The Innocent Man, Part One

On August 13, 1986, Michael Morton came home from work to discover that his wife had been brutally murdered in their bed.

1986 年 8 月 13 日，迈克尔·莫顿 (Michael Morton) 下班回家，发现妻子在床上被残忍杀害。

His nightmare had only begun.

他的噩梦才刚刚开始。

V.J.

V.J.

says: Michael Morton didn’t do enough justice to the courtroom theater.

说：迈克尔·莫顿没有对法庭剧院给予足够的公正。

Do you realize, the director (the judge), and his/her two leading actors (the defense and prosecuting attorneys)are not sworn in to the WHOLE TRUTH ?

你是否意识到，导演（法官）和他/她的两位主角（辩护律师和检察官）没有宣誓承认全部真相？

Discovery is what they want you and will let you see.

发现是他们想要您并让您看到的东西。

No more.

不再。

If a prosecutor has plans to run for higher office.

如果检察官有竞选更高职位的计划。

he/she can and will paint the nastiest picture for the jury they can, and get away with it.

他/她可以而且愿意为陪审团描绘出最肮脏的画面，然后侥幸逃脱惩罚。

If you have a court-appointed attorney, it works against you.

如果您有法庭指定的律师，这对您不利。

Texas is a PLEA state.

德克萨斯州是一个 PLEA 州。

Legal advocacy is a ’$’ sign.

法律宣传是一个“$”符号。

If you can’t afford it, and their running for office - get ready for a chain and whites.

如果你买不起，而且他们要竞选公职，那就准备好买连锁店和白人吧。

There are approx 150,000 incarcerated.

大约有 150,000 人被监禁。

Each of them represents 10-20 other family members and close friends that pray and visit them.

他们每个人都代表 10 到 20 名其他家庭成员和密友，他们为他们祈祷和探望。

That’s about 2-3 million other people affected by the justice system.

大约还有 2-300 万人受到司法系统的影响。

What percent of the Texas population does that represent ?

这占德克萨斯州人口的百分之多少？

(January 3rd, 2013 at 12:30pm)

（2013年1月3日中午12点30分）

Editors' note: This is part one of a two-part story.

编者注：这是两部分故事的第一部分。

The second half can be found here .

下半部分可以在这里找到。

I.

我。

On April 12, 1987, Michael Morton sat down to write a letter.

1987 年 4 月 12 日，迈克尔·莫顿坐下来写一封信。

“Your Honor,” he began, “I’m sure you remember me.

“法官阁下，”他开始说道，“我相信您还记得我。

I was convicted of murder, in your court, in February of this year.” He wrote each word carefully, sitting cross-legged on the top bunk in his cell at the Wynne prison unit, in Huntsville.

今年二月，我在贵法庭被判犯有谋杀罪。”他盘腿坐在亨茨维尔韦恩监狱牢房的上铺上，仔细写下每个字。

“I have been told that you are to decide if I am ever to see my son, Eric, again.

“我被告知，你将决定我是否能再次见到我的儿子埃里克。

I haven’t seen him since the morning that I was convicted.

自从我被定罪的那天早上起，我就没见过他。

I miss him terribly and I know that he has been asking about me.” Referring to the declarations of innocence he had made during his trial, he continued, “I must reiterate my innocence.

我非常想念他，我知道他一直在询问我的情况。”谈到他在审判期间做出的无罪声明，他继续说道：“我必须重申我的无罪。

I did NOT kill my wife.

我没有杀我的妻子。

You cannot imagine what it is like to lose your wife the way I did, then to be falsely accused and convicted of this terrible crime.

你无法想象像我一样失去妻子，然后被错误指控并被判犯有这一可怕罪行是什么感觉。

First, my wife and now possibly, my son!

首先是我的妻子，现在可能是我的儿子！

Sooner or later, the truth will come out.

迟早，真相将会水落石出。

The killer will be caught and this nightmare will be over.

凶手将会被抓获，这场噩梦将会结束。

I pray that the sheriff’s office keeps an open mind.

我祈祷治安官办公室保持开放的态度。

It is no sin to admit a mistake.

承认错误并不是罪过。

No one is perfect in the performance of their job.

