After a few minutes, he peeked through the small window in the door facing back out to the H-Unit. There, he saw Scottie Pinkerton standing in the middle of the cellblock. Scottie was a white man a little over six feet tall, slightly overweight, with a belly that pooched out like a starving African child in a late-night infomercial. His black hair was cropped short against his scalp. At the moment, he was being strip-searched.
Steve knew this was for his own safety but wondered how degrading it must be to be searched like that in front of everyone. Not that anyone was looking, but all of the inmates and guards in the cell block had a clear view of the ceremony. He wondered how many times Scottie had to go through this and similar experiences over the past seven years. Steve slowly walked away from the window and slumped back down in his chair.
When the door opened, Steve quickly stood as his client was escorted into the room. Steve reached out, and Scottie tried his best to shake Steve’s hand, but the wrist restraints were chained to his waistband. Scottie appeared to be feigning interest in meeting him until the officer left; Steve was certain the man was not happy about something. He sat down and gestured for Scottie to take the seat next to him.
Before Steve could ask what was wrong, Scottie leaned over the table and growled, “Why the fuck are these cuffs on me? Never had these on me before when other lawyers visited.”
Steve had to think quickly. He didn’t want Scottie to know his inexperience was the reason why the cuffs were on, but he also didn’t want his first words with a new client to be a lie. He
decided that the best approach was to just be completely honest, considering that is what he wanted from Scottie in return.
“To be honest, this is my first visit to H Unit and I forgot to put the magic words ‘barrier-free’ on my visitation request letter. So, the prison officials wouldn’t let me visit you without handcuffs on today,” Steve said. “I promise it will never happen again.”
Scottie leaned back and raised his hands up to Steve’s eyes. “Good! Because these cuffs aren’t protecting you from shit.” He placed the cuffs together in a manner that loosened them one notch. If he had continued the maneuver repeatedly, the cuffs would have fallen to the floor. “There, they were way too tight, now I can at least deal with these fuckers while we talk. Plus, I would be in deep shit if I removed them completely.” He smirked, leaned back in his chair and said, “You learn a lot of tricks in a place like this.”
Steve kept his composure, although internally he wondered if the waivers he had signed were actually based on past events rather than just an overly cautious Attorney General.
Scottie finally sat down and looked Steve in the eye, “So, you are my new court-appointed lawyer. I’ve gone through three different lawyers over the years and not one of them has been worth a shit. I guess you get what you pay for, huh?” He frowned, making no effort to hide the fact that he was sizing Steve up. “You seem awful young, though. My cellie said you would be super experienced since you’re my last shot. You barely look old enough to wipe your ass, let alone to have ever done anything like this before. And the fact I am wearing these cuffs seems to prove my impression.”
“Well, as I said earlier, this is my first time here and you are my first capital punishment client,” Steve admitted. “However, I just spent the last two years working for three federal judges in Tulsa on these cases. I did nothing but constitutional death penalty work, seven days a week, the whole time. I know this law inside and out. I even know the judge who will be ruling on your case. I promise I will give you my best effort at winning you a new trial.”
“New trial? I don’t want a new fucking trial. I want out of prison. I want to go home and see my son. I am innocent of these fucking charges. I didn’t kill my wife. If I had a decent lawyer at trial, or on my state appeal, I wouldn’t be in this shithole. Now, on my last shot, they send some kid younger than me to save me.” He almost looked like he would laugh, but he only looked up and grimaced. “Please tell me when this fucking nightmare will end.”
“Well, I’m not here to determine your guilt or innocence. My goal is to find some constitutional error that will get you a new trial.”
Scottie didn’t like that answer. “There you go again saying ‘new trial.’ Like I said, I’m a god damn innocent man! I’ve done some legal research to pass the time, and I know that if you show I am innocent I can get out. I can be released based on the fact I didn’t kill Ashley. And that’s the truth, man. I swear I didn’t even touch her at all. I never did. My only chance at getting out of here alive is if you believe me and find the real killer. None of my other lawyers believed me, so none of them tried. They all had other ideas, like you and your fucking new trial plan. None of them wanted to find the person who actually killed my wife.” Scottie caught himself and stopped ranting. He finally asked, “Do you believe me when I say I am innocent?”
