Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green

Chapter

4





Bob Wilson kept his word. The next day piles of boxes were stacked in a corner of HIPP’s conference room, all with the return address “Law Firm of Robert Wilson, Esq.”

“You take the appeals, I’ll take the trial transcript and exhibits,” Dani said to Melanie. It would take days to go through everything thoroughly, and they’d both be working well into the night and over the weekend. But Dani could do the work from home, accessible to Jonah, who felt well enough to go back to school. “As you go through the papers, see if you can find anything on these questions: Had an autopsy been performed on the murdered child? Did they match the child’s DNA to the parents? They found the body in Indiana; the Calhouns lived in Pennsylvania. Did anyone else recognize them along the way?”

“I assume you want me to chart out the issues already appealed and summarize the decisions?” Melanie asked.

“Yes, and also if there were any dissenting opinions, summarize those separately.”

“Sure. How quickly do you need it?”

“Yesterday would be good.”

“And six more months on the clock would be nice, too.”

They both felt the pressure of what lay ahead. Sitting on the floor, they each attacked a box, looking for the documents they needed. Dani found the transcripts in the second box she opened. They were the record of everything said during trial, every question, every answer, every comment, even the arguments made at the bench outside the jurors’ earshot. Usually, she skimmed through the transcripts first, getting the broad picture quickly, and then started again from the beginning, painstakingly searching for appealable errors. After Melanie collected the appellate briefs and left, Dani settled back into her chair and began her perusal.

The words on the pages became a movie reel in her mind and she became an observer, no longer in her office but sitting in the courtroom, watching the trial unfold. She visualized the prosecutor as a tall man, his bearing erect, dressed in his finest navy striped suit. She saw him walk to the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are going to hear about a horrific crime. You are going to see shocking pictures, images that no person should ever be asked to view. But you are here today because someone killed an innocent child, a four-year-old girl. Any murder is hateful, and any murder of a child is abominable. But for you to understand the full extent of how monstrous this act of murder was, you will need to see pictures of her burned body, found after she was callously buried in a forest. And when you see those pictures you will understand why the perpetrator must be found guilty and must be punished with death. I know how difficult it will be for you to sit through this trial and hear the testimony about this little girl’s death, but it will be easy for you to decide who committed this atrocity. It was the defendant, sitting over there in that chair. And the little girl he brutally murdered was his own daughter. How will you know it was that man who committed the crime? Because his own wife will tell you what happened. You will hear her say that she watched her husband kill their daughter, set her on fire, and then bury her in the forest. Ladies and gentlemen, when you go back to your room to deliberate after you’ve heard all the evidence, you will know beyond any doubt whatsoever that George Calhoun deserves to die.”

Dani skimmed through Bob Wilson’s opening statement. He made some valid points about the lack of forensic evidence, but in the movie running through her mind, she saw the jurors’ eyes glaze over.

She read quickly through the testimony in the prosecutor’s case. The most damning evidence was Mrs. Calhoun’s confession. As Dani read the transcript, she envisioned the jurors listening with rapt attention as Sallie said, “My husband beat our daughter unconscious. He poured gasoline over her body and set her afire. I watched him do it and I did nothing. I didn’t stop him. He wrapped her body in a blanket and we drove to Indiana. I was with him in the car. He pulled off the road when we came to a forest. I stayed in the car while he carried our daughter into the woods. He came back without her and we drove away.”

“Why did George do this to your daughter?” the prosecutor asked.

“She had the devil inside her. George said we had to do this to get the devil out.”

Bob Wilson limited his cross of Sallie to attacking her credibility. “Mrs. Calhoun, during the two years between your husband supposedly doing this to your daughter and the police knocking on your door, did you ever notify the authorities?”

“No.”

“Did you ever tell any friend or relative what your husband had done?”

“No.”

“And isn’t it a fact that you’ve been given a sentence of life imprisonment instead of facing the death penalty in exchange for your testimony?”