没有人在工作表现上是完美的。

I don’t know what else to say except I swear to God that I did NOT kill my wife.

我不知道还能说什么，除了我向上帝发誓我没有杀死我的妻子。

Please don’t take my son from me too.”

请不要把我的儿子也从我身边夺走。”

His windowless concrete cell, which he shared with another inmate, measured five by nine feet.

他与另一名囚犯共用一间没有窗户的混凝土牢房，面积为五乘九英尺。

If he extended his arms, he could touch the walls on either side of him.

如果他伸出双臂，他就能触碰到两侧的墙壁。

A small metal locker that was bolted to the wall contained one of the few remnants he still possessed from his previous life: a photograph of Eric when he was three years old, taken shortly before the murder.

一个用螺栓固定在墙上的小金属储物柜里藏着他前世所拥有的少数遗物之一：一张埃里克三岁时的照片，拍摄于谋杀前不久。

The boy was standing in the backyard of their house in Austin, playing with a wind sock, grabbing the streamers that fluttered behind it in the breeze.

这个男孩站在奥斯汀家的后院，玩着风向袋，抓住随风飘扬的飘带。

There was a picture too of his late wife, Christine—a candid shot Michael had taken of her years earlier, with her hair pinned up, still wet from a bath.

还有一张他已故妻子克里斯汀的照片——这是迈克尔几年前为她拍的一张照片，她的头发盘起来，刚洗完澡，头发还湿漉漉的。

She was looking away from the camera, but she was smiling slightly, her fingers pressed against her mouth.

她的目光从镜头上移开，但她微笑着，手指捂着嘴。

The crime-scene photos were still fresh in Michael’s mind, but if he focused on the snapshot, the horror of those images abated.

犯罪现场的照片在迈克尔的脑海中仍然记忆犹新，但如果他专注于快照，这些图像的恐怖就会减弱。

Christine with damp hair, smiling—this was how he wanted to remember her.

克里斯汀湿漉漉的头发，微笑着——这就是他想要记住的她。

The last time he had seen her was on the morning of August 13, 1986, the day after his thirty-second birthday.

他最后一次见到她是在1986年8月13日早上，也就是他三十二岁生日的第二天。

He had glanced at her as she lay in bed, asleep, before he left for work around five-thirty.

五点三十分左右他去上班之前，她躺在床上睡着了，他看了她一眼。

He returned home that afternoon to find the house cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape.

那天下午他回到家，发现房子被黄色犯罪现场胶带封锁起来。

Six weeks later, he was arrested for her murder.

六周后，他因谋杀她而被捕。

He had no criminal record, no history of violence, and no obvious motive, but the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office, failing to pursue other leads, had zeroed in on him from the start.

他没有犯罪记录，没有暴力史，也没有明显的动机，但威廉姆森县治安官办公室未能追查其他线索，从一开始就盯上了他。

Although no physical evidence tied him to the crime, he was charged with first-degree murder.

尽管没有物证证明他与犯罪有关，但他被指控犯有一级谋杀罪。

Prosecutors argued that he had become so enraged with Christine for not wanting to have sex with him on the night of his birthday that he had bludgeoned her to death.

检察官辩称，他对克里斯汀非常愤怒，因为他不想在生日那天晚上与他发生性关系，以至于他用棍棒将她打死。

When the guilty verdict was read, Michael’s legs buckled beneath him.

当宣读有罪判决时，迈克尔的双腿在他身下弯曲。

District attorney Ken Anderson told reporters afterward, “Life in prison is a lot better than he deserves.”

地方检察官肯·安德森事后告诉记者，“监狱里的生活比他应得的要好得多。”

The conviction had triggered a bitter custody battle between Christine’s family—who, like many people in Michael’s life, came to believe that he was guilty—and Michael’s parents.

这一定罪引发了克里斯汀的家人和迈克尔的父母之间激烈的监护权争夺战——和迈克尔生活中的许多人一样，克里斯汀的家人也开始相信他有罪。

The question of who would be awarded custody of Eric was to be resolved by state district judge William Lott, who had also presided over Michael’s trial.

