Here's a follow-up to my last post. It's titled: Don't lionize the police.
And the lesson for a writer is: Don't make your heroes too heroic. That's not how life works.
My career as a prosecutor was almost derailed by a dirty cop. It's a long story, too long for this space, just the basics here.
The case was a triple homicide, three victims being laid down on the hardwood floor of their living room and shot in the back of the head. A fourth victim survived and was interviewed by police. He identified two suspects as the killers. They were the two defendants that I was about to take to trial in summer 1993, until … it all fell apart.
By way of background: I wasn't the first prosecutor on the case. I wasn't assigned to it until a month before trial. My predecessor on it was a golden boy in my office, which was deeply invested in him, based on other major cases he was spearheading. If I got into why that was an institutional misjudgment, this wouldn't be a blog post, but more of a book.
Flash forward. Right before trial I came across evidence that the detective who'd taken the fourth victim's identifications had lied about how he'd gotten them. Of course I had to tell the judge and the defense lawyers about what I'd learned, and on the eve of jury selection the judge held a hearing on the identification issue. And the detective lawyered up and took the Fifth.
And our case was crippled. No justice for the victims, or their families.
Here's the thing. Before trial I'd sat down for hours with that detective, painstakingly walked him through all the facts about that fourth victim's IDs. He looked me in the eye and told me his story. And I believed it — he was a senior detective, with years of tough service on the job. I believed the story he was telling me well into the court hearing, all the way up to the point where I knew for sure it was a lie.
As I look back on who I was before I became a prosecutor 35 years ago, I believe I may have had some measure of the talent that it takes to become at least passably proficient at the techniques of the writing trade.
But as for taking a conflicted and ultimately corrupt character like that, and putting him on paper? I wouldn't have had a clue how to do that.