The Guardians

In the second chapter, Post provides more details about his work. Post works for an organization called Guardian Ministries, which was founded by a woman named Vicki Gourley 12 years prior. A devout Christian, Vicki was on a jury that convicted a young man to die. After the real killer was exposed, she started Guardian Ministries, which exonerates wrongfully convicted people. Post was her first employee. He started his career as a public defender, had a mental health crisis, and then became an Episcopalian priest before joining Vicki’s nonprofit. Guardian Ministries also employs a freelancer, Francois Tatum or “Frankie,” who does the dirty work the lawyers are best left out of, such as obtaining DNA from criminal suspects via illegal means. Frankie was the first man Post exonerated working for Guardian Ministries: “His freedom invigorates me and keeps me going. If not for Guardian Ministries, he would still be rotting away” (19).

After leaving Duke, Post meets Frankie, who is helping with Duke’s case. Post reveals that Duke was found guilty largely due to the testimonies of two “bogus experts” (11), a dentist who said the bitemarks on Emily’s arms came from Duke, and an employee of the state crime lab, who suggested that pubic hairs from the crime scene came from Duke. Post explains, “Bite marks and hair analysis have been discredited in most advanced jurisdictions. Both belong to that pathetic and ever-shifty field of knowledge derisively known as defense and innocence lawyers as ‘junk science’” (12). If Frankie can get a sample of Mark Carter’s DNA, they can compare it to the DNA of the pubic hairs found at the crime scene and see if they match. Before parting ways with Frankie, Post reveals that he is going to take on another case for Guardian Ministries in Seabrook, Florida.

Chapter 3 consists solely of internal monologue, given while Post drives from Opelika, Alabama, to Savannah, Georgia—where Guardian Ministries is headquartered. He reveals that he spends a lot of time driving along the “Death Belt, from North Carolina to Texas” where many of his clients are located (20). Through this internal monologue, Post provides details of his past and how he came to work for Guardian Ministries. Post was 30 and working in Memphis, Tennessee, as a public defender when he was given a case defending a Black teenager in the gang rape of a white girl and the murder of the girl’s boyfriend. Post’s client was one of five boys facing charges. The evidence made it overwhelmingly clear the boys were guilty. Post had a mental breakdown in court and left mid-way through: “Hated by my client. Hated by my victims. What the hell was I doing in that courtroom?” (26). He describes the moment in third person, as if he was having an out-of-body experience: “His Honor said something like ‘Mr. Post, where are you going?’ Mr. Post had no idea” (27).

After leaving the courtroom, Post drove to his grandparents’ home in Dyersburg, Tennessee, his hometown. He then checked into a psychiatric hospital in Nashville. He and his then-wife, Brooke, broke off their marriage. Post found solace in the church as he recovered from his breakdown. He then moved to Alexandria, Virginia, and entered the seminary while working part-time as a research assistant at a law firm to cover his living costs. He was ordained at age 35 and got a job at a church in Savannah. In this role, he met a man, Luther Hodges, who ran a prison ministry. This is how Post met Frankie, “a truly forgotten soul,” whose plight encouraged Post to combine his religious compassion with his legal skills: “Walking Frankie out of prison two years later was the greatest thrill of my life. I found my calling. Through divine intervention I had met Vicki Gourley, a woman with a mission of her own” (30).

After his drive, Post arrives in Savannah at the Guardian Ministries headquarters. He introduces his colleagues: Vicki Gourley, the organization’s founder; and Mazy Ruffin, the “director of litigation and the outfit’s brain trust” (32). The women show maternal instincts towards Post, worrying about his unhealthy lifestyle and lack of love life. Post spends most of his time working on the road, but he has a small room above the office where he sleeps. He describes the “Wall of Fame” in the office, which consists of photos of the eight men Guardian Ministries has exonerated: “Their smiling faces are the heart and soul of our operation. They inspire us to keep plugging along, fighting the system, fighting for freedom and justice” (33). Post, Mazy, and Vicki discuss next steps in Duke’s case. There are budget issues: “A successful exoneration can take many years and consume at least $200,000 in cash” (36). Post also tells the women that he plans to take the Seabrook case.

