Left for Garbage

danger or care for themselves … too many of them end up in a courtroom chair blamed for the actions of others.
    My Charlie is one such case in point. Charlie grew up with an absentee father and a drunken abusive mother. He was forced to run away and literally join the carnival. It’s the most heartbreaking story. Having no other place to go, he lived with the brutal uneducated scum who follow carnivals, and he was raped and sodomized on a regular basis. Escaping , finally, and hoping for some human warmth and love, he went to live with, and work for, a supposedly Christian family who gave him a job as a truck driver.
    It turns out the husband in this family, the owner of the company, was using his trucks to abduct and murder young girls, and when the first body was discovered, he blamed my Charlie, even going so far as to plant DNA evidence on him. Because this man was a so-called upstanding family man and a church-goer, the police chose to believe him , as did a series of juries. This is something that always happens to the poor and downtrodden of our country, and causes our prisons to be filled with the unworldly and the innocent.
    Ever since my Charlie referred mystically to young Denise as the daughter we could have had if only he had received justice, I have felt a special determination to see that she is not punished for the crimes of others in this case. Though , God knows, as do I, that her brother, and especially her mother, are also sin-stained and guilt-stained. At least the brother will now be revealed to the world as the sick man he is, and her father as the monstrous child rapist which he is. I fear her mother will walk free.
    But I must let go of my anger at this wrong , as I am a woman of strong faith and know there is a higher judge who will one day force an accounting from Mrs. Margaret Brown.
    Salvatore actually seemed relieved when I volunteered to spend the evening with Denise to prep her for court the following day. Oddly, ever since she told Salvatore the truth, he has seemed more worried and disconnected from her than previously. That’s a cr iminal defense attorney for you! They are never comfortable with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, preferring pretty lies that they can sell to a jury.
    Well , I won’t argue that Denise’s life has been an unpalatable one, but I am bringing all my considerable influence to bear on this case to ensure that my poor little girl is given what my Charlie wasn’t given - a chance to tell the world all about her grotesque childhood and how her family set her up for this crime.
    I know Salvatore doesn’t like it , but he will use it because what Denise has now shared with us not only explains away Deeley’s sad accidental passing, but Denise’s odd behavior following the death as well. Denial is the river all sexual abuse victims swim in, and while Deeley was drowned in a pool, my poor Denise was treading water and trying desperately to breathe long before Deeley’s accident.
    Great errors have already come in this case and we haven’t even seated a jury yet. For the first two years , through depositions and motions, Salvatore tangled back and forth with Judge Gus Murray, a man with a lot of vulnerabilities to press attention. In fact, the way I saw him was as the Lance Ito for this generation of mega-trials.
    Salvatore viewed him that way , too, but let his personal feelings at Judge Murray’s obvious dislike for the defense become a personal vendetta. Salvatore turned our entire investigative team to finding something on Murray, and lo and behold, he turned out to have a blog. All this occurred before I came onboard.
    If I had been there , I would have told Salvatore to leave it alone. Murray was vulnerable - vulnerable to us getting a mistrial ruling, if we needed it, and vulnerable to playing to press opinion. He would have bent over backwards for us, just as Ito once did for the Simpson defense.
    But Salvatore went ahead and got a dismissal. Unfortunate, because the new judge is no joke. He is the chief justice of the bench and a man of unimpeachable reputation, and that bodes ill for either mistrial or an appeal if the worst case scenario occurs and we lose.
    Judge Julius Saget is a formidable man and this trial is going to be run his way. Salvatore was a fool but still we have truth and justice on our side, and God as well. So, despite this obstacle, I have no fears. Maybe when it’s over , Denise will come to live with