I drove to Austin. I was really on the fence as to whether or not to go for a myriad of reasons but I  knew I would feel bad if I didn’t. Even as I was starting the drive on wednes. Morning I was still unsure. It was one of those things one could never tell the value of until after the event. I did go and the 3 hours passed quickly with the mamma mia cd I talked my husband into as an early bday gift. I had to remind myself not to sing too much as I wanted to testify at a hearing and last time I sang myself out of a voice with this CD. A very dear family friend met me at the capital and showed me around, introduced me to some people working there and we went to lunch. After which he helped me find the room where the hearing would be and showed me how the yellow form process worked to alert the committee I would like to speak. There is a self glorification aspect to speaking as if anything I had to say could change someone’s mind and in addition I was basically preaching to the choir and following the truly heroic and shakspearran(sp?) stories of the exonerees before me. But what put me over the edge to make the drive and to stand up there was to include in my moment at the mic the fact that Ben Spencer is still waiting a year after a judge in the 283 rd district court in dallas county proclaimed him to be actually innocent. I thought if maybe one of those state reps on the committee was as incensed as I was they would go back to their office and look him up and investigate what the hold up is. No way of knowing if this happened but I had to try.
Apparently there is video. I haven’t watched it yet but I will include the link below. Not sure how long they archive it for. I felt like the day was definitely worth the 6 hours in the car and hopefully somewhere a seed was planted that will bare fruit.