My Fifteen Minutes of Fame Never Happen
Today is April 19, 2024, twenty-nine years ago; at about the same time as when I sat down to write this essay, I was sitting in the Walker County Courthouse waiting for the sentencing hearing for a client in a rape case I had tried in February 1995.
While I believed my client, a Black man who used extra-large condoms (a crucial fact in the case), had had a consensual sexual relationship with a White woman he met at a local laundromat in Lafayette, Georgia, at 2:00 a.m. in 1994, her grandfather, a retired State Legislator from the area testified on behalf of his granddaughter, all but sealing the fate of my client.