Revenge of Innocents Read Free

called justice,” Carolyn said. “Maybe in prison Mr. Dover will find out how it feels to be violently sodomized.”
    “Yeah, sure,” Veronica said. “What was Baxter doing in an alley behind a bar in a ten-inch skirt? He was a prostitute, Carolyn. Isn’t it obvious? It was to the jury.”
    Carolyn was inundated with the details of every crime that passed through the system. She had to know as much about the case as the investigating officer. That meant reviewing police reports, trial transcripts, evidence. After the probation officers conducted their investigations and made their recommendations as to an appropriate sentence, they then had to conference the case with Carolyn to get her approval. She felt like a computer about to run out of memory. She had to shove things to the back of her mind just so she could answer a question.
    This particular case was controversial in a variety of ways. Brett Dover was white; the victim was black. Ten members of the jury had been not only men, but Caucasian. They probably perceived Baxter to be a twisted pervert who’d enticed a clean-cut young white boy into engaging in sex. The facts clearly refuted such an assumption. The case made Carolyn’s blood boil.
    She wouldn’t be having this discussion with Veronica if the crime wasn’t what they referred to as a wobbler. Section 245 of the California Penal Code allowed the court to sentence the defendant to serve a year in the local jail, or two, three, or four years in a state prison facility. The Judicial Council in San Francisco had developed specific rules that were to be applied to determine if the interest of justice would be best served by one sentence or the other.
    “Don’t you understand?” Carolyn argued, slapping back in her chair. “Whether the victim was male or female doesn’t matter. Patricia Baxter is only a few months past her nineteenth birthday. When her sex organs didn’t develop normally, her mother made the decision to raise her as a girl. Granted, this may have been a poor decision, but Patricia wasn’t the one who made it. She’d never had sex with anyone, male or female. Her mother was saving money for a sex change. Regardless, the medical report showed significant injuries from a violent sexual assault. The jury simply chose to ignore it because of the circumstances.” She paused and sucked in a breath. “So what if she was hanging around a nightclub in a short skirt? Would you feel the same if something like this happened to Jude?”
    “Hey,” Veronica said, pushing herself to her feet, “if you want to trump me on this one, go right ahead. You’re the boss now. No one cares what I think.”
    “You know I respect your opinion,” Carolyn told her. “I have to call the cases as I see them, Veronica. This was a brutal attack that resulted in great bodily injury. Circumstances in aggravation clearly exist and support the maximum term of four years in prison. I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to rewrite the report and submit it under those conditions.”
    “Can I go now?” Veronica said, her voice tinged with sarcasm. “I have to track down a probationer.”
    “Which one?”
    “Phillip Bramson.”
    “Is he in violation?” Carolyn asked, hating it that her investigators had to supervise people because of the overflow in field services.
    “I called the place where he works yesterday and they haven’t seen him in over a week. My guess is he’s using again. I left a message on his cell phone. He didn’t check in, so I’m going to try to track him down today.”
    The details of Bramson’s case were beginning to surface in Carolyn’s mind. “Doesn’t he have a suspended sentence?”
    “Yep,” Veronica said. “He doesn’t get to pass go or collect his two hundred dollars. If he tests dirty, all I have to do is put him on the next bus to prison.”
    Because of the overcrowding in the state prisons, judges were utilizing suspended sentences more often. “I’m going to get these