Since the preliminary hearing, things have not improved. Our attorney has not gotten his spark back. We waited for several weeks to see what the prosecutor would offer George. Eventually, he came back with a terrible deal: Plead guilty and receive between 4 and 15 years of prison time. 4 to 15 years for a crime he did not commit? What kind of deal is that?! Especially considering the extreme likelihood that the small town DA will milk this for all it's worth to bag a supposed criminal and get a gold star and a pat on the back - meaning George was looking at more like 15 than 4. Needless to say, George rejected it outright.
Our attorney was displeased. "This is the best deal they're going to give us, you know," he told us. "I don't know if we can make it through this Walker hearing. And after that, they'll go for the full two counts of 25 to life all over again." We tried to reason with him; we have so much material to work with! The police did so many things wrong - from your basic failing to read Miranda rights, to offering a deal of leniency, to intimidation and threats of imprisonment, even dictating what he should say - all to a man who we can prove has a psychological tendency to buckle under pressure and comply out of fear. How in the world would this thing stand? How could any person in their right mind believe that this was a legit confession? How can the police get away with doing this to a disabled guy and somehow call it a win?
Politics, said his attorney. It all boils down to politics. "You know, you got this old judge - he's been doing this for 99 years or whatever," he said, "he's about to retire, he's probably friends with all the cops. You really think he's going to want to retire thinking he's angered the cops and seen as letting a criminal go? Plus," he added, "it's a redneck town over there. These people aren't going to look favorably on you."
It's the perfect storm. The unimaginable made probable because of nothing more than small town injustice.
Just yesterday we trudged into the courtroom again, this time to formally reject the prosecutor's ridiculous plea offer. This time, a real, bonafide CSC case was heard just before our own. A man in his 30's or thereabouts, had had an ongoing thing with a little girl. We watched as he plead to a deal all too similar to what the prosecutor had offered George. We watched as a broken mother stood, afterward, and read the most heart-wrenching closing statements I have ever heard, clutching a notepad and shaking with tears. "My daughter trusted you!" she wept. "She just wants to know why you did this to her!"
Across the audience, I fought tears and thought back to what it was like to be a child growing up with the horrors of sexual abuse. I remembered the terror, the pain, the isolation. I remembered the shame and helplessness. The woman cried that her daughter had forgiven, but the pain may never go away. I nodded my head silently. She's right. The pain never goes away.
I clutched George's hand and squeezed. If I thought for half a second that he was like that...like them...those who would rob a young girl of her innocence...if I thought he was one of them, I would have left him to rot. I would have had many furious words for him, thrown the ring at him, and gone back home to Texas with no hesitation. When this case began, I made every effort to take off the rose colored glasses of romance and make a smart decision. I wasn't going to have the wool pulled over my eyes! All too quickly, the accuser's lies and manipulation surfaced like oil sludge on a tainted ocean. All too quickly, George's honesty, his alibi, his evidence came forth in abundance. I have no regrets. My stance remains firm. I will fight until the very end for him.
Presently, the sound of handcuffs yanked me from my thoughts. "Chill out there, Robocop," the convicted sex offender said with a smirk, and strutted his way out of the courtroom - and tossed back a final "I love you" to his girlfriend just before the doors swung shut. She broke down and sobbed. Our lawyer stood up and heaved a sigh.
Am I going to be where that woman sat - am I going to weep for an innocent man?
The prosecutor was furious when George rejected the plea. A small town reporter strolled up to him and asked, "So how's the case?" He puffed up. "I think I got it going pretty well," he said proudly. It was done and over with in just a few minutes. We trudged home with a tentative plan from the attorney as to what to do next, and three new court dates set. I spent the rest of the day feeling broken, wondering what next.
But when it rains, of course, it always pours.
We just received another call from our attorney. Suddenly, now that the case is lurching forward with no possibility of further plea offers, he is upset that George didn't just plead guilty to the crime he never committed - and he wants money. Lots of money.
Quite in fact, he wants me to raise $5,000 in about three weeks. "Nothing personal," he assured us, "just strictly business. I'm clocking in a lot of hours..."
Yeah. So are we. Let us know when you find a winning lottery ticket! In the meantime, we have been clinging to each other losing our minds and wracking our brains. What now? What happens if the attorney just up and quits? We thought we had a contract, a payment plan, everything taken care of! Now this!
Of all times to yank the rug out from under us.
Whatever happens, I will never stop fighting for you, George. I just wish I knew how.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Injustice: The Truth
I will be honest. I have avoided this blog - because I haven't had any good news to give, and it's like swallowing hot coals to have to deliver the same terrible news I have received. In a time such as this, there is nothing good to write. But I'm here now, because the truth needs to be told of what has happened in
my life over this last year - the truth I haven't been able to tell anyone but my
closest friends. I'm going to start from the beginning of this case, and bring it all up to speed. This was written on July 3rd (therefore, references to "yesterday" refer to the 2nd), and it took me until now to gain the courage to post it. If you do not feel like reading a real, true modern
tragedy, don't read on. It is true, it is disturbing, and it is likely
to end in the deaths of about three people whose health cannot survive
in its wake. This is in dedication to their memory, while they still
survive. In dedication to the truth behind the manifold lies. And in
dedication to my fiance, George.
