Lisa Scottoline Presents Final Appeal - Spotlight on Court System--and--Corruption Recommended as a Must-Read!

 Someone’s life is at stake, Armen had said. Get involved. I put the note back in my pocket and slip my car key in the door. There’s going to be an investigation, but it’ll have to be my own. Because I’m involved, starting now.

 Sarah wants to represent the downtrodden, not mingle with them.

“When we talk about justice,” Ben says, “we shirk thinking in legal terms.” “I’m impressed, Ben. Did you make that up all by yourself?” “No. Oliver Wendell Holmes said it.”

“Didn’t you know, Grace? Ben is waiting for a phone call from Justice Scalia. He’s this close to a Supreme Court clerkship.” Artie squints at his forefinger and thumb, held a half-inch apart. “Maybe even this close, am I right, Ben? This close?” He makes his fingers touch.

Empty coffee cups dot the surface of Armen’s conference table, along with sheaves of curly faxes, photocopied cases, and trial transcripts from the Hightower record. We worked straight through dinner and into the night, reading cases and talking through the opinion. Then Armen began to tap out an outline on his laptop and I picked up the habeas petition to check our facts. It says that Thomas Hightower was seventeen when he cut school to go drinking with a fast crowd, which got him drunk and dared him to kiss the prettiest girl in school. Hightower went to her farm, where he found Sherri Gilpin in the shed. He asked her out, and she laughed at him.,, Allegedly. In a drunken rage, Hightower slapped her and she fell off balance, cracking her skull against a tractor. He tried to give her CPR, at which point her little sister Sally came in and began to cry. Hightower says he panicked. He couldn’t leave witnesses; it would have killed his mother. So he throttled the child, then, full of shame, he got back into his car and drove himself into a tree. 

Enter the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which saved his life, reserving for itself the honor of putting him on trial. For death. Hightower couldn’t afford a lawyer, not that one in the small coal-mining town would represent him anyway. The county judge appointed a kid barely out of night law school to the case, and the jury convicted Hightower of capital murder. During the sentencing hearing, where the jury decides life or death, Hightower’s lawyer argued from the wrong death penalty statute, one that had been ruled unconstitutional three years earlier by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Somehow he had missed that. The obsolete death statute, the only one presented to this predominantly white jury, said nothing about the fact that a jury could consider Hightower’s youth, his diminished capacity because of alcohol, his lack of a prior criminal record, and the remorse that he demonstrated by his suicide attempt as “mitigating circumstances” in deciding whether to impose the death penalty. The jury took only fifteen minutes to reach its decision. Death. I set the papers down and look out the huge windows that make up the fourth wall of the office. It’s the dead of night. Orangey streetlamps stretch toward the Delaware River in ribbons. White lights dot the suspension cables on the Ben Franklin Bridge. Traffic signals blink on and off: red, yellow, green. The lights remind me of jewels, twinkling in the black night. I watch them shimmer outside the window and turn the legal issues over in my mind. The question is whether Hightower’s lawyer was so ineffective that the trial was unfair. Strictly as a legal matter, Hightower probably deserves a new trial; what he deserves as a matter of justice is another matter. This is why I practiced commercial litigation. It has nothing to do with life or death; the questions are black and white, and the right answer is always green. “Well,” Armen says to himself. “Well, well, well.” He stops typing and reads the last page of his draft. The office is quiet now that Bernice has stopped snoring. I feel like we’re the only people awake, high in the night sky over the twinkly city. “Well what?” 

“I think we’re going to save this kid’s life. What do you think?” The question takes me aback. “I don’t know. I don’t think of it that way.” “I do.” He smiles wearily, wrinkling the crows’ feet that make him look older than he is. “I wouldn’t stop if I didn’t think so.” “Was that your goal?” “It had to be. His lawyer was incompetent. Anybody else would have gotten him life in prison, instead he’s scheduled to die. They set him up.” He leans back in the chair. Fatigue has stripped something from him: his defenses, maybe, or the professional distance between us. He seems open to me in a way he hasn’t before. “I didn’t think of it as saving his life. I thought of it as a legal issue.” “I know that, Grace. That’s why I wanted you on this case. You narrowed your focus to the legalities, divorced yourself from the morality of the thing.” It stings. “Do you fault me? It’s a legal question, not a moral one.” “Really? Who said?” “Holmes.” “Fxxx Holmes,” he says, stretching luxuriously in a blue oxford shirt. His shirtsleeves are bunched at his elbows; his tie is loose. He’s so close I can pick up a trace of his aftershave. 