“They just told me to tell the truth and that’s what I did.”

After reading Sallie’s testimony, Dani needed a break. Her whole body felt dirty, as if even considering taking on George’s case had blackened her. She poured a cup of coffee and headed to Bruce’s office.

“Have a moment?” she asked as she walked in and made herself comfortable in the chair opposite his desk. It was just as threadbare as the one in her office.

Bruce looked up and smiled. “Do I have a choice?”

“I’m not feeling so good about this case.”

“Okay. Don’t take it then.”

Just like Bruce. Always pushing his staff to make decisions. Most of the time she liked that. Today she wasn’t so sure. “I’m not finished reviewing the transcript, but already it gives me the willies.”

Bruce fixed his eyes on hers. “You shouldn’t take the case if you think the guy is guilty, no matter how many mistakes were made at trial. But if those mistakes got in the way of the truth, he deserves to be heard. Your personal feelings about the nature of the crime are irrelevant. Only the truth matters. And it’s your job to find the truth. So, have you read enough to know what the truth is?”

“No, I haven’t even gotten to the defendant’s case.”

“Well, then two things might happen. The defendant’s attorney could have done a bang-up job and convinced you doubt existed about his guilt or left you certain after hearing both sides he was guilty, or—”

She didn’t let him finish. “Or he did a lousy job and I need to conduct my own investigation, right?

“You got it, girl.”

She thanked Bruce and went back to her office to finish reading the transcript. After Sallie’s testimony, the prosecutor entered into evidence photographs of the burned and battered body of the murdered child despite objections about their inflammatory nature. Side by side with one gruesome photo was one of Angelina Calhoun, a pretty toddler with blond hair framing her face. The contrast was designed to enrage the jury, as it no doubt did.

The prosecution then ended its case and the judge sent the jurors home for the day, leaving them with the sickening images of the corpse to linger in their thoughts overnight.

Wilson began his defense the next day with George Calhoun’s testimony. Once again, Dani’s mind turned the words on the page into a movie of the trial. She saw George take the stand, saw him swear to tell the truth. Wilson took him through the preliminary testimony, where he lived, where he worked, how far he’d gone in school—meaningless questions to get him comfortable with testifying. Then, “Mr. Calhoun, did you murder your daughter?”

“No sir, I did not. I loved my Angelina, more than anything else in the world. I would never hurt her.”

“Then how did that little girl get in that grave?”

“I don’t know. She’s not my daughter.”

“Your wife says she is.”

“My wife’s not thinking right.”

“No further questions,” Wilson said as he turned and walked back to the defense table.

The prosecutor easily discredited George on the stand.

“Where is your daughter?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ever report her missing?”

“No.”

“Did you ever tell anyone she was missing?”

“No.”

“Did you make any effort to find her?”

“No.”

“Is your daughter alive?”

The transcript noted silence by the defendant.

“I’ll ask you again, is your daughter alive?”

More silence, until the judge said, “Mr. Calhoun, you must answer the question.”

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. Calhoun, are you asking us to believe that your four-year-old daughter whom you love more than anything in the world simply disappeared and you did nothing about it? And you don’t even know if she’s dead or alive?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” he answered, assuring his conviction by a jury of his peers.


The first reading confirmed Dani’s suspicion about Bob Wilson. His lackluster defense during the trial bespoke an attorney who foresaw an inevitable guilty verdict and expended little effort to alter that outcome. Over and over he failed to attack the prosecutor’s witnesses, despite glaring holes in their evidence, or raise objections to improper questions. But even more noteworthy was the absence of any real defense. Aside from a handful of character witnesses, the only testimony refuting the charge was Calhoun’s. Although George had sworn he hadn’t murdered his daughter and that the child found in the woods was not his own, the defense presented no forensic evidence to back up his claim. How could that be? The files contained photographs of the murdered girl, her features burned beyond recognition. Surely, given George’s insistence that the dead child wasn’t his daughter, DNA testing would have been ordered, if not by the prosecution then by defense counsel. Dani stopped herself. Seventeen years ago, DNA testing was not routinely done.

