Manifest Injustice by Barry Siegel

Author:Barry Siegel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

CHAPTER 16

Playing Long Shots

JUNE 2003–JULY 2008

Since launching the Justice Project, Larry Hammond had watched class after class of volunteer law students go from failure to failure, despite their marvelous minds and energy. Innocence projects, by their nature, were often about failure. The legal obstacles they couldn’t get over, the injustices they couldn’t fix. They were always playing long shots. That they needed newly discovered evidence with verdict-changing capacity was tough enough. To accept non-DNA cases, as the Justice Project did, made it even tougher.

If only the Justice Project had paid professionals at the helm who could truly own the Macumber case. But they didn’t. Larry Hammond had his consuming private practice at Osborn Maledon, as well as various death row cases—appointments from the county and federal courts. Bob Bartels, besides his position at the ASU College of Law, served as a special assistant United States attorney for the District of Arizona. Rich Robertson had a private investigator’s firm to run, having added several PIs to his staff. The Macumber case, like the others at the Justice Project, depended on volunteer pro bono forensics experts and a steady influx of law students, who kept graduating and moving on. The Macumber case also depended on two Justice Project supervisors with distinctly different modes and outlooks. They revered each other, but Bob Bartels’s measured caution at times conflicted with Larry Hammond’s impetuous optimism. Where Hammond, far less skeptical, invariably wanted to run to court with a petition, Bartels often favored further investigation. Facts drove Bartels, feelings Hammond. The tension between these impulses now began to affect the Justice Project’s handling of the Macumber case.

In late June 2003, Bartels decided that he needed to interview Jerry Jacka once again—his third visit, the team’s fourth, to this fingerprint technician turned famous photographer. Jacka had moved from Phoenix and now lived on a 120-acre ranch near the remote town of Heber, three hours to the northeast. On June 26, Bartels drove up there alone. Since his earlier visits with Jacka, he’d had time to think about matters and carefully examine the print photos they’d obtained by court order. Despite Steve Anderson’s “gold mine” analysis the year before, Bartels still had questions. How much did Jacka really remember about this particular case? How exactly had he lifted the prints? What kind of paper card had he placed the print on? Why hadn’t he sent Latent Lift 1 to the FBI? Most important: Exactly how had Macumber’s palm print ended up on the Chevy Impala?

Bartels chewed on these issues as he drove north on Arizona 87, the Beehive Highway, then east on Highway 260 toward Heber. Gradually the scenery changed from low to high desert, then, just past Payson, to primarily ponderosa pine forest. The elevation shot up abruptly at the Mogollon Rim, the highway a steep climb now, the view at the top spectacular. Jacka’s ranch, set in a forest filled with towering pines and verdant meadows, sat at the end of a dirt road north of the highway.

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