The Justice Project

by Michael Betcherman

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be okay.”

  If only he believed it.

  After they said goodbye, Matt shoved his textbook aside and hobbled into the living room. He stopped in front of the cabinet that housed all the awards he had won over the years. On the top shelf sat the trophy for most valuable player in the state championship, a bronze figure of a football player on a wooden pedestal adorned with a brass plate inscribed with his name.

  Anger rose as he looked at the expressionless face with its dead, uncaring eyes. He opened the cabinet, grabbed the trophy and threw it on the floor.

  The football player broke from the pedestal, severed at the knees.

  FOUR

  Matt was leaving for school the next morning when his father came into the living room. He glanced at the trophy cabinet and then at Matt, but he didn’t say anything about the missing trophy.

  Matt felt a pang of guilt. In a way, the trophy was his father’s as much as his. He had groomed Matt to be a quarterback since he was little. He’d coached him in minor-league football and put him through endless drills in the backyard, until throwing a football came as naturally to Matt as putting on his clothes. He would never have gotten the scholarship to USC without his dad’s help.

  His father had warned him not to go snowboarding. “There’s a reason NFL contracts forbid it,” he had said. “You worked damn hard to get that scholarship. Why take a chance you might get hurt?”

  If only he’d listened.

  “I know you’re upset about having to stay in Snowden,” his dad said.

  “You think?”

  “But it wouldn’t have been any easier in Florida. You would have been all alone—except for your mom.”

  That was the point, Matt thought.

  “There are a lot of people here who care about you.”

  “I don’t want people feeling sorry for me.”

  “I understand. But—”

  Matt cut him off. “I gotta go,” he said, slipping his crutches under his arms.

  “You’re going to have to get rid of the crutches sooner or later,” his father said gently. “I know you’re worried how people are going to react, but putting it off isn’t going to make it any easier.”

  Worried didn’t come close to describing how he felt. The same scene kept running around his head on an endless loop: him staggering around town, and everybody pretending not to notice. He might as well have a sign tattooed on his forehead: Poor Bastard.

  “Things may have changed on the outside,” his dad continued, “but inside you’re the same person you were before you got hurt.”

  Not even close, Matt thought. But as long as he was using the crutches, he could pretend he was normal. Without them he felt like a freak.

  Matt walked into law class at the end of the day. He reminded himself to call Ed Armbruster as soon as he got home to see if the job at the golf club was still available.

  Two months earlier Armbruster, the president of the Snowden Golf and Country Club and a huge Falcons fan, had offered Matt a summer job working in the locker room at the club. He’d turned it down at the time because of the move to Florida. The thought of talking about the championship to Armbruster and his golfing buddies all summer long was depressing, but the job paid well. With the money he’d make, he’d be able to buy a decent used car by the end of the summer.

  Darrow stood by his desk, talking to a thickset man with a graying Afro and wire-rimmed glasses and wearing a blue suit. Sonya Livingstone was listening in on the conversation. Matt wondered if the man was her father, a well-known judge. Sonya was wearing her Harvard University sweatshirt—just in case people had forgotten where she was going to school next year. The bulky top couldn’t hide her killer body. She was hot. There was no denying that, even if she was a pain in the ass.

  The man in the blue suit caught Matt’s eye. He nodded, an acknowledgment that he knew who Matt was and what had happened to him. Like everybody else in this crappy town.

  “Please welcome Jesse Donovan,” Darrow said after everyone was seated. “He’s the founder of the Justice Project, an organization that defends people who have been wrongly convicted. Some of you may have seen him on television when the Aylmer Valley Slayer was executed.”

  A few heads bobbed.

  Jesse surveyed the room. “You all know that in our justice system an accused person doesn’t have to prove he’s innocent,” he said. “The prosecution has to prove he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s to make sure that innocent people don’t get sent to jail. But the sad reality is that innocent people do get sent to jail, and it happens far more often than you might think.”

  Yadda yadda yadda. Matt closed his eyes. He was drifting off when Jesse’s next words jolted him wide awake.

  “I know, because it happened to me. I spent twenty-four years in prison for a murder I did not commit.”

  There was a collective gasp from the class.

  “I was nineteen years old, living in Philadelphia,” Jesse continued. “One night I went to a party at a friend’s apartment. The next day two men were found stabbed to death in the alley behind the apartment building. Two women who had been at the party told the police they had seen me threatening the men with a knife. I was arrested and charged with murder.

  “There were two pieces of evidence against me. The first was the pair of blue jeans I’d worn that night. They had dark-red stains on them. I told my lawyer they were rust stains from an old set of barbells I’d been using, but he didn’t get the stains tested, so the jury believed the prosecutor when he said they were bloodstains. The second piece of evidence was a knife the police took from my apartment. The prosecutor claimed it was the murder weapon.

  “It took the jury less than an hour to come back with a guilty verdict. I was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole.”

  Another gasp from the class.

