Left for Garbage

because they were poor? I thought not then, and I think not now.
    So I began by volunteering two days a week on death penalty cases. In this role I acted as a sort of human information gathering device. When the State puts the death penalty on the table, obviously it raises the stakes. All of us on the side of the angels, i.e. the defense side, always hope every trial - especially the DP ones - will end in a righteous not guilty verdict. But when a poor person is on trial and not offered a rich man’s defense, you have to expect the worst and that is where people in my chosen field come in.
    I gather every piece of the defendant’s life I can. I sift through and choose the most extenuating circumstances in their life and present them , hopefully, to their lead attorney. Were they abused as a child? Were they disenfranchised by society? Did they have a home, love, a single chance in this world, a world where only the stupid and blind still continue to claim the playing field is level?
    Obviously I am already coming from a place of disadvantage, because if our client is in the death penalty phase, then a jury of their so-called peers has already found them guilty and therefore is badly prejudiced against them. In addition, not only have they found them guilty, but these jurors did it knowing that the ultimate penalty was on the table. Therefore they are wannabe killers, these people, and now the burden of reaching a better place inside of them falls to me. But as Abraham Lincoln once said, “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
    Despite the ugliness I see in these people, I still try to reach them and offer them the gift of mercy, which is my mission, my calling, if you will. It was in this frame of mind that I began work on the trial of Charlie James Bledsoe, a man convicted of a series of heinous crimes against several young women, women the State wrongly says that my gentle love raped, tortured and murdered. In point of fact, so revolting were the crimes that he was accused of, this holy innocent of mine, that the press has given him the disgusting and inflammatory name ‘Bledsoe the Butcher’.
    As I say, I began the work in my usual frame of mind.
    Working diligently to find enough evidence to sway a group of people with murder in their hearts back to the path of righteousness, my work had until then touched my social conscience but never my heart. All that changed from the moment Charlie’s eyes met mine. Everything I thought I knew and understood of the world was utterly changed in an instant.
    Before Charlie, I now see that my world was black and white, like an Ansell Adams photograph. But Charlie, he introduced soft colors and dreams, and with his advent, I stepped into Monet’s gardens at Giverney.
    I was a rich man’s wife in an empty life and now I am filled spiritually and emotionally. My love can give me nothing in the way of money. Nor, thanks to the Draconian laws of death row inmates, can he even offer me a reassuring hug. Instead, I have love, a love that is pure and true, and unmarred by petty daily concerns such as who can pay the electric bill, and like many women before me, I have been forced by a jealous and judgmental society to pay for this love.
    My husband divorced me and took custody of our five daughters , and then poisoned them against Charlie and me before they even met him. And it’s all fine. I took what he dished out, but I fought tooth and nail with the Florida Bar that tried to pull my license to practice. As it turns out, there is no law yet against love, though I suppose that will be next. But until that time, I’m going to live in and celebrate my truth.
    My truth is that my Charlie is an innocent man. Fortunately or not, my truth is of interest to a great many people , people who should mind their own business but don’t. So, instead of wasting my inner light on resentment, I am planning to write a book, a love story about Charlie and me, which will doubtless make me several million dollars, every penny of which I will then turn around and use to finally give Charlie the rich man’s defense he deserves, and an indulged life once he is freed.
    My love has lived a life of deprivation, and though money no longer has any value to me, I understand his desire for nice things. One of the most endearing moments in our love affair came when I started to bring him my husband’s Armani suits to wear to court. Seeing the childlike delight on