'I looked up - the two of them were staring at me. They had a mixture of sadness and curiosity on their faces... wondering how I could be so calm and unfazed when I was seriously in jeopardy..'
Chapter 6 Part 4
When I spoke to my attorneys in the days leading up to court, they had told me that they were ready to go to trial and that they believed the prosecution would agree to move forward as scheduled. I couldn’t believe it. When we made it to court it became official. Both us and the prosecution informed the judge that we were ready to go on to trial. I believe the trial was set to start that following week.
My judge gave the order to allow me to have street clothes brought to the jail for my trial. There were some last minute housekeeping issues that needed to be addressed concerning evidence or motions that needed to be addressed. I didn’t care about any of that. I was overwhelmed with excitement and kind of in my head thinking about what was next to come.
I spent almost every day meeting with Kevin and Eric. Most of the time it was for them to make sure I was doing okay mentally and emotionally. I felt good. I was excited and very anxious. Finally getting to that point was a big deal. Honestly, I was still very much living in a fantasy world thinking or simply hoping that I might win at my trial.
The two of them came to visit me the day before my trial was set to begin. I asked them what they thought my chances of winning were. It was not my first time asking this question. I usually ask the question directly to Kevin because I appreciated his ability to be straight up and honest. He gave me the same answer that he had before. That the odds were against me, and that it was going to be an uphill battle, but they were going to do everything they could. I just looked down at the table while nodding my head. I heard him, yet I felt nothing.
I looked up and the two of them were staring at me. They had a mixture of sadness and curiosity on their faces. Probably wondering how I could be so calm and unfazed when I was seriously in jeopardy of being convicted in a matter of days, and headed to prison for the rest of my life.
Kevin broke the silence. He asked me if I would have liked for them to reach out to the state’s attorney about a potential plea agreement. I told him I didn’t want that. He then asked me if I wanted to pursue a self-defense strategy. I had never given him any version of events of what happened that night. A self-defense argument would require an admitting of guilt. It would require me to testify, he explained.
I pondered the idea for a second. However, I was working with limited information at the time. I didn’t fully understand how a claim of self-defense would potentially affect my case. I wasn’t comfortable putting myself in such a vulnerable position by admitting my guilt. I told him I would stick to our current strategy of me completely denying any responsibility. a claim of mistaken identity. They respected my decision.
What I didn’t know was that if I claimed self-defense, my jury would have been given not just jury instruction for first degree murder, they would have also been given the option to convict me of second degree murder. Second degree is a lesser offense of murderers, and it carries a much lighter sentence if convicted of it. It implies that a person acted out of fear and self-defense. The idea being that the killing was essentially justified because someone’s life was being threatened.
That was not the truth of the matter with my case. I would have had to tell my truth and hope that my jury chose to convict me of the lesser offense of murder instead of first degree. It would have been a strategy of accepting the fact that I would be getting convicted, but that I would not be spending the rest of my life in prison. It would have been me hoping that my jury picked the option between first degree murder and acquittal.
It would have been a gamble, and scary. However, it would have been a much better strategy compared to the one I went with. Unfortunately, it is well established in our criminal justice system that “ignorance to the law is no excuse.”