Read Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 02 - FINAL ARGUMENT - a Legal Thriller for Free Online

the brown accordion folders piled on his desk.
    “The Zide case,” he said.
    I had assigned it to Dale Settels, an eager young prosecutor who had moved last year from Boston to Jacksonville.
    “A slam-dunk for the state,” I told Beldon.
    “It’s for sure a slam-dunk for the newspapers and the TV,” he grumbled. “Could go national, and sure as hell it’ll go southern. Two black perps, and one gets shot by a trigger-happy JSO Homicide asshole while the kid’s trying to escape.”
    “Or so the asshole says,” I pointed out.
    “Got the ACLU poking their nose into that, and more power to ‘em. So we’re left with one live black defendant in a big murder trial, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s come up with a black lawyer.”
    I hadn’t heard about that. “Who is it?”
    “Guy named Gary Oliver.”
    “I don’t know him.”
    “But you see where I’m heading? Constance Zide knows you, likes you, seems to trust you, and she’s asked me if you’ll prosecute.”
    I made no comment. This was quicksand.
    “An old dog for a hard road,” Beldon said. “You’re not old, and you’re on your way out the door to greener pastures. But you’re the man for the job. Will you do it, Ted?”
    My affair with Connie Zide was defunct—Beldon didn’t know about it; no one did—but it was still something for me to consider. Beyond that, however, was an even more worrisome factor. Seven years earlier, in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court had declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Florida’s state legislature in Tallahassee was the first to fashion new law to get around that edict. Now in 1979, first-degree murder carried with it the possibility of electrocution, a spectacle that seemed to grip Floridians almost as much as that of a man jerking at the end of the hangman’s noose had once excited the English. Schoolchildren in our state built model electric chairs. The governor had already earned the nickname “Barbecue Bob.”
    This case, for many reasons, was not for me.
    “Tell me about Gary Oliver,” I said.
    “Used to be a good private investigator. Then he got uppity and went to law school, like some other dickheads we know. But he’s got a problem the others don’t have. Down in St. Augustine last winter he was so shitfaced he was pulled over for drunk driving, and he hands the cop his fishing license. Guy’s favorite drink is the next one.”
    “Why didn’t Darryl Morgan go to the public defender?”
    “He did, and Kenny assigned a white woman lawyer. Morgan didn’t trust her—he fired her. She didn’t protest too much: I heard she didn’t like him or the case. So his mother managed to come up with whatever it took to hire Gary Oliver. Actually, I heard that Oliver’s doing it for just his expenses.”
    Not that it mattered, Beldon explained. Forty-eight hours after his Miranda rights had been read to him, Darryl Morgan confessed the murder to Sergeant Floyd Nickerson of Homicide. A few nights later he repeated the confession in front of his cellmate at the Duval County Jail. And Connie Zide identified him positively as the man who had shot her husband during the attempted burglary. Neil Zide confirmed the ID at a police lineup.
    “This Morgan kid’s six foot six,” Beldon said. “A fucking giant. Hard to mistake him for anyone else.”
    “So the jury will convict.”
    “You can bet the family jewels on it. But not on part two.”
    In Florida a murder trial was divided in two parts. In the first part the jury heard evidence, then voted as to guilt or innocence. If the verdict was Guilty, in part two of the proceedings the same jury voted on a recommendation for sentencing. The final decision was up to the judge.
    “Let me tell you what I’m feeling,” I said. “Until ‘72 you did all the death penalty cases. That suited me fine. I’ve never done one, and this doesn’t strike me as the time to start.”
    “So you’d want someone defending Morgan who’ll give you a decent