Kate Morales’ office wasn’t much to look at. The dark furniture and leather chairs were new, but you could see peeling paint and hear the old radiators wheezing to keep the place warm on a rainy afternoon. They’d said she was good with my kind of case. And that I could, possibly, afford her.
My brother Pete refused to go with me. He’d paid my bail, but after that he asked me to contact him only through the number of a burner phone he’d purchased. “Sorry, man. It’s just too dangerous these days.”
So I’d taken the bus downtown by myself. Kate’s office was in the Smith Tower. It’s gone now, but it used to be a Seattle landmark. Just two blocks from the old courthouse.
“Mr. Henry?” Kate stood up to greet me, but when I nodded, she sat back down in her chair and began rummaging through papers on her desk. Short dark hair. Her nose not quite right for pretty—a little large, a bit crooked. Big brown eyes that, I’d learn, could go from warm to chill in a heartbeat.
Derek, the law student who worked for her then, offered me a coffee. I shook him off, having no taste for stuff from an office coffee machine (how I wish I could have a cup of that now!). I sat down in one of the two leather chairs that faced Kate’s desk. I realized, as I tried to get comfortable, that most people had someone who came with them. But Pete wouldn’t get involved and Alison—well, I hadn’t heard from her since my arrest and the news people came to her house wanting to know things about me.
I sat with my hands on my knees and looked down. I noticed how my suit seemed kind of baggy. I hadn’t worn a suit since Pete’s wedding, 14 years earlier. I guess I’d lost weight. Or maybe the styles had changed. Mostly I wore jeans, but that hadn’t seemed right for an attorney’s office.
There was a soft sigh as Kate opened a file folder on her desk. I looked up to see her biting her lip.
“That bad?” I said, giving her a nervous grin.
“Well…” Kate closed the file, shaking her head. “Mr. Henry. There’s no way you’re going to get off. But, since it’s a first offense, I’m looking for ways we can get the prosecutor to reduce the charges.”
She must have seen the hope on my face. She shook her head, sadly. “Unfortunately, it seems as though the new prosecutor wants to make a test case out of this. He's thrown a lot at you, most of it charged under state’s new Corporate Hate Crimes laws.”
“So you’re going to tell me to plead? I can. I mean, I did—”
“Let's hold on a minute.” Kate leaned back in her chair. I studied her blue suit, her plain pink blouse, her tiny gold earrings. Her eyes read the wall above my head. “This is your first arrest, right?”
I nodded.
“We'd did a check and it looks like you have a clean record. College degree. Steady work as an engineer at a series of boatyard and fishing industry jobs around Seattle and Bellingham. You own a house in Bellfair. Divorced 10 years back. No children, no child support. Girlfriend?”
“Y—” I remembered about Alison. “Not anymore.”
“Sorry about that. Arrests?”
I shook my head.
“No other names? Other than Joseph Henry?”
“No other names. But I've done some things, before, that would probably get me arrested these days.”
Kate ignored my chuckle. She bit her lip again and picked up another file folder. “My investigator looked at your social media. Lots of pictures of you at marches and rallies protesting the closing of Lake Union to create a private business park for three of Seattle's largest companies. I’m sure the prosecutor has found a lot more.” She gave me a sharp look. “Were you involved in the May 2023 riots?”
Finally I could give her some good news. “Early halibut run that year, so I was up in Alaska, getting a friend's boat ready.”
Kate was nodding now, staring again at the files on her desk. “So it's really just this incident.” We sat in silence as she picked up the arrest report again. “Unfortunately, Joe, the violation is clear. Pictures went viral. They showed you standing in front of Feracidata company headquarters, holding that sign.”
It read Destroy Feracidata. Take back our jobs, our environment, and our city!
“Did someone maybe, you know, just suddenly give you that sign to carry? Shove it into your hands?” Kate asked, her voice rising at the possibility. “That would be a major, exonerating issue.”
I hated to discourage her. “I made the sign myself. In my garage.”
Kate exchanged a quick look with Derek. His long, bony face twisted in a grimace. “And I suppose you still have the paints in there,” she said, her voice trailing off.
“Yes.”
Derek grunted, got up and left the room. Kate shuffled papers again. I started to suspect she was just buying time.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“Well, there isn’t a lot of case law. The state statutes only went into effect six months ago. The prosecutor is arguing that the sign—your sign—was featured in local news coverage and that, as a result, it incited the riots that culminated in the firebombing of the Ferocidata conference center two night later.”
“No one got hurt.”
“True. But under the new Washington State statue, corporations are regarded by the law as individuals, and advocating any action to harm them is a hate crime. You’re going to be a test case.”
“Yeah. Got it. I mean, I’ll plead guilty. I’m ready to take my punishment.”
“No.” Kate snapped, her voice bringing Derek back into the room. “Joe, if you're convicted of advocating violence against the corporation, violence that clearly took place—”
“Prison?”
Kate looked right at me, for the first time, as if she thought I might be joking. One eyebrow went up. “Prison?” She gave a short, ugly laugh. “Under the new statute, the judge has no sentencing discretion. And law says the penalty for publicly proposing violence against a corporation is death.”
I didn’t think I’d heard her right. She asked more questions. I mumbled some answers. She said she’d take my case and that I should refer any journalists’ inquiries to her. I signed lots of papers. One of them authorized her to apply to outside agencies for funding for the case—her fees, investigators’ fees, research fees.
To my amazement, in the following months, tens of thousands of dollars flowed in. Money kept coming in, all though the trial and, I guess, after my conviction when Kate brought in all those specialist lawyers to do the appeals. By then I was in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, where the state houses Death Row prisoners.
Three years later, when Washington outsourced its long-term incarceration to Texas, they moved me. Strange the way it was almost frightening to be outside the walls. It was a bleak November night. They put ten of us onto beat-up looking plane that must have been chartered. Kept us handcuffed, seated far apart from each other. It was still dark when we landed in Houston, got in a bus, and they drove us out here to West Livingston.
Turns out Texas pretty much specializes in Death Row prisoners. When I got here in 2035 there were more than 300 men, and now, we’re up to nearly 400. Most of them convicted of murder, but more than 30 guys like me, charged under state Corporate Hate Crimes laws. By now, more than 30 states have them and in 18 states, a conviction mandates the death penalty.
The attorney who took over for Kate when she retired tells me that more women than men get convicted for corporate hate crimes. I wonder why that is.
What do I do these days? I read books—mostly science fiction. I sketch plans for boats I’d like to build. And I wonder—a lot—about all the things I never tried or did while I was on the outside and could have done any of them, at any time. Always meant to summit Mount Rainier. Spend a weekend on the Oregon Coast.
During the appeals, I stayed busy answering letters from researchers and journalists. At first, there were all sorts of people writing books and articles about the Corporate Hate Crimes cases. I guess they wanted to talk to the first guy who got convicted.
That’s fallen off quite a bit, though. These days, what letters I do get come from researchers outside the United States. Denmark. Norway. Even Italy. Carrisime signore, they call me! I like that. Carrisime signore...
No, folks in the United States don’t talk much about the Corporate Hate Crimes laws any more. Seems like it’s dangerous even to write about them. I guess you’re the only one who’ll be at my execution tomorrow.