Laura Caldwell began 2005 as an author and law professor. Within one year’s time she would find herself serving as second chair on a first degree murder trial. The person that she and attorney Catherine O’Daniel were championing was Jovan Mosley, a man wrongly imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. As an author, Caldwell knew high stress drama from inside the minds of her characters. But this would be the first time walking in her own shoes would seem to better fit one of her heroines. Long Way Home is the story of Jovan Mosley and how two fearless attorneys pursued freedom for him from crimes he didn’t commit. Caldwell shares what it was like to live the pages of the story, how she used her writer instincts in a court of law, and why words can change your life.
PC: Will you share a little about who Jovan Mosley is?
LC: During his trial, I was continually struck by how Jovan looked like a handsome young lawyer, not a kid awaiting trial for first degree murder. In fact, Jovan does want to be a lawyer, always has, and I see now that he will make it happens if he wants to. More than his intellect and hard work, though, I am often now struck by Jovan’s smile—a big, wide-eyed smile that, despite what he went through, conveys the joy he continually finds in the world.
PC: How do you get past the fear of knowing that what happened to Jovan isn’t a story, but real life?
LC: One of the toughest things about writing Long Way Home was knowing that I couldn’t play with facts. Not only did I not want to exaggerate the story, ala Million Little Pieces, but I also felt an immense responsibility as Jovan’s friend to get his story as right as I possibly could. Then there was Cathy, too, his lead attorney, and Andrea, the foreperson of the jury, and the state’s attorneys, who were great guys we became friends with, and the cops and the public defenders….the list goes on. I’d never realized how many stories there were involved, not just Jovan’s. My goal with writing Long Way Home was to show, via Jovan’s journey, the very tough job everyone has in the criminal justice system.
PC: Catharine O’Daniel, is the gunslinger of criminal law, will you share more about her?
LC: The Chicago Sun-Times, in reviewing Long Way Home, described Catharine O’Daniel as a ‘fascinating heroine’ and although she’s very, very real, I couldn’t agree more. She is a brilliant strategist (one of the most important traits for being a good defense lawyer), a devotee of Constitutional rights and someone who can, and does, relate to everyone. I think it’s one of the things her clients love about her—she sees them, she knows them, and she has their back, no matter what they’ve allegedly done. On top of it, she is unarguably one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. The “B Team” scene in the book shows that humor, but only the mere tip of it. I’ve often told her that if there was a 24-Hour-a-Day Catharine O’Daniel reality show, I would watch it. If that wasn’t enough, she’s a dedicated mom and wife, a fantastic cook and her house rocks. There’s little the woman can’t do.
PC: Was second chairing a murder trial like stepping into one of your novels?
LC: Without a doubt, I felt I had stepped into one of my novels by second chairing Jovan’s trial. And not just because I happen to write Chicago mysteries about murder and the law. Also, the reason I fell into the case was because I was writing my novel, The Rome Affair, about a Chicago couple charged with murder. I had police detectives in the book trying to force the couple into a murder confession and I called Cathy for research purposes, asking her,Does someone ever really confess to something of which they were totally innocent? The edits of the book were due the same day as the verdict so I was working on the book all during the trial. I would sit in the empty courtroom during lunch break, and when my character in The Rome Affair, who had been charged with murder, had to appear in front of a judge at Chicago’s famed criminal courthouse, I didn’t have to dig for details. I just looked up, stared at the wood scrolls over the judges desk and scribbled a description of them into the manuscript. It was odd, to say the least.
PC: Was being on trial like writing a story?
LC: That’s a very astute question, and there’s no doubt that crafting a defense in a murder case is like crafting the plot of a novel. I was uber-aware of that, not just because I am a novelist, but because I was aware that in Jovan’s case, the detectives had crafted the first “plot-line,” one that said Jovan had been involved in the fight. Tunnel vision in the criminal justice world is a known and well-studied phenomena—a detective who decides you did the crime, might get so focused on that opinion that he won’t move off that theory, doing anything he can to mold the ‘facts’. But I knew that tunnel vision can happen to defense lawyers too, so I was reminding myself not to do the same thing. As Cathy explained many times, though, it’s not the job of a defense lawyer to determine guilt or innocence—that’s the job or the judge or jury—but rather the work of the defender is to ensure that the constitutional rights to a fair trial and fair arrest, etc., are given to the defendant.
PC: How do we civilians reconcile the cops behavior and not lose faith in the system?
