Steve sat and stared at the volumes of transcripts in front of him. His morning meetings this Friday had run longer than expected, and he had received a couple of emergency calls from divorce clients right after lunch. When he was finally able to truck all of the boxes down from his office, to his car, and then into his house, it was mid-afternoon.
Steve smiled wryly. Another exciting Friday night in Tulsa, America.
When he worked at the federal court, Steve had read thousands upon thousands of pages of transcripts of murder trials. Yet, this time, the process seemed more daunting. In those previous cases, he was merely reviewing the arguments made by the respective attorneys and working with the judges to see whose side the law fell in favor of. This time, he was the one who would have to make the winning argument.
Otherwise, someday, I will have to watch…Steve didn’t finish the thought.
Despite the exponential difference in pressure, Steve decided he would use the same procedure he had perfected during his time as a law clerk.
First, he picked up the three-ring binder labeled “Volume One of The State of Oklahoma vs. Scottie Pinkerton Rogers County Case Number CRF-2008-1273” and opened it on his kitchen table. There were seven such binders, and the dates listed below the titles on each told him the trial began on Monday, July 20, 2009, and lasted a little over three weeks.
Next, he got out a yellow legal pad and a pen. He set the notepad
CHAPTER 11
to his right. As he read through the thousands of pages, he would create a personalized index of all sixteen boxes, covering maybe thirty to forty pages of his legal pad. It was the perfect resource material for the job ahead.
The first several pages covered some preliminary motions the trial judge ruled on before the court brought in the prospective jurors. He was looking for any constitutional error by the trial court in these preliminary rulings. Sometimes, a death row defendant’s best shot at a new trial came from these rulings because they determined what could or could not be presented to the jury.
Unfortunately, he found nothing that gave cause for a reversal of Scottie’s conviction. His stomach began to grumble.
Steve made himself a ham and cheese sandwich and sat back down for the next portion of the transcripts. He was finally at the opening statements of counsel.
He took a determined bite of his sandwich. Let the festivities begin.