Arlene’s Story
My son was arrested for murder in 2002. Texas does not have a conspiracy statute it has the much worse Law of the Parties. This statute requires less evidence to convict and makes all party equally guilty as it actually allows the murderer to testify against the "friend in the car"who then gets the death penalty, while he gets to go home laughing about it.
We hired a trial attorned who is now deceased for 30,000, who did very little to nothing, failed to advise our son or affective strategy or his rights and manipulated us into agreeing to terrible things concerning the trial and secured a life sentence for my son. The same thing a court appointed attorned would have done for free.
In 2004 he was sent to one of the worst units in Texas where the Connolly Seven had escaped from a few years before. It was 180 miles away and I was devastated. We hired an appeal attorned in 2004 this attorney, this attorney lied to us for 10 years until well past the effective time limit for my son's state and federal appeals. In effect, most likely destroying my son's appellate recourses thank you for this "service" thank you Texas Bar for certifying this officer of the court. Let us wait on the next governor he said or wait on the next DA or "The more water under the Bridge the better" It took a prisoner writ write to snap myself and my son out of this lawyer's spell and demand to see the State Writ of Habeas Corpus.
What he sent was 4 pages with contained misspellings and no cited authorities. We fired him and hired another attorney. This one cost 85,000 this one cared about his reputation and took most of my net worth. He filed an appeal to get my son back in court. As it turned out not only the jail house informant had lied at my son's trial, but the DA then took his original transcript information statement out of the records. This is a due process violation but they blamed my son for the 10 year delay and dismissed his appeal without a written order.
The Justice and Prison system are not a place to teach my son a lesson or to teach him to repent or to rehabilitate him. These are just places where crimes are committed against us. It is a system by criminals for criminals.
As for the question that you asked me, when this happened back in 2001 and the police called to tell me, (they were so hard almost cruel with the message) I was in shock, I mean shock, I do not think I came out of shock not completely, I had to go on living, but never could talk to anyone about it. In the 24 years I worked at Stein Mart I never told anyone. I had a very few close friends that I did tell, but for the most part I carried this alone. My husband, did not seem to really digest this and within a few years dementia set in and he died, that was more than 10 years ago. The pain was acute, no one to help, no one to talk to.There are no words, only God knows, I am thankful that I have a strong faith and, by the grace of God, David does also. We both kept encouraging each other, and trusting somehow in the God of all creation, the God of both good and who allows evil.
Here it is almost 25 years later, what has changed, I do not know, the pain never goes away, it is not acute as it was, but it is constant. We have no where to go except to the God that we trust in. And He is enough, we both read the Parshah each week, we both know the Torah very very well, it keeps us stable. The system is very corrupt, how long will this go on, I do not know, it has cost me most everything I have, but as long as we can, we will go up each day as David did when he approached Goliath, "you come to me with a sword and a shield and I come to you in the Name of My God" .
We must not give up, we must not let them win, we will keep fighting.