Post introduces the Seabrook case, the book’s primary plotline. Seabrook “is in the rural backwaters of north Florida” and has a population of just 11,000. Keith Russo, a 37-year-old attorney, was shot in his office, twice in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun. He lived in Seabrook with his wife, Diana Russo: “She collected $2 million in life insurance and inherited Keith’s interests in their joint assets” (40). Diana suggested Quincy Miller, a disgruntled ex-client of Keith’s, as the possible killer. Keith represented Quincy in his divorce; it didn’t go well, and Quincy got stuck paying more alimony than he could afford.

There was little evidence in Quincy’s case. A murder weapon was never found, and Quincy had never owned a registered shotgun. However, Quincy’s ex-wife, June Walker, testified that “she believed he had one” (41). Police then got a warrant for Quincy’s car and found a flashlight with supposed specks of blood on it in the trunk. The sham case against Quincy was further bolstered by the testimony of “drug addict” Carrie Holland, who said she saw a Black man running away from Keith’s office. Quincy was charged and put in jail awaiting trial. There, he was connected with a “jailhouse snitch named Zeke Huffey who testified that Quincy had boasted of the killing and was quite proud of himself” (43). Meanwhile, the flashlight, the main piece of hard evidence in the case, was lost in a suspicious fire.

During the trial, Quincy was represented by Tyler Townsend (43). In Post’s view, Tyler defended Quincy excellently. He picked apart the weaknesses in the case, challenging experts and raising doubts about the convenient “loss” of the flashlight in a fire. Tyler even found an alibi for Quincy, a woman named Valerie Cooper who was with Quincy at the time of the murder. However, Valerie had a past drug conviction, which the prosecution used to discredit her in court.

The jury convicted Quincy quickly, but it took longer to come to an agreement on his punishment: “After two days of intense and heated debate, the lone Black held out for life with no parle. The eleven whites were disappointed that they could not return a death verdict” (45). This all happened 22 years ago; Quincy has maintained his innocence the entire time. Tyler left the law after the case and now lives in Fort Lauderdale; he’s married and has kids and works with his father-in-law developing shopping malls. Diana Russo lives on Martinique and never remarried. Post notes that, except for him and the team at Guardian Ministries, Quincy is forgotten: “This is not a cold case. The State of Florida got a conviction. The truth is irrelevant” (46).

Post goes to visit Quincy at Garvin Correctional Institute in Florida. He reveals that Quincy has three children and an ex-wife, June, who testified against him at his trial. His brother, Marvis, remains loyal to Quincy and visits him monthly. Quincy is emotional as he thanks Post for taking his case: “For at least the last fifteen years Quincy has not had a lawyer or any type of legal representative, not a soul out there in the free world working to prove his innocence. I know from my vast experience that this is a burden that is almost unbearable. A corrupt system locked him away, and there’s no one fighting the system. These burdens are heavy enough as an innocent man, but with no voice he feels truly helpless” (48).

Discussing Quincy’s case with him, Post lays out part of his plan for helping to exonerate Quincy. Post hopes to dismantle the testimonies of Zeke Huffey, the jailhouse snitch, and Quincy’s ex-wife, June Walker. Both testified against Quincy, but Post suspects their testimonies were false. Zeke would have happily lied to avoid further jail time for his own crimes while June was in a bitter divorce with Quincy and may have wanted revenge. He hopes to get them to sign affidavits telling the truth. These can then be submitted as new evidence to reopen Quincy’s case—which will hopefully exonerate him.

Post asks Quincy for clarity on some other points related to the case. For example, Diana Russo testified that Quincy had come by Keith Russo’s office and threatened him. Quincy says this is false. Quincy tells Post, “Diana lied, like everybody else” (54). Quincy asks if Post has spoken to Quincy’s former lawyer, Tyler Townsend, calling him “a good dude” (55). He then asks Post if the prison phones they’re speaking on are safe, implying he wants to tell Post something important and private. Post tells him that letters are safer, and Quincy uses sign language to tell Post that he will write him.