谁将获得埃里克的监护权的问题将由州地方法官威廉·洛特解决，他也主持了迈克尔的审判。

If Christine’s family won custody, Michael was justifiably concerned that he would never see his son again.

如果克里斯汀的家人赢得了监护权，迈克尔有理由担心他再也见不到他的儿子了。

Two weeks after sending his first entreaty to Lott, Michael penned another letter.

在向洛特发出第一次请求两周后，迈克尔又写了一封信。

“My son has lost his mother,” he wrote.

“我的儿子失去了母亲，”他写道。

“Psychological good can come from [seeing] his one surviving parent.” Ultimately, custody of the boy was awarded to Christine’s younger sister, Marylee Kirkpatrick.

“[看到]他唯一幸存的父母可以给他带来心理上的好处。”最终，男孩的监护权被授予克里斯汀的妹妹玛丽莉·柯克帕特里克。

But at the recommendation of a child psychiatrist who felt that Eric should know his father, Lott agreed to allow two supervised visits a year.

但在一位儿童精神科医生的建议下，他认为埃里克应该认识他的父亲，洛特同意每年允许两次有人监督的探视。

Marylee drove Eric to Huntsville every six months to see his father.

玛丽莉每六个月开车送埃里克去亨茨维尔看望他的父亲。

He was four when the visits began.

探访开始时他四岁。

At first, Eric was oblivious to his surroundings.

起初，埃里克对周围的环境浑然不觉。

He raced his Matchbox cars along the plastic tabletops in the visitation area, mimicking the sounds of a revving engine.

他驾驶火柴盒汽车沿着探访区的塑料桌面比赛，模仿发动机加速的声音。

He talked about the things he loved: dinosaurs, comic books, astronomy, his dog.

他谈论了他喜欢的事情：恐龙、漫画书、天文学、他的狗。

As he grew older, he described the merit badges he had earned in Boy Scouts and his Little League triumphs.

随着年龄的增长，他描述了他在童子军中获得的功绩徽章和少年棒球联盟的胜利。

Marylee always sat beside him, her impassive expression impossible to decipher.

玛丽莉总是坐在他旁边，她冷漠的表情让人难以辨认。

For Eric’s sake, she seemed determined to make the mandated reunions—which she had strenuously opposed—as normal as possible.

看在埃里克的份上，她似乎决心让强制的团聚——她极力反对——尽可能正常。

She flipped through magazines as Eric and his father spoke, sometimes glancing up to join in.

当埃里克和他父亲说话时，她翻阅杂志，有时抬起头来加入。

Michael tried to pretend there was nothing unusual about the arrangement either, dispensing lemon drops he had purchased at the prison commissary and talking to his son about the Astros’ ups and downs or the Oilers’ failed attempts at a comeback.

迈克尔也试图假装这种安排没有什么异常，他分发他在监狱小卖部购买的柠檬汁，并与儿子谈论太空人队的起起落落或油人队东山再起的失败尝试。

During the months that stretched between visits, he wrote letters to Eric, but Marylee did not encourage the correspondence, and it remained a one-way conversation.

在两次访问之间的几个月里，他给埃里克写了信，但玛丽莉并不鼓励这种通信，这仍然是一种单向对话。

Over the years, as Eric got older, Michael would try not to register surprise at each new haircut and growth spurt, but the changes always startled him.

多年来，随着埃里克年龄的增长，迈克尔会尽量不对每一次新发型和生长突增感到惊讶，但这些变化总是让他感到惊讶。

He was dumbstruck the first time he heard Eric call Marylee “Mom.” The boy’s memories of his mother had, by then, receded.

当他第一次听到埃里克称玛丽莉为“妈妈”时，他惊呆了。那时，男孩对母亲的记忆已经消失。

“Of course, I have lost him,” Michael wrote in his journal after one visit, when Eric was ten.

“当然，我已经失去了他，”迈克尔在一次拜访后在日记中写道，当时埃里克十岁。

“He knows little or nothing of me or the short time we spent together.”

“他对我知之甚少，甚至一无所知，也不知道我们在一起度过的短暂时光。”

Around the time Eric turned thirteen, the tenor of their visits changed.

