John Katzenbach: Just Cause

'We can discuss this later, if there's anything to discuss.'

Sure, he thought, after you've talked to attorneys and social workers and edited me out completely. He knew the thought was untrue, but it refused to be dislodged.

'It's not your life we're talking about, she added. 'Not anymore. It's mine.'

And then she hung up.

You're wrong, he thought. He looked about his work cubicle. Through a small window he could see the sky stretching gray over the downtown. