Sworn Affidavit
Sworn statement of Counselor Croaksworth, court-appointed public defender, entered into file PP-08-21-9420. The witness noted for the record that testifying about one's own client is irregular, and then did it anyway, because, quote, 'somebody has to.'
In twenty-two seasons of public defense I have represented the guilty and the innocent and the great muddy middle where most frogs live. I know the difference in my bones by now. The guilty ones want a deal. The innocent ones want the truth, even when the truth is slower and worse for them. My client has never once asked me for a deal. He has asked me, seventeen separate times, to please make sure the checks get back to whoever's actually missing the money. That is not a guilty frog's request. That's the request of a frog who's worried about the victim while sitting in the victim's cell.
My client has never told a lie in his life and isn't about to start across courtroom glass. I have tried, professionally, to get him to shade the truth in his own favor — that's my job, to find the most favorable honest framing — and he won't even let me do that. When I suggested we say he was 'asleep' at 3:47 rather than 'admiring a gnat,' because 'asleep' sounds less strange to a jury, he corrected me. He was not asleep. He was admiring a gnat. He will go to the marsh-bottom prison before he'll let his own lawyer round a gnat down to a nap.
The prosecution charged the wrong twin. I have said this in filings, in chambers, and in open court, and I will say it here under oath: the tongue on those checks is not my client's tongue. Detective Salamandez proved it. Forensic Flossie measured it. The analyst wept over it. My client's own mother banks the difference. I did not build this defense out of nothing. I built it out of the prosecution's own evidence, which is the most damning place to have to find your client's innocence — inside the case against him.
There is a second frog with my client's face across a pond I am instructed not to name, and I want the court to notice that the instruction runs one direction. I may not name him. But he has never once been made to appear, never printed, never questioned, never so much as invited. A justice system that will jail the twin it can find rather than fetch the twin it can't is not a justice system. It's a convenience. My client deserves better, and so, frankly, does the pond.