“Hey Pornie Boy! Did you get your petition for review to the state supreme court filed?” Carlton Mallace, my supervisor asked me in his inimitable style. He was a smart mouth for a little homosexual former JAG officer in the United States Marines who somehow made a successful career there even before the era of “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” probably because his father had been a decorated U.S. Navy Admiral in the Korean War.

“I not only got it filed, but it’s already been denied.” I told Mallace.

“Well what are you gonna do now, Jerk Off? Your sixty days to retry Duendes is already running. You got nothing without his confession, and, like I told you before, if you fuck this up, your ass around here is history! You got any new job prospects, because we’ll have to kick you to the curb if you lose this one.” Mallace literally growled everything he now threatened me.

“Yeah. All I can do is petition the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari to ask them to take our case and reverse Brown v. Illinois and simultaneously ask Duendes’ new trial judge, Kenneth Connolly, for a stay of the proceedings at least until we get word from the Supreme Court on our petition for cert. Even if they deny, which they probably will, I’ll at least have a couple more months to try to scrounge together enough scraps of evidence to try the case without Duendes’ confession. But if in the highly unlikely event that the Supreme Court grants cert, then that would mean that there’s at least four votes to reverse Brown, because it takes at least four out of the nine Supreme Court Justices to agree to take a case. When Brown was decided in ’72, it was by a seven to two majority. But after three decades of clearly guilty defendants getting off on less and less egregious police misconduct in each succeeding case, the majorities to uphold Brown have dwindled down from a six to three decision ten years ago and last time five years ago it was just a five to four decision with then Justice Rehnquist writing a blistering dissent. Now that Rehnquist is the Chief Justice, I’m praying for a miracle!”

“Well keep praying, Buddy Boy! Keep praying. Get your petition to the United States Supreme Court drafted. You’ll need a sponsor by someone who is already a member of the bar for the United States Supreme Court in order to be admitted just so that you can file your “Hail Mary” brief, and you’re looking at the only one in our office who fits that bill. MY name will haunt you from the face of your framed Certificate of Admission that you will proudly hang on your office wall all the rest of your life, you lucky bastard. And speaking of luck, Katie Sergeant from the crime lab called to say that those big mama panties that your teenaged victim in that “Jesus The Rapist” case came back with his DNA, the big mama’s DNA, and your little victim’s DNA all found on the crotch of the panties. It’s a good thing that little girl who was so poor she wore her mama’s panties saved them in a paper bag under her bed for six months after that dirty son of a bitch raped her. Katie Sergeant said that if bio evidence isn’t going to be stored in their fridge at the crime lab, then the best place to preserve such evidence would have been in a dark, dry environment like under that little girl’s bed in a brown paper bag. God BLESS that smart, brave little girl. We gotta nail that serial child molester murderous monster and that’s for sure!”

“Thank YOU, Jesus!” I thought to myself as I absorbed this little ray of sunshine in my increasingly dark, dark world. And I didn’t mean ‘Hey-ZEUS,’ the child rapist, of course. I meant Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, my possibly imaginary Friend.