埃里克十三岁左右，他们拜访的基调发生了变化。

Eric was distant and impatient to leave.

埃里克态度冷淡，不耐烦地想离开。

Michael knew that the boy had started asking questions; during a trip to East Texas to see his paternal grandparents, he had asked if it was true that his father had killed his mother.

迈克尔知道这个男孩已经开始问问题了。在前往德克萨斯州东部看望祖父母的途中，他曾询问他的父亲是否真的杀害了他的母亲。

Fearful of alienating Eric any further, Michael never tried to engage him in a conversation about the case or persuade him that he had been wrongfully convicted.

由于担心进一步疏远埃里克，迈克尔从未尝试与他讨论此案，或说服他相信自己被错误定罪。

He assumed that Marylee would contradict any argument he made, and he doubted Eric would believe him anyway.

他认为玛丽莉会反驳他提出的任何论点，并且他怀疑埃里克无论如何都会相信他。

The silences that stretched between them became so agonizing that Michael often found himself turning to Marylee to make conversation.

他们之间的沉默变得如此令人痛苦，以至于迈克尔经常发现自己转向玛丽莉交谈。

Two hours were allotted for their visits, but that was an eternity.

他们的访问时间被分配了两个小时，但那是一个永恒的时间。

“Well .

“嗯。”

.

。

.

。

,” Marylee would say when they ran out of small talk.

”当他们聊完了闲话时，玛丽莉会这样说。

Their last meeting was so brief that Eric and Marylee barely sat down.

他们的最后一次会面非常简短，埃里克和玛丽莉几乎没有坐下来。

Eric, who was fifteen, was unable to look Michael in the eye.

十五岁的埃里克无法直视迈克尔的眼睛。

“I don’t want to come here anymore,” he choked out.

他哽咽道：“我不想再来这里了。”

Michael considered thanking Marylee for turning his son against him or telling Eric that everything he had been led to believe was a lie.

迈克尔考虑感谢玛丽莉让他的儿子反对他，或者告诉埃里克他被引导相信的一切都是谎言。

But as he looked at his son, who stared hard at the floor, he kept those thoughts to himself.

但当他看到儿子紧紧盯着地板时，他把这些想法留在了心里。

“I’m not going to force you to come see me,” Michael told him.

“我不会强迫你来见我，”迈克尔告诉他。

“You can come back anytime if you change your mind.” Before he walked away, he said to Marylee, “Take good care of my son for me.”

“如果你改变主意，随时可以回来。”走之前，他对玛丽莉说：“替我照顾好我的儿子。”

When Michael and Christine bought the house on Hazelhurst Drive, in 1985, northwest Austin had not yet been bisected by toll roads or swallowed up by miles of unbroken suburban sprawl.

1985 年，当迈克尔和克里斯汀在黑泽尔赫斯特大道 (Hazelhurst Drive) 买下这栋房子时，奥斯汀西北部还没有被收费公路一分为二，也没有被绵延数英里的郊区蔓延所吞没。

The real estate bust had brought construction to a standstill, and the half-built subdivision where they lived, east of Lake Travis, was a patchwork of new homes and uncleared, densely wooded lots.

房地产泡沫破裂导致建筑工程陷入停滞，他们居住的特拉维斯湖以东的半建小区是由新房和未清理、树木茂密的地块拼凑而成的。

Although the Morton home had an Austin address, it sat just north of the Travis County line, in Williamson County—an area that, despite an incursion of new residents and rapid development, still retained the rural feel and traditional values of small-town Texas.

尽管莫顿的家位于奥斯汀，但它位于特拉维斯县线以北的威廉姆森县，尽管新居民的入侵和快速发展，该地区仍然保留了德克萨斯州小镇的乡村氛围和传统价值观。

Austin was seen as morally permissive, a refuge for dope smoking and liberal politics that Williamson County, which prided itself on its law-and-order reputation, stood against.

奥斯汀被视为道德上宽容的地方，是吸毒者和自由主义政治的避难所，而以法律和秩序声誉而自豪的威廉姆森县却对此表示反对。

In Georgetown, the county seat, bars and liquor stores were prohibited.

