Sullivan's Law by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg Page A

seeing these three big jocks standing out the back door of the bowling alley. I kept dropping my books. The strap on my backpack had broken, so I was trying to carry them all in my hands. Some of the books were textbooks. The others I’d checked out at the library. Every time I tried to pick up a book, one of the boys would kick it. I got really upset. It was dark and I couldn’t find half of the books. I knew they were expensive. I didn’t want my mother to have to pay to replace them.”
    â€œKeep talking,” Carolyn said, wondering how upset he’d become that night. She could imagine a jury asking themselves the same question. This may have been the reason his public defender had not allowed him to testify at the trial. “What else do you remember?”
    â€œI tripped and fell on my stomach,” he said, his eyelids fluttering again. “I remember them laughing at me, calling me names. I tried to get up when they started hitting me. A black guy turned me over and forced my mouth open. Things get fuzzy after then. The last thing I remember was one of them urinating in my mouth.”
    Carolyn placed her head in her hands. If what he was saying was true, it was a travesty. Had he spent twenty-three years in prison while the three obnoxious thugs who had beaten and humiliated him went free? She corrected herself, as Tim Harrison, the chief’s son, had lost his life.
    â€œDid you intentionally push Tim Harrison in front of a car?”
    â€œNo,” Daniel said, standing and pacing as he relived the events of that night. “After they started beating me, I’m almost certain I never got up off the ground until right before the guy got run over. By then, I’d convinced myself the entire thing was a delusion. Why fight people who don’t exist?”
    â€œWhere were you when Tim got killed?”
    â€œWhen they began fighting among themselves,” he said, wrapping his arms around his chest, “I crawled over to a corner and hid behind a trash barrel. I was in pretty bad shape. That’s where I was when the police arrested me. One of the boys swore I’d threatened them with a knife. The police never found any kind of knife. My mother would have never let me out of the house with a knife, even a table knife.” He smiled briefly. “With the kind of problems I had, even I knew better than to carry a knife.”
    â€œWere the boys fighting among themselves before or after Tim got hit by the car?”
    â€œBefore,” Daniel told her. “One of the guys got mad. I may be mistaken, but I think it was Harrison. He kept talking about his father, saying his friends shouldn’t have hurt me, that they were all going to get booted off the football team and his father was going to beat the shit out of him.”
    Carolyn generally used first names when referring to victims. Parents and loved ones didn’t call each other by their last name. “Did you see Tim get struck by the car?”
    He stopped pacing and faced her. “I’m not sure,” Daniel said, sucking in a deep breath. “When you think something isn’t real, you try to pay as little attention as possible.”
    â€œTell me precisely what you heard,” Carolyn said, her pen poised over her pad.
    â€œPrecisely isn’t going to work,” Daniel told her. “We’re talking twenty-three years and a mind that wasn’t right. All I can do is tell you what I think I heard. Are you sure you want to know? When I explained it this way to my attorney, he told me that whatever I saw or heard was basically worthless. That’s why he wouldn’t let me testify.”
    â€œI’m aware you didn’t testify,” Carolyn told him. “I’m not your attorney, Daniel. And Tim’s death wasn’t a delusion.”
    â€œFine,” he snapped. “I heard a car engine, tires screeching, and people yelling. The next thing I remember I