Resurrection Walk, Michael Connelly, author; Christine Lakin, Peter Giles, Titus Welliver, narrators
Connelly rarely disappoints and this 7th book in the Lincoln Lawyer series is no exception. My two favorite characters team up to bring justice to innocent people behind bars. Mickey Haller is The Lincoln Lawyer, and Harry Bosch is a retired police detective who works for him now. Although one works to defend criminals and one used to capture them, they get along well. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with Mickey’s ex-wife, however, since Maggie was a prosecutor who worked to jail those Mickey, a defense lawyer, worked to free.
Harry and Mickey are half-brothers. Harry has an aggressive form of cancer and needed insurance in order to participate in a study at UCLA that might impact his disease. Mickey provides that as a perk when he employs him as an investigator. Harry searches through the letters from potential clients. He is looking for those that Mickey might defend, who truly might be wrongfully convicted. The cases are often pro bono, but sometimes the civil suits afterward, for wrongful conviction, are very lucrative. The pro bono work is far from it. It is sad that one side is against the other side, when they are only exposing the flaws in the system. If the flaws are real, and the system is corrupt, it seems to me that both prosecutors and defense lawyers should be on the same team, wanting the innocent to remain free and only the guilty to be incarcerated.
The book opens with one of Mickey’s clients finally doing what Mickey calls “the resurrection walk”, the walk to freedom. His innocence was proven and the charges were reversed. When Harry brings Mickey another client to review, the case concerning Lucinda Sands, Mickey agrees with Harry’s assessment. The woman is in prison for the murder of her husband in a fit of rage. However, the evidence, investigation, and legal representation seemed to leave a lot to be desired. The background and the court case seemed flawed and was compelling. They believe her conviction is in question.
As Mickey and Harry work to prove her innocence, one wonders if those who are really guilty of the crime will ever be brought to justice. Sometimes, the arrogance of the judge, adhering to the letter of the law, prevents the truth and the facts from being exposed. It is frustrating, not only for the reader, but also for Mickey Haller as he mounts Lucinda’s defense and is thwarted by injustice, rather than justice, prevailing. The original prosecution had been tainted, but it is hard to prove it, five years later. Who determines what counts as new evidence when it is presented? The novel may make one wonder about how many other innocent people are behind bars because of technicalities and the manipulation of evidence and facts. Sometimes the sentences simply cannot be reversed because of the rules of presenting evidence, even though it proves the person’s innocence. They remain guilty in the eyes of the judge because of the technicalities. Information is stricken from the record even when it is definitely exculpatory.
So should the judge be the be-all end-all when the facts are so obvious, but the rules’ book won’t allow them to be aired. Shouldn’t there be some leeway regarding the presentation of evidence so that it is acceptable if it is the actual representation of the truth. The judge’s rulings gave Mickey pause, and he wound up doing his own “resurrection walk” at the end, but to where, the reader is unsure.
Until the very end, the book was really a five-star endeavor, but certain scenes in which the judge held Mickey in contempt, when her own behavior seemed contemptible, turned me off a little. If a judge is more concerned about how she is treated, than the guilt or innocence of the plaintiff, in what could be a wrongful conviction case, it means the system is very flawed. I hope that in a more perfect world, it would not take so long to present the facts, nor would a convoluted approach to justice have to be created in order to do it.