The video shows Liveson hitting Ricky first, but there’s no angle that shows whether or not Holmes is holding a knife before David John turns him over. Holmes’s got a knife in his hand by the time the police and the ambulance arrive, that’s for sure, but there’s only a single set of fingerprints on it, as if somebody had wrapped Holmes’s fingers around the handle. It’s a cheap folding pocketknife, the kind sold at hardware stores for twenty bucks. This model comes from Home Depot. Something a contractor—or a plumber—might carry, but there’s no way to tell who bought it. No audio, so no way to prove what the black kids said to Ricky, what word Ricky might have said back.
It’s a messy case, the kind that’s a no-win for the prosecutor. David John’s record is pretty clean—he’s never done time—but his brother, Earl, is the preacher and the face of the Blessed Church of the White America, and David John has his own tattoos. Affiliations. If the dead kids were white, you could settle it as self-defense, give a slap on the wrist, call it a day, but with two dead black kids, both students at Cortaca University to boot? Holmes’s dad a police chief in one of Atlanta’s suburbs, his mom a kindergarten teacher, Liveson’s parents both lawyers and moneyed. It hits the national papers, CNN and Fox News and MSNBC sending news trucks, Jessup’s mom having to chase at least one reporter off their property. Protests at the church—Jessup hears this from his mom and Wyatt, because he refuses to go—with signs and chanting and eggs thrown at congregants’ cars. It plays on the news for weeks.
The whole thing is high profile, but it’s not open-and-shut: with the video, and with both Ricky and David John sticking to their stories, there’s too much room for it to go off the rails if the prosecutor takes it to court. The victims drinking, Ricky claiming self-defense, the video showing Ricky getting hit first. If the boys had been empty-handed, it would have been a disproportional response, but with the beer bottles, with a knife found in one of the black kid’s hands? It’s the kind of case that can kill a political career if it goes poorly. The prosecutor decides to deal.
Jessup’s mom wants them to fight, but the court-appointed lawyer—they can’t afford any better, though there’s some talk of a collection at the church—explains that her son and her husband aren’t going to find a sympathetic jury. Not here. The mayor of Cortaca, a former Cortaca University student who is only in his midtwenties, is incensed. He’s calling it a hate crime, calls it a crime against the community. He’s asked the Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation. The mayor is earnest, but there are other politicians getting in on it, grandstanding. It’s a litmus test.
The lawyer, frustrated, tells them that if they risk a trial, Ricky might spend the rest of his life in prison, David John along for the ride. It’s not going to look good. White-power tattoos and two dead black college students?
They take the plea bargains. Rock and a hard place and all that. Ricky lucky to be able to walk out of prison when he’s nearly forty, half his life gone by. That’s a good deal for killing two men, the lawyer tells them, and David John’s only doing five years. Less if he behaves himself.
He behaves himself.
David John skates after four.