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of first-degree murder. In those days, that left the judge to impose the sentence, and the only option was the death penalty.
    The judge was Tom O’Donnell. He came from coal country, Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, and he was tough but fair. He was a Catholic who I don’t think believed in capital punishment. I was distraught over the verdict and was desperate to find a way toget it undone. Knowing the judge’s propensities, I needed to figure out a way to get the case back before him; the concept of the judge as the thirteenth juror. I wanted to get him to nullify the verdict.
    I knew the judge was ticked off at the Mormons for having taken a position in “The Book of Mormon” that the Catholic Church was the “abominable whore” of the earth. He used to quote that phrase, citing the page number and paragraph where he said it was stated. He also felt the Mormons considered the blacks to be inferior and relegated to a position at the bottom rung of the societal ladder. Therefore I had a feeling he wasn’t thrilled with Bingham’s testimony.
    Carolyn was in the courtroom when the verdict came in. She could see how disappointed I was. Afterward I told her I wanted to go back and talk to Brown. She waited outside the visiting room just off the courtroom, and she heard all this sobbing and crying. When I came out, she was standing there.
    “He took it badly,” she said.
    “No,” I said. “That was me.”
    I was beside myself, angry and disappointed. I needed to do something. I spent the whole night researching the law. I stayed in the law library, drinking water, eating crackers, and reading. The next morning I was leaving, exhausted, and a reporter from the newspaper came up to me and asked about the case.
    “My client’s gutsy,” I said. “He has a lot of guts.” Then I mumbled some other stuff about an appeal and what I was trying to do.
    Either the reporter didn’t hear me or I was so tired I wasn’t making sense, but the next day in the paper the headline read:
    LAWYER SAYS CLIENT IS GUILTY
    Now I was even more upset. I went down to the jail to see Crockett and explain what had happened. He was very understanding.Given the circumstances, I’m not sure many clients would have been. But he said, “I knew you wouldn’t say anything like that.”
    Then he told me that he wanted me to meet somebody who was in jail with him, a fellow named Floyd Hamlet. I had been trying to find Hamlet during the trial because Crockett had said Hamlet was the guy who went out the window with the shotgun. But Hamlet had been released from prison, and he was nowhere to be found. I figured that was the way the prosecution kept me from getting to him.
    Now he was back in jail on some other charge. I met him and it was amazing; he was the spitting image of Crockett. Hamlet told me that he was the guy leaving the apartment that day with the shotgun. He said that he didn’t shoot Wheeler, but he was the guy that Bingham saw.
    Even though it was a Sunday, I got a court stenographer to take down Hamlet’s statement, and I used it in a motion for a new trial based on new evidence. Judge O’Donnell scoffed at the mistaken-identity theory after reading my motion. I was getting nowhere, until one day when the judge met the undersheriff, Lloyd Bell. They were friends, and they would go to lunch together. O’Donnell was down there one day and he saw a familiar-looking inmate. He said, “Hi, Brown. How ya’ doin’?”
    The murder trial had gone on for several weeks, and the judge looked at Crockett day after day sitting at the defense table. But at this moment, the inmate he was talking to was Floyd Hamlet. The next day, the judge granted my motion.
    But my work was far from over.
    The prosecution appealed and eventually the Nevada Supreme Court ruled three-to-two in my favor, granting the new trial. One of the dissenting justices, Jon Collins, asked me during the hearing, “What if Hamlet doesn’t testify? What’s to guarantee that he