“Do you hate him?” the officer asked when he saw me afterward.
I considered the question. “Sometimes. But hatred doesn’t help me remember dates or names. So I put it somewhere else until the work is done.”
He looked surprised. Perhaps he expected fury. I had plenty of it. I simply could not afford to let it make my decisions.
That night I slept for six uninterrupted hours, a small victory I recorded in the margin of my notebook.
- A New Hearing
Daniel filed a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence and the emerging questions about the original forensic analysis. The prosecution requested time to review the new material. I was still in custody, still convicted, still living under a twenty-five-year sentence. Yet for the first time, the legal process was moving toward rather than away from the questions I had been asking.
At the hearing, the judge listened to testimony from a digital forensic examiner, the hospital records custodian, and an investigator who described the newly located security footage. The prosecutor acknowledged that the original presentation had left significant uncertainties unresolved.