在乔治城，县城、酒吧和酒类商店都被禁止。

Their neighborhood was a place for newcomers, most of them young professionals with children.

他们的社区是新移民的聚集地，其中大多数是带着孩子的年轻专业人士。

The Mortons arrived when Eric was a toddler, and Christine had quickly learned everyone’s name on their street, often stopping in the driveway after work to visit with the neighbors.

当埃里克还是个小孩的时候，莫顿一家就来了，克里斯汀很快就记住了街上每个人的名字，经常下班后停在车道上拜访邻居。

Friendly and unguarded, with long brown hair and bright-blue eyes, she had a disarming confidence; she might squeeze the arm of the person she was talking to as she spoke or punctuate conversation with a boisterous laugh.

她友善而毫无防备，长长的棕色头发和明亮的蓝色眼睛，充满了令人放松的自信。她可能会在说话时捏住谈话者的手臂，或者用大声的笑声来打断谈话。

Michael was slower to warm to strangers, and his neighbors on Hazelhurst, whom he never got to know well, found him remote, even prickly.

迈克尔对陌生人的态度较慢，他在黑泽尔赫斯特的邻居们对他不太熟悉，他们觉得他很冷漠，甚至易怒。

(“He would spend the whole morning working in the yard and never look up,” one told me.) The Mortons’ next-door neighbor Elizabeth Gee, a lawyer’s wife and stay-at-home mother, often seemed taken aback by Michael’s lack of social graces.

（“他会整个早上在院子里工作，从不抬头，”一个人告诉我。）莫顿一家的隔壁邻居伊丽莎白·吉是一位律师的妻子和家庭主妇，她似乎经常对迈克尔缺乏社交礼仪感到惊讶。

He made no secret of the fact that he found her comically straitlaced; he and Christine had gone out to dinner with the Gees once, and Michael had rolled his eyes when she had demurely looked to her husband to answer for her after the waiter asked if she wanted a drink.

他毫不掩饰自己发现她拘谨得可笑。他和克里斯汀曾和吉斯夫妇出去吃过一次晚饭，服务员问她要不要喝一杯，她端庄地看着她丈夫，替她回答时，迈克尔翻了个白眼。

Christine had grown up in the suburbs south of Houston and attended Catholic school, where she was a popular student and member of the drill team.

克里斯汀在休斯顿南部郊区长大，就读于天主教学校，在那里她是一名受欢迎的学生，也是训练队的成员。

Michael was rougher around the edges.

迈克尔的边缘更加粗糙。

His father’s job with an oil field service company had taken the family from Waco to a succession of small towns across Southern California before they finally settled in Kilgore, where Michael attended his last two years of high school.

他父亲在一家油田服务公司工作，一家人从韦科搬到了南加州的一系列小镇，最后定居在基尔戈，迈克尔在那里读了最后两年的高中。

One day when Michael was sixteen, his father brought him along to an oil drilling site, and Michael sat in the car and watched as his dad slogged through his work in an icy rain.

迈克尔十六岁的一天，他的父亲带他来到一个石油钻探现场，迈克尔坐在车里，看着他的父亲在冰冷的雨中艰难地完成工作。

The experience forever cured him of wanting to toil in the oil patch.

这段经历永远治愈了他在油田辛苦劳作的念头。

He went to Stephen F.

他去找了史蒂芬·F.

Austin State University, in Nacogdoches, where, in 1976, he met Christine in a psychology class.

1976 年，他在位于纳科多奇斯的奥斯汀州立大学的心理学课上认识了克里斯汀。

For their first date, he took her out in a borrowed Corvette, and not long afterward, she confided to her friend Margaret Permenter that she thought he might be “the one.” “Mike was pretty reserved, but he was nice and handsome, with one of those Jimmy Connors haircuts,” Permenter told me.

他们第一次约会时，他开着一辆借来的科尔维特带她出去，不久之后，她向她的朋友玛格丽特·佩门特吐露，她认为他可能就是“那个人”。 “迈克相当保守，但他很友善、英俊，留着吉米·康纳斯的发型，”佩门特告诉我。

“Chrissy was more committed than he was at first.”

“克丽丝比一开始更加坚定。”

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