On the morning of Sunday, June 1, 2014, Tony Cotton’s cell buzzed in the pocket of his swimming shorts. He was at a bachelor party, drifting across Eagle Spring Lake on a pontoon boat. Despite the warm weather, the water was freezing—one last vestige of a brutal winter—but Tony’s friends dived in anyway. Like most Wisconsinites, they felt at home in the cold. The state prided itself on masochistic customs like the annual Polar Bear Plunge, a New Year’s Day tradition in which Wisconsin residents stripped to their underwear on the frozen banks of Lake Michigan and waded into the ice floes, screaming.
Tony did not participate in stunts like that. He took himself seriously. Monday through Friday, he rose at 5:00 A.M. to exercise on the elliptical machine in his home gym. In many ways he was a good mid-western boy, just like his friends, virtuous and unassuming. He took jokes literally and could drink three IPAs without feeling drunk. He ate McDonald’s and went to church on holidays. Perhaps most important, he’d done something impressive with his life, becoming a lawyer, without ever leaving home. After attending Waukesha Catholic schools, kindergarten through twelfth grade, Tony had gone to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, before matriculating to Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee. He married a Wisconsin woman, Laurel, who gave birth to their son at Waukesha Memorial, the same hospital where Tony had been born.
But against the backdrop of midwestern conformity, Tony was in other ways unusual. According to sociologists, Wisconsin ranked highest in the nation for traits like friendliness and obesity. But Tony rarely smiled and exercised religiously. He ran a criminal defense firm in Waukesha with his mother, Donna Kuchler, championing cases that nobody else even wanted to talk about, ranging from child sex crimes to child homicide. In a state where many businesses closed on Sunday and by 5:00 P.M. on weekdays, he was also a workaholic, making himself available to clients outside of business hours. Since childhood, he’d been conditioned to work relentlessly.
As a kid, Tony had watched Donna earn a law degree from UW–Madison, balancing work and motherhood with typical midwestern stoicism but unusual feminist ambition. She commuted several hours each day and signed up for classes that met early in the morning so that she could be back home by 3:00 P.M. to get Tony and his siblings off the bus. Donna studied her lawbooks at the kitchen table while her children sat beside her doing their homework. Later, when Donna started representing young Black clients from Milwaukee, some of whom could not afford to buy a suit for their court appearances, she made Tony lend them his church clothes. When Tony graduated law school, he wanted to start a business with the hardest-working person he knew: his mother.
As a lawyer, Tony continued the practice of lending clothes to clients, even buying them suits when his were too small. Donna’s tirelessness had taught him the virtues of overtime and empathy. After launching Kuchler & Cotton, they carved a niche for themselves battling grisly felony charges that made most lawyers recoil—like the case that had changed Tony’s life forever: State of Wisconsin v. Billy Brookes.
Billy Brookes, a middle-aged Black man with twenty prior convictions, had been charged with breaking into a convent and robbing a bunch of nuns.
According to the nuns, Billy had taken their purses. They tackled him. He punched them, kicked them, and escaped with their purses into a van parked outside. The nuns called the police with the license plate number.
Later that day, the police found the van abandoned at an intersection with the purses still inside. It had crashed. Down the road, they found Billy wandering around. Billy pleaded innocent. But the nuns identified him in a photo lineup. According to the district attorney’s office, one of the nuns was prepared to testify against Billy in court, wearing her habit and crucifix. She was six feet tall. As Tony later said, “She was the biggest nun I ever saw.”
When Tony heard about the case, he was fresh out of law school, still handling DUI cases for his friends. Every lawyer Tony talked to said the case of Billy Brookes versus the nuns could not be won. Wisconsin was home to the most racially segregated city in the nation. Who was a jury going to believe, a Black man with twenty prior convictions or white sisters of Jesus? “It’s the most hopeless case I can humanly imagine,” one attorney said, laughing.
But the challenge appealed to Tony. Billy couldn’t afford a lawyer, so Tony joined as a public defender. Known for being a difficult client, Billy refused every plea deal Tony brought to him. He even tried to fire Tony in open court, which came as a surprise to Tony.
“I want a new lawyer,” Billy yelled at the judge.
“Do you feel the same way?” the judge asked Tony.
“I don’t particularly care to withdraw,” Tony said. “I don’t have any problem with Billy. He appears to have a problem with me, but I have no problem working with him.”
The judge dismissed Billy’s request.
At trial, the nun took her seat in the witness box, pointed at Billy and declared under oath that he had stolen her sisters’ purses.
Tony glanced at the all-white jury. He was unemotional by nature, and when it was his turn to argue he focused on the facts:
1. The getaway vehicle had not been registered to Billy but to another Black man, who happened to be six feet two inches and 280 pounds.
2. Six feet two inches and 280 pounds matched the physical description provided to the police by the nun who had just testified. She had described the robber to the police as “enormous.”
3. Billy stood five feet four inches and weighed 150 pounds.
4. The nun who had just testified against Billy was six feet tall.
5. The nun who had just testified against Billy had told the courtroom that she had been looking up at Billy at the time of the crime.
Tony based his case around “the other guy,” the enormous one to whom the van was registered, “the one they never found.” The nuns had ID’d the wrong Black man.
The trial lasted one week. But the jury returned from its deliberations in under an hour. Quick decisions are usually bad news. Tony braced himself. The chains around Billy’s waist, ankles, and wrists jangled as they stood to hear the verdict:
Not guilty of burglary. Not guilty of theft from person. Not guilty of fleeing an officer—and so on. A total of six not guilty counts in all.
Billy stared at Tony in disbelief. He tried to hug him but couldn’t, because his hands and feet were shackled to a chain around his waist. At that moment, deputies were crossing the courtroom to remove Billy’s handcuffs.
Tony excused himself. Outside, he stood with his back against the courthouse and cried for the first and only time in his career, thinking, “The American justice system is the greatest thing that humanity ever invented.”
Billy never returned to prison. Five years later, he died, but he died a free man.
Tony didn’t recognize the number flashing on his cell phone screen, which meant it could be work. He knew he should be having fun. Tony and the groom-to-be, Luke, had spent their lives together since Catholic school. Luke now worked for the world’s largest starch company, selling starch. Tony was proud of him. He thought of Luke like a brother. But he answered the call: “Hello?”
On the other end of the line, a woman wept, saying her twelve-year-old daughter had been arrested for stabbing another little girl nineteen times. The police had five hours of videotaped confessions. The case was hopeless.
Tony turned to Luke and said, “Turn the boat around.”