would be here too, all of them speaking their truth in solidarity, that I decided that I, too, must speak my truth. I, too, must tell my story. And I am firmly ready to swallow the consequences that will be associated with my being here today to tell the world about what Noel Harrison did to me. Thank you very much.”

  After she was through speaking, you could hear a pin drop on the sidewalk. Then, all at once, everybody was talking, trying to get closer to Felicity so that they could get some exclusive words from her. The reporters weren’t satisified to have been in the crowd, listening to the great Felicity McDaniel expound about her vicious assault at the hands of the son of the current VP. They all wanted to get some exclusive words from her, too, something that nobody else would be reporting on. They all wanted the scoop.

  So, Felicity was mobbed, while the other women remained behind the dais, holding hands with one another. One of the women started to sing the lyrics from Brave by Sara Bareilles, while the other women picked up the chorus and sang along. After that song ended, another woman started singing the Lady Gaga song, ‘Til It Happens to You, her song about her own rape, and some of the ladies who knew that song sang along.

  The ladies stood there, with flashbulbs popping and reporters clamoring, singing song after song about female empowerment and surviving. None of them talked to the multitude of reporters who were done with Felicity and were now eager to talk to all the other women. They had said their piece, and they were done.

  Chapter 26

  The next day, I woke up to see that the presser was leading every single news station, both locally and nationally, and I knew that I had done my job. This was the vice-president’s son who was at the crucible of this particular story, and nobody was going to let that go, especially since he was so wealthy and powerful in his own right.

  That was behind me, and I had a more important job to do.

  I went directly to the prosecutor’s office and marched into Matthew Howard’s office. I didn’t have an appointment, but I felt that I didn’t need one.

  He looked up at me when I came into his office. “Christian,” he said. “I just filed, on-line, my notice of dismissal for Jamel’s case. With prejudice. Of course.”

  I nodded my head. “You’re damned right it’s with prejudice. How can you live with yourself, doing that to an innocent kid? I mean, really, how do you look in the mirror?”

  He sighed. “It was the vice-president’s son. I couldn’t-“

  “Yes, you could. You could have done the right thing and prosecuted him, but you didn’t. Now the whole world knows about what you did. The whole world knows that you railroaded an innocent boy to cover up for Noel Harrison’s crimes, and that you were prepared to railroad him again, even after his conviction was overturned. Was that really a better outcome for you? If you would have done the right thing, you would have been a hero. As it is, everyone knows that you are nothing but a lily-livered coward. Have a nice life.”

  He didn’t say a word to me as I turned and left. How could he? He had no defense. Zero. There was nothing that he could possibly say that wasn’t going to make his situation worse, so he obviously chose just to say nothing at all.

  And that was fine.

  Those ladies said all that needed to be said.

  Now it was up to Matthew Howard to do the right thing and put that bastard into prison, where he belonged.

  I only hoped that he found enough courage to do it.

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Three weeks after the presser, I finally saw what I had been hoping to see - a perp walk. Noel Harrison was being frog-marched out of his office in handcuffs while the press, having been tipped off about what was going to happen, went nuts on the street in front of his luxury building.

  It was a long time coming. Too long. I was surprised that it had actually happened, considering all the strings that VP Harrison was trying to pull on behalf of his son. He was threatening to cut aid to California, with the excuse that California mismanages federal dollars, bu
t the real story was that he was only threatening that because he wanted the state of California to back off of charging his son. Everybody knew it. Everybody called him on it. Some people in his party made excuses for him, of course, but none of the excuses rang true anymore.

  Weeks of public protests were what finally forced the prosecutor’s hands. Every single day, thousands of people showed up on the steps of the prosecutor’s office, with signs and bullhorns, and made their voices heard. Politicians came to their aid, as many senators and congressmen and women would show up at these protests and speak to the crowd. Politicians from both sides of the aisle actually participated in the blood-letting, which just showed that the VP wasn’t as powerful as he might have thought.

  Finally, the prosecutor’s office knew that they couldn’t ignore it any longer. They were defeated. They were going to have to finally take that guy into custody. So, they coordinated with the local police to do their business, and do it, they did.

  Whether or not he would be convicted for his crimes was unknown. I had to hope that he would be. Felicity would be a powerful voice in court, just as powerful as she was in that press conference. So would Jacqueline. So would all the nameless, faceless prostitutes who he viciously assaulted.

  As for VP Harrison? He was being replaced when the president was going to run for re-election. He was finished. His political career was dead. It wasn’t just that he raised a monster - it was that he created that monster. After the press conference, journalists started to dig, and what they found was that Noel had suffered horrific abuse at the hands of his pious, religious father. Details of that abuse filled the tabloids, magazines, blogs and nightly news programs.

  Then details started to come out about all the money VP Harrison had paid over the years to women his son assaulted. It turned out that he not only paid off Jacqueline, but also a few prostitutes who were going to go to the police about what Noel did - they weren’t scared, like some of the others were, and they were going to tell their story. Suddenly, they were off the streets, with large bank accounts, and their mouths were shut. All of this came out, cascading through the media, as they pounced on this salacious story like sharks tearing through chum.