Darius McGinley had had only one profession since age eleven, drug dealer. He’d had only one true family, a gang.
The case seemed to underline what many in homicide work knew; you can’t explain crazy.
More inmates died of suicide than the needle on death row in California.
He called them human tumbleweeds moving with the winds of fate.
It was the era of fake news and reporters being labeled by those in power as enemies of the people. Newspapers were folding right and left and some said the industry was in a death spiral. Meanwhile, there was a rise in biased and unchecked reporting and media sites, the line increasingly blurring between impartial and agenda-based journalism.
All around them the cacophony of greed carried on in its most glorious and extreme excess.
Los Angeles: there was no rush hour because every hour was rush hour.
In the law of innocence, for every man not guilty of a crime, there is a man out there who is. And to prove true innocence, the guilty man must be found and exposed to the world.
But then the world changes and your own DNA can unlock everything and secrets aren’t secrets anymore.
A preliminary hearing is a routine step on the way to a trial. It is one hundred percent the prosecution’s show. The state is charged with presenting its case to the court and the judge then rules on whether there is sufficient evidence to take it forward to a jury trial. This isn’t the reasonable doubt threshold. Not even close. The judge only has to decide if a preponderance of evidence supports the charges. If so, then the next stop is a full-blown trial.
The only way to prove I didn’t do it is to prove who did,” I said. “That’s the law of innocence.
The intrusion of the government into our lives is pervasive. Where do we make a stand? I’m making mine right here.
When it came to opening statements, I was from the Legal Siegel school of law. He always said, save your powder, meaning less is more; don’t reveal your case or its surprises until it’s time to present your evidence.
As with many of my young male clients from the south side of the city, prison was an anticipated part of life for McGinley. He grew up knowing he was going. The only questions were when and for how long and whether he would live long enough to make it there.
I felt like he was another one who’d never had a shot at anything but thug life in the first place. He’d never known his father and had dropped out of school in the sixth grade.
Donovan stared at the car silently, contemplating it the way a matador looks at the bull he is going to fight.
Anybody who relished the idea of being a juror was blue ink all the way.
That’s the problem here. It’s Sunday. Everybody wants to go home. Play golf. Sell houses. Watch the ballgame. Nobody cares one way or the other. Just going through the motions.
There was no going back to repair what had happened. You can’t patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.
The citizens want their police to protect them, to keep the plague from their eyes, from their doors. But those same John Q.’s are the first to stare wide-eyed and point the finger of outrage when they see close up exactly what the job they’ve given the cops entails.