For five years he had held up the conviction of Elena Cole as the crowning achievement of his career.

He had stood before television cameras in the flush of victory and called her a cold-blooded, greedy monster who had killed for financial gain, and he had believed every word of it, and the public had believed him, and the belief had helped bury an innocent woman under the weight of a whole state’s certainty.

He had not been corrupt.

That was almost the worst part, and he understood it now with a nausea that would not leave him for a long time.