All Chapters of The Dead Woman's Verdict: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

"Your Honor, did the court misspeak?"Defense counsel was on his feet again. "My client has a full alibi, and the district attorney's office has already withdrawn the murder count against her."I looked up.My eyes settled on Marina Harrow at the defense table.She sat slouched and bored, like none of this had anything to do with her.Her eyes and brows resembled someone.I'd seen that face in the photograph Grandpa had been touching for fifty years.I repeated the ruling."Having weighed the evidence submitted by both sides, this court denies the defense motion for dismissal."The gallery erupted.Nothing in the file put Marina at the scene, and nothing gave her a reason to be there.Even the district attorney had given up on the count, which made today's release a formality everyone had come to watch.The ease went out of Marina's face.She glanced at me.Contempt came into her voice."Guys who claw their way up out of nothing always have something to prove. Mr. Dorsey

Evelyn Harrow knew exactly how to use what she had.By the next morning, a full campaign against me was underway.They started with where I'd come from and where I'd gone to school, and they turned all of it inside out.Then they went back through every ruling I'd ever signed.Former defendants surfaced out of nowhere to say I'd ignored the law and decided their cases on a whim.I'd never seen anything online build that fast."He's thirty and he's already on the felony bench. Nobody moves that fast without someone above him pulling. And out of some mountain town, too. Families that have had money for four generations can't get a kid onto that bench, and he managed it.""Why are almost all of these judges men? They protect each other and they pick women to make examples of. The victim in this case was a woman, and he's letting his own feelings run the courtroom.""Same. He's the one who ruled on Marina, right? He's jealous of what her family has and he's punishing her for it. Th

Marina still hadn't grasped a thing.She was shouting. "It's you. You set me up. That little nobody was nothing, she was nothing. My grandmother will get me out of this."I looked at Evelyn, collapsed in her chair.No.Marina would wait forever.I brought the gavel down once.The courtroom went quiet.I stood, came down from the bench, and took off my robe."There's one more matter to be heard in this courtroom today."It's a case that runs fifty years."And I've never believed justice fails to arrive. Only that it can arrive very late.""A fifty-year-old case? Wouldn't the statute have run twice over?""What kind of case makes a judge take off his robe first?""Now I'm curious. Fifty years back the forensics were garbage. There were a lot of bad convictions."I went on."It begins in a farming town called Pinebarrow."A man there was accused of murdering his wife."The evidence never closed, but with everything weighed against him, he was sentenced to twenty years."

Only then did something move in Evelyn's face.Her eyes went wet."Walter, it wasn't me. It was Victor. He forced me back then."I'd been drinking that night and it happened, and afterward he told me that if I didn't go along with it he'd report the whole thing and have me taken away."She grabbed at Grandpa's hand. "I had no choice, Walter. There was nothing I could do.""You lying witch. You're the one who said a divorce would finish your career. You're the one who said the house and the money were Walter's and you'd walk out of that marriage with nothing. That's why you invented the funeral."And don't you dare say I seduced you. If you hadn't wanted it, could I have done any of it alone? Now it's out and you want to hand them my body instead. Don't hold your breath, Evelyn."The couple who'd spent thirty years being photographed together were tearing at each other in the middle of the courtroom.I stood next to Grandpa and watched the two of them come apart.The reporters