The Curse of Sacerdozio

It seemed like a great honor. I was the first Jicarilla Apache to graduate Harvard Law School. Then, I was selected from many applicants to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anton Sacerdozio.

I was young, smart and naïve, and having grown up on the reservation, was without people skills in the Ivy League. My study buddy had been Catherine Welch, and she was a great at covering my shyness.

As it turned out, Catherine was also selected to clerk for Justice Sacerdozio. We fell in love, and at the most inopportune time, Catherine became pregnant. We decided on an abortion. Justice Sacerdozio went ballistic, and stated he would not provide us with an end – of – term favorable review.

That seemed terrible enough, but as we attended the Sacerdozio, Thomas More and Federalist Societies’ retreat on a far West Texas ranch, the judge was found dead floating in one of the hot mineral pools.

Because of my philosophical arguments with the Justice and the abortion of upheaval, I became a murder suspect in the eyes of the FBI. In fact, I was arrested and put in the El Paso federal lockup for over a year waiting for trial. There had been so much going on behind the scenes that I had no knowledge of, which directly affected my life, freedom and any possibility of a future with Catherine. Two people, a sheriff from Sierra Blanca and his friend, a private investigator from New Orleans, believed in my innocence and came to my aid.

There were interrelating influences that were affecting my life and Catherine's such as mining interests of a powerful Houston mining company owner, the judicial doctrine known as "Originalism," societies of influence seeking to control the judiciary, and not least, the government's strong will to prosecute Sacerdozio’s killer.

This is my story of that intense path. What seemed like a great honor in the beginning turned into a disaster. The only thing the powerful want is more power. You do not know what fear is, until you get in their way.