LC: If you think about it, the cops sometimes have to be scary, at least in a city like Chicago where they are often dealing with massively violent people. As citizens, we want the police to get people like that—the ones who have committed unspeakable crimes—off our streets. When I asked one Chicago detective about the harsh, sometimes inhuman, treatment Jovan experienced while interrogated, he said, What are the police supposed to do? Find out what makes each individual comfortable and take the necessary steps to put them at ease? Cases would rarely get solved with such a scenario. I understand that, and so I understand the need for the police to intimidate. And yet, it’s become very, very clear that it’s fairly easy, relatively speaking, to get someone to confess to something they didn’t do by creating conditions of absolute despair, to the point where that will say anything to just get out of the situation. (A good example is the case of Kevin Fox, in the Chicago suburbs, who confessed to killing his daughter, when he had nothing to do with it). Something needs to be done about what the police are allowed to do and tell a suspect in order to get them to confess. I want our police to be able to do their jobs as much as anyone, but I realized after working on Jovan’s case that I would have probably lasted 2 hours in that interrogation room and then I could have been coerced to say my mother shot Kennedy.
PC: You share that the role of attorneys is to represent their clients to the absolute best of their abilities. That the entire point of a lawyer is to give everyone a chance to lay out their case….so the jury can do its job of being impartial, reviewing the facts and making a decision. Will you elaborate on this – I believe we often struggle with seeing the person instead of the lawyer, and wondering what kind of person would represent so and so.
LC: Even where someone is a ‘bad guy’, IE he’s been convicted, maybe even admitted to, a number of crimes before, that person has to receive a fair trial the next time and the next time. Maybe even more than the person who’s never been arrested, because otherwise our system could easily slide into chaos. The cops could pick up a known ‘bad guy,’ force him into confessing to a current crime he had nothing to do with and ‘close the case,’ just like that. Being convicted of something you didn’t do is one of the most surreal, Kafka-esque nightmares that anyone can go through. As a society, I don’t think we can allow that to happen. To anyone.
PC: Will you further share how Jovan was treated when cleared of his wrongful imprisonment? What kind of reparation was paid to him? How is it different from how a person who did the crime and the time gets treated upon their release?
LC: In many ways, Jovan would have been better off if he’d been convicted right away and later got off on parole. Although there are not enough services for ex-offenders, if he was one, he would have received a parole officer, a half-way house, job reintegration services, eligibility for certain ex-offender jobs, medical services, etc. As someone acquitted, he was released onto a cold Chicago street (in a very bad neighborhood) at two in the morning, without a coat or anywhere to go. The only thing given to him was a bus card. This is the same situation that’s dealt to most ‘exonerees’—people convicted of a crime and later proven entirely innocent. In my opinion, it’s no one’s fault. It’s simply something we need to become aware of and address. We’re trying to do that at Loyola’s Life After Innocence program (Jovan was our first client).
PC: How did you go about turning the story of Jovan, and your journey with him, into a book? You masterfully lay everything out, placing the reader inside of each person’s perspective, and you do so without unrelenting bias.
LC: Oh you’re so kind. Thank you for saying that. The book didn’t start out as even-handed. I was incensed at what Jovan had been through, and at the beginning I only wanted to tell his story. Then the more my agent and I spoke about it, she kept pointing out that I was part of the story, too, and Cathy as well, and that our lives had changed because of it. That led to the folding in of our perspectives. Then I kept doing research for the book, kept talking to cops and public defenders and judges and state’s attorneys, and I realized how incredibly tricky and delicate and ripe for injury and abuse the criminal system is. Again, that’s no one’s fault. The more I realized this, the more I became recognizant of the fact that it would be remiss of me, since it was a non-fiction book and not a novel, if I didn’t attempt show what everyone in the system has to deal with.
PC: What was your favorite, most inspired moment of championing Jovan?
LC: I don’t know if anything could surpass the pure, sky-high elation of that not-guilty verdict. I remember for a second, thinking, Don’t cry, don’t cry. Then I looked at Cathy and saw tears rushing down her face, and I let go to the moment. I was so proud of Jovan, of Cathy, of that jury.
PC: Do you believe that one person’s words can really change your life?
LC: Oh yes. Absolutely yes. Words can wound, and so sometimes your life changes for the worse (which is what makes me cringe about our current blame-centric media), but words can also lift someone up and out. Jovan always talks about how Cathy and I believed in him, and how just hearing that gave him hope for the first time in a long time. And Jovan’s words about bitterness—about how not being bitter is a choice you have to make every day, sometimes many times a day, changed my life. In large part that’s because I see that in play a lot working with exonerees at Life After Innocence. You’d think that working with people who’ve suffered so much would tire me, deflate me, but I’ve never been more positive in my life than since I started the project, because I’ve realized that you can go through anything and still turn your situation around and be a positive person. It ain’t easy, but it’s true.
For more on Laura Caldwell visit: www.lauracaldwell.com
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