Unintended Consequences Read Online Free PDF

delusional to you?”
    “He’s crazy like a fox—you know, just about this dead girl. On everything else he’s as sane as I am.” Bob laughed. “Well, who knows how sane I am? I stuck with this crazy case long after I should have.”
    After she hung up, Dani thought to herself that Wilson was right. He had stuck with the case longer than he should have. A convicted murderer claiming innocence should have had a lawyer who believed in him. She didn’t know yet whether she was that lawyer. That decision would have to wait until she got the records and met Calhoun.

C HAPTER
    4
    B ob Wilson kept his word. The next day piles of boxes were stacked in a corner of HIPP’s conference room, all with the return address “Law Firm of Robert Wilson, Esq.”
    “You take the appeals, I’ll take the trial transcript and exhibits,” Dani said to Melanie. It would take days to go through everything thoroughly, and they’d both be working well into the night and over the weekend. But Dani could do the work from home, accessible to Jonah, who felt well enough to go back to school. “As you go through the papers, see if you can find anything on these questions: Was an autopsy performed on the murdered child? Did they match the child’s DNA to the parents? They found the body in Indiana; the Calhouns lived in Pennsylvania. Did anyone else recognize them along the way?”
    “I assume you want me to chart out the issues already appealed and summarize the decisions?” Melanie asked.
    “Yes, and also if there were any dissenting opinions, summarize those separately.”
    “Sure. How quickly do you need it?”
    “Yesterday would be good.”
    “And six more months on the clock would be nice too.”
    They both felt the pressure of what lay ahead. Sitting on the floor, they each attacked a box, looking for the documents they needed. Dani found the transcripts in the second box she opened. They were the record of everything said during trial: every question, every answer, every comment, even the arguments made at the bench outside the jurors’ earshot. Usually, she skimmed through the transcripts first, getting the broad picture quickly, and then started again from the beginning, painstakingly searching for appealable errors. After Melanie collected the appellate briefs and left, Dani settled back into her chair and began her perusal.
    The words on the pages became a movie reel in her mind and she became an observer, no longer in her office, but sitting in the courtroom, watching the trial unfold. She visualized the prosecutor as a tall man, his bearing erect, dressed in his finest navy striped suit. She saw him walk to the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are going to hear about a horrific crime. You are going to see shocking pictures, images that no person should ever be asked to view. But you are here today because someone killed an innocent child, a four-year-old girl.
    “Anymurder is hateful, and any murder of a child is abominable. But for you to understand the full extent of how monstrous this act of murder was, you will need to see pictures of her burned body, found after she was callously buried in a forest. And when you see those pictures you will understand why the perpetrator must be found guilty and must be punished with death.
    “I know how difficult it will be for you to sit through this trial and hear the testimony about this little girl’s death, but it will be easy for you to decide who committed this atrocity. It was the defendant, sitting over there in that chair. And the little girl he brutally murdered was his own daughter.
    “How will you know it was that man who committed the crime? Because his own wife will tell you what happened. You will hear her say that she watched her husband kill their daughter, set her on fire, and then bury her in the forest. Ladies and gentlemen, when you go back to your room to deliberate after you’ve heard all the evidence, you will know beyond any doubt whatsoever that