41

The justices filed in right on time, and the clerk called the court to order. It was an imposing forum, and I wondered if I would ever gain the poise and ability to argue a case here. The setting didn’t seem to bother Mace James in the least.

He settled in behind the podium without a single note and stared straight at the seven justices sitting a mere twenty feet away. A red digital clock at the right of the bench displayed the time left on his twenty-minute argument. From my perspective, I could see only a partial profile of his face—his jaw firmly set—the tattoo on his neck, the back of his head, and his broad shoulders flexing as he grabbed both sides of the podium.

“May it please the court, I represent the appellant, Antoine Marshall, in this capital murder case. Sixty days ago, the state of Georgia came within three hours of executing an innocent man. Fortunately, this court intervened.”

James let them chew on that thought for a second, and I repeated the Latin phrase under my breath: “Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.”

After his brief pause, James resumed with confidence, hammering home points that in my mind had already been addressed by the courts. The alleged impropriety of Bill Masterson’s striking three African Americans from the jury panel, the questions Judge Cynthia Snowden had asked to rehabilitate my dad’s testimony, her refusal to admit the polygraph results, and her refusal to allow the testimony of two expert witnesses.

“I’m not trying to replow old ground here,” James said. The comment made me scoff, and the justices looked like they shared my skepticism. “But I think we need to look at the Cooper affidavit in the total context of this case. This is not a situation where the testimony of a jailhouse snitch was just one more incriminating piece in a mountain of evidence proving guilt. If you take away the testimony of Cooper, the only thing left is the disputed cross-racial eyewitness testimony of a man who failed to pick the defendant out of a lineup presented to him on the witness stand in court.”

“But, Counselor,” the chief justice interrupted. She was a conservative whom I was counting on as one of the four votes we needed to rule against Marshall. “Mr. Tate cross-examined Freddie Cooper at trial and discredited him so much that the DA hardly even mentioned Cooper in his closing. How can you ignore that and claim Cooper’s testimony was the linchpin of the prosecution’s case?”

“I’m not saying it was the linchpin, Your Honor. But we really don’t know how much the jury relied on him. And that’s the point. How can we say the state proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt apart from Cooper’s testimony? One discredited eyewitness? No DNA, no confession, no corroborating evidence? This case begs for a retrial.”

“How convenient,” shot back Justice Sherman, a junior member of the court who was a former prosecutor. “The only eyewitness, as I understand it, is now dead, and your client wants a retrial.”

Yes, I thought. It was frustrating to sit there and listen to James make these high-sounding arguments about why a killer should go free. But it was heartening to see at least a few justices challenging him. Still, as the give-and-take played out over the next twenty minutes, I couldn’t tell whether we had the four votes necessary to win.

The swing vote, Justice Skelton, was a Southern gentleman, an unassuming moderate who had been on the court longer than anyone except for the chief. And Skelton just sat there, chin in his hand, listening intently but saying nothing.

What was that man thinking?