“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
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Falsely Accused 10 Years Later: Part 1
It’s been 10 years since I published the book Falsely Accused. Today, I watched a movie about a man who was wrongly convicted of murder, and he spent 14 years in prison before he was granted a new trial and exonerated.
While I was watching the movie, I decided to read a few pages of my book. I ended up reading the whole thing. I couldn’t put it down. When I was through, I thought about something that I should have included in the book but didn’t.
Yahweh Told Me to Write the Book
Yahweh woke me up in the middle of the night and told me to write that book. The case involved a young woman who was accused of a double homicide and two counts of the use of a firearm in the commission of a violent crime. If convicted, the young woman faced 100 years in prison without the chance of parole.
She was innocent. In a moment, I’ll explain why Yahweh wanted me to write that book, but before I do, I want to tell you about one of my regrets.
In the initial manuscript for the book, I explained what Yahweh did. As I said, He woke me up and told me to write the book, but He didn’t give me the details. I had to dig them up just to get started.
I’ve been working with Yahweh for a long time now. That’s His modus operandi with me. He doesn’t tell me everything up front, and then I just write down what He says. I have to do the legwork myself. When I’m finished, it’s really my book, but Yahweh guides me through the process.
The shooting took place in Anderson, South Carolina near where I live. The woman who was shot and killed was pregnant. The mother-to-be died almost instantly, but her baby girl was delivered from the dead woman’s womb. She lived for about 40 days before she died. That’s why it was a double homicide, and that’s why there were two counts of the use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a violent crime.
When it came time for me to find a publisher, I thought about my options and decided that The University of South Carolina Press was my best bet. I called the woman in charge. She wanted to see the manuscript, so I sent it to her. She liked it and told me that she had to send it to 2 reviewers before they could publish it. Both of them were University of South Carolina professors.
The woman in charge told me that she thought Yahweh’s involvement was incidental to the story and suggested that I remove it. I followed her advice, and I regret it. In the book that I did publish, Yahweh’s involvement is not discussed, either. I regret that, too. I’m clearing that up now.
I didn’t write Falsely Accused because I wanted to. I wrote it, because Yahweh told me to. I was just being obedient.
One reviewer at the University of South Carolina Press liked the book a lot and wanted to publish it. The other reviewer said essentially, “Anyone who uses a gun deserves to be charged with a crime.” She didn’t want to publish the book, because it challenged one of her core beliefs. For the University of South Carolina Press to publish a book, the 2 reviewers must agree. That’s why it didn’t publish the book.
Be that as it may, the victim in this case wasn’t the woman who was shot and killed. The victims were the shooter and the dead woman’s daughter. It was a clear-cut case of self-defense. I didn’t matter to the second reviewer one bit that the shooter acted in self-defense. South Carolina law is very clear. Anyone has a right to defend herself in her home if she is attacked. That’s exactly what happened in this case.
The shooter never should have been charged with a crime, but it was an election year. The prosecutor was running for reelection, and this was a high-profile case. She needed to prosecute this case to make herself look good to the voters. The shooter was victimized by the prosecutor for political reasons pure and simple.
The prosecutor in this case had been a cancer survivor before she made the fateful decision to try an innocent woman for murder. She was reelected, but her cancer returned and she died. I’m not her Judge, but I know Yahweh. He took her life.
People tend to think that Yahweh is not intimately involved in everything we do. That’s a serious mistake. He’s involved in everything we do, and He judges us if we ignore Him. As I said, the prosecutor made a serious mistake. So did the lead detective who filed the charges against the shooter. He’s Yahweh’s problem, not mine.
As an aside, when I was just about finished writing the book, I talked with the lead detective one last time. He implied that if I continued, he would investigate me. I said, “Go ahead. Do it.”
That’s not in the book, and I regret it, too. I should have included it, but Yahweh knows what he said.
There’s a part of me that would enjoy writing another book, one in which the lead detective is the main character. He wasn’t called as a witness during the trial, but he made a decision to charge the shooter with 2 murders in a matter of minutes with practically no investigation. That’s world-class callousness. I wish he had been forced to take the stand and answer questions under oath.
It takes months to write a book. Sometimes, it takes years. Yahweh didn’t tell me to write the second book, so I probably never will. If I do, it may have to be fiction. I’ll change the names to protect the guilty.
In Falsely Accused, real names are used. Writing a second book as fiction would enable me to get inside the characters’ heads and lay out their thinking completely. There is a lot to be said for fiction.
The Shooter’s Grandmother
The shooter’s grandmother was at the trial every day. The whole time she was in the courtroom she was praying silently. No one in the shooter’s family knew what she was praying, but I do.
The grandmother was praying that her granddaughter would be acquitted, but she was also looking beyond the not guilty verdict to the time when her granddaughter would have to come to grips with the fact that she took 2 lives. She was praying that Yahweh would do something to get her through that difficult time.
There is only one way I can know what the grandmother was praying. Yahweh told me.
I never met the grandmother. She died shortly after the trial, but I was the answer to her prayer. Yahweh sent me to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the shooter was innocent. The book does that.
As I said in the book, not guilty and innocent are lightyears apart. The shooter was innocent, but juries can’t come back with that verdict. All they can say is “not guilty”.
Epilogue
Everyone involved with the case including the shooter, her lawyer and her family, the sheriff’s department, and the prosecutor’s office knew that Yahweh told me to write the book, because I told them. I never tried to hide that fact from anyone.
During conversations with the lead detective, he asked me point blank if I had received instructions from “God”. I told him, “Yes.”
A couple of years after the book was published, I was getting a concealed weapons permit. In South Carolina, that process includes fingerprinting every applicant for a CWP. A deputy from the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office came to the meeting where we were being tested and did the fingerprinting.
When it was my turn to be fingerprinted, I asked the deputy if he had ever heard of a book titled Falsely Accused. He started laughing and said, “Everyone in the Sheriff’s Office has heard about that book.”
I said, “I wrote it.” His demeanor didn’t change. He acted like he was glad to meet me.
Following the book’s publication, I heard that changes were made in the Sheriff’s Office. No higher-up in that office ever tried to interfere with my work, and no one ever tried to stonewall me except the lead detective in the case. In fact, the Detective Lieutenant in the Sheriff’s Office exceeded my expectations. I couldn’t have hoped for more cooperation than he gave me.
Not so for the prosecutor’s office. Everyone in that office refused to help me in any way. They wouldn’t answer any of my questions, and the people I needed to talk with refused to return my phone calls. Since Yahweh told me to write the book, I know that they made grievous errors. I’ll leave it at that.
I still want to know exactly what was said during a phone conversation between the lead detective and the prosecutor immediately before the detective charged the shooter with murder. As I said, the prosecutor is dead. She can’t answer that question. The lead detective is alive and well. He can answer it. Will he? I have a hunch that Yahweh will require him to answer it at some point. He won’t be given a choice.
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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
