Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt

At six-thirty PM, while out for your daily run, you smile inside as you think about how much improved your situation is. You are a young man of twenty-six, married to a woman you love and the father of a baby daughter you adore. Life in California has not been easy, but at last you have a job you like and the future is looking good. At two-thirty AM the following morning, you are not lying between Isabel and your baby. Instead, you feel dazed and frightened as you scramble for a dry spot to sit in an overcrowded holding cell in the county jail. You have been arrested for the murder of a police detective that you allegedly committed while on your run. Circumstantial evidence points definitively to you as the perpetrator of the crime. The state's case is ironclad. Your attorney and his investigators can find nothing to refute the charge. When the trial is over and the jury is sent to deliberate, a guilty verdict is virtually guaranteed. How, you ask yourself in despair, can a civilized society condone a legal system that allows for the possibility of execution of an innocent man? How? Except for people close to you, your question goes unheard and your agony concerning the future of your wife and baby goes unnoticed.


Genre: Literary Fiction