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EVIL EYES: Seeing is believing, and I will never forget it.
A few years ago, I got an unexpected phone call from an attorney friend who needed help with a sexual misconduct case. He told me that the case was set to go to trial within a couple of weeks, and he desperately needed an investigative reporter to gather information and report back the findings. I was a little nervous and uncertain about my ability to do what needed to be done. Nevertheless, I agreed to meet with him the following day at his office where I was briefed on the case and given documents.
I listened to him recount the defendant’s story while I made mental notes. I also struggled with the details of the case as I contemplated where I would have to go and who I would have to interview, but the public defender assured me that I could handle it. After all, he said he knew that I conducted “all that research for books” and that’s why he “thought of me” for the job. I just nodded and thought…L. Sydney Fisher, investigator reporter?
I put everything else going on in my life on HOLD for the next several days as I tracked down witnesses and interviewed them. I was on the road by 8:00 a.m. scoping out neighborhoods. I only had two weeks to find witnesses that could CONFIRM the innocence of our client. If I didn’t do a good job, the defendant might never see the outside of a prison cell again. And he had already been…