“It’s both those things, Grace, law and morality. You can’t separate law from justice. You shouldn’t want to.” “But then it’s your view of justice, and that varies from judge to judge.” “I can live with that, it’s in my job description. Judges are supposed to judge. When I read the Eighth Amendment, I think the framers were telling us that government should not torture and kill. That’s the ultimate evil, isn’t it, and it’s impossible to check.” His face darkens. “I don’t understand,” I say, but I do in part. Armen’s culture is written all over his olive-skinned features, as well as his chambers: the framed documents in a squiggly alphabet on the walls, the picture of Mount Ararat over his desk chair, the oddly ornate lamp bases and brocaded pillows. 

“It started piecemeal with the Armenians,” he says, leaning forward. “Our right to speak our own language was taken away. Then our right to worship as Christians. By 1915, they had taken our lives. We were starved, hanged, tortured. Beaten to death, most of us, with that.” He points at a rough-hewn wooden cudgel mounted over the bookshelf. “I didn’t know.” “Not many do. Half my people were killed. Half a million of us, wiped out by the Turkish government. All my family, except for my mother.” A flicker of pain furrows his brow. “I’m sorry.” He shakes it off. “The point is, government cannot kill its own citizens, not with my help. 

I know Hightower did a terrible thing. He killed, but I won’t kill him to prove it’s wrong. He should be locked up forever so he never hurts another child. He will be, if I have any say in it.” He seems to catch himself in mid-lecture; then his expression softens. “So thank you, for getting involved.” “Did I have a choice?” “No.” He relaxes in the leather chair. “You are involved, you know,” he says quietly. I see the city lights glowing softly behind him and feel, more than I can understand, that we aren’t talking about the case anymore. “I don’t know—” “Yes, you do. I’m involved too, Grace. Very involved, as a matter of fact.” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I feel my heart start to pound softly. “We can’t do anything about it.” “Yes, we can. Give me your hand.” He holds out his hand to me. I look at it, suspended between us, at once a question and an answer. This situation is supposed to be black and white, but it doesn’t feel that way inside. “Stop thinking. Take it.” So I do, and it feels strong and warm. He pulls me in to him, as naturally as if we’ve done this a million times before, and in a second I feel myself in his arms and his kiss, gentle on my mouth. 

