Page 4 of Hard Heart

Mostly, we were like two ships passing in the night. As I arrived home, Heidi headed out, and vice versa. On the upside, it was almost like having my own apartment, and the building came with a super named Mac who hung out in the lobby from eight thirty till five and took in any parcels I might want delivered. The pocket-sized voodoo doll from Flora, for example, or the grocery hamper Rhoda had sent. Honestly, one of the most disappointing things about this whole mess was that I’d never have her as a mother-in-law. She’d been far more enthusiastic about my move stateside than my actual parents, and even now, she was going out of her way to take care of me.

Like pulling strings to get me the job, for example.

On my first day, it quickly became apparent that the Justice Project was both understaffed and underfunded. Raelene, my new supervisor, had led me over to a mismatched desk and waved a hand at a pile of envelopes.

“We’ve gotten a little behind,” she’d explained apologetically. “We never have enough staff or enough money, but then we lucked into some funding, and you came highly recommended.”

Lucked into some funding? Had that been another favour from Rhoda? Really, I owed her the hamper.

“Oh, wow, that was a piece of good fortune.”

“We thought you could help us to clear the backlog. Each of these envelopes contains an application form from an incarcerated person who claims they’re not guilty of the crime they’ve been convicted of. What we need you to do is triage the forms.”

“Is there any guidance for that?”

“We’ll go through it now. Do you have a notepad?”

Of course. What kind of lawyer would I be if I didn’t? I gave a bright smile, even as my stomach sank. The stack of envelopes was three and a half feet high, and the ones at the bottom were dusty.

“Right here.”

“So firstly, and most importantly, we can only take cases where the trial is over and an appeal has failed. Sandy was supposed to weed out the ineligible cases, but…” Raelene pulled a face. “There might be a handful left.”

I was going to assume Sandy had dropped the ball.

“No conviction, no appeal, no review. Got it.”

“Then we need to look at the merits of each application. I wish we could consider them all, I do, but we just don’t have the resources for that. So we have to prioritise the ones we think we can win, and those need a thread we can start picking at.”

Raelene unfolded a sheet of paper. She was older than me, mid-forties at a guess, and she’d come to work in jeans and a Christmas jumper, even though it was only November. I felt ridiculously overdressed in my pinstriped skirt suit.

“I printed some notes for that part,” Raelene said. “Here you go.”

I glanced over the list.

Missing or misapplication of forensics.

Incorrect ID by an eyewitness.

False/forced confession.

Use of an unreliable jailhouse informant.

Misconduct by law enforcement.

Missteps by the defense.

Coerced plea.

Improper use of surveillance technologies.

“I put the forensics at the top because that’s our most common type of case,” Raelene continued. “Hair analysis has been discredited, and in older cases, DNA samples just weren’t tested. We can try to overturn those convictions, especially if the police have kept the evidence.”

“I don’t suppose it’s easy getting them to give it up.”

“No, it never is; nobody likes to admit they were wrong. We usually start by building a strong circumstantial case, and where officers have retired and more open-minded folks have taken their place, we can sometimes get the result we’re looking for. I understand you have a background in entertainment law?”

“I worked at Bester & Block in New York. Briefly,” I admitted. “But I originally qualified in England, and I did my work-based training with the CPS. Uh, the Crown Prosecution Service.”