Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green

Chapter

27





Four Days


Dani wondered if George, sitting in his jail cell, felt as if the hands of the clock were speeding toward Tuesday, the day the state of Indiana had set for his execution. Unless she succeeded in getting him freed, or at least obtaining a stay of execution, he would be placed in a special cell Monday. He would be provided meals of his choice all day. If he should so desire, a clergyman would visit him. Dani would be there that day as well. She would sit with him in his cell and hold his hand. Sometime after midnight, he would be taken to the room of his death, where he would be prepared for the three injections that would kill him. Indiana law mandated that the execution take place before 6 a.m. By custom, it would occur shortly after midnight. She would take her place in the viewing room and watch him die.

For Dani, the hands of the clock were painstakingly slow. She awaited a decision from the federal court of appeals on the denial of the writ of habeas corpus. They did not want to hear oral argument; the papers were sufficient, they said. She didn’t know whether that bode well or ill for George. She only knew it was agonizing to sit and wait for the call from the clerk’s office.

Today was Friday. The loss of their appeal to exhume the child’s body had been devastating. If they lost the appeal on the writ of habeas corpus as well, their last hope was the Supreme Court. Unless a stay was issued, that meant an emergency petition to the highest court of the land, a rarely successful gambit. The tragedy was compounded by the fact that time—the same time that was speeding forward for George and had slowed to a crawl for Dani—was the salvation they needed. Time for the Mayo Clinic to uncover Sunshine Harrington’s medical records; time for Nancy Ferguson to return from her rafting trip; time for Tommy to find Sunshine Harrington, or whatever her married name was; time to run a DNA test to confirm what they all now believed to be true: that Sunshine was the daughter George and Sallie Calhoun sacrificed their lives for.

Busywork spared Dani from utter paralysis, but it didn’t stop her from looking at the clock every five minutes. The papers for an emergency writ to the Supreme Court were completed, should she need them. No pressing matters were on her desk. Still, she couldn’t leave.

“Go home, Dani,” Bruce had said an hour ago, obviously able to see her exhaustion. He knew that, should they lose, there would be no rest for her until Tuesday had passed. “I can’t,” she’d told him. He understood.

As the hands of the clock inched toward five o’clock, Dani’s heart sank. Could the decision be sitting in a pile on the desk of a clerk who was unaware that time was slipping away? Perhaps she was thinking about her child’s birthday party the next day or was going through a stack of decisions in the order they’d been put on her desk, routine decisions given the same priority as life-or-death decisions. Whatever the reason, it seemed inconceivable to her that the court would leave this undecided on the Friday before his execution.

She picked up the phone and dialed the clerk’s office. A male voice answered. “This is Dani Trumball with the Help Innocent Prisoners Project. We have an appeal pending on a capital case. I just wondered if there’s been any decision yet.”

“Hold on a moment.”

A crisp female voice came on the line. “Ms. Trumball, I was just dialing you when you called. I have the decision and I’ll fax it over to you now.”

“Can you tell me—how was it decided?”

Her voice softened. “I’m sorry. It was denied.”

“And the stay?”

“Also denied.”


Dani sat in Bruce’s office, sobbing. He was perched on the edge of his desk, facing her. He handed her a tissue and tried to console her. Dani knew she should remain professional. She understood the importance of keeping her emotions in check in order to best represent her client. And she was keenly aware of being considered “soft” because she was a woman. None of it mattered now. The news devastated her.

“You’ll file your petition with the Supreme Court first thing Monday morning,” Bruce said. “It’s not over yet.”

Bruce was being kind. They both knew that the odds of getting the Supreme Court to review the case, much less overturn it, were minuscule.

“Go home. Put this out of your mind for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll both come in and tighten up the petition to the Supremes,” he said.

As she stood to leave, Tommy walked in. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “I just got off the phone with Jack—you know, the guy from the Sharpsburg police who ran the fingerprint check for me on that note left on my car. He decided to send it over to the FBI, since they have an expanded database. The prints were run again and a partial match came up. With Stacy Conklin.”

“Isn’t that the little girl who disappeared around the same time as Angelina?” Dani said.

“You got it.”

“How would a young child’s fingerprints get into a database?”

“My guess is her mother or father took her to one of those mall events where kids get fingerprinted in case something bad should happen to them. It helps the police if they’ve got them on file. It was pretty commonplace back then.”

“So it’s Stacy’s fingerprint on the letter?”

“Not hers. Only part of it matched. But the person who threatened me is related to her, closely related. Her mother or father, most likely.”

“Oh my god! You just met with them the day before. You obviously struck a nerve.” Dani practically danced with excitement. “Now we know who’s buried in that grave. It’s Stacy Conklin. It must be.”

“Hold your horses,” Bruce said, ever the pragmatist. “Don’t get carried away with yourselves too quickly. It’s possible that, losing their own daughter the way they did, the thought of a child-murderer getting off on what they might view as a technicality was too much to bear.”

Her joy deflated.

“Why don’t you call the cop that handled that investigation?” Bruce said to Tommy. “If he bites, then he can ask a local judge for an order to exhume the body. If it’s part of an ongoing police investigation, he shouldn’t have any trouble getting it.”

“Sure. I always had a bad feeling about Mickey Conklin, so I’ve been keeping in touch with Cannon all along.”

Bruce turned to Dani. “And you should start reaching out to the governor. Let’s alert her to what’s going on and ask her to be available on Monday to consider at the least a stay.” Colleen Timmons was the governor of Indiana, the first woman elected to that position in that state. She’d run as a tough-on-crime candidate and hadn’t changed since being in office. Dani hoped it wouldn’t come down to relying on her compassion.

