Free Anatomy of Injustice by Raymond Bonner

swashbuckler with a smart mustache and a fondness for Panama hats. Some thought he looked like Gregory Peck or was even more handsome. Most good trial lawyers have a bit of actor in them, and while a student at the University of South Carolina—where he enrolled after being tossed out of Clemson—he performedthe lead male role in
Bus Stop
, playing Bo Decker, the cowboy who chases Cherie (played by Marilyn Monroe in the film version). Bitten by the acting bug, he dropped out of school and headed to Hollywood, driving day and night across the country in a 1950 Ford. He studied at the Pasadena Playhouse, got bit parts in the ABC series
Bronco
, and befriended the musician David Crosby, who had yet to team up with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. After a year and a half, Anderson returned to South Carolina and tried again at Clemson, where a brother, Joe, was now the star quarterback. Geddes didn’t excel at anything, except maybe partying, and he was thirty-two before he finally managed to complete law school, at the University of South Carolina.
    By his own account, he should have stayed in California. “I probably would have been a lot happier, as well as a hell of a lot more successful,” he said many years later, sitting in his office with threadbare carpet. Creditors and the IRS seemed to knock on his office door more than clients did. He sought the public defender job, which would guarantee him a steady income of $12,000 a year.
    Anderson was as affable as they come, and in truth, he was pretty good in the courtroom—when he was sober. Around town, bartenders called him “the bourbon cowboy.” (They were sure they had seen him on television as the Marlboro man; they hadn’t.) He was busted twice for drunk driving, once while he was the public defender, which caused some of the cops to laughingly wonder what it would be like for a prisoner to find himself sharing a cell with Anderson. During the trial, Elmore smelled alcohol on Anderson’s breath every day, and his behavior in the courtroom reinforced the suspicion that he had been drinking when he should have been preparing. Anderson insists he was “perfectly sober” throughout the trial. “I wasn’t even hungover one day,” he said. SLED investigator Tom Henderson scoffed at that: “Geddes Anderson was drunk through the whole trial.”
    Under South Carolina law, because Elmore was facing a possible death sentence, he had to have two lawyers (a requirementin most death penalty states). Finding a second chair for Elmore wasn’t easy. There were some thirty lawyers in Greenwood, all white and male, save for Solicitor Jones’s daughter Selma. None rushed to take the case of a black man accused of killing a prominent white woman. When the town’s lawyers realized the court was going to appoint one of them, they raised $5,000, which they offered to any lawyer who would take the case. It was kind of like buying your way out of the military during the Civil War.
    John Beasley stepped forward. He was an undistinguished criminal defense lawyer, known around town for boasting that he really didn’t care much for work. Saturday was his favorite day of the week, he would tell friends; he liked it so much, he got up earlier that day, he said. His father, Hugh, the county prosecutor for the twenty-six years before Jones took over, was a staunch segregationist, and routinely used the word “nigger.” His son was more guarded, but he once slipped, referring to Elmore as a “redheaded nigger.”
    Anderson and Beasley couldn’t comprehend Elmore. He was courteous and polite, but he was so uncommunicative. He wasn’t like other men Anderson had defended, who’d scream, “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it! Here’s what happened.” Elmore just quietly kept saying he hadn’t killed Mrs. Edwards. Anderson never considered that Elmore’s reticence, his inability to articulate what happened, might reflect his mental limitations. Even less did he imagine that perhaps