Laura waited to leave the courtroom to give the herd time to migrate out. Her goal was to get to her car without being besieged by reporters. Or being encircled by rowdy protestors, clamoring for a guilty verdict. She got up from the defense table, dropped her legal pad into her briefcase, and started down the center aisle of the empty courtroom. She pushed through the twin oak doors, emerged into the narrow hallway, and headed toward the staircase that wound down to the exit. Ten or twelve feet from the stairs, she stopped in her tracks, her path blocked by a glowering, middle-aged man and a dour, middle-aged woman. Laura recognized the couple as Erin Lambert’s parents.
“Mr. and Mrs. Lambert.” Feeling ambushed, she struggled to find the right words. “How are you?”
Those were not the right words.
“How are we?” Paul Lambert hissed like a snake coiling for the strike. The six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound man in the crisp flannel shirt and blue jeans glared at her with eyes that told her to go fuck herself. “We’re reliving a nightmare. We’re reentering hell. Why are you bringing this all back? Why are you defending this monster? Why doesn’t this state have capital punishment? He should be dead. Like our little girl. Why does she rot in the grave, while he gets a new trial?”
“Please. Just stop this insanity,” Josie Lambert piled on. The petite woman in the white, cotton dress stood one step behind her husband. “Don’t destroy us all over again. Don’t send this killer back into the world. Don’t put another family through the pain that we’ve been through. I want my little girl back. How can you do this to us?”
Laura held up two palms. “Hold on.” She looked over her shoulder and spotted a court bailiff stationed at the courtroom door. Laura caught his eye and, with a toss of her head, signaled him to come over. She turned to face the irate couple. “We can’t have this conversation.” She took a long backward stride. “I’m sorry. This is not going to happen. It’s inappropriate.”
The Lamberts took a step closer to her, eyeing the bailiff, hustling in their direction.
At that moment, the transcript from the sentencing phase of the first trial flashed through Laura’s mind. Paul Lambert had been the first to take the stand to put a human face to the case by delivering a family impact statement. In tears, he’d explained to the judge how he’d been devastated by the loss of his beautiful, young daughter. Erin had been pulling her life together before she was “strung up by that self-made executioner.” Paul Lambert pleaded with the judge to impose the maximum sentence on Nash, whom he called, “a cold-blooded murderer with the mind of a jackal and conscience of a snake.” The victim’s father had seen “evil in Nash’s eyes” when Eddie visited their home a couple weeks before the murder. At that time, Mr. Lambert thanked Eddie for looking out for his little girl—encouraging her to give up drugs and quit the strip club—but, in between sips of beer, he could see the evil lurking inside Eddie. “Now, I will live the rest of my life knowing that I did not do enough to save my little girl from this cold-blooded killer.” The grieving father concluded his remarks to the original jury with the lament, “With her gone, my life is over, too. My wife’s life is over. We exist to keep the memory of our little girl alive. Period.”
Josie Lambert’s testimony had reflected the same searing pain, with less anger. “I see a mother and daughter walking down the street, and I fall to the sidewalk in tears,” she said in the penalty phase. “I see a young woman coming out of the hair salon with a cut like Erin’s, and I have to stop myself from calling out her name. I miss her sweet smile. I miss her mischievous laugh. I miss having her in my life.”
Laura could not imagine their pain. The loss was unfathomable. Of course, they wanted justice. All the defense research had shown the Lamberts to be good, decent people who did their best to raise their daughter right and rescue her when she veered off-track. Paul Lambert was a longtime and highly decorated military man, now working as a foreman at the regional recycling plant. Josie Lambert was a registered nurse at the Eden Community Clinic and had even walked Eddie through his check-ups. “I kept the man healthy, so he could murder my daughter,” she had sobbed to the first trial judge. It was no surprise that their loss still hurt all these years later. That kind of pain never went away. Still, Laura couldn’t let herself get drawn into a conversation about it.
Placing himself in Laura’s path, Paul Lambert went on. “You can’t ignore us forever,” he snarled at her, grabbing his wife by the arm and yanking her toward the stairs. He looked back and yelled, “You’ll hear from our attorney!”
Laura exhaled. She gave the bailiff the all-clear. He stopped in his tracks and headed back to his post. Laura stood alone in the empty hallway for a long moment, trying to make sense of the encounter.
One of the most profound changes in the criminal justice system, she knew, had been the escalating participation of victims and victims’ families in trials. Responding to the understandable pleas of the victims’ rights lobby, all fifty states had passed laws allowing “victim impact statements” at sentencing.
Laura supported the victims’ rights movement—until it infringed upon the rights of the accused. Although she sympathized with the Lamberts, her preparation for the new trial had shown that they could pose a threat to her client. After their daughter’s death, the grieving couple had turned to a victims’ rights advocate to navigate the complex terrain of the police investigation and trial. The Lamberts also hired a local attorney to handle inquiries from the police and medical examiner, and to make sure the prosecutor “dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s.” The Lamberts even tapped a public relations professional to craft their victim impact statements.
Laura hoped that this time, it would not come to that.
***
Laura was still reeling from the encounter when she climbed into the Mustang. Paul Lambert’s words reverberated inside her. “We’re reliving a nightmare.” Josie Lambert’s words made her eyes tear up. “I miss my little girl.” Laura was searching for her car keys when her phone buzzed. It was Nick, and this time, she wanted to talk to him.
“Nick. Hi.”
“Just checking in. You okay?”
“Your timing is impeccable.”
“What’s wrong?”
Laura filled him in on the clash with the victim’s parents.
“I can’t imagine their pain,” she told him through tears. “To lose a daughter is beyond horrible. To lose a daughter in such a violent way is unbearable. I hate putting them through this all over again. They’ve suffered enough.”
The line was silent for a long moment.
“Laura.” Nick spoke softly. “You can’t take the responsibility for their loss. You have to keep your eyes on the prize. The life of an innocent man is in your hands. Only you can set this right. Just keep pushing forward. You’re doing the right thing. You’re the difference between justice and injustice.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right, Nick.”
“I have one more point to make.” Nick paused, as if searching for the right words. “It’s going to sound cruel and crass and totally uncaring. I apologize in advance.”
“What is it?”
“It’s about the Lamberts.”
“Okay.”
“Well, their daughter was a stripper, a drug addict, and an alcoholic. Their daughter was killing herself.”
“Yeah.”
“Where were their tears when she was alive?”