Deadly Dose by Amanda Lamb

Author:Amanda Lamb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.

SEVEN

The impossible is often the untried.

—JIM GOODWIN

“We left that hearing in the Wake County Courthouse that day, myself and the Miller family, with a sense that things were finally on track,” Morgan says. “I don’t think any of us realized at that point and time just how slow the wheels of justice sometimes turn.”

It was clear that Rick Gammon was going to appeal the judge’s order mandating him to reveal what he knew about the Miller case. And on March 14, 2002, following proper legal protocol, he did just that. Word on the street was that the case would skip the Court of Appeals and go straight to the North Carolina Supreme Court, but no one knew for sure because this was such a unique case. It was a test of the attorney-client privilege that had the capacity to affect many other cases in the future. Given its gravity, most people close to the case felt it was a legal question which deserved to be heard by the highest court in the state.

In the meantime Morgan was nervous. He had made so many promises to the Millers, to the community, and to himself. If this didn’t work, he wasn’t sure there was anyplace else for him to turn. He would officially be at a dead end in this investigation, and the thought kept him awake at night.

“It was like I had written a very large check and wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to get the funds in the bank to cover it by the time it had made it to the bank,” Morgan recalls.

But Morgan just kept hoping that the funds would be there. He prayed that a trip to the North Carolina Supreme Court would mean a big payoff for the Eric Miller case—a payoff in the form of the arrest of Ann Miller on murder charges.

As everyone waited for some kind of resolution to the legal wrangling, the media weighed in on the question of attorney-client privilege. Every night Morgan watched self-proclaimed experts on the evening news arguing that vacating the attorney-client privilege would be the worst thing that could happen in this case—that it would set a legal precedent that would have a permanently chilling effect on the attorney-client relationship. But while the pundits sided with the defense, Morgan observed the general public siding with the state’s position, that solving a murder trumped the attorney-client privilege of a dead man. Yvette Willard herself had weighed in on the debate, saying that she wanted Gammon to speak, that as the executor of Derril Willard’s estate, she gave him permission to do so. But under the law, her permission was still not enough for Gammon to vacate his oath not to share his confidential conversations with his client.

The Millers became media junkies as well, scouring the Internet every day for the latest news on the case. They also, like Morgan, became increasingly disturbed by the fact that so many lawyers were deciding the outcome of the case before the courts had a chance to even consider the question.

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