Her father needed a character witness.
She was old enough to testify.
Ashlee had one job. Get her convicted father out of prison without asking too many questions.
She was nine.
A darkly funny memoir about the slow cost of believing everything you're told.
The plea deal would mean admitting he did it. Plead guilty, skip the third trial, serve less time.
Twenty-four people have looked at the evidence against Dad and reached the same conclusion.
He killed his wife.
And he’s about to make it thirty-six, on the grounds of what he calls honor.
He has never really been a “premeditated” type of guy. He’s dangerous. Reckless even. But not calculating. They socked him with second-degree murder — not even a jury thought he was capable enough to plan it.
I spend the whole phone call trying to convince him to take the deal. To come home.
“I think you should take the deal, Dad,” I say.
I’m not even sure he’s innocent. I’m arguing for the early release of a man, fifty-eight witnesses called maliciously violent. Hell, I’ve covered the holes his fists left in the drywall.
Yet, for a reason even my therapist still can’t unpack, I want him home anyway. Because he’s my father.
“You take that deal, you’re guilty forever,” he says. “I’d rather do the time.”
He’s already guilty forever — by a Catholic’s standards, anyway. What he means is that the guilty plea is the only version of the story where nobody owes him anything. To Dad, this isn’t a sentence; it’s an investment. Admit nothing, win the third trial, and the county that wrongfully caged him for the last eleven years has to pay him millions.
Better to come home to your children rich and presumed guilty than poor and presumed guilty.
The next hand is a third murder trial, and he likes his odds.
