Reversible Errors Read Free

that he did not know wrong from right, which was what the law required for a defense.
    "I'm not the kind to kill no one," Rommy offered, as an afterthought.
    "Well, you've been convicted of killing three people-Augustus Leonidis, Paul Judson, and Luisa Remardi. They say you shot them and left them in a food locker." The state also said he'd sodomized Luisa after her death, although Rommy, most likely from shame, ha d r efused to acknowledge that part. Judge Sullivan, however, who'd heard the case on her own, without a jury, had found him guilty on that count as well.
    "I don't know nothin 'bout that," said Rommy. He looked askance then, as if that remark would close the subject. Arthur, whose sister, Susan, was even crazier than Rommy, tapped the glass to make sure Rommy's gaze came back to him. With people like Rommy, like Susan, you sometimes had to hold their eye to get through.
    "Whose handwriting is this?" Arthur asked mildly and pushed Rommy's written confession under the glass. The guard jumped from his chair and demanded to see each page, front and back, to ensure nothing was concealed. Rommy studied the document for quite some time.
    "What you think about stocks?" he asked then. "You ever own stock? What's that like anyway?"
    After a considerable interval, Pamela started to explain how the exchanges operated.
    "No, I mean sayin you own stock. How's that feel and all? Man, I ever get outta here, I wanna buy me some stocks. Then I'm gone get all that stuff on the TV. 'Up a quarter.' 'Down Jones.' I'm gone know what they-all on about."
    Pamela continued trying to outline the mechanisms of corporate ownership, and Rommy nodded diligently after every sentence, but was soon visibly astray. Arthur pointed again to the sheet Rommy held.
    "The state says you wrote that."
    Rommy's inky eyes briefly fell. "Tha's what I was thinkin," he said. "Lookin at it and all, I'd kind of said it was mine."
    "Well, that paper says you killed these three people."
    Rommy eventually leafed back to the first page.
    "This here," he said, "this don't seem to make no sense to me."
    "It's not true?"
    "Man, that was so long ago. When was it this here happened?" Arthur told him and Rommy sat back. "I been in that long? What-all year has it got to anyway?"
    "Did you write this confession for the police?" Arthur asked.
    "Knowed I wrote somethin back there in that precinct. Ain nobody told me it was for court." There was, of course, a signed Miranda warning in the file, acknowledging that any statement Rommy made could be used against him in just that way. "And I ain heard nothin 'bout gettin the needle," he said. "Tha's for damn sure. They was a cop tellin me a lot of stuff I wrote down. But I don't recollect writin nothin like all of that. I ain kill't nobody."
    "And why did you write down what the cop was saying?" Arthur asked.
    "Cause I, like, dirtied myself." One of the more controversial pieces of proof in the case was that Rommy had literally shit in his pants when the detective in charge of the case, Larry Starczek, had started to question him. At trial, the prosecution had been allowed to introduce Rommy's soiled briefs as evidence of a consciousness of guilt. That, in turn, became one of the prominent issues in Rommy's many appeals, which no court had managed to address without a snickering undertone.
    Arthur asked if Larry, the detective, had beaten Rommy, denied him food or drink, or an attorney. Though rarely directly responsive, Rommy seemed to be claiming none of that-only that he'd written an elaborate admission of guilt that was completely untrue.
    "Do you happen to remember where you were on July 3rd, 1991?" Pamela asked. Rommy's eyes enlarged with hopeless incomprehension, and she explained they were wondering if he was in jail.
    "I ain done no serious time 'fore this here," answered Rommy, who clearly thought his character was at issue.
    "No," said Arthur. "Could you have been inside when these murders happened?"
    "Somebody sayin