Suddenly I hear a noise outside the office and push myself away from his chest. “Did you hear that?” “What?” “There was a noise. Maybe the door?” ...

~~~

I'm certainly happy I kept on reading... You see, Lisa Scottoline has taken readers much further into the entire Justice System than most legal fiction books do. I even checked and the first 10% of this book introduces us to a group that we rarely even learn about other than as a very minor character. In this book, you see, it is the clerks of the judges who are leading much of the action--along with a certain undercover FBI agent... In fact, the POV is from Grace, who becomes the "amateur detective" since... well... because... Let me just tell you what happened...

Grace, has just come back to her law career, after a divorce. She is older than those who are just out of Law School, thrilled to be selected as a clerk, but, often, are lacking, shall we say, in the decorum, or, even more so, the maturity of what we normally see within legal communities--in books or television. Hey, I've been a Law and Order Fan for uncountable years!

The support of Judge Gregorian, Chief, is presently working on The Hightower (name of accused) case and discussion is moving throughout all levels as the political component moves into the forefront for affecting the decision... Yes, and readers will see much of the action of the opinions based upon each of the judges... Now, one totally irrelevant legal point is that there are several of the females supporting this apparently very striking judge becomes relevant very soon...

And that actually begins the investigation... It was Grace, who was not in criminal law, who was chosen to assist the Judge in preparing his final opinion... She was one of those who was attracted to her boss... So she was scared to have been chosen because she wouldn't know relevant laws, but at least she thought she could deal with her own issues...

At least until they were finally closing the all-night work session in the early AM hours and it was the Judge who initiated the seduction, ultimately telling her that he loved her... You'll have to read the details of those last few hours, however...

Because the important thing was that Judge Gregorian was dead by the next morning... Supposedly by suicide...

And of course Grace doesn't believe it... And through some strange and funny scenes, she is ultimately asked to assist the undercover FBI agent to be his informant...

I think about Hightower, who had no suburban soccer field, no fancy jersey or hundred-dollar cleats. One will go to Harvard; the other will be put to death. No justice, no peace.

“Let’s do it,” Eletha says grimly as we encounter the first wave of reporters along the wall of the outer lobby to the courthouse. “Grace! Grace Rossi!” one of them shouts. Shocked, I turn toward the voice. It’s the reporter from the day before, Sandy Faber. He’s wearing the same sport jacket and more stubble. “Remember what I said, Ms. Rossi?” “Which judge does she work for?” one of the women reporters asks. He ignores her, so she shouts at me. “Who do you work for, Ms. Rossi? Do you have any comment on Hightower? Why did it take so long to get the transcripts of the oral argument?” “Holy shit,” I hear Eletha mutter beside me. I push forward away from the reporters, but the lunchtime crowd is barely trickling out the narrow courthouse doors. “Come on, Ms. Rossi!” Faber shouts. “You gonna talk to me? Come on. Gimme a break here.” The heads of three other reporters snap in my direction. I feel Eletha’s hand on my forearm. “Who do you work for, Judge Meyerson? Judge Redd?” the woman shouts at me. “I can find out, you know.” “No comment,” I say. “Aw,” the woman says, “just tell me who you work for. It’s Simmons, right? That’s who? Simmons?” I feel Eletha’s talons dig into my arm; she seems shaken. I press ahead, pushing in line for the first time in my life as a good girl. It works. The crowd surges forward, and Eletha and I squeeze out the door and into the crowd outside the courthouse. “You all right?” I say to Eletha, but she can’t hear me over the Hightower supporters to our left. 

“No justice, no peace!” they chant. 

Their signs read: DEATH PENALTY=GENOCIDE OF AFRICAN AMERICANS! ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY! SUPREME COURT ADMITS “DISCREPANCY CORRELATES WITH RACE!” 

“Let’s just get out of here,” Eletha says. “I’m trying, El.” 

One of the signs is a picture of a young black teenager with smooth clear skin and a shy smile. He wears a red varsity football jacket. Hightower. The sound of the chanting resounds in my head. At the front line of the swelling Hightower contingent is a prominent black city councilman and members of the black clergy. An older black woman standing next to one of the clergymen catches my eye; she’s heavyset but dignified in an old-fashioned cotton dress, a calm eye at the center of a media hurricane. I recognize her from TV: Hightower’s mother, Mrs. Stevens. “Are you surprised by the amount of support that’s being shown for your son?” a TV reporter says to her, thrusting a bubble-headed microphone in front of her face. Mrs. Stevens looks startled, then the black councilman steps closer to the microphone, obstructing her from view. “We are going to hold a round-the-clock vigil to protest the death penalty, to show that it has always been racist in this country,” the councilman says. “The Baldus study shows that African Americans are more likely to receive the death penalty than whites.” 

