Miscarriage Of Justice (6 page)

Still, there were many unanswered questions. How had Mitch been able to put the pictures, or camera for that matter, into the clock? Then, how had he retrieved the snapshots of Mariana? And perhaps the most perplexing question, how had the guy managed to get the pictures into Granite Hills?

These uncertainties only added to the anger and frustration Ethan felt at being locked up for something he hadn’t done. This Machiavellian D.A. had not only taken his freedom, but everything he possessed, both physically and emotionally, knowing all along she had the wrong guy! And for what? A feather in her cap? The respect and praise of her colleagues? Just so she could chalk up another victory? Didn’t the truth matter at all? Or was the truth simply an annoying nuisance?

Through subsequent research, Ethan discovered his case wasn’t all that unusual. Similar circumstances happened quite frequently in fact. Perusing the limited resources in the prison library, he found a book,
Guilty Or Not, Here They Come
, which substantiated the practice. Written by an attorney, a former prosecutor; the volume exposed the reprehensible conduct and the sinister motives behind it. Ethan was astonished by the results of a poll in which eighty-five percent of District Attorneys questioned, readily admitted that the guilt or innocence of a defendant was not at all important. Their only concern in any trial was whether they could get a conviction. A positive win/loss ratio for their career being the bottom line.

In addition, the lack of ethics wasn’t limited to District Attorneys the book claimed; most other attorneys felt the same. The better their winning percentage, the more work they were able to procure and the more esteemed and lauded they became. Ultimately, this allowed them to charge higher rates for their services.

Though a District Attorney’s salary was set and paid by the county, via tax revenue, they routinely received kickbacks, bonuses and payoffs, along with many other perks. And as always, they were preparing for the day when they may no longer be in their current position. A good win/loss record then became a very valuable asset, increasing their net worth to potential clients. Money and power. That’s what it all boiled down to. Justice was somehow forgotten.

An even more appalling report revealed that sixty-three percent of District Attorneys in America would continue to prosecute a case, even knowing that the defendant was not guilty, if they were reasonably sure they could emerge with a victory. So much for truth and justice. Apparently, this was the new American way.

Ethan could identify with the sentiment and the author’s perspective. He liked the book so well; he copied one excerpt onto a sheet of notebook paper and hung it on his cell wall for inspiration. The passage was the author’s response, regarding the belief that if a guy is or had been in prison, he obviously was a bad individual and guilty of something.

“I too was once so naive, thinking prison was a place for only criminals; reserved for those wayward individuals, guilty of crossing a well-defined line between right and wrong. I was grossly mistaken.

The instances are many of good men, law-abiding men, guilty only of the crime of being innocent without proof, who are spending insufferable days behind the confines of those cold stone walls. Conversely, plenty of cases can be cited where men: evil, brutal, and ruthless, cold and calculating, are walking the streets.

These days it seems the more guilty a person is, the less likely it’ll be that they’ll do time, and vice versa. The guilty go free, while the innocent pay dearly. Is the system broken? No. Quite the contrary, it’s fixed. Fixed in prearranged deals between prosecutors and judges, in collusion with defense attorneys, who don’t seem to care if their clients win or lose—as long as they are paid and their career is bolstered.

Barter system justice.”

Later, through more rumors and scattered bits of information, Ethan learned that Mitch was the crazy uncle of Sara Wyman, the victim’s mother. The man’s time in the mental hospital, according to the gossip, was due to having tried to kill the same girl ten years earlier.

Six months before Natasha Wyman’s gruesome murder, a psychiatrist had determined Mr. Evans to be sane and competent. Apparently, so had the parents. Why had they ever let the man near their daughter? And again, why hadn’t any of this been mentioned at the trial? The fact that it hadn’t been discovered before, during, or after the trial, constituted gross negligence on the part of the prosecutor, that being the Lincoln County District Attorney, Mariana Clark, as well as Ethan’s attorney. If the rumors were true, Natasha’s parents should’ve had a pretty good idea who killed their daughter. Did they not care that an innocent man was paying the price? Did anyone? Were they all in denial? Or, had they really believed Mariana Clark’s arguments when she had presented her case. Admittedly, it had been a compelling presentation.

Ethan shook his head in disbelief. He still didn’t know if he bought into all of the rumored details of the events, but those rumors did explain how Mitch would’ve had access to the home, and the clock. Yet, what it didn’t explain is how the pictures had wound up at Granite Hills. But then, a lot of items from the outside seemed to make it through. Who knew how any of it was done?

That had been the turning point for him. The determining factor in Ethan’s decision to exact a little payback of his own. He’d already planned to retaliate but now he had a new motivation. Obviously, he’d known he was innocent; now he had proof the prosecution had known too. His trial, and evidently the entire judicial system, was nothing but a scam. A farce. An egregious affront to all he believed in.

That day he became a changed man and began diligently formulating his strategy. The strategy of revenge.

The preferred tactics, kidnapping and torturing the D.A., or simply killing her were out. Other methods running through his mind like blowing up her house or targeting family members were not options either. These would be expected. And likely, anything so brazenly disastrous would land him right back inside Granite Hills.

Ethan chose a more subtle approach. Things not so obvious. Little things. Seemingly mundane things. He understood that anything, if repeated often enough can become intensely annoying, even terrifying, no matter how small or insignificant it seems. Together, these little things would serve to drive the D.A. to the brink of insanity. In the end, this would certainly be more cruel.

Patience was the key. It was also his weak point. A man obsessed with revenge, and consumed with rage is typically not a particularly patient individual, or a rational one. Ethan was no exception. Yet, while patience may indeed be a virtue, it isn’t alone. Brainpower, commonsense, or whatever it’s labeled, cannot be discounted, even amid a lack of patience.

