Chapter 8 - Brenda's Downfall
The criminal courts were not as swift as the court of public opinion, but they were far more thorough. Brenda’s trial for grand larceny was a brief, brutal affair.
Her defense relied on the idea that it was a "misunderstanding," that she was merely "safekeeping" the emeralds. But the prosecutor played the security footage of her slipping the necklace into her purse and whispering, “She’s past caring.”
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The jury deliberated for less than an hour. She was found guilty.
Because she was a first-time offender, she avoided a lengthy prison sentence, but she was given three years of strict probation, five hundred hours of community service, and a massive restitution fine. Her husband—my brother, who had cowardly stayed in the shadows while his wife stole from me—filed for divorce a week later to save his own social standing. They were broken, fractured by the very greed that had brought them to my deathbed.
