The Bad Guy

Sara and I left Montgomery, Alabama, bound for a county seat about two hours away. We were going to interview a witness. Sara was an investigator in the office. I was a lawyer. Our clients were all on death row. Every day, teams of lawyers and investigators dispatched across Alabama on similar errands.

While the fact of our travel was unremarkable, our appointment that day was exceptional. Big Jim, the district attorney of that county, had agreed to a personal meeting at his office in the county seat to discuss a triple murder conviction he’d obtained ten years earlier. Two men were convicted. One—our client—was sentenced to death.

The appointment was so unusual because it happened. Coming into a case years after conviction, as we did, we seldom had access to the people involved in the trial. Prosecutors, homicide detectives, and other state agents were free to decline our interview requests. Replies from such people, when they came at all, were typically conveyed by a district attorney accusing us of harassment and warning us to leave people alone.

Our clients’ former trial attorneys, though required to turn over their files under the rules of legal ethics, often failed to do that. Most also dodged our meeting requests, protesting that they were too busy and the case we asked about had happened so long ago.

I have empathy for those former trial attorneys. They were appointed by the trial judge to fulfill the constitutional requirement for criminal counsel. Those former capital murder trial attorneys had no choice but to represent someone accused of a terrible crime that happened in the community where they lived and practiced law. I know from personal experience that it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to turn down a judge’s appointment no matter the personal disdain or hardship. They were paid next to nothing, and at the end of the trial their choices and actions would be litigated over and again on appeal and in post-conviction by lawyers like those in my office.

Thus, it was standard for lawyers and cops to blow us off. Big Jim did not do that. When I called, his office gave me a date and a time. They said Big Jim would be happy to host us in his hometown.

I’d made that trip several times before, sometimes with Sara or another colleague, and sometimes alone. That county seat was not far enough for an overnight stay, but far enough that those were always long days.

Sara and I checked in with Big Jim’s secretary, who said it would be just a minute. She was right. A minute later a door opened and Big Jim invited us into a room where he said we would not be disturbed. It wasn’t his personal office, but it was well-appointed. The desk and chairs were sturdy, nice. The walls were covered in dark wood paneling. The light was just right.

Big Jim welcomed us warmly, his hair perfectly combed, his teeth white, a broad smile on his face. Big Jim sat across from us. I introduced myself, introduced Sara, and began my usual preamble about coming onto the case long after conviction, that our role was to do a full investigation from the beginning, to ask all the questions, leave no stone unturned, this meeting was routine, and—

Big Jim cut me off. “You’ve been talking to people for a while, getting your facts straight. I understand. You’ve got your story. And now you want to talk to the bad guy. Well, here I am. It’s why you called, isn’t it? To meet the bad guy. How can I help?”

I was taken aback, disarmed by his use of the phrase “the bad guy” to refer to himself.

I recovered. During our drive from Montgomery, Sara and I had gone over different scenarios for this meeting with Big Jim, how things might play out, what the best outcome would be. We agreed that we couldn’t expect to get much useful information from Big Jim by asking questions, that we weren’t going to trick him or break him like happens on TV. But if we could get access to any of the file from his prosecution of the case, that would be an amazing success. Prosecution files are supposed to be turned over in death penalty appeals as a matter of course, but that almost never happens. Going into that meeting, we’d never seen the prosecution file for that particular case.

I said, “Actually, it would be a huge help if—well, we’d love to take a look at your file, if it’s available.”

Big Jim smiled. “The file? I figured you’d want to see that. I’ll have it brought in.”

Two banker’s boxes soon appeared. Big Jim motioned for them to be placed on the desk in front of Sara and me. Big Jim lifted the lid of one box and took out a handful of papers. “It’s all here,” he said. “My file from that trial. Not sure it will make any sense to you but have at it. Figure out what you want. I imagine that will take a while. Then go to lunch. After you eat, come back and my secretary will copy whatever you like.”

We all shook hands. Big Jim left.

Sara and I stayed standing, too amazed to move or speak. I think we both held our breath. It had been so easy, a simple request and the file appeared. Then one of us said, “Holy shit!” and we opened the boxes and began.

I have two memories of that morning. One is a general recollection of flipping furiously through papers, recognizing how helpful many of them would be, and working in real time with Sara to figure out how the documents in the file would affect the story we’d been piecing together. It’s highly creative and collaborative to be in a moment like that with a fellow professional who, not being a lawyer, saw many things from a very different perspective. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced anything quite like that.

My other memory is the pictures we found in one folder. There were dozens, maybe over one hundred, of highly saturated color photographs taken at the morgue. There were three deceased victims in the case, all in their late teens or early twenties. They’d been placed in a small metal storage container and killed by bullets that ricocheted after being fired into the container by a handgun. The corpses were all hit several times, with grievous damage. For the photos, however, the corpses were washed and dried, the wounds cleaned but not repaired. They lay on their backs, naked on large cement slabs.

Many of those pictures were not admitted into evidence. They did not go to the jury that convicted our client. Most photos thus had no relevance to our work. But I remember sitting with Sara, gently turning over those ghastly photos, touching them at the corners out of respect for the situation—but looking nonetheless because it is very hard not to look.

Now I can never unsee those images.

I also can never forget what happened when Sara and I returned from lunch with our list of documents we most wanted to copy. When we asked Big Jim’s secretary if we could return to the room where we’d met with Big Jim, she said she could not allow us access, now that our meeting with Big Jim was over. I explained the proposition Big Jim had made for us to review the file and then have her make copies. She said she had no idea what I was talking about. I asked to speak with Big Jim. She said he was gone for the day. I asked if she could go to the desk where we’d been working and bring out the files, if there was another room we could work in. She disappeared briefly then returned to say that there were no files in the room where we’d met with Big Jim, that she didn’t know what we meant. I asked again to speak with Big Jim. She said again that he was gone. I asked to make another appointment with Big Jim. She said she’d take my information and discuss it with him, and an appointment would be made when he had time.

There never was another appointment with Big Jim.

It’s possible that other lawyers later got ahold of that file, after I left that office, but I never saw that file again.

Big Jim’s power play, brazen as it was, wasn’t even the most shameless thing that happened in that case while I worked on it. There was a fourth victim who lived. One day Sara went by herself to meet with the survivor, on the theory that sending lawyers to meet with an attempted murder victim was poor situational awareness, at best. That young person told Sara a lot of helpful information that clarified and sometimes contradicted the official record. After Sara wrote up her notes and we attached them to a court filing, the Alabama Attorney General sent lawyers and local police to that young person’s home, sirens on, to demand an official written retraction of all the things told to Sara, or that young person would be guilty of letting a murderer walk free. So, the fourth victim recanted.

That is not the only case I worked on where the Attorney General intimidated witnesses like that.

The client we represented in that case involving Big Jim was innocent. We gathered a lot of evidence to that effect. It didn’t matter. He was eventually executed, his chances ruined by procedural reasons involving missed deadlines, and personal reasons involving information he decided to take to his grave.

Over the years, when government agents choose to break the law and don’t even try to hide their actions, much less apologize, I think of Big Jim. When you know you can do what you want and get away with it, there’s no risk in describing yourself as the bad guy.

As Kurt Vonnegut wrote: So it goes.