Hard News

conviction on murder—which is hard to prove to the jury— maybe you can get the manslaughter. If you can’t get that maybe you’ll get criminally negligent homicide. Okay? So. My client—who’s got a rap sheet a mile long—had a grudge against the victim. When the cops arrested him based on an informer, he was in a bar in Times Square, where four witnesses swore he’d been drinking for the past five hours. The victim was killed two hours before. Shot five times in the head at close range. No murder weapon.”
    “So your client had a perfect alibi,” Rune said. “And no gun.”
    “Exactly.” The voice dipped from its screech and sounded earnest. “I grill the informant in court and by the time I’m through his story’s as riddled as the vic’s forehead, okay? But what happens? The jury
convicts
my guy. Not of murder, which is what they should’ve done if they believed the informant, but of criminally negligent homicide. Which is total bullshit. You don’t
negligently
shoot five bullets into somebody’s head. Either you don’t believe the alibi and convict him of murder or you let him off completely. The chickenshit jury didn’t have the balls to get him on murder but they couldn’t let him walk because he’s a black kid from the Bronx who had a record and’d said on a number of occasions he wanted to cut the vic’s spleen out of his body.”
    Rune sat forward in her chair. “See, that’s just what I’m doing my story on—an innocent man got convicted.”
    “Whoa, honey, who said my client was innocent?”
    She blinked and mentally reviewed the facts for a moment. “I thought
you
did. What about the gun, what about the alibi?”
    “Naw, he killed the vic, ditched the gun, then paid four buddies a couple six-packs of crack to perjure themselves….”
    “But—”
    “But the point is not is he guilty? The point is you gotta play by the rules. And the jury didn’t. You can only convict on the evidence that was presented. The jury didn’t do that.”
    “What’s so wrong with that? He was guilty and the jury convicted him. That sounds okay to me.”
    “Let’s change the facts a little. Let’s pretend that young black Fred Williams, National Merit Scholar with a ticket to Harvard Medical School, who all he’s ever done bad is get a parking ticket, is walking down a Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street when two of New York’s finest screech up behind him, get him in a choke hold then drag him to the precinct and book him for rape. He gets picked out of a lineup because they all look alike, et cetera, and the case goes to trial. There the DA describes to a predominantly Caucasian middle-class jury how this kid beat, raped and sodomized a mother of two. Then a predominantly Caucasian middle-class witness describes the perp as a black kid with razor-notched hair and basketball sneakers and the predominantly Caucasian middle-class doctor gets up and describes the victim’s injuries in horrifying detail. What the fuck do you think is going to happen to Fred? He’s going to jail and he ain’t gonna be just visiting.”
    Rune was quiet.
    “So every time a shooter who Glocks some poor asshole five times in the head gets convicted by a cheating jury—i.e., a flawed legal system—that means there’s a risk that Fred Williams is gonna go down for something he
didn’t
do. And as long as that’s a risk then the world’s got to put up with people like me.”
    Rune gave him a coy look. “So’s that your closing argument?”
    Megler laughed. “A variation on one of them. I’ve got a great repertoire. Blows the jury away.”
    “I don’t really believe what you’re saying but it looks like you do.”
    “Oh, I do indeed. And as soon as I stop believing it then I’m out of the business. I’ll go into handicapping or professional blackjack. The odds are better and you still get paid in cash. Now, I’ve got some truly innocent clients arriving in about a half hour. You said you wanted to ask me about the Boggs case? Anything about that article I read?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re doing the story?”
    “Right. Can I tape you?”
    His thin face twisted. He looked like Ichabod Crane in her illustrated copy of
Sleepy Hollow
. “Why don’t you just take notes.”
    “If you’d feel more comfortable …”
    “I would.”
    She pulled out a notebook. She asked, “You represented Boggs by yourself?”
    “Yep. He was a Section Eighteen case. Indigent. So the state paid my fee to represent