Fatal Convictions Read Online Free PDF Page A

none.
    Alex kept the list and had it framed after his grandfather passed away.
    The first sentence was characteristically blunt:
Good lawyers don’t advertise.
    Alex thought about that advice as he stopped to chat with the news crews in front of the Virginia Beach courthouse. His grandfather never paid for advertising, but he also never turned down a free interview. He told Alex that only legal dinosaurs turned up their noses at the media. “I’m an advocate for my client,” he explained. “And sometimes I want to send a message to the jury before we get into the courtroom.”
    Alex handled a few questions while Aisha stood next to him. He waited until somebody asked whether they were going to appeal before he made his announcement.
    “We’ve decided not to appeal,” Alex said, “because if we win, Aisha would end up working at Atlantic Surf Shop, and it’s pretty obvious they don’t want her there. But fortunately for her, not all surf shops have a Look Policy that forces you to check your religious beliefs at the door. In fact, the owners of Burke’s Surf on Laskin Road believe strongly that the surf culture wants people just to be who they are. They’ve therefore offered Aisha a job for the summer, hijab and all.”
    A few reporters congratulated Aisha, and she gave them a beautiful white smile. She told them how excited she was to start at Burke’s. Alex even added that most locals preferred Burke’s to the Atlantic Surf Shop anyway. By the time the interview ended, it was hard to tell who had won and who had lost the court battle just a few minutes earlier.
    Alex smiled for the cameras as well but would be kicking himself all the way back to the office. He should have checked Aisha’s Facebook page. He had been complacent. His grandfather would have never missed that important detail.
    Alex had not just lost the case. He had violated principle number five on his grandfather’s competitive edge list, a sentence he knew by heart, just like every other sentence on that yellow sheet of paper:
Never get outworked by an Ivy League lawyer.

9
    For Khalid Mobassar, sleep had become a luxury. He spent each night in the reclining chair next to Ghaniyah’s bed, waking when she stirred, checking on her while she slept, exulting in each small step on the road to recovery. When Ghaniyah was moved from ICU to the brain trauma rehab center, Khalid followed her, hauling his small duffel bag of clothes and toiletries, his briefcase full of books and papers, his computer, his prayer rug, and his Qur’an. He left her side for only a few hours each day to go home and shower and to stop by the mosque.
    The medical side of things was confusing at best. Khalid became familiar with the vocabulary of treatment for traumatic brain injury, or TBI, both from listening to the doctors and from scouring the Internet. Ghaniyah had been admitted to the hospital with a 12 on the Glasgow Coma Scale, indicating moderate brain damage. She had briefly lost consciousness before rescuers arrived at the scene. Fortunately, a CT scan and MRI showed no swelling of the brain or the type of cranial bleeding that would require surgical intervention.
    But according to the doctors, many closed head injuries produced microscopic changes not easily detectable on the radiological tests. Ghaniyah’s official diagnosis was moderate traumatic brain injury with diffuse axonal injury and ischemia. Her prognosis for a full recovery was “guarded.”
    Five days after the accident, a neuropsychologist had performed a basic neurological assessment designed to reveal the extent of the damage. A full battery of neuropsych testing would come later, but the preliminary results were sobering. Though no longer in a coma, Ghaniyah had suffered memory loss, personality change, and moderate impairment to her executive functioning skills. She had a hard time trying to focus and couldn’t handle more than one task at a time. She experienced mood swings and depression.