Sally, as we will call her, is the step-sister of my fiancee. His mother married her father many years ago. Last year, Sally had moved out of her father and his mother's house in order to be with her own blood mother, a conniving woman well known among everyone including the police and the courts for trying to imprison, harass and devastate anyone who dared cross her - and there, Sally's hatred festered against my fiance's mother for months on end. From this black hatred, a plot was hatched to bring the entire family down, to tear apart what had been joined by his mother marrying her father. And my love, my fiancee, was the perfect scapegoat. By leveling this accusation, not only would it devastate his mother and tear apart her marriage to Sally's father - but furthermore, the stress might be the last nail in his mother's coffin, since she suffers from a chronic and deadly neurological illness and is now nearly skeletal from its damage. Even more, if she claimed to be a victim of the crime, she could hold a free ticket for government money for the rest of her life - something her mother had proudly told her would save her from ever having to work again. It was the perfect plan.
And so, in January of this year, she faked her best cry and told an earth-shattering lie: That he had committed a terrible crime.
By early February, the police, not only obligated to investigate but taking her words as God's own, sent a state trooper who stormed into our house, stole him away and interrogated him for hours on end. I sat outside a tiny, run-down small town station, dark and empty but for the officer and my fiance crammed into a tiny room - and clutching myself against the horrible cold, I knew something was wrong. When at last he stiffly walked out of the police station, shaking and in pain, he collapsed into the passenger's seat of my car and wept, "I'm fucked."
I have read accounts of false confessions before. But I have never known the true evils of our justice system until now. For hours he was manipulated, pushed, coerced, cajoled, terrorized. He was told that if he did not confess, he'd be taken away to jail and they'd automatically believe the accuser. He was told over and over again that he was doomed, and promised leniency if he confessed. Before it was over the officer was throwing things, pounding on the table, towering over him. He was told to "write a letter of apology"...which, in essence, would be a written confession. Having had only an hour or two of sleep, his bones aching from the horrible winter cold and his chronic ill health, his head pounding, the sheer liquid fear aggravating damage that had been done to his brain years before, he rocked back and forth, slurring complaints of agonizing head pain and struggling against the officer's onslaught. He had never had this happen before. He had no idea what to do. What started as a simple, "Well I guess I'll explain the truth and this'll be done" ended in tragedy. Shaking and weeping, desperately fearful that he'd never see me again, after hours he collapsed and gave in to the officer's demands. Trembling fingers wrote on paper and he struggled to make it as ineffective as he could, while the officer dictated to him what he should write - careful to say "In your own words, of course" for the hidden recorder in order to cover his ass. He broke the law repeatedly, the law he was meant to uphold, and in that tiny locked room he broke down an innocent man into saying he was guilty of a crime he could never dream of committing.
In the months since, a case has been launched and gone into full swing. At first, he was taken to jail, and I single-handedly pulled together all of his friends, his mother, and my friends, and we scraped together the bail to rescue him. Sitting in a tiny cell crawling with bugs, seeing horrors that are unspeakable, he was on the verge of suicide - and with guards all too happy to leave razors unattended in the cells for hours at a time, it would have been all too easy. Every night I had clung to the little stuffed dog he bought me for Valentine's, and lay awake sobbing and praying. Every day was spent organizing, gathering funds, pawning and selling what little I had, calming his hysterical mother down and coaxing her to drive 2 hours alone in a broken down van with what little money she had gathered to help. Finally, after an agonizing week and with the sale of my car, we finished. I called the bondsman and drove, white-knuckling the steering wheel, to the jail house. We filled out paperwork and turned it in. And we were turned away. In direct opposition to the judge's orders, the police smirked and told us it wasn't good enough. The bondsman, an old hefty man who could barely walk, shuffled back to us and said, "I've never seen anything like it. They just don't want to let him go." Thinking they had a criminal in their clutches, they had refused, however illegal it may have been. We almost left empty-handed - but we begged, shaking and weeping, for the bondsman to try again. It was a long shot.
The jail stalled for hours before letting him go. When he staggered out of the building, he was an empty shell of a man, pale and sickly and wide-eyed with terror. He has never told me what happened to him in there, except for a few things. But I know the truth. The horrible, unspeakable truth. An innocent man was subjected to true horror at the hands of a system meant to protect the innocent. And it was just the beginning.
He had scraps of paper with him. Little scraps with shaky scribbles of increasingly-frantic pleas, prayers, little letters of love and despair to me. He had been ruined, his heart torn out and inked all over these little pages in jagged lines.
At first I got him a court-appointed lawyer, since we had spent every last spare dime on his bail. I had to do a lot of snooping and calling around to even get them to give it to him. The system stalled and stalled. Everyone wanted a feather for their cap, bonus points for capturing a criminal, sentencing him, prosecuting him. In a small town in one of the most economically-desperate states of America, with officials all vying for the adoration of the public and votes - everyone wanted in on this. I fought corruption with a cell phone, throwing the book at them. I made enemies. Cops followed me around, hugging my bumper with their squad cars, crouched in unmarked cars, slowly passing by the house and glaring inside. At long last, we were given the lawyer, but as the weeks passed and he did precisely nothing, we discovered eventually that even he was against us. You see, if a lawyer and a prosecutor negotiate a plea deal - it is reflected on both of their records as a win. He had every bit of interest in refusing to help us. And he was all too happy to oblige the prosecutor.
