An Imperfect Process: Another story behind the story

by Mary Jo

The last of my newly renamed and relaunched Starting Over Series is An Imperfect Process, and this was one book I was happy to retitle.  An Imperfect Process had been my working title, but the publisher didn’t like it and preferred the very generic Twist of Fate.  Oh, well.  I think my title suits the book’s theme of an imperfect justice system, and also the heroine’s issues about falling in love.

This story was inspired when I read in the Baltimore Sun about a local man named Michael Austin who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.  Austin was convicted by the flip-flop testimony of a lying eyewitness, and a business card that turned out to be totally irrelevant. Not only had several other eyewitnesses described a killer of very different appearance, but Austin had been at work at the time of the murder and had a time card to prove it. 

It took twenty-seven years for the truth to set him free.  His story horrified me.  That a man could be convicted and imprisoned when there was absolutely no evidence?  While we know in general that the justice system makes mistakes sometimes, this error was jaw-droppingly outrageous.

Another story also caught my attention: the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who killed several people and injured others with letter bombs.  He was caught when his brother David and David’s wife Linda realized that the Unabomber must be Ted and contacted federal authorities.  Clearly the Unabomber needed to be stopped, but turning in your own brother had to have been a haunting moral dilemma for David Kaczynski.

Those two real life stories helped provide the raw material for my plot.  I had my heroine—Val Covington, a lawyer with wild red curls and a whip smart brain.  The story begins when Val receives an unexpected windfall large that will allow her to leave her high paid job as a corporate litigator and do law that she can feel passionate about: representing little guys who need legal help. 

Val comes by her idealism honestly.  She was born in a commune to an artist mother and a middle class kid who eventually quit the hippie life and went off to Harvard Law and a solid position in the upper middle class.  Val’s father paid child support, but she was always at the periphery of his life, which may have had something to do with her choice of Harvard Law. 

But she has enough of her mother’s idealism to like the idea of helping out underdogs, so she decides to open her own office, which leads to a pair of life changers: Val’s invaluable assistant, Kendra Brooks, says she’ll run Val’s new practice if in return Val will look into the conviction of Daniel Monroe, who is on Death Row.  He was Kendra’s lover and father of her only son, and she knows he’s innocent because he was with her when the murder took place.  But no one believed her, and time is running out.  Val agrees to look into the case, not knowing what she’s getting herself into.

Her next life changer is visiting an old church that is being rehabbed and which might make a good office.  She meets the owner/rehabber, Rob Smith, who is tough, smart, sexy and enigmatic—and has a personal interest in death penalty cases.  As a former Marine Corp investigator, he also has some skills that will help Val in her quest for justice. 

Here’s a brief excerpt of their first meeting:

    Val glanced at Rob.  Hard to read expressions under that beard, but his eyes were intent.  “If you mean can I feel that this was a much loved house of worship, yes.  I’m glad you saved it.  No new building would ever have such richness.”   She advanced, feeling as if she were swimming in light.  “Not right for me, though.”
    “What sort of business are you in?”
    “I’m a lawyer.”
    “A lawyer?”  
    She smiled wryly at the surprise in his voice.  “People always have trouble believing that.  My first week in law school, one professor called on me by saying, ‘You, the barmaid in the third row.’”
    “Isn’t that considered harassment?”
    “Probably, but at Harvard Law, the philosophy is to torment students into toughness.  If you can’t take it, too bad.  I was warned that HLS is not a user-friendly school, but I didn’t really appreciate what that meant until it was too late.”
    “In the case of that professor, it meant that he noticed you.  Any man would.”
    To her surprise, she blushed.  “Is that a compliment?”
    “Definitely, in a non-harassing sort of way.”  He smiled and changed the subject.  “Why Harvard?  Because it looks so good on a résumé?” 
    “That, and to prove I could do it.”  She turned.  Rob was standing in a swath of light, the sun blonding his hair and emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders. Suppressing thoughts of how long she had been celibate, she continued, “My mother says that even when I was a toddler, the surest way to get me to do something was to say it was a bad idea.” 

Attraction grows as Val and Rob work together to find new evidence to free Daniel Monroe.  But Rob is haunted by his past and Val has commitment issues, so falling in love is indeed an imperfect process.  But really—isn’t it always???

An Imperfect Process is one of my most-researched books.  I talked to all kinds of lawyers: legal aid, family law, and a public defender, among others.  My agent of the time was married to a retired federal judge, and he read the judge’s chambers scene for me.

I did plenty of reading of my own.  Most useful was the book Actual Innocence,  by Barry Sheck, Peter Neufeuld, and Jim Dwyer.  Sheck and Neufeld founded the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongful convicted, and Dwyer is an award winning journalist. 

Each chapter of the book is a case study of an actual wrongful conviction, and the specific systemic failures that resulted in an innocent person being convicted.  One of the most common problems is mistaken eyewitnesses, but there are all kinds of other reasons, like faulty lab work, false confessions, public outrage over a particularly heinous crime, and more.  The book was a compelling read as well a shocking wake up call, and it helped me construct a plausible scenario for my book.

An Imperfect Process has been called controversial, which I don’t quite get.  Granted, capital punishment is controversial (and as a novelist, I can see both sides.)  But really, is there anyone in FAVOR of executing innocent people?  I shouldn’t think so!

