Pages

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Stories I've written, always meaning to send

 
  Let this be a lesson to some young person out there. If you have an idea, about anything, carry it through as far as you can. You will often stop at some point when you realize it's not going to work, but everyone has at least one good idea and it's a goddamned shame when you look up one day and find out someone else had the same idea and carried it through.
     Case in point. Tonight while watching television and ad come up for a new show scheduled to begin in January. It's called "Found Innocent." It gave me a cold chill.
    You see, I had this idea years ago, even wrote what's called a treatment for it. I have searched for that treatment but so far no luck. In it the main protagonist each episode took on the case of a person imprisoned and maintaining his innocence. Each prisoner would provide a different story, some of them actually innocent and others who were just where they were supposed to be.
     I found it. It's dated May 5, 2014, but it may have been updated on that date. I probably had been thinking about it long before that, Anyway, just because I can, this is what I had prepared: ( And for the sake of truth I am not going to make any corrections or changes at all. This is the way I left it in 2014)

INNOCENCE
BAsed in the cliche that everyone in prison says he's innocent and loosely based on the Innocence Project
 Main character former prosecuting attorney who learns he send a man to the chair who was innocent.  Now in private practice, he volunteers pro bono at a prison advising people in prison.  Nrried, young old girl friend  what?
He has a buddy in the police department.  They meet when the detetective forces his way into the office (most police don't like the lawyer)  and makes him very nervous.  Turns out the lawyer ahd been instrumental in proving the policeman's convicted brother was actually innocent and so he says a faver is owed. Lawyer takes liberal advantage of access to police files.
He has to have a secretary gatekeeper helper but this is cliche.  He could have a law grad student helpling with all the hyoung innocence'
Private detective.   This is going to be a woman, tough and capable who does investigations for the lawyer. There can be sexual tension here, but she over the long run pushes off any hint of  connection.
Detective's boss and colleagues don't like his connection with the lawyer and at times try to subvert him.
Head of  the firm:  Silver haired white guy who doesn't like all the pro bono work. )A thought here some civil case he forces on the lawyer turns out to be connected to one of his innocence cases.
Maybe need a nemisis prosecutor.
FIRST CASE
 ANOTHER MORE TIMELY STIMULUS:   A kid in jail for 20 years for having a pocketfull of pot.
 First case: Hard looking goth girl comes into his office.  Says her boy friend is innocent and he told her the lawuyers name becasue he heard it from someone in prison.  She explains the case but says they have no money and says her boyfriend told her to fuck the lawyer if she had to.  Looks:  a teardrop tattoo under one eye and that one with heavy goth makeup....  the other eye just shadowed like sunken zombie like. Nose ring, short straight dark hair.  fingerless gloves and sexy. And makes no bones about fucking the guy.
Prisoner, hard case biker gangster who is guilty of a lot but not the crime he was convicted of. not very likable  but that's part of the deal of the innocence project, if the person is not guilty he is not guilty no matter what kind of person he is.

The guy's crime: Seeing a biker gang fight.  Gun shots. A guy goes down.  Just then someone attempts to drive a pickup truck through the center of the fight scattering combatants in all directions. The prisoner sees a guy layng in the street and grabs the shoulders of his lether jacket and pulls him to safety, only in turning the guy over to learn he is not only dead,  he is wearing the jacket of the other gang. Our biker pulls th body into the bushes and hightails it not realizing he has dropped his knife by the body and picked up some blood on his own clothing.  By a circuitous route he makes it to his bike as he hears sirens. He atempts to get out of there but the street he heads down has cops coming at him.  He makes a quick turn into an alley. but his rear wheel hits a spot of oil and he skids out of control into the side of a building right in front of the comps and knocks himself out.  He wakes up in jail. The bllood on his coat, his knife by the body, and a witness who saw him dragging the bodyh away  are enoujgh to convict him. He gets 15-30 for second degree murder largel becasue of the prior arrests and convictions. mostly for assault but a couple of minor possession drug busts. His gang is supected of drug trafficking.
During the fight: whole bar erupts.  Spills out into the street. As it does a big guy grabs the girlfriend and drags her kicking out a side door into an alley.  There he slams her against a dumptster then throws her to the ground, holds her down and starts to tear off her jeans.  from her pocket she pulls a knife and stabs him in the stomach. and while he is still shocked she cuts him across his neck.  Then she is abel  to squirm out from under him and head away from the meless int he street down toward to opposite end of the alley.
In the street sirens and then police and the boyfriend runs and turns into thee ame alley to escape. when he is about halfway down the alley a car roars into the alley heading toward him.  He sees the victim laying there and runs, pulling him out of the way just as the car passes.  But, right behind the car comes a police car.  The police see the guy with the victim, come to a stop and jummp out to subdue the guy and put him under arrest.  
Meanwhile the gril has left the alley just before the first car, hides agains a wall is it also emerges and turns away from where she is hiding.  Once free of any observation, she makes her way down the street and into the darkness whil her boyfirend  is hauled off to the jail.
CHANGE THIS SLIGHTLY TO AVOID IDENTIFYING THE REAL KILLER.  During the fight a big tough guy drags the girl out of the bar by a back door opening into the alley.  Minutes later the boyfriend/convicted runs into the alley to escape police. He sees another figure farther donw the alley running away. He starts to follow mostly for his own escape but trips over  the guy. A car screetches into the alley chased by police. The figure disappears at the end of the alley in the same shot where the biker is pulling the victim out of the ay of the car. The car roars past followed by a police care which sotps when they see the biker with the body.
Now how do they prove him innocent.             
1  did they check his knife for blood
2. attack the witness...  did he actually see the guy stab the victim   no  only dragging him away
3. forensices:  blood on his jackt is it the kind of spatter that would come frtom stabbing someone?  No only dragging and turning over. Knife found by body, too bloody from neck wound, no prints, blood washed away.   Might somewhere find an odd print of partial finger but cut off evenly.  Like made from fingerless gloves like got girl was wearing.  Looking at one print taken.middle and lower sections of finger but no tip print.
4.  Depth of stab wounds,    neck wound is shallow but evidence knife was twisted while in the wound.
5. Investigation centers on identification of the mystery person in the alley.  Interview people in the fight. Did anyone see anyone go out the back door?  Identifiable. Bartender might have seen (a man and a woman leaving) Later admits, man was forcing woman out the door.
SOULUTION
Turns out she did it. WEaker knife wouldnds plus a gun shot from a small weapon.
 WRITING PROMPTS
What are protagonist's top five monthly expenses
 So that's it. Obviously not a finished, polished treatment, but you get the idea. So, now as I anticipate a television show coming up in January all I can say is godammit!  At least I can hope I will be at the East Pole and unable to watch it. And I can hope some young writer will be encouraged to believe in his work and follow it through. At times like this I recall something overheard near a harbor one day. A woman owned a restaurant one step up from a food truck. By herself she was digging a trench to run a water line from a nearby building to her restaurant. As she worked several men stopped to watch for a minute or two. When one of them shouted a wise crack she hollered back: "You can pick up a shovel, you know. Nothing's stopping you but fear."
Nothing stopping any of us but fear. Go for it.

No comments:

Post a Comment