Ethan was no fool, so patience or not, he bided his time. There would be no attempted escape; no deals with the gangs in prison who promised their contacts could effect his release from the outside. No, this was too important. It could wait until his time had been served. That’s when he began to learn patience.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ethan looked at the calendar on the wall in his hotel. Twenty-two days. A little over three weeks, that’s how long he’d been out. Three weeks of living free, re-adjusting to life on the outside, trying to become a normal citizen. The concept seemed simple, but it was no easy task. A new century had dawned while he’d been inside, social practices and the American culture had seen drastic changes in those years. Mainly, the changes were technological advances, which affected the cultural environment as well. Many things now widely in use had not even existed before he’d gone off to prison; CD’s, DVD’s, digital cameras, cell phones, and a whole assortment of other gadgets. Perhaps the most drastic new creation, the one that linked all of the others, was the personal computer. In the mid-eighties, when he’d gone off to prison, virtually no one had a computer, now nearly everyone did. The world was definitely a much different place. He soon learned that successfully transitioning from convict to citizen involved more than merely changing one’s locale.

In the past three weeks, he’d purchased new clothes, rented a hotel room, and gotten used to eating his meals in a restaurant where he could choose his own menu. But, after years of a strictly regulated regiment, a regiment, which controlled every aspect of his life; when he got up, when he went to bed, when and what he ate, along with the clothes he wore, whether he was allowed to go outside or watch TV, and virtually everything else in his life, he was finding it difficult to forge his own path. Despite loathing the routine at Granite Hills, he found that, for the most part, he was sticking to the prison schedule to which he’d grown accustomed.

Strangely, he kept forgetting that if he needed, or simply wanted, to buy anything, take in a movie or go someplace, any place, he didn’t need to ask permission. Life’s decisions and choices, the road he traveled, what he did or didn’t do, were completely up to him. And yet, returning from a late-night supper at the corner café, the
Wagon Wheel Grill
, which had become his favorite place to dine, he had the oddest sense that he’d crossed some invisible line of forbidden conduct, and would be reprimanded and penalized. The feeling was indicative of the way he felt daily—awkward and out of place. However, though it was taking considerably more time than he’d expected, slowly, he was easing back into a comfortable lifestyle.

Since his release, Ethan had carefully avoided any activity that would in anyway telegraph his intentions. He thoroughly enjoyed the first week of relaxation. After a few days however, he would have liked nothing better than to catch a ride to Cedar Springs and settle the score with Mariana Clark, once and for all. But the learned patience and his common sense kept him idle, at least for the time being.

Prison officials had repeatedly insisted no one would be checking up on him. That was not the sort of thing they did, they claimed. But, he knew otherwise. He’d heard too many stories from returning inmates to fall for that line. The system hadn’t quite treated him justly in the first place; Ethan was under no illusion that those in charge would suddenly have a change of heart and behave honorably. As far as he was concerned, someone would be watching, at least for the first month or so.

And so, for three weeks, he’d stayed close to the hotel, not venturing more than a few blocks from his new home. To further give the impression he harbored no illicit intentions, he’d applied for a job, eleven of them actually. Of course, he received no response. Listing Granite Hills Correctional Facility as his last place of residence had guaranteed that. And it suited him fine. Right now, he needed to be free to pursue his own agenda, and not be bogged down with the responsibilities and limitations a job would bring.

Reasonably confident now that he wasn’t being watched, Ethan left the hotel early the next morning and strolled downtown, walking the eleven blocks to the library. In prison, he’d learned to acquire knowledge and information by reading, listening, and paying attention, not by asking questions. Questions led to people remembering what a guy was interested in, and he surely didn’t need that! But through a constant observance—simply keeping his eyes and ears open, no one ever knew just what he’d learned.

Though the advent of the computer age had dawned while he’d been locked away, it hadn’t necessarily passed him by. During his incarceration, he’d become extremely proficient in their use as well as familiar with the Internet, despite the outdated equipment available. And though his activities were restricted and the approved sites severely limited by the prison, he’d learned the basics easily enough.

Seated now at the public computer terminal inside the library, he casually surfed the Web, visiting a variety of sites. He’d heard the library staff would not be at all concerned with what he did online still, he was cautious, wanting to make sure.

Forty minutes later, convinced no one cared what he was doing; he typed anycase.com into the address bar. The library’s Internet connection was blazingly fast compared to the dial-up at Granite Hills, and he was amazed at how quickly the pages were displayed. In a matter of seconds, he was viewing the homepage of the largest database of court records from across the nation. So far so good.

Using the search box, he typed in the state and his last name. If what he’d heard about the website were true, he should soon be wading through a wealth of information regarding his case, complete with the most intricate details. Supposedly, the database included both public and private information. Privileged information. Information to which he should not have access. That’s precisely the information that interested him.

It wasn’t exactly illegal. He had broken no laws. He was merely surfing the web, just a typical library patron. With the exception of porn sites, the law didn’t regulate who could and couldn’t visit a particular website. Theoretically, he supposed, state lawmakers could enact legislation prohibiting convicted criminals from pursuing this kind of information, but so far, he was under no such restriction.

On the other hand, the anycase.com site, which provided the information to the public, probably was skirting the law, simply due to the methods by which they obtained and collected the data, as well as the fact that they disseminated it to the masses by publishing it on the Web. The company employed a vast number of computer geeks, hackers, who regularly accessed the judicial archives of every county in each of the fifty states; public records and sealed documents. The data from these documents was then transferred to their own site. The information was made available to the public free of charge.

Since first hearing of the site, nearly five years ago, Ethan had been worried the government, which had to know of the site’s existence, and its shady practices, would, through the aid of the courts, force a shutdown. A cease and desist order would bring an immediate end to the operation—before he’d had a chance to use it. But, smiling briefly, he read his name on the screen. The site still worked!