I also researched some other topics, such as the Big Sisters organization, as Val tried to decide how she felt about having children.  While driving a Harlequin editor to the airport, I interviewed her about the care and feeding of her wild red curls. I studied eradication of graffiti. And Quakers.  And the cost of a Rolls-Royce. <G>  I love this job!

I’ll be giving away a print copy of the book under its original title, Twist of Fate, to one person who comments between now and Thursday midnight. 

Mary Jo, adding the question: do you have any idea how many books are named Twist of Fate???

Comments

[nancy]

I have the book Twist of fate. I thought it well done without hitting readers over the head about the injustice . Trouble is , if a jury convicts you, no upper court will reverse unless obvious error can be shown. There was a case in GA in which a man was convicted of killing a man. Even though most of the so called witnesses later recanted and said they lied about the man being the killer, the court refused to retry the man, free him, or delay his execution.

[Beverly Abney]

I still have print copies of these three books and have re-read them a couple of times. Maybe I will have to get them out for another read. I am glad that new readers will be able to read them electroniclly so they will gain readership that way.
I believe in capital punuishment, but I wish there was a better way to prove guilt and innocence. I hate that sometimes the innocent are convicted and the guilty sometimes go free.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Nancy--stories like your one from Georgia make me insane. I think whether new evidence can make a difference usually happens at the prosecutor level. IF they'll look into a case, there's a chance of correcting the injustice, but by their nature, they tend to be zealous about sending people to jail, so often they won't budge, no matter. I hope that there has been enough publicity about wrongful convictions to open the minds of people in the justice system.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Bev--

You make a very good point--not only does wrongful conviction punish the innocent, but it also means the guilty are walking around free and sometimes literally getting away with murder. That's just WRONG.

[Liz]

The old saying that it was better to let 9 guilty go rather than convict 1 innocent fell by the wayside. Balancing the demands for justice from victims and their families and from accused is beyond a human system, it often seems.

[Nancy]

Off Topic for this subject.
Congratulations , Mary Jo on winning the 2013 RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award .
So pleased for you.

[theo]

I second that congrats! I just read about it and I think it's so well deserved.

There was also another story on Discovery, I think, where the killer's father, an FBI agent or profiler, realized that his son was a serial killer and turned him in. I wish I could remember who it was. It was several years now that I watched the program. But I still can't imagine the pain that man must have gone through to make that decision.

[Mary Jo Putney]

You're right, Liz--perfect justice is no more possible than perfect is in any area of life. But--most of the people in the system try. One lawyer I talked to said he thought that the system and courts got things right about 90% of the time. (He wasn't criminal law, though. One hopes they do better!)

[Mary Jo Putney]

Thanks so much for the congratulations, Nancy and Theo! Needless to same, I'm delighted, and more than a little startled. *G*

Theo, I hadn't heard of the case of the FBI agent and his serial killer son. It's almost impossible to imagine the horror of that. God rest their souls.

[Dee]

Fascinating story. I am going to see if I can track this down. Justice is such a noble concept and yet in every era, there are innocents convicted/ punished. And, guilty go free. I would hope that overall the system favors the innocent and yet it really seems to be a game where the best players can bend the rules in their favor.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Dee--and sadly, the best players tend to be hired by those with the biggest bank accounts. The public defender I talked to was a good guy, but he had a killing workload. I do think most of the people in the system want to do justice, but sometimes it's easier not to bother.

[Betty Hamilton]

Although I have read so many of your books... and LOVED te. I seem to have missed this one. I would so LOVE to win a copy!! TY for the blog and for the giveaway!!

[Wynne]

Congrats on the award! I don't need to win a copy--I already have this book--but I wanted to tell you how much I admire it. I loved how you wove a thoughtful take on a serious problem among the emotional highs of a romance.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Betty, contemporaries have a different feel from historicals, but I do write about the kinds of characters, so I hope you'd like my contemporaries. There are used print editions floating around, but I'm so glad that the e-editions are now available.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Wynne, thanks so much for the congratulations! RWA's Lifetime Achievement is a tribute to survival, and I'm so pleased to have been chosen.

I'm glad you liked the balance of them and romance in this book. It wasn't easy--my contemporaries were a HUGE amount of work--but I am proud of how they turned out. Ideas matter, and so does romance. Val and Rob had a lot to work through, and they did it.

[Diane]

The whole idea of unfair imprisonment IN MY COUNTY is horrifying to me. Of course, I know it happens, and I see people on television who have just been released from unfair, no, not unfair, criminal imprisonment. But when I see the TV segments, it just causes me to wonder how many more are out there: innocent, caught in the system, trapped, no way out. It makes me incredibly sad.
I'll look forward to reading the book, Mary Jo.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Diane--

I feel exactly the same way: how can such miscarriages of justing be happening IN MY COUNTRY?!! Also like you, I hate knowing that there must be many more innocent people imprisoned that we'll never know about. Here in Baltimore, DNA evidence proved a man innocent of rape charges after hed' served years in prison. He'd been up before the parole board earlier and denied parole because he refused to say he was guilty of the rape because he knew he wasn't. The parole board figured he was lying and sent him back to prison, until the DNA evidence was found.