In Halden County, the most difficult work began after the television cameras had moved on. Thirty-seven cases were flagged for individual review, and court staff had to retrieve transcripts, locate defendants, notify attorneys, and determine what each conviction had actually depended on. Some defendants were still incarcerated. Others had completed their sentences but carried records that followed them into job interviews, apartment applications, and conversations with their children. The prosecutor's office assigned independent lawyers to handle the disclosures because the same office had relied on the challenged reports in the original prosecutions.
Harriet volunteered to represent eleven of the affected people without charging them. Monica asked why she was taking on more cases when her desk was already covered in files, and Harriet answered that she had spent nineteen years telling clients to trust a process that too often made them feel invisible. "Now the process has a chance to prove it deserves the name," she said. She kept Cory Hariston's file on top because his conviction had rested heavily on the disputed gun and a warrant record that should have been corrected before the arrest. The physical firearm had been preserved, the destruction certificate authenticated, and Fowler's admitted conduct had made the original prosecution's central evidence untenable.
Cory's case moved first through a post-conviction proceeding. The court reviewed the newly disclosed records, the independent forensic report, and the prosecutor's position that the conviction could no longer be defended. His prior plea, entered under the pressure of a potential longer sentence, did not prevent the court from considering the integrity of the evidence on which it had been based. The judge vacated the conviction and ordered the remaining custody arrangements addressed promptly. Janice cried when Harriet called with the news, but she kept asking whether the order was signed because she had learned not to trust a promise until she could see it on paper.
On a cold Thursday morning in late February, the gate of the Halden County Jail opened, and Cory stepped outside wearing a borrowed sweatshirt. He stopped just beyond the threshold and looked up at the broad gray sky as if he had forgotten how much of it could be seen from a single place. Janice had been waiting in the parking lot since six, holding his dark blue apprentice's jacket over her arms. When she saw him, she hurried forward, stopped halfway because she had suddenly begun crying, and then crossed the remaining distance at a run.
She held the jacket open for him, and he slid one arm into it, then the other. The sleeves were slightly short now, but the name above the pocket was still his, exactly as it had been the morning Copeland and Fowler took him from the gas station. Janice straightened the collar while Cory laughed at her fussing and then began crying himself. Channel 8 recorded the reunion from a respectful distance after obtaining the family's permission. In the background, the jail gate closed with a sound Janice said she hoped never to hear again.