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will?”
    I couldn’t believe it. Collins’s question was puerile and, I thought, cavalier. We were talking about a death penalty case. A man’s life was literally on the line. It wasn’t time to be splitting hairs and speaking hypothetically. I sneered, looked him right in the eye, and said, “What guarantees are there in life?”
    The granting of a new trial was good news and bad news, of course.
    I got the word from Judge O’Donnell, who had been notified by the clerk of the State Supreme Court. The trial judge is always the first to be informed. When he called me on the phone, he sounded as relieved as I was. The burden of ordering Crockett’s execution had been lifted off his shoulders, at least temporarily. I asked the judge if he’d like to join me for a drink to celebrate. We had several, and out of that grew a lasting friendship.
    I know it might sound strange—the idea of a defense attorney having a drink with a judge after a criminal case he was involved in, but I could care less. To be brutally frank, the ethical issue wasn’t something I was concerned with. It just seemed to be the right thing to do.
    That night, the judge and I got completely sloshed. We ended up passed out on the living room floor in my apartment. In the morning, Carolyn came downstairs and cooked us corned beef hash and eggs. We also had a couple of beers to sober us up. From that day forward, we were fast friends.
    But I still had to put the case in front of a jury. Remember, the first jury was going to convict Crockett if the woman hadn’t locked herself in the bathroom. And the second jury had buried him. Even with this new evidence, we still had an uphill battle. And there was always the question of racism. I didn’t know what Bingham, the only witness, was going to say about the likeness of Hamlet and Crockett.
    The prosecutor in the case was the district attorney himself, a guy named George Franklin, and he was livid. He was apompous megalomaniac who really enjoyed playing the role of the top law enforcement official in the city. From his perspective, both his office and the police department had been upstaged and embarrassed by a young punk lawyer who was an outsider. Franklin was convinced that Crockett was guilty.
    So there was a lot at stake, and not all of it had to do with truth and justice. Too often for the prosecution, it’s about winning. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but unfortunately that’s the reality. I was new to the game at that point—just a baby lawyer—but I could see how it worked.
    So I offered Franklin a deal. I told him my client would take a polygraph, and if he passed, the prosecution would drop the charges. If not, he would plead guilty. Franklin said okay.
    But I wasn’t going to use one of his polygraph experts. I brought in Leonard Harrelson, a guy with a national reputation from the Keeler Institute in Chicago. He turned out to be the uncle of the actor Woody Harrelson, who at that time was only five or six years old. Leonard was the brother of Charles Harrelson, Woody’s father, who was later found to be an underworld hit man—but that’s getting ahead of the story.
    I set up Leonard Harrelson at the Fremont Hotel. He spent three days testing Crockett, and when he was done, Harrelson told me the lie detector results were pristine. Crockett passed with flying colors. He had nothing to do with the murder of Wheeler.
    I took the information to Franklin, the prosecutor, thinking I’d done pretty well for my client. And the prosecutor backtracked.
    “I’m not going to drop the charges,” he said. “No deal.”
    I couldn’t believe it. “You son of a bitch,” I said. “You gave me your word.”
    He didn’t care. He never thought Crockett would pass the polygraph, and he knew I couldn’t use it in court. So he was still going to take my client to trial. Now I was really hot.
    But I was lucky.
    The National Conference of District Attorneys was holding its annual