We called literally dozens of lawyers, seeking anyone we could afford, anyone who would help us. We reached out and received a few donations from friends, but in this economy nobody has money to spare - the donations totaled at about 50 dollars. Still, with it we managed to scrape by. At long last we found an attorney from a big city about an hour and a half to two hours away. He listened to our tale of woe and said proudly, "Let's get in there and give 'em hell."
For a time, we had hope. He stormed right into that small town courtroom and he did just as he said - he gave them Hell. They didn't stand a chance. The prosecutor became red-faced with rage, flabbergasted at how well we had done to gather evidence. I personally acquired a recording of the seedy interrogation and wrote a 40-page transcript. Every word, every detail, every sound effect, with a two-page cover letter of annotations and periodic time stamps for reference. It was nothing short of a masterpiece and it was done in just 12 hours of frantic, tearful work, as I was forced to listen over and over and over again to the love of my life being broken down and manipulated and bribed and intimidated by a police officer who does not deserve his badge. Multiple times I threw my headphones and broke down, weeping that I couldn't do it again, not again, no more. But it had to be done, and it proved to be essential. When I handed it to the lawyer, he gave me a look of awe.
For a time, we had hope. The prosecutor was offering lower and lower and lower plea deals, before we had even begun to chip away at Sally's sick little lies.
Then, someone leaked to her part of our evidence. We suspect that our court appointed attorney, angry at having been fired, went and spoke to the prosecutor, still holding what evidence he'd had while working for us. Even our lawyer agreed that was the most likely culprit. Sally had been called in by the prosecutor, and they decided to revise the story altogether. A "motion to amend" was filed - moving the dates conveniently right where they needed to be to break the solid alibi that my fiancee had. Right where they needed to be to try and take him down. When asked in court later why she had done this, she just shrugged, grinned wide and said "I thought about it and realized the dates didn't seem right." In the audience, her mother smiled wide and nodded in silent approval, proud of her conniving daughter and the welfare money she'd soon be able to steal from her.
That was just yesterday.
The whole case had been reset. We went back to a preliminary hearing and prepared to hear the prosecution struggle to show that they had enough proof to move forward. All they had was the lie of a teenage girl, a constantly-changing story...but what they also had was a shifty cop with a big award-winning smile, and a false confession forced out of my fiance. It was nothing - and yet it was everything. They had no proof - but it didn't matter. We have mountains of proof - but it is not enough. The preliminary was an utter circus. Sally got on the stand and poured on the tears. At first, she froze up - she couldn't tell her lies with everyone staring her down. With the whole courtroom silent enough to hear a pin drop (but for the rain - yes, literal rain, because my life is just that weird sometimes - falling outside), her mother loudly cleared her throat and Sally flinched to attention and started nervously recounting her tale in deadpan, rehearsed tones, then froze up again. This went on until the judge ordered a 15 minute recess. By the time those 15 minutes were up, she had been huddled in a little cluster of white trash and wiggers, all from the side of the family hell-bent on this succeeding, all patting her on the back and whispering to her - and she returned to the stand with a grin on her face and her head held high. Her mother sat motioning and mouthing to her silently, and she rehearsed the perfect lines, complete with official-sounding words. Our lawyer upon cross-examining her asked, "Who told you to use those words?" and she sassed with head bobbing side to side, "Nobody, I just know them!" He asked, "When you changed your story, why did you do so?" She smirked and said, "I just thought about it some more." She played the court room like a violin. And the judge, looking bored out of his mind, actually bought it. The case ho-hummed its way back to gearing up for trial. And our lawyer told us: "It looks grim."
My fiance's mother stood wearily leaning on her cane, trying to beg the lawyer to give her any signs of hope. An acquaintance of ours sat avidly telling stories of friends of hers who'd been in similar trouble. My fiance's eyes were hollow as he stood beside his mother and asked over and over, "What does this mean?" And I just looked up at the lawyer. He looked at me, eyebrows lifted, sad and helpless. And I knew. Piercing the chorus of voices, I asked the million dollar question: What kind of plea deals do we have on the table now? Trying to remain professional, he explained in detail. I knew what it boiled down to. As my fiance and his mother grew more heated trying to beg for hopeful news and wrap their minds around it all, I sighed. The lawyer looked at me and said, "You get it, don't you?" I nodded. "I get it. Trust me, I get it." He picked up his briefcase. "You can explain it to them, then." And he went on his way.
Yesterday, as the rain fell on the windshield of my tiny little Prius, cracked by last winter's harsh Michigan temperatures and ice and since left unattended with every spare dime poured into legal fees - I wept and delivered the deadly news.
At this point, we have a choice. Try to negotiate for a plea deal, which may be a required 20 year prison sentence (we will not know for certain until about a month from now). Or try to fight...knowing that confessions are almost never overturned, and that if that confession stands, a jury of our peers will sentence the man I love to 25 to life. With his health on the decline and the crime of choice carrying such powerful venomous stigma and hate - he will not survive. The first guy to try and shank him will likely be the last.
I am spending the last days with my love. I do not know how long we have. If a sufficiently-lenient plea deal cannot be reached, we know that he will be taken to prison and we know he will die. We will fight the case with nothing left to lose. And when the time comes, we will have spent every last moment clinging to each other until the end.