Bob Wilson should have done more to discredit Sallie’s confession. His cross-examination of her was shockingly inadequate. Perhaps he thought she was a more sympathetic witness than her husband and would do more damage if he questioned her aggressively. He was wrong. Her testimony sealed George’s fate. If Wilson had cross-examined her more thoroughly, he might have been able to show inconsistencies in her story, create doubt in the jurors’ minds. Sallie mentioned the devil in her testimony for the prosecution. Were she and George devoutly religious? Had they ever confided to their pastor their concerns about their daughter? Dani didn’t know the answers because Wilson hadn’t asked those questions. Letting the jury hear Sallie’s testimony without any effort to contradict her seemed a colossal error by Calhoun’s attorney.

Dani’s brief review of the transcripts and exhibits suggested a number of avenues for appeal. Many had no doubt been raised as the case wound its way up through the court of appeals, the state supreme court, and petitions for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. Calhoun’s case had made it to the highest court twice, a not uncommon journey for death-row inmates. She would have to wait until Melanie completed her review of the appellate briefs and decisions to see what arguments were still available. Dani still didn’t know whether she believed that George Calhoun was guilty or innocent, but she did know this: They needed to take a trip to Indiana State Prison.

Dani called the travel agent used by HIPP and booked three seats on a Monday flight to Indianapolis. After hanging up, she glanced at the clock. It was almost 4, past the time she liked to leave for home. And it was Friday to boot, the worst day for early traffic. She briefly considered calling Doug at his office to suggest he stay in the city and meet her for dinner. With Jonah so recently sick, though, she didn’t want to be far away in the evening. Even though Katie could handle any emergency, there was no substitute for the comfort of a mother’s touch.

She walked out of her office into the large common room and saw Tommy still seated at his desk. Tommy had left the Bureau after ten years because his wife couldn’t take the strain of his undercover stints, which had often kept him away from home—and their five children—for months at a time. He had a swarthy complexion, a full head of black wavy hair, greased down a bit too much for Dani’s taste, and a thick mustache. No doubt he was once handsome, but now his body, although still trim, had softened, and his years in the field showed in the lines of his face. His still had a razor-sharp mind, though, and he could uncover truths—and lies—like no other investigator in the office.

“Tommy, would you check into whether any other girls between 3 and 5 were reported missing around that time?”

“Sure.”

“And can you give me a hand?”

“I can give you both hands, baby. Just tell me where and when?”

“Give it a break, Tommy. I’m not in the mood for this now. I’ve got a bitch of a ride home and a weekend of work to look forward to.”

“Ouch. Okay, no jokes. What do you need?”

“Would you help me carry the cartons in my office down to my car?” The one perk of her job was a free parking spot in the outdoor parking lot two blocks from HIPP’s office. Monthly parking spots, when you could get them—there were waiting lists for most—went for $400 a month in the East Village. Tony, the owner of the lot, was a former exoneree freed through the efforts of HIPP. He provided HIPP with four spots, gratis. When first offered, Bruce turned them down, but Tony was so adamant about doing something for HIPP that Bruce ultimately relented. He understood that Tony’s gesture provided him with a measure of self-esteem that had been all but obliterated during his twelve years in prison.

Tommy looked at the stack of boxes. “You got it, boss.”

Out on the street, the sky was still bright, with the fragrance of sprouting buds lingering in the air. Although the temperature hovered around sixty degrees, the still air made it feel warmer. Dani loved spring. It carried the hope of warm lazy days ahead, summer vacation with Jonah, and sunlight that seemed to last forever. But this summer would be different. By the beginning of summer, she knew, George Calhoun’s fate would be determined. He would be a free man, released after seventeen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, or, rightly or wrongly, dead from a lethal injection.


