:: My Hero (Part II of III - The Trial)

Catch Up » :: My Hero (Part I of III - The "Crime")

That afternoon, my father did as he was told and proceeded to the local Police Department to turn himself in. Two days later, upon finding out that David Brown's brother, Paul, had recently been re-elected as Federal Judge of Texas, my grandfather suffered a fatal heart attack with me on his lap, his last words to my parents and I, "I'm sorry for what is about to happen to you." Three years of preparation passed and in September of 1992, my dad's trial for Attempted Murder began.

My parents hired the best attorney in East Texas and my father's optimistic attitude was infallible. Every morning, he said a quick prayer with my mother and I before they headed off to the courthouse. At 9 years old, I was of course too young to fully understand what was going on, but somehow I still realized we were in trouble. One night while he was tucking me into bed, I remember him trying to explain to me what was happening...That he was in trouble and fighting some bad people and that if they won he would have to leave for a long time. All the while though he assured me, "But we're not going to lose, so you don't have to worry. The truth will set me free." And I took his word for it, kissed him on the cheek and fell asleep.

It became apparent within the first week that something was wrong. The judge presiding over the trial was known for two things in our hometown: A) That she practiced cutthroat ruling according to quota rather than justice so that one day, she might attain the status of federal judge and B) That she sat front row in church every Sunday morning with her hands held high. The first day of the trial, during her address to the jury, she stated, "I am friends with the Brown family and I will not let their name be tarnished with this filth." And she kept her word...For the duration of the trial, not one single witness that my father provided was allowed to testify. Instead, the trial focused on attempting to argue that my father wasn't really blind and that he had strategically aimed to paralyze Brown, never calling into question WHY he had had to defend himself in the first place. My parents spent hours with my father's attorney, poring over the case and perfecting every detail, but when they appeared in the courtroom, the attorney never objected to anything the judge or prosecuter threw at him. We later found out that he had been paid an outrageous sum of money to stay silent.

To make matters worse, halfway through the trial, David Brown contracted pneumonia and died. After an autopsy was performed by a close family friend of the Browns, it was ruled that the pneumonia was due to complications from the gunshot wounds he had received almost half a decade earlier.  With these new developments and no allowance for a second, unbiased opinion, my father's charge was immediately changed to Murder.

And one week later: "We the jury find the defendant, William J Amis, Jr, guilty of the murder of David Brown."

My father was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in a state penitentiary. Protests broke loose outside the courthouse and appeals were filed, but with Brown's brother as the reigning Federal Judge of Texas, there was no hope. Immediately following the trial, my dad was held at the County Jail where the warden routinely snuck my mother, father and I into his office for visitation, which was under no circumstances allowed, but he claimed that if a judge could break the law, so could he. Two months later, my dad was transferred to Huntsville State Prison in south Texas. The first night he was there, one of his blockmates heard him sobbing and called out to him, "That you, Famous Amis?"

"You must be thinking of someone else. I'm hardly a celebrity."

"Naw, man...You're Famous Amis. Everybody in here knows what they done to you."

Next » :: My Hero (Part III of III - The Release)