“I can do that,” she said.
“All right then,” the Jackson County Prosecutor declared, “we’ll ask for the dismissal.”
. . .
The discussion in chambers was held out of earshot of jurors, spectators, and cameras. There was just the judge, the defendant, the three attorneys, and the court reporter.
It took the better part of an hour to hash everything out. When they returned to the courtroom, the judge thanked the jurors for their service and declared the case dismissed with prejudice and the proceedings over. No bang, no pop, not even a whimper.
“What does that mean, it’s over?” Jason asked, as the deputy who had been escorting him to and from the jail every day for a month slapped him on the back and wished him luck. He hadn’t really understood much of the conversation in chambers.
“It means all the charges have been dismissed, and you’re free to go,” Lily told him.
His jaw dropped. “What happened?”
“I guess, given the turn of events, the prosecutor was no longer confident he could get a conviction,” she said. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t argue.”
“I ain’t gonna,” Jason declared. “Does this mean they don’t believe I killed the cop anymore?”
“Not exactly. It just means the prosecutor no longer feels he has sufficient evidence to prove you did.”
The Indian frowned. “So people could still think I did it, even if I didn’t get convicted for it?”
“Some people might,” Lily conceded, “but I wouldn’t worry about them. Besides, I doubt any of them would be the people you care about.”
“Do you still think I did it?” he asked.
Lily smiled “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I think there’s enough evidence to suggest that you didn’t.”
“But the cop is dead, and someone has to pay for it, right? If they can’t find someone else to blame, can they change their minds? Can they come after me again?”
“No, they can’t,” she assured him. “There’s something in the law called double jeopardy, which means you can’t be tried twice for the same crime.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Jason stood up, and took a few tentative steps, almost expecting a hand to reach out and pull him back and slap the cuffs on his wrists, but none did.
“If I’m really free, you know the first thing I’m gonna do?” he said, a mischievous grin breaking out across his face.
“Head for the mountains?” Lily inquired.
“Nope, that’s the second thing,” he told her. “The first thing -- with all due respect to you -- the first thing I’m gonna do is dump this suit!”
. . .
The analyst on the local cable channel, who had been reporting on the trial from the very beginning, was at a loss for words as he tried to explain to his viewers what they had just seen on their television screens -- or to be more precise, what they had not seen. The editor of the Port Hancock Herald pored over legal tomes in an effort to construct reasonably informed sentences to enlighten his readers. And talk radio was overrun with callers from both sides, wanting to know what the hell had happened.
Tongues wagged for hours over telephones, across back fences, on street corners, at the supermarket, the pharmacy, the hardware store, and the beauty salon. The Internet’s social media outlets were flooded with exclamations of both outrage and delight. And the patrons of hangouts from Old Town to New Town to out-of-town weighed in with their opinions on the totally unexpected turn of events.
“So, did he do it, or didn’t he?” was the most often asked question.
“I guess we’ll never know,” was the most frequent answer.
“I knew he didn’t do it,” some said.
“The son-of-a-bitch got away with murder,” others declared.
“Which son-of-a-bitch?” several couldn’t help but inquire.
“It’s nothing but another damn liberal bleeding-heart cover-up!” a few asserted.
“It sure is,” came the inevitable response, “when you try to railroad an innocent man just because he’s a minority.”
“What kind of country are we living in,” still more chimed in, “when you can’t tell the cops from the crooks?”
Even the jurors were speaking out.
“I have no idea why the case was dismissed,” veteran juror Julia Estabrook declared. “I’m sure we could have come to the right verdict.”
“The state made a pretty good case,” John Boyle confirmed. “But the defense was making a pretty good case, too, so there’s no point in asking whether we’d come to any decision.”
“Is this the way our justice system really works?” Eileen Wolcott wanted to know. “That’s my question.”
But the question that was on the minds of most people, as they went about their daily lives that day and the next and the one after that, was the same as Jason’s -- what had happened?
. . .
The fallout was immediate. Demands for Kent McAllister’s resignation could be heard all across the city. Demands for John Henry Morgan’s resignation could be heard from every corner of the county.
“As it turns out, we didn’t have the evidence we needed,” the prosecutor tried his best to explain to a large crowd that gathered outside the courthouse the next morning. “So we did the right thing -- we asked to have the charges dismissed. What would you have had us do -- convict an innocent man just because the community wants closure?”
“If the Indian didn’t kill Scott,” a veteran reporter from the Port Hancock Herald called out, “then who did?”
“We may never know.”
“Will you reopen the investigation?” the TV analyst asked.
“Certainly.”
“Do you think that other cop did it?” a talk radio host cried. “The one who admitted to firing the second bullet?”
“We are reopening the investigation,” John Henry said, promising himself, if he still had anything to say about it, that the Lightfoot trial would be the first and the last to have cameras in the courtroom. “When we have something to report, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I want everyone working on this,” he told Tom. “If Hitchens did it, I damn well want to nail him for it.”
.
