Chapter Six, “Say What You Mean,” September, 1982

This case would not be the last time Cynthia and John Hoestenbach would work well together as a legal team. They would have the opportunity again thirteen months later when he was court appointed to represent a young man on a murder charge. Cynthia had been sitting in her office that day when John, a Robert Redford look-alike, came walking down the hall. She had no sooner thought she’d like an exciting case to be working on than he popped his head into the room.

“Hey, I just got appointed on that big murder case where the woman was found out by the mall with her throat slit. Wanna help? The kid’s already given a confession, but you never know, it could be interesting. His name is Johnny Foote.”

Yes, Cynthia was interested.

They had learned they made a good team. John Hoestenbach had the easy, smooth style of a West Texas native. He was smart, a good lawyer, and came across to juries as just one of them. Cynthia was a hard worker when it came to the preparation of the case. She would know it forward and backward and have the witnesses and John ready by trial. Then during the trial they would take turns on the direct and cross examination doing the good guy/bad guy routine. For some reason, this female lawyer always got the bad guy role. Oh well, it made her money, she thought.

Johnny Foote had confessed to a murder he did not commit. As the bizarre circumstances unfolded during the investigation of the case, Cynthia learned that Johnny, the young co-worker of the slain woman, could not have done it. He had no motive, no weapon, and no opportunity. He was surrounded by other people during the entire time frame when, according to the autopsy, the killing had taken place. So, why had he confessed to raping and murdering Velma Nesset?

Johnny was a man, according to the testimony, with an intelligence quotient only a point or two above the classification for retardation. He, along with everyone else who worked that early morning shift at Permian Mall, had been minor suspects in the murder investigation. What made Johnny stand out was his adamant argument with his supervisor. Upon his learning of the location where the body was found, Johnny Foote argued that it had not been there forty-five minutes earlier.

When Velma had not shown up for work on the 6:00 a.m. shift, eventually the boss sent Johnny to search the ditch and culvert over which Velma Nesset would have had to pass on her three block walk to work. Foote had looked inside the culvert where the body had been found but had reported he saw nothing. No one realized, that because of the position of the sun and the shadows inside the culvert, the body was not visible although Johnny stood only twenty feet away. His arguing with the policeman and his supervisors had caused raised eyebrows as to the reason why he so adamantly insisted that he had looked.

“Why was Johnny insisting that someone had moved the body there inside the culvert after he looked there?” the detective                    wondered.

The autopsy revealed the body was there all along. In Johnny’s mind they were accusing him of doing sloppy work. To the detective, it appeared Johnny knew more about the body than he was admitting.

The murder had been unsolved for months. Every time a new detective was assigned to the case, Johnny got hauled in for questioning. He was shown pictures and accused of having witnessed the scene before in person. Johnny had denied it each time, until the final time when he was informed he had flunked the polygraph test.

At the pre-trial hearings, the lawyers learned their client had passed the test. However, a police officer testified under oath that it was standard operating procedure in the Odessa Police Department to tell suspects they had failed, when they had in fact passed a lie detector test. Johnny could only see a future of being hauled into the police department every few months for the rest of his life and accused of a crime he had not committed.

          The psychiatrist who testified on Johnny’s behalf likened it to the workaholic husband who was being wrongly accused of an affair by his wife night after night. Eventually he would agree to whatever she said just to shut her up so he could get some sleep.

The confession of Johnny Foote had not said what he meant. The confession did not mean what it said.

What upset Cynthia the first time she talked with Johnny in jail was his innocent faith in the justice system in America. He didn’t commit the murder, and he could prove he didn’t do it. He had given the confession as a way to get the harassment by the police to stop. He knew he would be acquitted because he did not commit the crime. Even in her most naive days as a young lawyer, she knew the system didn’t work that way. A confession made the case almost open and shut.

Most of the attorneys doing criminal work would have read the confession, worked out the best plea bargain possible, and collected their state paid fee. Cynthia realized Johnny was fortunate that she was willing to investigate the case beyond his confession.

The investigation for the defense and trial was something right out of a made-for­television-movie special. It had all the excitement and drama of every murder trial she had imagined. The hard work and preparation paid off.

Only forty-five minutes of deliberation passed before the jury returned with a not guilty verdict.

Every time anyone asked Cynthia how she could represent someone when she knew he was guilty, she thought of this case. At first glance, by all appearances and the confession, Johnny Foote was guilty. It had been an honor and a privilege for her to work on the case of an innocent man. It had not been her job to judge the man. It had been her job to represent him to the best of her ability. She had done that and justice had been served. Cynthia loved the law, and she loved being a lawyer.