His mother's health is declining. She is working on getting her affairs in order. She knows this stress is about to kill her. He has left her a last recording of his voice, and she has left everything to him in the hopes he can survive long enough to receive it, and in the wake of her entire family betraying her. If George is in prison, all of her possessions, her house, her money, will fall to Sally and her father - which is what they hope for.
My health is also declining. I will not likely survive. I don't think I want to anymore.
Somewhere, a teenage welfare mother is bragging to her parents, and being bribed with a house for herself and her skinny wigger husband-to-be for a job well done. They will live on to forever steal tax dollars and raise scum of their own.
George, I love you. I have fought with everything I have, every bit of strength in me, and every last dollar and possession I own. I would do it all again over and over if only I could save you. I still cling to frail shreds of hope that we will survive. I will not stop fighting - I will stall for time as long as I can. Please survive with me. As long as we can.
I love you.
Sally, as we will call her, is the step-sister of my fiancee. His mother married her father many years ago. Last year, Sally had moved out of her father and his mother's house in order to be with her own blood mother, a conniving woman well known among everyone including the police and the courts for trying to imprison, harass and devastate anyone who dared cross her - and there, Sally's hatred festered against my fiance's mother for months on end. From this black hatred, a plot was hatched to bring the entire family down, to tear apart what had been joined by his mother marrying her father. And my love, my fiancee, was the perfect scapegoat. By leveling this accusation, not only would it devastate his mother and tear apart her marriage to Sally's father - but furthermore, the stress might be the last nail in his mother's coffin, since she suffers from a chronic and deadly neurological illness and is now nearly skeletal from its damage. Even more, if she claimed to be a victim of the crime, she could hold a free ticket for government money for the rest of her life - something her mother had proudly told her would save her from ever having to work again. It was the perfect plan.
And so, in January of this year, she faked her best cry and told an earth-shattering lie: That he had committed a terrible crime.
By early February, the police, not only obligated to investigate but taking her words as God's own, sent a state trooper who stormed into our house, stole him away and interrogated him for hours on end. I sat outside a tiny, run-down small town station, dark and empty but for the officer and my fiance crammed into a tiny room - and clutching myself against the horrible cold, I knew something was wrong. When at last he stiffly walked out of the police station, shaking and in pain, he collapsed into the passenger's seat of my car and wept, "I'm fucked."
I have read accounts of false confessions before. But I have never known the true evils of our justice system until now. For hours he was manipulated, pushed, coerced, cajoled, terrorized. He was told that if he did not confess, he'd be taken away to jail and they'd automatically believe the accuser. He was told over and over again that he was doomed, and promised leniency if he confessed. Before it was over the officer was throwing things, pounding on the table, towering over him. He was told to "write a letter of apology"...which, in essence, would be a written confession. Having had only an hour or two of sleep, his bones aching from the horrible winter cold and his chronic ill health, his head pounding, the sheer liquid fear aggravating damage that had been done to his brain years before, he rocked back and forth, slurring complaints of agonizing head pain and struggling against the officer's onslaught. He had never had this happen before. He had no idea what to do. What started as a simple, "Well I guess I'll explain the truth and this'll be done" ended in tragedy. Shaking and weeping, desperately fearful that he'd never see me again, after hours he collapsed and gave in to the officer's demands. Trembling fingers wrote on paper and he struggled to make it as ineffective as he could, while the officer dictated to him what he should write - careful to say "In your own words, of course" for the hidden recorder in order to cover his ass. He broke the law repeatedly, the law he was meant to uphold, and in that tiny locked room he broke down an innocent man into saying he was guilty of a crime he could never dream of committing.
In the months since, a case has been launched and gone into full swing. At first, he was taken to jail, and I single-handedly pulled together all of his friends, his mother, and my friends, and we scraped together the bail to rescue him. Sitting in a tiny cell crawling with bugs, seeing horrors that are unspeakable, he was on the verge of suicide - and with guards all too happy to leave razors unattended in the cells for hours at a time, it would have been all too easy. Every night I had clung to the little stuffed dog he bought me for Valentine's, and lay awake sobbing and praying. Every day was spent organizing, gathering funds, pawning and selling what little I had, calming his hysterical mother down and coaxing her to drive 2 hours alone in a broken down van with what little money she had gathered to help. Finally, after an agonizing week and with the sale of my car, we finished. I called the bondsman and drove, white-knuckling the steering wheel, to the jail house. We filled out paperwork and turned it in. And we were turned away. In direct opposition to the judge's orders, the police smirked and told us it wasn't good enough. The bondsman, an old hefty man who could barely walk, shuffled back to us and said, "I've never seen anything like it. They just don't want to let him go." Thinking they had a criminal in their clutches, they had refused, however illegal it may have been. We almost left empty-handed - but we begged, shaking and weeping, for the bondsman to try again. It was a long shot.
The jail stalled for hours before letting him go. When he staggered out of the building, he was an empty shell of a man, pale and sickly and wide-eyed with terror. He has never told me what happened to him in there, except for a few things. But I know the truth. The horrible, unspeakable truth. An innocent man was subjected to true horror at the hands of a system meant to protect the innocent. And it was just the beginning.
He had scraps of paper with him. Little scraps with shaky scribbles of increasingly-frantic pleas, prayers, little letters of love and despair to me. He had been ruined, his heart torn out and inked all over these little pages in jagged lines.
