Free Joe Dillard - 03 - Injustice for All by Scott Pratt Page A

and is standing next to me, and across from him stands Tommy Miller. Tommy, tall and lean and dark haired, has adopted the affect of a zombie. I haven’t heard him utter a single word since we arrived. His cheeks are without color, his dark eyes empty and trained on the ground.
    The group of pallbearers stands silently as the funeral home director slides Ray’s casket out of the hearse. We carry the flag-draped casket solemnly through the crowd toward the tent. As we place the casket on the stand above Ray’s grave, I hear Toni sobbing behind the black veil she’s wearing. Jack and I step out of the tent and stand next to Caroline and Lilly. Caroline is sniffling into a pink handkerchief.
    “This is terrible,” she whispers. “So senseless.”
    A debate has been raging in the legal community over the past few days. Who’s to blame for Ray Miller’s killing himself has been the central question. Many blame Ray, reasoning that his aggressive style in the courtroom and his bravado with judges made him an inevitable target for someone like Judge Green. Had he kept his head down, played nice, and got along like nearly everyone else, he wouldn’t have found himself in such a desperate situation. It’s as though they believe he got what he deserved.
    Others, of course, blame the judge. There’s little doubt that his vicious campaign against Ray was personally motivated and largely unfounded. Nearly everyone believes that had any other lawyer made the same mistake Ray made, nobody outside of the judge’s office would have heard about it. But Ray had been suspended, jailed, and bankrupted. The local media sharks had gone on a feeding frenzy, and Ray was the bait fish of the month. His reputation had been shattered.
    Then there are those who call Ray a coward. He didn’t have to kill himself, they say. He could have taken his medicine, apologized to the judge, gone through a bar hearing, and he would have been back practicing law within a year. I find myself empathizing with Ray on that point. I’m a proud man, just as he was. If a judge had taken away my ability to earn a living and care for my family and the media had ruined my reputation without giving me a chance to defend myself, I might have considered doing the same thing Ray did. The only difference, I think, is that I wouldn’t have missed when I fired the shots at the judge.
    A minister is talking, saying something nonsensical about a basket representing Ray’s life and that he had filled his basket to overflowing with love for his family and friends, service for his clients, and genuine feeling for his fellow man. He’s speaking in banal generalities. It’s obvious the minister didn’t know Ray.
    “Follow his example,” the preacher says. “Fill your basket.”
    He drones on about how we shouldn’t judge Ray for taking his own life, that God never gives us more than we can handle, and that the bullet that ended Ray’s life was somehow an instrument of God’s love. It’s sophistry of the worst kind, worthy of an appellate court, and I find myself wanting to tell the preacher to shut up and let us bury Ray with some dignity.
    But I stand there quietly, grieving for my friend but grateful I’m still alive, still with the people I love, and once again I think about how fleeting life is, how fragile, how dangerously unstable. One minute Ray Miller was a fine specimen of a man, a strong and brave spirit standing defiantly in front of those who sought to persecute him, and the next he was a mass of dead matter, lying in a heap on the ground, his spirit gone to some mysterious place.
    I lean over and kiss Caroline gently on the cheek. She’s been battling breast cancer, along with the sickness and mutilation that comes with the treatment, for a year and a half. I love her so much it almost hurts, and I can’t imagine how I’d go on if she were the one being lowered into the ground.
    “Oh death, where is thy sting?” the preacher says. “Oh grave,