A murmur passed around the room, but the reaction was fairly muted. Most people, it seemed, already knew.
“Okay, I’m going to give you a very quick rundown of the case history so far, then Jim’s going to brief you about the facts around the murder itself. After that we’l assign tasks and then we get to work.
“I’m going to assume you’re al aware of the basics—Sarah Fitzhugh was murdered in June 2007, and our client, Michael Dandridge, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death in April 2008. From prison Michael made contact with a law firm cal ed Lovel McCain, who agreed to act pro-bono for him. Jake Lovel made any number of appeals for Michael right up until October 2018, al of which were either procedural y barred or ultimately rejected on their merits. In November 2018 Michael had exhausted his direct appeals, Jake Lovel walked away, and Michael filed an application with our office.” Parekh smiled at them al , and his charm was so thick it was almost uncomfortable.
“It didn’t take long for the application to make its way to me, and I interviewed our new client in December of last year. Michael was able to convince me pretty quickly that he had been the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice.”
Hannah swal owed hard. The self-righteousness was nauseating.
“Michael told me that Sheriff Jerome Pierce beat the living daylights out of him in custody,” Parekh continued. “Got him in an interview room and beat him up, threatened him, until he confessed.
Michael says he told this to both his original attorney and to Jake Lovel , but neither Lovel nor the original defense attorney ever raised this in Michael’s defense. Why do you think that is? I mean, granted, Jake Lovel did not have a great deal of experience with wrongful conviction cases. Let’s just say that he was more enthusiastic than he was skil ed. But stil .” He looked around the room. “Anyone? Ideas?”
Camila half raised her hand, as if she was in the classroom.
“Were they concerned about believability? Do we have photographs of Michael’s injuries? Does Pierce have a record of complaints made against him?”
“No photographs,” said Parekh. “Michael was too afraid to talk until he saw the prison doctor at Sussex I prison after his conviction more than a year later. And Pierce’s discipline record is good. Two complaints from his rookie days, nothing for twenty years.”
Camila grimaced. “Maybe he’s just gotten better at covering his tracks.”
Parekh pointed at her. “Maybe. But let’s bring it back to the attorneys. Why didn’t they raise Michael’s al egations of coercion at his trial or on appeal? Yes, there would be chal enges to overcome, but to not even make an attempt?” He shook his head. “Something smel s here. Something feels off to me. Let’s bear that in mind as we move forward.
“I filed an appeal with the fourth circuit in January arguing actual innocence. By its nature that appeal was limited to the facts and arguments that had been put before the original trial court. I wasn’t permitted to put forward new evidence at that time, my arguments had to focus essential y on the failures in the original case. The fourth circuit ruled in our favor and referred the case for an evidentiary hearing, which was held over the summer break. I worked that case along with Jim and Mary Calvas. Jim, do you want to take us through what happened next?”
Jim Lehane gave a brisk nod. “We received a copy of Michael’s original attorney’s file. We took up everything we could get on discovery. We did the usual crossreferencing and double-checking.
And we found that the numbers on the evidence dockets from the crime scene weren’t sequential. One docket seemed to be missing.
So we went direct to the forensics lab—wel , we found the cash for an investigator and he went directly to the forensics lab—and discovered that evidence that corresponded to that missing docket had existed, but had never been disclosed to the original defense attorney. Crime scene officers found a single hair on Sarah Fitzhugh’s body. It was tested and compared to samples taken from Michael and there was no match. The hair evidence was then hidden from the defense, because it suggested that someone other than Michael committed the crime. Michael’s original attorney never knew a hair had been found. The DA’s office buried the evidence. On purpose.”
This information had been publicly reported in the various articles written about the case. Presumably everyone in the room already knew about it, but there was stil a murmur of discontent from the group. Hannah had to hold back an eye rol . Not that she was al right with prosecutors hiding evidence. That wasn’t okay, ever. But assuming that a single hair on Sarah Fitzhugh’s poor body meant Dandridge was innocent was taking rose-tinted to an extreme. Sarah could have picked that hair up from anywhere. And al this holier-than-thou shock at the prosecutor’s cheating was painful. According to their biographies on the Innocence Project website, Parekh, and the other staff attorneys like Jim Lehane and Mary Calvas, had al worked as criminal defense attorneys outside the Project, which meant that they had routinely defended guilty clients. Everyone knew how that game was played. The convenient fictions that were maintained, the blind eyes that were turned, al so that they could put forward the best possible defense for clients they knew in their hearts were guilty as sin, without tripping over ethical rules that could get them disbarred. Now these same people were shocked and appal ed that a prosecutor was wil ing to cheat to put a murdering rapist in jail? Please.