Free Bad Lawyer by Stephen Solomita

legs, raised a lecturing finger. “Remember this—if you get up on the witness stand, say Priscilla graduated first in her class, you must have report cards to back it up. If you don’t, the jury won’t believe you. They’ll think you’re lying to protect your daughter. And if they think you’d lie about something small, they’ll decide you’re lying about everything else, too.”
    Thelma sniffed once, her bird-bright eyes all but closing, then muttered, “Okay, I understand,” before getting down to business.
    The Priscilla Sweet who emerged seemed a fairly ordinary child, neither Queen of the Prom nor Ugly Duckling. Her strengths were a quick, vivacious smile (demonstrated in a half-dozen snapshots) and a general enthusiasm for life. She’d done well at school, had various boyfriends, spent her summer vacations flipping hamburgers at the local McDonald’s. After high school, she’d gone on to Columbia University and was holding her own when she met Byron Sweet. Byron, according to Thelma, had filled Priscilla’s head with “black communist ideas,” telling her the university was a tool of the oppressor class, that the revolution was on the way and she’d better get her act together.
    “It came so fast,” Thelma explained, “so fast. They were married and living in a slum before Joe and I could do anything about it. Then came the drugs and … and the rest.”
    The rest, which I had to force out of her, was cocaine and marijuana dealing and a prematurely born child who died within a week of his birth.
    “Byron blamed it all on the system. He thought being black gave him the right to do any damn thing he wanted. And that included beating his wife. The time he took Priscilla out of the house, he kept saying, ‘White bitch, white bitch.’ Over and over again.”
    I interrupted before Thelma’s recitation descended into pure diatribe, reminding myself that there would almost certainly be blacks on the jury, that race would be an issue, that a hung jury would result in a second trial and we couldn’t afford the first.
    “Okay, why don’t we cut to the confrontation between Priscilla and Byron, the one you witnessed. You can begin with the time and day she knocked on the door.”
    As Thelma described the incident in detail, her angry facade began to peel away. For the first time, I was able to see her pain, to see the helpless, bewildered mother unable to protect her child. That was the side she was going to have to show to the jury and I was more than pleased to know it existed.
    Byron’s assault had taken place about a year before. Priscilla, who’d showed up on Thelma’s doorstep one night, had been so badly beaten (according to Thelma) that she couldn’t speak above a whisper. Not that Thelma needed to hear an explanation.
    “Well, I guess I knew what happened, didn’t I? Priscilla wouldn’t go to the hospital, wouldn’t let us call the police. I made up an ice pack with a plastic bag and some towels, then Joe and me, we put our daughter to bed. It feels funny to say it like that—she was thirty-three years old, after all, and not a little girl—but that was the way it felt. Like she was a two-year-old and needed tucking-in so the monster in the closet wouldn’t get her.”
    “But the monster did get her.” Julie’s voice was flat. She was looking down, watching the palms of her hands make slow circles, one against the other.
    “Byron got in through a bedroom window. I’m sure it was locked because Joe was very careful about locking the windows at night, but somehow … Anyway, Byron marched into the kitchen, and knocked Priscilla off the chair. ‘White bitch, white bitch.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
    Thelma’s faucets were full on, now, the tears running almost continually as she dropped her face to her hands. “Joe tried to help her. He picked up a chair and was holding it over his head. I had the phone in my hand, ready to call 911. Byron was standing behind