Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn’t Quit
By Kevin Flynn
Putnam, 2007

Review by Ronald Goldfarb

Criminal trials provide unique drama. Many good trial lawyers are good storytellers, and Kevin Flynn, assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, is one.

In Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn’t Quit Flynn tells the story of a gruesome double murder trial he prosecuted over a decade ago that still haunts him. In the telling he informs readers about the inner workings of the criminal justice system—about government at its best, coping with a violent society and an imperfect justice system. He refers to the process as “a secular faith.”

At a time when we too often read about innocent convicts released from wrongful convictions after years in prison, of irresponsible district attorneys involved in wrongful misconduct, and of cynical acquittals of guilty criminals, it is a relief to read a prosecutor’s personal story of conviction.

“[F]or any man who’s had it in him to want to be a homicide prosecutor, every day falls in a bittersweet autumn, and death is never that far away, nor is work.” From these words on page one, the reader knows he is being addressed by a thoughtful storyteller committed to public service and aware of the humanity around him.

The story of a brutal double murder, its investigation, and the people in and out of the system who were touched by the case is insightful in its explanation of the workings of the District of Columbia criminal justice system. There was one obvious suspect, circumstantial but incomplete evidence, critical police work, a competent defense counsel, and a composed, driven prosecutor. The reader is taken through the reconstructed event, the development of the evidence, the arduous investigation, the years of preparation, and finally the trial and the appeals. We get to know the dramatis personae, and root for an acceptable ending (there can be no happy one).

The reader will learn about bloodstain patterns and the clues they expose, the role of judges and juries (“islands of inscrutability”), the moral dilemmas of defense attorneys, the tricky techniques of proper arrest procedures, the role of precedent, the double layers of trial work (“[p]laying to two audiences: the unreceptive judge on the bench in front of me and the as-yet faceless, chimerical group of appellate judges who someday would probably be reviewing the cold record I was creating”), and the art of cross-examination (“the grand drama of the search for truth, reduced to a one-act play”).

Along the way Flynn provides some fine writing. At one point he distinguishes his views as attorney and author: “I couldn’t seize on this image and expand on it as a novelist would; I had to move on.” When he talks of the eloquence and poetry and rhythm of witness examination, he could be describing good writing (“the right words in the right order”). He notes the difference between what police do (“they thrive in the niche of time that exists between the dead of night and the following day; that’s when their cases are made or broken”) and what prosecutors do (“what they put together we have to keep together”), and the difference in approaches of the prosecutor (to advance) and the defense attorney (to destroy).

Flynn is able to detach himself from the intensity of his work, for example, to describe his connection to the jury: “Once the trial ended, I’d probably never encounter any of these people again. But for as long as they were next to me in the courtroom, I would track the moods and movements of each like an obsessed lover.”

Flynn offers a peek into how criminal investigations and trials happen, and a glimpse of the victims’ world, which most readers do not know. He deals with the ugly side of our society: dangerous violent people “animated only by the pulse of self-preservation and the thrill of the kill.” We also come to know the extended family of the victims who follow the case, pray to resist seeking vengeance, and demonstrate nobility in the face of horror.

Flynn deals, as he says, with “humanity at its most brutal and most noble.” His career has been “an extended tour through a veritable museum of amorality and depravity.” He doesn’t miss sensitive insights, however, as he agonizes over his trial preparation, his own personal family pressures, painful private events, and his responsibilities to the family of the victims. Contact with “the wreckage of lives lost to brutality” forges a special dedication for many prosecutors in the criminal justice system, and when he stands before a court at the start of a trial and announces, “Flynn for the United States government,” he feels a special pride and responsibility.

As the story progresses, Flynn provides insights into the criminal trial system that relieve some of the distress engendered by the sordid facts of his story.

On trial preparation: “[P]repare every case backward. . . . To know where you are you first have to know where you’re going . . . surrounding an issue, breaking it down into small parts, and eyeing the parts from different angles.”

On a prosecutor’s life: “Prosecutors tend to move about most comfortably in the shadows of the human soul. . . . I sit in an office where people come in and lie to me all day long.”

On examining a witness: “Never, ever let a witness get a foothold in the box.”

On investigation: “At some stage . . . a prosecutor has to have an epiphany, a moment when he becomes absolutely convinced of the defendant’s moral culpability.”

On discovery: “The process by which the government discloses these matters to the defense is universally known as discovery; an oddly whimsical choice of words, implying an open-minded, adventurous quest, when in fact the ritual usually amounts to little more than exchanges of letters between lawyers.”

On trial tactics: “A murder trial is like a heavyweight boxing match with the fighters circling each other warily in the opening rounds while they feel each other out.”

On picking a jury: There are a lot of sophisticated theories, but most amount to “look into their eyes and listen to your gut.”

On good defense attorneys: “[A]t the same point in the distant past, something in the way the government used its power made you want to line yourself up on the other side . . . of the downtrodden and vilified. . . . [Y]ou were just contrary enough to want to make sure that all that authority wasn’t misused. . . .”

Relentless Pursuit is a riveting and touching story that will leave the reader admiring Flynn and the police and detectives who worked with him on the case.

Ronald Goldfarb is a Washington, D.C., attorney, author, and literary agent whose reviews appear regularly on these pages.