Traffic crawled, as Dani had expected, and she didn’t arrive home until after six o’clock. She was exhausted, barely able to muster the effort to eat dinner. After Jonah fell asleep, she decided to give herself a break for the evening. Her mind was too fried for the tedious scrutiny of the transcript that awaited her. Instead, she settled down in front of the fire, Doug’s arms wrapped securely around her.

“Do you ever regret giving up the U.S. Attorney’s Office?” she asked. Like Dani, Doug had started his law career as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York.

It would have been easy for Doug to respond with a quick “no,” but he was too thoughtful to toss off an answer. “Most of the time, no. Teaching has so many rewards, and by and large the students keep me entertained. But sometimes I miss the energy of the agency, the stimulation of getting close to nailing our target, knowing I have the power to stop bad things from happening.”

Power. There were many reasons an attorney joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and one was for the feeling of power. For Doug, that had been a strong draw, one that fueled his interest in law from the outset. There was an adrenaline rush in putting together an investigation, preparing for trial, and securing a conviction, but under all that was an awareness of one’s power. Doug had luxuriated in that knowledge yet gave it up without complaint to spend more time with Jonah.

“I’ve been thinking about Sara recently,” Dani said.

“You haven’t spoken to her in a while.”

“I’ve been so busy. But I’ve been thinking lately how so much of my life now is tied to her, or at least to things about her.”

Dani didn’t grow up expecting to be a lawyer. She wanted to be a psychologist. During her undergraduate days at Brown University, she volunteered for several social action groups. One of them was Fast Friends. Looking back, that choice seemed prophetic, but at the time, it was fueled by a selfish desire to enhance her graduate-school opportunities.

Fast Friends paired volunteers with developmentally disabled “friends.” At the college chapters, volunteer students committed to meeting with their friends at least twice a month, with more regular contact by phone and, nowadays, e-mail. But inevitably it became much more than that. Most of the volunteers were close to their friends, and the benefits of the relationships flowed both ways.

Dani’s friend was Sara Klemson. An unusually pretty, mildly retarded eighteen-year-old, Sara had always found it difficult to make friends. Her overly effusive personality was off-putting to her non-disabled peers, and she had gradually become more withdrawn. She and Dani had hit it off immediately and saw each other regularly. Fast Friends held numerous social activities for the volunteers and their friends, but gradually Dani began to invite Sara to some regular campus social events. One was a fraternity party during her sophomore year.

She didn’t know how it had happened. She swore she wasn’t drunk; she never liked the feeling of being out of control. But somehow she lost sight of Sara and didn’t realize it until it was too late. She found her sobbing in a bedroom, her clothes torn, blood on the sheets. She had been raped. Eventually, two of the fraternity brothers were arrested and tried. With her inappropriate smiling and slow speech, Sara didn’t make a very good witness, and the boys’ expensive attorneys had little difficulty getting a “not guilty” verdict. It was then that Dani decided she’d have more impact as a prosecutor than as a psychologist.

“You would have ended up as an attorney even without Sara,” Doug said as he stroked her cheek. “You’re so naturally suited for it.”

The flames from the fireplace cast a soft glow in the darkened living room. The images in the photographs on the mantle were barely visible, but Dani could see her favorite: seven-year-old Jonah, flanked by his parents, blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, a look of pure joy on his face.

Decorators would have considered their living room a nightmare. No unifying style, no coordination of fabrics and color, just a hodgepodge of pieces they’d picked up over the years. Dani called it “comfy style.” Their cushioned burgundy couch, deep enough for her and Doug to lie entwined in each other’s arms. Two armchairs, on their third set of slipcovers. A water-marked maple coffee table Dani had picked up at a garage sale. An oval braided rug in front of the fireplace in a rainbow of colors, frayed at the edges.

The sounds of early cicadas outside the window mixed with the crackling of the burning wood and imbued her with a sense of deep contentment. Their lives had turned out differently from what they’d planned, but they were happy. They were a family.