She and Tommy headed to their respective desks. With Indiana an hour earlier than New York time, they were hopeful they’d still be able to reach the people they were looking for. Dani pulled out her reference guide to each state’s gubernatorial office and dialed the number for Joe Guidry, the governor’s chief of staff. He answered the phone directly. She identified herself and filled him in on what had happened with George Calhoun. She finished with her purpose in calling: “Joe, this guy is innocent, and if we have one more week, I’m sure we can prove it beyond any doubt whatsoever. We’re hoping that Governor Timmons can stand by on Monday in case the Supreme Court turns us down.”

All she heard was Joe’s breathing.

“You still there?”

“Yeah. I’m just thinking. Let me understand. You’ve been turned down by two federal courts, your request of the state court for exhumation has been turned down, and if the big Court turns you down, you want the governor to put her neck out there and give this convicted child-murderer a break. Does that about sum it up?”

“It’s not exactly how I’d put it. I’m not asking her to let the guy go free, not yet anyway. All I need is seven days. Seven days to wrap it up with a nice bow and ribbon and I’ll throw in the real murderer, who’s been living unpunished for nineteen years.” Dani realized she’d probably gone too far. Bruce was right; she shouldn’t jump to conclusions about the Conklins. Still, she didn’t pull back the pledge. If that’s what it took to get a stay, she’d say anything at this point.

“I don’t know what the governor will want to do. The best I can promise you is that she’ll listen to you on Monday. Call us after the Supreme Court rules.”

It was the most she could hope for—Governor Timmons would hear her out. She walked back to Bruce’s office and saw Tommy inside. “Did you reach Cannon?” she asked.

“Nope. Just got his voice mail. I left an urgent message, then called the general number for the sheriff’s office and left a second message. Hopefully he’ll call me back.”

Dani filled Tommy and Bruce in on her conversation with Joe Guidry.

“There’s nothing more you guys can do tonight. Go home and get some rest,” Bruce said.

As if she could.


It was almost 8:30 when Dani arrived home. An accident on the FDR had slowed the usual Friday-night exodus from the city to a standstill. By the time she pulled up to her house, her body ached from head to toe. Doug greeted her at the door with a glass of wine.

“Rough day?”

“A rough six weeks.”

He put his arm around her and led her to the couch. On the cocktail table lay a platter of her favorite cheeses with crackers. Next to it was a bowl of ruby-red cherries, her favorite fruit.

“Where’s Jonah?”

“Sound asleep.”

Dani settled into the couch and let the wine relax her. The windows were open and a soft breeze moved the curtains like ripples on a lake. It felt so good to be home.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Doug asked.

“No. Not tonight. Tonight I want to pretend that I’m back in law school, that last year, when I was excited about entering the legal profession. I remember how I thought I would do so much good as a lawyer. Everything seemed black and white then, remember? Bad guys were convicted, good guys were never even arrested. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be?”

Doug cut a piece of cheese and placed it on a cracker and handed it to her. “I don’t think even then we were that naïve.”

“I was. I thought the law really meant something. That truth and justice were the goal, not wins and losses.”

“Truth and justice are the goal. But finding the truth is difficult. You’re sure your client is innocent, that all the facts you’ve uncovered prove he is. But the people opposing you believe in a different truth. They believe your facts are suggestive, perhaps, but not conclusive. And to set a convicted child-murderer free, there must be indisputable facts. Whose truth is right?”

“Okay, different people look at facts differently. I get that. But death is irreversible. When there isn’t agreement on what is the truth, then keep the prisoner alive while the search for the truth—a truth that can’t be challenged—goes on. How can anyone be comfortable with killing a man who might be innocent?”

“You and I aren’t comfortable with that. But others may argue that those instances are so rare they shouldn’t change what is just punishment for atrocious deeds.”

Dani leaned her head back into the couch and felt her eyes drift closed. She spread herself out on the couch and Doug covered her with a blanket. She was too tired to talk anymore. She was too tired for their honeymoon hour. Sleep overtook her and she welcomed it; she welcomed her escape from a world of gray.


Dani returned to the office Saturday. Waiting at the fax machine was the decision from the federal court. Two of the judges on the three-judge panel had denied the habeas petition as well as the stay. The third had dissented, agreeing that George had received ineffective assistance of counsel at his trial. The majority’s opinion was succinct: “Nothing in the record below supports defendant’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. Defendant has not shown that his attorney’s performance affected the outcome of his trial. Rather, defendant’s own silence concerning the whereabouts of his daughter, despite the urgings of his counsel to explain her disappearance, are likely to have played a greater role in the verdict than any act or failure to act of his attorney. Nor does the allegedly new evidence support a reopening of his case. His motion for a writ of habeas corpus is denied, as is his request for a stay of the execution.” The lone dissenter was equally succinct: “The majority’s blind eye to the possibility of executing an innocent man is tantamount to the commission of murder by the state.”

Dani couldn’t have agreed more.

Her work was finished and she was ready to leave when she got a call from Tommy.

“What are you still doing at work? Go home and play with your kid.”

“I was just about to do that. What’s up?”

“Cannon called me back. I filled him in on the fingerprint results and he was pretty skeptical.”

“But will he follow up on it?”

“He won’t go for an exhumation, not yet. But he did say he’d take a ride over to the Conklins’ and talk to them. I think I can push him some more, but we need time.”

Each time Dani heard that word—time—it felt like a sucker punch to her gut. “That’s the one thing we don’t have.”