“Push, Grace,” Eletha says. “Okay, okay,” I say. I force my way past the man in front of me, but find myself face-to-face with Mr. Gilpin, who’s standing in my path. Even in the midst of the hubbub, his face relaxes into a smile. “Hello there, my friend,” he says, loud enough to be heard over the din. “Is this pretty lady a friend of yours?” A tall black man in an X baseball cap chants over his shoulder, and behind him is the TV reporter and the black councilman. Gilpin acts like none of this is happening, as if it’s a squabble over a suburban fence, not an incipient race war. “Mr. Gilpin, this is Eletha Staples,” I say. Eletha extends a hand reluctantly. “Hello, Mr. Gilpin.” “Call me Bill, Eletha. You girls goin’ out to lunch?” 

“No justice, no peace!” booms a clear voice behind him, and the crowd begins to shove me aside. “We’d better go, we’re blocking the way,” I say. I edge forward, but Eletha gets jammed between one of the Hightower supporters and a TV technician. Gilpin grabs her arm and pulls her lightly to her feet. “Are you all right?” he says. “Get me out of here, please. I hate crowds.” She places a hand to her chest and starts breathing in and out. I’m worried she’s going to hyperventilate and Gilpin must see it too, because in one swift movement he scoops us up by the elbows and drives through the mob. He deposits us at the curb and brushes back a pomaded hank of hair. “I played football in high school,” he says. Eletha tugs a handkerchief from the sleeve of her sweater and dabs at her forehead. “Thanks a lot.” Gilpin’s eyes skim the crowd unhappily. “We started this, I know. But it’ll be over soon.” 

Which is when it occurs to me. The politics of the new Hightower panel is all over the newspapers; Galanter and Foudy aren’t closet conservatives. Gilpin must realize that Hightower’s going to lose, and he’s about to see his daughters’ murder avenged. I wonder if Gilpin is happy that Armen was killed. Suddenly I like him less. “We’d better be going,” I say. He nods. “Sure enough.” “Thanks again,” Eletha says, recovering. We cross Market Street and the chanting trails off into the noontime traffic, making me suddenly aware of Eletha’s stone silence. She chugs along the sidewalk like a locomotive and I tense up, feeling like a curtain has fallen between us: white on one side, black on the other. We come to the corner of Sixth and Chestnut and she squints up at the light. 

An executive takes a second look at her, then stares right at my breasts. 

My tension, pent up, bubbles over. “They’re a B-cup, okay?” I spit at him. “Any other questions?” The man hurries past us, and Eletha bursts into startled laughter. “I can’t believe you said that!” she says. “Neither can I. It felt great. Absolutely great.” I laugh, suddenly lighthearted. “I’ve been wanting to do that all my life.” “So have I.” I meet her eye. “Are you mad at me, girlfriend?” She shakes her head, still smiling. “I’m getting over it.” The traffic light turns green and we cross Chestnut. “It’s not my fault I’m white.” She laughs again. “It’s not that. It’s that I can’t believe you’re messin’ with Gilpin. You know better than that.” “I’m not messin’ with him. He talked to me the first day.” “You shoulda walked away.” “I couldn’t walk away, he’s a person.” 

She holds up a hand. “I don’t want to know he’s a person, and I don’t want to know Hightower’s a person. These are names on a caption, not people. If you start thinkin’ they’re people, you won’t be able to do your job. Look what happened to Armen.” “What?” We stop in front of Meyer’s Deli, the only place she’ll eat; Eletha’s not Jewish, but she practically keeps kosher. “What do you mean by that, about Armen?” She looks warily at the lunchtime crowd. “Let’s talk inside, okay?” We head into the noisy deli, with its old-time octagonal tile floor and embossed tin roof. Meyer’s is always mobbed, but the line moves quickly because everybody inhales their food; the clientele consists almost exclusively of hyperactive trial lawyers. The hostess accosts us at the door and hustles us to an orange plastic booth against the wall. Our waitress, Marlene, appears at our table from nowhere. “You havin’ the tuna fish?” she says to me, already writing down #12 on her pad. “Only if you call me ‘honey,’” I tell her. “I want someone to call me ‘honey,’ and not just for my body.” Eletha smiles. “Do what she says, Mar. She just attacked a man on the street.” “Okay, honey,” Marlene says mirthlessly. She tears off the check and puts it face down, like we’re at the Ritz-Carlton. “You havin’ the whitefish on bagel, Eletha?” she says, scribbling on the order pad. “Yes,” Eletha says. “What’s goin’ on at the courthouse, girls?” Marlene says. She rips Eletha’s check off the pad and slaps it face down on the table. 

“They gonna kill that kid?” Jesus. “We have no comment,” I say. Marlene scowls as she slips the ballpoint into her apron pocket. “I’m sick of the whole thing anyway,” she says and vanishes. Eletha leans forward. “So. I’ve been thinkin’ about what you said, about Armen. About him being murdered.” “What?” “Just accept that he’s gone, Grace. That’s hard enough. Anything else is a waste of time.” “I don’t understand. You don’t think he was murdered?” “I’m not so sure.” Now I really don’t understand. “Since when? That’s not what you said yesterday.” “I know what I said. But last night I tried to quit school, and they told me Armen paid already, in advance.” “What are you talking about? You go to school?” “Night school, at the community college. I got two more years left, and I’ve had it up to here.” She draws a line across her throat. Marlene materializes with our food. “Enjoy,” she barks and takes off again. “Eletha, I didn’t know you went to school.” “I thought Armen might’ve told you.” She picks up a bagel half and spackles it with whitefish salad. “He didn’t, but why didn’t you?” 