  “Fifteen years later I got a letter from Angela Jacobson, a woman I’d gone to high school with in Philly. She’d moved to Snowden before I was arrested and had just found out what happened to me. She asked if she could come visit me. We didn’t know each other that well, but it’s not as if my social calendar was full.” Jesse smiled wryly. “Angela looked into my case and became convinced that I was innocent. She told me she was going to get me out of prison. It meant everything to know that somebody believed in me, but I didn’t hold out much hope that she’d succeed.

  “Angela refused to give up. It took seven years, but she finally persuaded a lawyer to take my case. His name was Sean O’Brien. Sean did what my first lawyer should have done. He sent the blue jeans to a lab, which confirmed the stains were rust stains, just like I’d said. He also had an expert examine the knife found in my house. The expert said the blade was too short to be the murder weapon. When Sean spoke to the two women who said they’d seen me threaten the victims, they admitted they had lied, because they were afraid of the real killer. I was given a new trial. This time the jury found me not guilty.”

  “Why didn’t your first lawyer send the jeans to the lab?” Vince Santoro asked.

  “Incompetence. My parents were both dead. I was living on my own and didn’t have any money to hire my own lawyer, so the state appointed one to represent me for free. Like they say,” Jesse added with another wry smile, “you get what you pay for.

  “When I got out of prison, I felt like I had been given a second chance, and I wanted to do something meaningful with it. I started the Justice Project, so that what happened to me wouldn’t happen to others.”

  “You think the Aylmer Valley Slayer was innocent?” Vince asked, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

  “No. He killed those women. No doubt about it. But in addition to defending the wrongly convicted, we lobby against the death penalty.”

  “We’ve been debating that issue,” Darrow said from the back of the room. “I’m sure the class would be interested in your perspective.”

  “It’s simple.
We don’t try to answer the question of whether or not the death penalty is immoral. We’re against it solely because of the possibility that an innocent person could be executed. Since 1973, 162 people have been freed from death row before their death sentences could be carried out. That’s 162 people who were almost executed by mistake,” he added, just in case anybody had missed the point. “And those are just the ones we’re aware of. Who knows how many innocent people are still on death row?”

  “Still in favor of the death penalty?” Sonya whispered to Matt from across the aisle. Matt pretended he didn’t hear.

  The bell rang. The class gave Jesse an enthusiastic round of applause.

  “What happened to the woman who helped you?” Vince called out as everybody got to their feet.

  A smile spread across Jesse’s face. “Angela? I married her.”

  FIVE

  Matt was at his locker when he spotted Emma at the end of the hallway. The memory of the first time he’d seen her flashed into his mind. She’d been in the school play—The Crucible—playing the role of a young girl in the eighteenth century who had been falsely accused of being a witch. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her from the moment she walked onstage. The next day he caught up to her as they were leaving school and told her that the playwright had it all wrong, that he knew she really was a witch because she had put a spell on him. She rolled her eyes at the corny joke but said yes when he asked her if she wanted to get a coffee.

  He’d had such a great time talking to her that he was late for practice for the only time in his high-school career. Coach Bennett had made him run laps in ninety-degree heat for a half hour, but all he’d been able to think about was seeing Emma again.

  How would she react when she found out he wasn't moving to Florida? Was it too late for her to transfer back to the arts college in Snowden? Dream on, he said to himself as he shoved the books he needed for the night into his backpack. Dream on.

  Matt closed his locker and headed for the exit. Jesse Donovan was at the front door. He spotted Matt and held the door open for him. He nodded at the crutches. “You move pretty good on those things.”

  “I’ve had lots of practice,” Matt said. Across the street a bus was pulling away from the curb. “Crap. There goes my bus.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home. On Bayfield.”

  “I’ll give you a lift.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What are your plans for next year?” Jesse asked as they walked toward the school parking lot.

  “I’m going to Eastern State.” Matt didn’t bother hiding his lack of enthusiasm. The prospect of going to his dinky hometown college after being all psyched up to go to a university that had won eleven national championships was downright depressing. Like trading in a Ferrari for a Ford Fiesta.

  “Not exactly USC, is it?”

  “I’ll save a bundle on sunscreen.”

  Jesse laughed. Matt waited for him to say how sorry he was about the injury—everyone always did—but Jesse must have sensed Matt didn’t want his sympathy, because he didn’t say anything.

  Jesse started his car and put a CD into the stereo. “Do you like country music?”

  “Don’t listen to it much.”

  “I didn’t either until I went to prison. You don’t hear a lot of country in North Philly. But the guy in the cell next to mine was from Oklahoma. Johnny Mickelson. He played it from morning until night. It took a while, but it grew on me. Nothing says ‘I’m hurting’ like country music. Johnny gave me his collection when he got out.”

  Jesse drove on, moving his head in rhythm with the music as the singer wailed about a wife who had left him for another man.

  Matt glanced at Jesse. It was hard to believe the man had spent twenty-four years in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. Twenty-four years! Longer than Matt had been alive. All those lost years. It would be hard enough to deal with if you were guilty. But to go through that knowing you were innocent? Matt wondered how Jesse had been able to keep his sanity.

  He felt a connection with the older man. In a way they’d both had their lives taken away from them, hadn’t they? He had a sudden urge to tell Jesse the truth about his limp, but he pushed it back.