Frankie finds June Walker, Quincy’s ex-wife. She’s married to a man named Otis Walker, and they live in Florida. Frankie approaches Otis and tells him he works for a lawyer who is trying to exonerate Quincy. June could help free the innocent man if she agrees to talk to them. Her key role in the trial regarded the flashlight, the one piece of solid evidence in the case, which subsequently went missing in a suspicious fire. Based on photos of the flashlight before it went missing, June told the jury that Quincy had a flashlight very similar to it. Quincy claims this is false. June also told the jury that Quincy was in Seabrook, where Keith Russo was shot, on the night of the killing. In fact, Quincy was visiting his girlfriend an hour away. Otis is reluctant to get involved. Frankie gives Otis his business card and encourages him to talk to June.

Post goes to visit Zeke Huffey, the jailhouse snitch who helped put Quincy away. Zeke is in a for-profit prison:

which means the guards earn even less and there are fewer of them, the terrible food is even worse, the commissary gouges the men on everything from peanut butter to toilet paper, and the medical care is nonexistent. I suppose that in America everything, including education and corrections, is fair game for profiteers (63).

Zeke implies that his testimony claiming that Quincy boasted about killing Keith was false. Post asks him to sign an affidavit saying he lied at trial, promising Zeke a better deal on his own criminal charges/penalties in exchange. Zeke asks Post to send him some money and says he’ll think about it.

Post and Frankie track down Carrie Holland, the “drug addict” who testified that she saw a Black man running away from Keith’s office on the night he was killed. Carrie left Seabrook shortly after the trial. She now goes by Carrie Pruitt and lives in Tennessee with a man named Buck. Post and Frankie wait for Buck to leave the house, and then Post approaches her. He tells her she could help get an innocent man out of prison by signing an affidavit telling the truth about that night. Carrie is reluctant. Post leaves his business card with her just in case.

Post gets the letter that Quincy had promised to send from jail. In it, Quincy reveals his old lawyer Tyler Townsend’s theory as to the real murderer. Keith and Diana Russo were running with the drug cartels, serving as lawyers for the drug dealers and making a lot of money. Tyler suspected Keith double-crossed the cartel in some way and that’s why he got shot. The Sheriff of Seabrook at the time, Bradley Pfitzner, was supposedly also involved with some of the cartels—and was pivotal in framing Quincy. Quincy is convinced that Sheriff Pfitzner was the one who placed the bloody flashlight in the trunk of Quincy’s car. Quincy also tells Post that Tyler got spooked after the trial when threats were made against him, and that’s why he left town. Quincy also reveals that a deputy sheriff, Kenny Taft, was killed in Seabrook shortly after the trial. Tyler thought Kenny’s death was related to the Russo murder.

Post reveals his plans to debunk one of the “expert” witnesses who testified at Quincy’s trial, Paul Norwood, a former homicide detective turned “bloodstain expert.” Post notes Norwood was a college dropout without a criminology degree. He became an “expert” by attending some seminars and reading papers. Post explains this was quite common:

In the 1980s and 1990s, expert testimony proliferated in the criminal courts as all manner of self-anointed authorities roamed the country impressing juries with their freewheeling opinions […] Thousands of criminal defendants were convicted and put away by shaky theories about bloodstains, blood spatter, arson, bite marks, fabrics, glass breakage, scalp and pubic hair, boot prints, ballistics, and even fingerprints (78).

Post notes that DNA testing has made this kind of “junk science” harder to get away with and that in many DNA exonerations, “bad forensics” was the cornerstone of the conviction: “In one year, 2005, three of Norwood’s convictions were invalidated when DNA testing exposed his faulty methods and testimony” (79). Norwood refuses to speak to Post. So, instead, Post plans to get an expert testimony from Dr. Kyle Benderschmidt of Virginia Commonwealth University, which has a leading forensic science department, to debunk Norwood’s junk science. The testimony will cost Guardian Ministries $30,000.