At first I got him a court-appointed lawyer, since we had spent every last spare dime on his bail. I had to do a lot of snooping and calling around to even get them to give it to him. The system stalled and stalled. Everyone wanted a feather for their cap, bonus points for capturing a criminal, sentencing him, prosecuting him. In a small town in one of the most economically-desperate states of America, with officials all vying for the adoration of the public and votes - everyone wanted in on this. I fought corruption with a cell phone, throwing the book at them. I made enemies. Cops followed me around, hugging my bumper with their squad cars, crouched in unmarked cars, slowly passing by the house and glaring inside. At long last, we were given the lawyer, but as the weeks passed and he did precisely nothing, we discovered eventually that even he was against us. You see, if a lawyer and a prosecutor negotiate a plea deal - it is reflected on both of their records as a win. He had every bit of interest in refusing to help us. And he was all too happy to oblige the prosecutor.
We called literally dozens of lawyers, seeking anyone we could afford, anyone who would help us. We reached out and received a few donations from friends, but in this economy nobody has money to spare - the donations totaled at about 50 dollars. Still, with it we managed to scrape by. At long last we found an attorney from a big city about an hour and a half to two hours away. He listened to our tale of woe and said proudly, "Let's get in there and give 'em hell."
For a time, we had hope. He stormed right into that small town courtroom and he did just as he said - he gave them Hell. They didn't stand a chance. The prosecutor became red-faced with rage, flabbergasted at how well we had done to gather evidence. I personally acquired a recording of the seedy interrogation and wrote a 40-page transcript. Every word, every detail, every sound effect, with a two-page cover letter of annotations and periodic time stamps for reference. It was nothing short of a masterpiece and it was done in just 12 hours of frantic, tearful work, as I was forced to listen over and over and over again to the love of my life being broken down and manipulated and bribed and intimidated by a police officer who does not deserve his badge. Multiple times I threw my headphones and broke down, weeping that I couldn't do it again, not again, no more. But it had to be done, and it proved to be essential. When I handed it to the lawyer, he gave me a look of awe.
For a time, we had hope. The prosecutor was offering lower and lower and lower plea deals, before we had even begun to chip away at Sally's sick little lies.
Then, someone leaked to her part of our evidence. We suspect that our court appointed attorney, angry at having been fired, went and spoke to the prosecutor, still holding what evidence he'd had while working for us. Even our lawyer agreed that was the most likely culprit. Sally had been called in by the prosecutor, and they decided to revise the story altogether. A "motion to amend" was filed - moving the dates conveniently right where they needed to be to break the solid alibi that my fiancee had. Right where they needed to be to try and take him down. When asked in court later why she had done this, she just shrugged, grinned wide and said "I thought about it and realized the dates didn't seem right." In the audience, her mother smiled wide and nodded in silent approval, proud of her conniving daughter and the welfare money she'd soon be able to steal from her.
That was just yesterday.
The whole case had been reset. We went back to a preliminary hearing and prepared to hear the prosecution struggle to show that they had enough proof to move forward. All they had was the lie of a teenage girl, a constantly-changing story...but what they also had was a shifty cop with a big award-winning smile, and a false confession forced out of my fiance. It was nothing - and yet it was everything. They had no proof - but it didn't matter. We have mountains of proof - but it is not enough. The preliminary was an utter circus. Sally got on the stand and poured on the tears. At first, she froze up - she couldn't tell her lies with everyone staring her down. With the whole courtroom silent enough to hear a pin drop (but for the rain - yes, literal rain, because my life is just that weird sometimes - falling outside), her mother loudly cleared her throat and Sally flinched to attention and started nervously recounting her tale in deadpan, rehearsed tones, then froze up again. This went on until the judge ordered a 15 minute recess. By the time those 15 minutes were up, she had been huddled in a little cluster of white trash and wiggers, all from the side of the family hell-bent on this succeeding, all patting her on the back and whispering to her - and she returned to the stand with a grin on her face and her head held high. Her mother sat motioning and mouthing to her silently, and she rehearsed the perfect lines, complete with official-sounding words. Our lawyer upon cross-examining her asked, "Who told you to use those words?" and she sassed with head bobbing side to side, "Nobody, I just know them!" He asked, "When you changed your story, why did you do so?" She smirked and said, "I just thought about it some more." She played the court room like a violin. And the judge, looking bored out of his mind, actually bought it. The case ho-hummed its way back to gearing up for trial. And our lawyer told us: "It looks grim."
My fiance's mother stood wearily leaning on her cane, trying to beg the lawyer to give her any signs of hope. An acquaintance of ours sat avidly telling stories of friends of hers who'd been in similar trouble. My fiance's eyes were hollow as he stood beside his mother and asked over and over, "What does this mean?" And I just looked up at the lawyer. He looked at me, eyebrows lifted, sad and helpless. And I knew. Piercing the chorus of voices, I asked the million dollar question: What kind of plea deals do we have on the table now? Trying to remain professional, he explained in detail. I knew what it boiled down to. As my fiance and his mother grew more heated trying to beg for hopeful news and wrap their minds around it all, I sighed. The lawyer looked at me and said, "You get it, don't you?" I nodded. "I get it. Trust me, I get it." He picked up his briefcase. "You can explain it to them, then." And he went on his way.
Yesterday, as the rain fell on the windshield of my tiny little Prius, cracked by last winter's harsh Michigan temperatures and ice and since left unattended with every spare dime poured into legal fees - I wept and delivered the deadly news.
