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particularly if their offense is a relatively minor one. So over time, a process has evolved in such situations whereby the arresting officer notifies whatever county or local prosecutor he can find, by the simple device of calling one at home. Failing that, the officer may call a town or village justice, or a county judge, also at home. The officer proceeds to explain the situation, and the prosecutor or justice makes an on-the-spot determination whether to authorize the outright release of the prisoner pending his appearance Monday morning, or sets an amount of bail that has to be posted first. If the prisoner is affluent and fortunate enough to reach a lawyer, then counsel can get in on the act, too.
    Occasionally there are situations where the great likelihood is that bail will be prohibitively high, or the prisoner will be held in remand, meaning he won’t be entitled to bail at all. Jonathan Hamilton’s case certainly fell into that category. But even in such instances, the arresting officer still has an obligation to make the notification. Furthermore, where the crime is a serious felony (and a double murder is that and more), a state police officer is bound by departmental regulations to confer with the county prosecutor as soon as practically possible.
    According to Deke Stanton’s next log entry, he did precisely that, reaching the Ottawa County District Attorney by telephone at home at ten minutes before five o’clock Sunday afternoon. Stanton’s next entry purports to contain the results of that conversation:
     1650 Reached D. A. Cavanaugh by phone at his
     residence. Advised to book prisoner on 2 counts
     Murder One and lodge at County pending court
     appearance 0900 9/2/97.
     Status: Remand.
    There seems to be little reason why Stanton should have written those words, were they untrue. Certainly, his actions immediately thereafter are consistent in every way with the entry: He and another investigator drove Jonathan Hamilton, who was by that time in handcuffs, to Cedar Falls, and brought him to Ottawa County Jail. According to the Sign-In Book, Jonathan was received at 1817 hours, or 6:17 that evening. His charge was listed as “Murder 1st” and his disposition as “County Ct, 09-02-97, 0900, Part 1.”
    On the other hand, if you talk to Gil Cavanaugh, he didn’t hear about the Flat Lake murders and the arrest of Jonathan Hamilton until sometime Monday afternoon.
    FRANCIS GILMORE CAVANAUGH JR. is, and has been for close to twenty years, the District Attorney of Ottawa County. Pushing sixty at the time of the Hamilton murders, he is tall, good-looking, and silver-haired. He has a ready smile and a handshake so firm that it borders on the painful. Only the slightly pronounced veins in his nose give away the fact that, in addition to being a career politician and prosecutor, he is also something of a career drinker. He knows everybody there is to know in the county, and in just about all of upstate New York, for that matter. He plays golf with the state senators, representatives, and judges in the summer, hunts with them in autumn, and skis with them in winter. He trades war stories with the best of them, though he has the reputation of being a better talker than he is a listener. He is known as a good friend to have on your side, and a bad enemy to have against you.
    Gil Cavanaugh’s insistence that he knew nothing of the charges against Jonathan Hamilton until the day following the arrest takes on special significance in the context of the law. The same statute that brought back the death penalty to New York after a thirty-year moratorium (if that somewhat oxymoronic term can be forgiven) created a Capital Defender’s Office. Included in the Capital Defender’s mandate was the responsibility to maintain a house staff of attorneys to represent defendants accused of capital crimes; to train a small but select group of lawyers from the private sector, public-defender agencies, and legal-aid offices,