  They turned into a strip mall and parked in front of a storefront. The Justice Project was printed on the door. “I’ve got to pick something up,” Jesse said. “Come on in. I won’t be long.”

  Jesse held the door open for Matt, then followed him inside. He closed the front door behind him, then opened and closed it again. It was a strange thing to do. Matt pretended not to notice.

  The office was small, barely large enough to accommodate three scarred desks and an ancient filing cabinet. Cardboard boxes were piled up on the worn carpet.

  A middle-aged woman with short blond hair and a round face was on the phone. “Don’t worry about it,” she was saying. “We’ll find somebody…Yeah. You too.” She hung up and smiled at Jesse. “Hi, sweetie.”

  Jesse kissed her on the cheek. “This is Matt. Matt, this is my wife, Angela.”

  “We just lost one of our interns,” Angela told Jesse. “Hassan Aboud got a job at the Ford plant. He was sorry about canceling at the last minute, but it pays eighteen dollars an hour and he needs the money. I could call the other people on the short list, but I’m sure they’ve all found something else by now.”

  Jesse looked at Matt. “You interested?”

  The question took Matt by surprise. He hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

  Jesse looked at Angela. She shrugged. “We’d need you to work Saturdays until your exams are over,” she said. “Then it will be Monday to Friday, nine to five. And you’ll have to supply your own computer.”

  “No problem.”

  “The job only pays minimum wage, but it’s yours if you want it,” Jesse said.

  “I do,” Matt said. The words were out of his mouth before he realized he’d just accepted a job that paid minimum wage. But it beat the hell out of talking about his glory days all summer at the golf club. Even if it meant taking the bus to school next fall.

  SIX

  Angela was at her desk when Matt arrived at the Justice Project office Saturday morning. She was talking to a girl with curly hair, whose back was to him. Nice butt, was his first thought. Must be the other intern, was his second. Angela waved hello to Matt. The girl turned around, following Angela’s gaze.

  Sonya Livingstone.

  You’ve gotta be kidding.

  The look on Sonya’s face told him she felt exactly the same. “You’re working here?” Sonya asked in disbelief.

  “You two know each other?” Angela asked.

  They both nodded. It was hard to say who was less enthusiastic about it.

  “This is your desk, Matt.” Angela pointed to one of two desks that faced each other. “And that’s yours, Sonya.”

  Matt and Sonya exchanged a look. Great. They’d be spending the summer looking at each other.

  “If you’ve checked out our website, you’ve got an idea of the kind of work we do,” Angela said.

  “I was blown away by the case histories,” Sonya said. “The stories are heartbreaking, and there are so many of them.”

  Damn. It hadn’t even occurred to Matt to look at the website. Meanwhile, Sonya had been all over it. Sonya 1, Matt 0.

  “Those are just the ones we’re involved with,” Angela said. “More than two thousand prisoners have been exonerated across the country in the past twenty-five years. And there are probably thousands more who are still in jail.”

  She pointed to a pair of cardboard boxes labeled Prisoner Applications. “You can get started on these. We’re way behind. That’s one of the problems of being underfunded. We’re having a major fundraiser in August. You guys will be spending most of your time working on that.” Angela plunked one of the boxes on Matt’s desk, and the other on Sonya’s. “The first thing you have to do is determine if the prisoner qualifies for our help. It’s ve
ry straightforward. He—or she, although it’s usually a he—must have been convicted of a serious crime that resulted in a sentence of ten years or more, and he must have appealed his conviction and lost. You know what an appeal is, right?”

  Sonya answered before Matt could. “It’s a convicted person’s attempt to get a higher court to overturn the verdict.”

  Angela nodded. “And the person must still be in prison. He can’t be out on parole.”

  “And you only take on cases where the crime was committed in state, right?” Sonya asked.

  “That’s right. We don’t have the resources to help people from out of state. You’ve done your homework.”

  “It was right there on the website,” Sonya said with a shrug, as if only an idiot wouldn’t have thought to check it out.

  Sonya 2, Idiot 0.

  Matt looked around the dingy office. It was depressing. So was the thought of spending the summer cooped up in this hole with Sonya Livingstone. He peered into the cardboard box on his desk. The huge pile of envelopes was daunting. Maybe he should have taken the job at the golf club after all.

  “I’m going to need your computer password so our IT guy can hook you into our network,” Angela said to Matt.

  “Statechamps. One word. Lower case,” Matt said.

  “Go Falcons,” Sonya said mockingly, with an exaggerated fist swirl.

  Matt ignored the sarcasm and took the top envelope from the box. He was partway through the application when Jesse entered. He closed the door behind him, then opened and closed it again.

  “Good morning,” he said. “You guys all settled in?”

  “I’ve started them on the prisoners’ applications,” Angela told him.

  “Don’t believe everything you read,” Jesse cautioned. “All these guys will give you a song and dance explaining why they’ve been wrongly convicted, but the vast majority are guilty. Very few are actually innocent.”

  “One is too many,” Sonya said fervently.

  God help me, Matt thought.