At this point, we have a choice. Try to negotiate for a plea deal, which may be a required 20 year prison sentence (we will not know for certain until about a month from now). Or try to fight...knowing that confessions are almost never overturned, and that if that confession stands, a jury of our peers will sentence the man I love to 25 to life. With his health on the decline and the crime of choice carrying such powerful venomous stigma and hate - he will not survive. The first guy to try and shank him will likely be the last.
I am spending the last days with my love. I do not know how long we have. If a sufficiently-lenient plea deal cannot be reached, we know that he will be taken to prison and we know he will die. We will fight the case with nothing left to lose. And when the time comes, we will have spent every last moment clinging to each other until the end.
His mother's health is declining. She is working on getting her affairs in order. She knows this stress is about to kill her. He has left her a last recording of his voice, and she has left everything to him in the hopes he can survive long enough to receive it, and in the wake of her entire family betraying her. If George is in prison, all of her possessions, her house, her money, will fall to Sally and her father - which is what they hope for.
My health is also declining. I will not likely survive. I don't think I want to anymore.
Somewhere, a teenage welfare mother is bragging to her parents, and being bribed with a house for herself and her skinny wigger husband-to-be for a job well done. They will live on to forever steal tax dollars and raise scum of their own.
George, I love you. I have fought with everything I have, every bit of strength in me, and every last dollar and possession I own. I would do it all again over and over if only I could save you. I still cling to frail shreds of hope that we will survive. I will not stop fighting - I will stall for time as long as I can. Please survive with me. As long as we can.
I love you.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Sheer Chaos: The Good, The Bad, And the Terrible
As the title implies, it has been nothing short of chaos around here. I apologize for the lack of updates, guys - I've had a whopping seizure problem lately and I'm up to about 1 to 3 seizures a day some days. It's difficult to write on a post-ictal brain. Today has been a little more restful and a little less seizure-prone, so I'm here to bring you updates!
The Good:
1. Some really important evidence has come in that proves the accuser is a liar. I cannot disclose details but let's just say it's pretty interesting stuff. Our attorney is hopeful that it will be very useful.
2. I have written a 38-page transcript of the recorded confession, taking approximately 12 hours to complete it. I'm pretty darn proud of myself, and the attorney seems pretty glad to have it. I hope to go over it with him soon.
3. We are thus far keeping up with lawyer fees, thanks to the donations of friends. It's a tenuous balancing act for us, but at least the retainer fee and first month's payment are out of the way. Keeping our fingers crossed that we can keep up. It's one hell of a task!
The Bad:
1. Someone has leaked vital information to the accuser. She's suddenly switching up her story to try and get around George's obvious alibi, saying she suddenly has new memories that it happened some other time. I can't even believe they're letting her get away with it! And neither can our attorney. He's going to try and set this straight, but if they're actually lending even a half a second's credence to her constantly-changing stories, it's hard to believe they'll bother with the truth. It's horrifying to see them buying into her crap.
2. There is reason to believe George's former attorney is actively working against us now. It's not something you can really prove or put your finger on, but let's just say we and George's new attorney are less than happy about a few things.
3. A new landlord has bought out the property we've been living at for the last year. Long story short, he swooped in and tossed out the rental terms from our old landlord, and then required everybody to "lock in" their rental rates (and required a one-year lease) and/or have their rent raised by up to 600 dollars; if anyone so much as paid the next month's rent, they were considered locked in for the next year. He did all of this while firing all of the maintenance staff (with no replacements in sight) and setting up a drop box so he could just roll in the money from like five states away. It's a real shady thing, and we certainly can't afford it. Fortunately, we managed to find a new apartment in just four days, and we are working as quickly as we can to relocate in light of this new landlord's shady tactics. We're really going to miss our old landlord; he was a great guy!
The Terrible:
I can't really go into much detail, but basically - George's case hangs by a thread. It's much more hopeful in some ways, but at the same time, certain factors leave him really on the edge here. I really do not know how this is going to go. It's destroying our lives, and the sense of utter betrayal and disgust at the lies of the accuser grows every day for us. It's hard to hang on to hope. I wish I could explain more, but the recent leak has us a little paranoid for the time being. Sorry, guys.
That's about all for now. Over the weekend we will be scrambling to move to the new apartment, get me a neurologist appointment for my out-of-control seizures, and a whole slew of other stuff. It's nothing short of chaos around here! Thanks for your patience, everyone - I'll do my best to update as much as possible!
The Good:
1. Some really important evidence has come in that proves the accuser is a liar. I cannot disclose details but let's just say it's pretty interesting stuff. Our attorney is hopeful that it will be very useful.
2. I have written a 38-page transcript of the recorded confession, taking approximately 12 hours to complete it. I'm pretty darn proud of myself, and the attorney seems pretty glad to have it. I hope to go over it with him soon.
3. We are thus far keeping up with lawyer fees, thanks to the donations of friends. It's a tenuous balancing act for us, but at least the retainer fee and first month's payment are out of the way. Keeping our fingers crossed that we can keep up. It's one hell of a task!
The Bad:
1. Someone has leaked vital information to the accuser. She's suddenly switching up her story to try and get around George's obvious alibi, saying she suddenly has new memories that it happened some other time. I can't even believe they're letting her get away with it! And neither can our attorney. He's going to try and set this straight, but if they're actually lending even a half a second's credence to her constantly-changing stories, it's hard to believe they'll bother with the truth. It's horrifying to see them buying into her crap.
