In the coming months we decided to retain Harlan Protass as my attorney. My sons loved him and his work ethic. Harlan would then plow through many documents pertaining to my case and after a short period of time had passed, he thought that he might have found an issue we could work with. Harlan then arranged to have meetings with the US attorney assigned to my case and then with the Probation Dept. always requesting and being granted permission to bring my sons along. Harlan felt that they were an asset and would showcase them whenever possible. The only business at hand now would be waiting for a date for the re-sentencing hearing. After months of waiting, Harlan called the Judges chamber and was only told that the case was on the calendar. He had set his own time-table as to when he would feel comfortable calling again if we still hadn’t heard anything. In the ensuing days my mother was rushed to the hospital by ambulance for kidney failure. Clifton informed me that he had told Harlan about his grandmother’s hospitalization, asking him to call the courts and maybe under those circumstances would expedite the process. Knowing Harlan would be opposed to that, I called him and let him know that my mother was doing better and to disregard my sons request to call the courts. Harlan then told me that while talking to Clifton he had mentioned how he and his brother were doing a lot of stressing waiting on this hearing, which for me was a stinging reminder that I no longer would be able to sugar coat an unfavorable court decision. My sons were now on the front lines and now would absorb the brunt of the impact of our next ruling.

Within the next week we were notified that August 29th was our date… at 11am. Presiding over our hearing would be Judge Preska who as a Chief Judge was well-known in the federal system to be very tough, so once again I found myself bracing for the worst, something my sons had no intention of doing. The one subject that my sons and I were in agreement with is that we had the best lawyer in the business fighting on our behalf as I recalled Clifton once saying “I just can’t believe that we had actually thought about retaining anyone else but Harlan”. The morning of August 29th I watched the clock approach 11am wondering what was going on. I would purposely wait till later on in the day to call home in an effort to downplay the importance of the preceding. If things did not go well today, the perception that I was upset would only add to the disappointment that my sons would already shoulder. As I sat in my cell in the middle of the afternoon watching the clock slowly going by, a close friend of mine stopped by to find out how the hearing went. When I told him I hadn’t called yet, he walked away shaking his head clearly annoyed by my response. The same would hold true as others would ask during the course of the afternoon. I called Clifton at 5pm and asked how he was and asked what he did today; He quickly shot back wanting to know why I hadn’t called earlier. As I laughed, I told him I was a busy man and had a lot of things to do. He asked if I talked to uncle Jac and I said no. He asked if I talked to uncle Pete and I said no. He then asked me if I talked to grandmother and I again said no. He then asked “So you don’t know what happened today”? And again I said no. After a deafening pause the next two words out of my sons mouth would be for me a moment forever frozen in time…