“If you tell me, you are innocent, then yes, I believe you. But I’ve also read the news reports. There was quite a bit of evidence against you: the 911 call, the DNA evidence, the scratches on your face, the bloody footprints from your shoes, the fact you showered as soon as you got to the hotel room.” Steve listed the points off one by one. “I must admit, all of the evidence is leading to you being the one who did it. That said, I haven’t had an opportunity to review your entire file or the trial transcripts yet because they weren’t delivered to me until late yesterday, so I don’t know everything yet.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you sound just like my trial attorney. He never listened when I tried to tell him what happened; he didn’t even try to get me a not-guilty verdict. He always said his goal was to keep me from getting the death penalty, that we had no chance at the guilt/innocence phase, and he would get more respect from the jury if he didn’t argue for me until the sentencing stage. Now you keep saying you want to get me a new trial, not get me out of here. More of the same court-appointed lawyer bullshit. Man, if only I could afford a real lawyer.”
Then something clicked in Scottie’s brain, and his expression changed from pissed-off despair to hopeful consternation. He stared a hole through Steve’s head. “I’ll tell you what, you go read all that stuff and come back here and convince me that you believe I’m innocent. Only then will I tell you the story of what happened that day. Until you do that, I’m not going to waste my time talking to another shitty public pretender. I don’t trust you, and you probably won’t listen to a word I say anyway, just like all the other lawyers the government has gotten for me. Worthless.” He held up his cuffed hands as he said that.
Steve quietly considered his client’s words.
“I’ll leave you with one fact,” Scottie finally said. “When I left the house that day, she was living and breathing without a scratch on her. That’s the god-honest truth.” He stood up and pushed the intercom button. “We’re done in here. Please send Wayne back for me.”
While the two men waited in the room, Steve spoke up. “Listen, I believe you. I promise you. I will read everything and come back here and show you that I am different from any lawyer you’ve had in the past. I’m going to do everything I can to figure out the truth and get you out of here, even if it’s the last thing I ever do in my life.”
Scottie only stood silently by the door until it clicked open, and a massive guard came in to retrieve him.
The guard said to Steve, “You need to stay in here until I get him back to his cell. No one is allowed in the hall while a prisoner is out of their cell.”
Scottie was escorted out. A few minutes later, Steve left the same way he came in, slowly and through many doors. When he signed out, he realized he had been inside H-Unit for almost an hour, even though he’d met with his client for less than five minutes.
When he stepped outside of the facility, Steve suddenly noticed how immense and blue the sky was above him. He had been inside Oklahoma’s death row for what was, comparatively speaking, a short amount of time. But the freedom he felt as he soaked up the vastness of the world outside was indescribable. He tried to imagine what it was like to live inside those walls day after day after day. How it would change a person to see only the sky that was visible through the slits in a grate three stories up, to never see the sun set or rise, to never see the horizon.
As Steve stared skyward and slowly turned in place beside his car, he thought to himself that, for some indefinable reason, Scottie didn’t really seem like a murderer. Although his client had opened with a threat, it seemed more bark than bite, almost like learned behavior from having to survive in custody for so long. And despite everything Steve had read in the news about the facts of the case, his gut told him that Scottie was telling the truth; maybe, just maybe, Scottie had left Ashley at home that day alive and without a scratch on her.
Steve decided he would start sifting through the boxes of the case as soon as he returned to Tulsa. Furthermore, he would read through everything from the perspective of innocence, looking for evidence to exonerate Scottie, rather than just looking for constitutional mistakes that would lead to a new trial. Steve knew this was the only way he would gain Scottie’s trust and get to hear his version of what happened that August day. That story was key to finding out if Scottie, or someone else, killed Ashley Pinkerton.