2. There is reason to believe George's former attorney is actively working against us now. It's not something you can really prove or put your finger on, but let's just say we and George's new attorney are less than happy about a few things.
3. A new landlord has bought out the property we've been living at for the last year. Long story short, he swooped in and tossed out the rental terms from our old landlord, and then required everybody to "lock in" their rental rates (and required a one-year lease) and/or have their rent raised by up to 600 dollars; if anyone so much as paid the next month's rent, they were considered locked in for the next year. He did all of this while firing all of the maintenance staff (with no replacements in sight) and setting up a drop box so he could just roll in the money from like five states away. It's a real shady thing, and we certainly can't afford it. Fortunately, we managed to find a new apartment in just four days, and we are working as quickly as we can to relocate in light of this new landlord's shady tactics. We're really going to miss our old landlord; he was a great guy!
The Terrible:
I can't really go into much detail, but basically - George's case hangs by a thread. It's much more hopeful in some ways, but at the same time, certain factors leave him really on the edge here. I really do not know how this is going to go. It's destroying our lives, and the sense of utter betrayal and disgust at the lies of the accuser grows every day for us. It's hard to hang on to hope. I wish I could explain more, but the recent leak has us a little paranoid for the time being. Sorry, guys.
That's about all for now. Over the weekend we will be scrambling to move to the new apartment, get me a neurologist appointment for my out-of-control seizures, and a whole slew of other stuff. It's nothing short of chaos around here! Thanks for your patience, everyone - I'll do my best to update as much as possible!
Monday, March 25, 2013
A Glint of Hope
We talked to the lawyer today. He is...nothing short of amazing. The consultation went even better than we could have expected. At this point, we're just waiting for one more thing to fall into place before it's settled. It's going to be a hard fight, but this is one of the biggest pieces of good news we've had.
Our Anonymous donor has said funds will arrive hopefully soon. Once it's done, we hope to have things covered. It's going to be tough - we're going to utterly destroy an already stretched budget, and frankly I don't know how we're going to do it yet. I'm going to be wracking my brain over our budget soon, trying to figure out what in the world I can try to drop or cut back or whatever. I don't know yet.
Anyway, great news. Not much more to say for now. Thanks again for all your support and concern. We will keep everybody posted while we keep up the fight!
Our Anonymous donor has said funds will arrive hopefully soon. Once it's done, we hope to have things covered. It's going to be tough - we're going to utterly destroy an already stretched budget, and frankly I don't know how we're going to do it yet. I'm going to be wracking my brain over our budget soon, trying to figure out what in the world I can try to drop or cut back or whatever. I don't know yet.
Anyway, great news. Not much more to say for now. Thanks again for all your support and concern. We will keep everybody posted while we keep up the fight!
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Weekend Drag
Weekends have become an interesting time for us, since this all began. With nothing open, all of our errands, phone calls and breakneck pace come to a sudden screeching halt - but then we're left compiling all of the things we couldn't work on during the week. We don't really get a break; just a sudden, dramatic change in what we're working on. Honestly, it's starting to wear on me after nearly two months of this. I slept in today for the first time in a long time. The moment I woke up though, I hit the ground running.
Today I'm listening to a recording of the confession. To be brutally honest, it angers me. The things the officer did to try and manipulate George are just crazy. I can see now why there are false confessions all the time. These guys will pry away at your brain until you truly believe you have no choice but to tell them what they want to hear - and they'll do it in a way that exploits legal loopholes, tiptoes on the lines of various laws, and sneaks past your ability to defend yourself faster than you even know what's going on. I'm pretty sure if an officer like this one came up to me today and asserted that I actually had purple skin and came from the planet Exelon, he'd probably be able to convince me with these tactics. It's unbelievable!
Anyway I'm taking notes. We managed to save George's mother. But we know that with her gone, the father of the accused is rifling through all their possessions searching for evidence to destroy, as he has been already. It's utterly exasperating. I don't know what, if any, kind of legal recourse we even have for this stuff. But the important thing is, George's mother is safe. We're going to do our best to get her some help; she's in a terrible situation and too afraid to get out.
Tomorrow we have an appointment with a potential lawyer - the one that I said hangs on a thread and a prayer. We should have more news on that tomorrow.
Today I'm listening to a recording of the confession. To be brutally honest, it angers me. The things the officer did to try and manipulate George are just crazy. I can see now why there are false confessions all the time. These guys will pry away at your brain until you truly believe you have no choice but to tell them what they want to hear - and they'll do it in a way that exploits legal loopholes, tiptoes on the lines of various laws, and sneaks past your ability to defend yourself faster than you even know what's going on. I'm pretty sure if an officer like this one came up to me today and asserted that I actually had purple skin and came from the planet Exelon, he'd probably be able to convince me with these tactics. It's unbelievable!
Anyway I'm taking notes. We managed to save George's mother. But we know that with her gone, the father of the accused is rifling through all their possessions searching for evidence to destroy, as he has been already. It's utterly exasperating. I don't know what, if any, kind of legal recourse we even have for this stuff. But the important thing is, George's mother is safe. We're going to do our best to get her some help; she's in a terrible situation and too afraid to get out.
