A Mother's Trial by Wright Nancy

Author:Wright, Nancy [Wright, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: XXXXXXXX
Published: 2012-06-02T06:00:00+00:00

7

One week later, Steve walked up to the clerk at the Marin County jail and handed him a check for $40,000. The clerk looked at him in disbelief.

“This is Priscilla Phillips’s bail money,” Steve said.

“Hey, man, I can’t take this! You gotta go to municipal court with this.” Steve slumped. It just seemed like the next in a series of incredible hassles he had faced attempting to raise the bail. From the moment of Priscilla’s arrest, Steve realized that finances were going to be a serious problem. Since Jim Doudiet was a treasurer for Pacific Gas and Electric, Steve had consulted him.

“I guess we’re talking about big bucks here—by the time we finish with the bail and the attorneys,” Steve said.

“Absolutely. Now let’s see what you’ve got in terms of assets. Then we can decide how to proceed,” Jim answered.

“We’ve got about three or four thousand dollars in savings, and the house. That’s about it,” Steve told him.

“I think you’d better hold the house back. A bail bondsman’s going to want collateral, and if you give him the house, you’ll have no resources for the lawyer. I think any reasonable attorney’s going to need some collateral, too—a second mortgage or something. So we should keep the house in reserve.”

“So how do we get bail without a bondsman?”

“We organize a defense fund and we raise it, Steve.” They had done just that. In fact they had raised $50,000. The extra $10,000 was to go to the attorney. The money had trickled in erratically and in different forms. There were checks from Steve’s and Priscilla’s families on the East Coast, money orders, cash donations. It all had to be collected and cleared and placed in one account before a cashier’s check could be issued. Steve could do nothing but wonder at the extent of the community response—he had been so fearful at first about how people might react.

The first night after the arrest, he had walked nervously about the house. Looking back on it he realized that he hadn’t behaved totally rationally. At one point that evening, he had loaded his twelve-gauge shotgun and sat up with it across his knee like some old-time sheriff expecting the outlaws to ride in. He was so afraid that when the news got out, a carload of the kids he had been counseling might see fit to come out and blow up the house. Priscilla had been working on the Child Protective Service, writing reports that were taking children out of their parents’ houses—there was no predicting how those people might react when they read in the paper what their social worker had been accused of doing to her own children.

But his fears had proved groundless: No one had threatened them. Their friends had rallied in total support, and the boys were doing well, although sometimes Priscilla’s daily phone calls reduced them to tears. Visiting at Marin County jail was bleak: glass separated the prisoner from the visitor and communication was by telephone. Since the

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