The disproportion in resources was real and documented. The government spent an estimated five to ten million dollars on the investigation and prosecution of the Judge Wood case over three years. Charles Harrelson’s defense was managed on approximately seven thousand dollars. This disproportion is not unusual in cases where the government commits major resources to a high-profile prosecution and the defendant does not have the financial capacity to mount an equivalent defense — but it is substantial enough that it constitutes a legitimate argument about the fairness of the proceedings.
In August 1998, Charles testified in a federal courtroom about the mishandling of his case. The appeal attracted attention partly because of Woody’s involvement and partly because of Dershowitz’s involvement; a case that had been decided in 1982 was generating legal activity sixteen years later, which is itself a testament to the sustained effort that the son had made on the father’s behalf.
The appeals were ultimately unsuccessful. The Supreme Court rejected Charles Harrelson’s final appeal in 2004, declining to disturb the conviction that had been entered twenty-two years earlier. Every argument that the son could afford to fund and that skilled legal counsel could advance had been made, and every one of them had been rejected. The conviction stood.
In 2012, Woody told the Guardian that he didn’t know whether his father deserved a new trial and was “just being a son trying to help his dad.” This is perhaps the most honest thing he has said publicly about the appeal effort — a statement that locates the motivation in filial loyalty rather than in certainty about the verdict’s correctness. He was not, by his own account, primarily a legal analyst of the case. He was a son who believed his father had not received a fair trial and who used the resources available to him to try to change that outcome.