Tomorrow we have an appointment with a potential lawyer - the one that I said hangs on a thread and a prayer. We should have more news on that tomorrow.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Never A Dull Moment
Today has taken off at a breakneck pace. I don't have long to type but I'd like to update everybody while I have just a few moments to spare. Bear with me, readers - I'm resorting to bullet points today.
1. We spoke with a lawyer from an hour and a half or so away who seems like he might be willing to work with us. With the help of our Anonymous donor, we are off to a good start. It's tenuous - we'll be destroying my paycheck to keep up with this guy. This hangs on a thread and a prayer, at this point.
2. We're going to be driving that hour-and-a-half, if we can make it, to meet with the lawyer and see how this goes. We won't really know the exact price range until we meet him. Just that, as I said, it's halfway hopeful but hangs by a thread and a prayer and maybe a miracle or two.
3. The father of the accuser has become dangerous lately. Child Protective Services has been investigating him (it's a long story), they're requiring him to register as a sex offender for a crime he has knowingly hidden for years, and now he's begun arguing, screaming, threatening, harming and endangering George's mother. He has also been actively seeking out and burning, hiding, or otherwise destroying evidence. It's a constant race against him at this point. George's mother will be staying with us for a while for her own safety, and we are trying to help her out as best we can. She's bringing along a few precious shreds of evidence she has managed to save. That's another thing hanging by a thread and a prayer right now. Gas money for a 2 and a half hour trip is hard to come by for all involved, and the accuser's father is just as likely to try and prevent George's mother from leaving (and has been so far).
4. Continuing work to gather further evidence and paperwork here and there. Swimming through red tape to get paperwork has become a constant reality for us; it's unbelievably hard to gather it up from countless places (check stubs, employment records, and so on) from a decade ago. I have to be honest, it's extremely annoying. Sign here, date here, fax this there, call this number, visit this website, sign this form, 10 to 15 business days for this, 7 business days for that, 30 days for that, five forms for one thing, three for another... At this point, I would not be surprised to hear "We need fingerprints, an iris scan, and a stool sample, sir" from the next person we speak to. It's quite a mess, moving at the speed of business (which is very slow).
Long story short, today has been incredibly hectic thus far, and we really don't know where it's going to land until the end of the day. Hopefully I'll have more concrete news by tonight or tomorrow.
Thank you again for all your support, everyone - the view count just keeps going higher and higher for our humble blog. Donations are slowly trickling in; right now we're at about $100, along with the generous donation from Anonymous and several people coming forward stating their donations are likely to show up soon as well. You guys are angels - we just don't know how to thank you enough, and we will do everything we can to keep you up to date on the latest. Stick with us, we're keeping up this fight no matter what.
1. We spoke with a lawyer from an hour and a half or so away who seems like he might be willing to work with us. With the help of our Anonymous donor, we are off to a good start. It's tenuous - we'll be destroying my paycheck to keep up with this guy. This hangs on a thread and a prayer, at this point.
2. We're going to be driving that hour-and-a-half, if we can make it, to meet with the lawyer and see how this goes. We won't really know the exact price range until we meet him. Just that, as I said, it's halfway hopeful but hangs by a thread and a prayer and maybe a miracle or two.
3. The father of the accuser has become dangerous lately. Child Protective Services has been investigating him (it's a long story), they're requiring him to register as a sex offender for a crime he has knowingly hidden for years, and now he's begun arguing, screaming, threatening, harming and endangering George's mother. He has also been actively seeking out and burning, hiding, or otherwise destroying evidence. It's a constant race against him at this point. George's mother will be staying with us for a while for her own safety, and we are trying to help her out as best we can. She's bringing along a few precious shreds of evidence she has managed to save. That's another thing hanging by a thread and a prayer right now. Gas money for a 2 and a half hour trip is hard to come by for all involved, and the accuser's father is just as likely to try and prevent George's mother from leaving (and has been so far).
4. Continuing work to gather further evidence and paperwork here and there. Swimming through red tape to get paperwork has become a constant reality for us; it's unbelievably hard to gather it up from countless places (check stubs, employment records, and so on) from a decade ago. I have to be honest, it's extremely annoying. Sign here, date here, fax this there, call this number, visit this website, sign this form, 10 to 15 business days for this, 7 business days for that, 30 days for that, five forms for one thing, three for another... At this point, I would not be surprised to hear "We need fingerprints, an iris scan, and a stool sample, sir" from the next person we speak to. It's quite a mess, moving at the speed of business (which is very slow).
Long story short, today has been incredibly hectic thus far, and we really don't know where it's going to land until the end of the day. Hopefully I'll have more concrete news by tonight or tomorrow.
Thank you again for all your support, everyone - the view count just keeps going higher and higher for our humble blog. Donations are slowly trickling in; right now we're at about $100, along with the generous donation from Anonymous and several people coming forward stating their donations are likely to show up soon as well. You guys are angels - we just don't know how to thank you enough, and we will do everything we can to keep you up to date on the latest. Stick with us, we're keeping up this fight no matter what.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
A Selfless Offer
Holy crap! An anonymous donor has come forward, offering to match any donations made by other donors. They are offering up to 50% of the cost of initial legal fees. George and I have been discussing this with the anonymous donor over Skype for the last hour or so, and we are just...speechless. I don't even know what else to say. Anonymous, thank you so much!
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