“It’s a secret.” She bites into her sandwich, but I’m still too surprised to start mine. “In case I flunk out.” “You won’t flunk out.” “You never know. The whole damn thing was Armen’s idea. Now he’s gone.” “But I think it’s wonderful, Eletha.” “You don’t have to do it, girl. Three nights a week I get home at eleven o’clock. I gotta take two buses, then transfer to the subway. Malcolm’s in bed, I don’t even get to see him. If I’m lucky, I got an hour left to fight with Leon. I figured if I got an associate’s degree, maybe I could transfer the credits and go on to college, then who knows.” “Maybe to law school?” She smiles. “Maybe.” “That sounds great. I think it’s great.” She puts down her sandwich. “Nah, it was a pipe dream. The only reason I didn’t quit was Armen. He’d have been on my case forever, like he was till I quit smoking. That man was too much. He paid my tuition for me, clear through to graduation.” “But why does he pay it at all, if I can ask?” “I couldn’t afford to, so we had an agreement. He lent me the money and I paid him back in installments. When they told me it was all paid off, I started thinkin’. Maybe it was a suicide. Maybe he was fixing it so I couldn’t quit after he was gone.” It can’t be. “Maybe he just wanted you not to worry about it.” She shakes her head. “I feel like quitting anyway.” “Don’t. He wouldn’t want you to.” “I know that.” She bites into her sandwich. “El, can I ask you a question?” She nods, her mouth full. “How much money are we talking about for your tuition?” “Couple thousand a semester.” “Where would Armen get that kind of money?” “He makes a fine livin’, hundred thirty thousand a year, and he saved like a fiend. He never spent a dime, that man.” It doesn’t make sense. Why would Armen save if he had over half a million dollars? “He was a saver?” “Always. But he was cheap, they all are.” “Who’s they? Judges?” “Armenians. You should see, when they’d have a dinner, I’d be countin’ dimes on my desk. Who had the iced tea, who had the wine. I’m serious.” “That’s racist, El.” “I know. But it’s true.” She laughs. “Did his family have money?” “No. Susan’s did, but he didn’t.” “So how much did he have saved, do you think?” “Maybe fifty–sixty thousand. He told me not to worry about it, he’d take care of Malcolm’s college. I worried plenty, but I don’t make enough to save shit. Why?” I look down at a half-eaten pickle. “Just curious.” 

We split up after lunch because Eletha has to run an errand; she promises me she’ll take the back entrance into the building, because there’s no demonstration there. As I reach the courthouse, I consider doing the same myself. The mob has grown. People spill out past the curb and into the street, filling the gaps between the TV vans and squad cars. The police ring the crowd, trying vainly to keep it out of Market Street. I cross against the traffic light, which turns out to be advisory anyway. A gaper block stalls traffic up and down the street. As I get closer to the courthouse, I see that something seems to be happening. The chanting stops suddenly; the crowd noise surges. Reporters and TV cameras rush to the door. I pick up my pace. It looks like breaking news, maybe the panel decision. My pulse quickens as I reach the edge of the crowd. I look for the hot orange cones that mark the walkway into the courthouse, but they’ve been scattered. “What’s going on?” I say, but am shoved into a woman in front of me. I turn around to see who’s pushing. A cameraman stands there, and a lawyer with a trial bag. “Sorry,” says the lawyer, sweating profusely behind horn-rimmed glasses. “It’s this person behind me.” “No!” someone screams at the head of the crowd, and then there’s more shouting and pushing. The mob’s moving out of control. I feel a sharp elbow in my back. It knocks me off balance. “There’s a decision!” someone shouts up front; then there’s more yelling, even screaming. I feel panic rising in my throat as the crowd swells toward the door, carrying me with it, almost off my feet. Suddenly there’s a painful whack at the back of my head. I feel faint, dizzy. Everything gets fuzzy. My arms flutter, groping for anything to stay upright. Gunshots ring out like distant firecrackers, and there’s screaming and shouting, also far away. Strong hands catch me from behind. Someone says in my ear, “This is a warning. Let the judge rest in peace.” The words and the pain melt together. And then slip beyond me. 

~~~

One will go to Harvard; the other will be put to death. No justice, no peace.

It reminds me of Armen, and our talk that night, over Hightower. Law and morality. You can’t separate them, why would you want to? Then I think of his broad back slumped over his desk. Armen was murdered, and murder is wrong. Illegal and immoral. Nothing I’ve learned tonight changes that, and I’m still the only one who has a chance of getting to Galanter. I rise, unsteadily. “Maybe I’m not out, Rain Man.”

If you have questions of exactly how and why we've begun to be greatly concerned about Justice in America, this is an excellent book from which you can learn about the inside of the system... We've seen the introduction of bias against non-white citizens and, the implementation of DEI, the override of established laws by The Supreme Court, in this case, resulting in the death of one judge and subsequent criminal actions which were discovered...by those in the legal staff... Yes, this is fiction, but there was too much that ran parallel to things happening today. By the way, the Judge's wife was a Senator and they were heading for divorce, but she asked that the judge stay with her until "after the election..." Manipulation, seeking personal power, and yet, learning of how it is the single individuals who work to investigation who in the end do...find...justice...

GABixlerReviews

Sometimes free will is not freeing. “I just don’t know. Whatever you think, Miss Rossi."

--Secretary to Conservative Judge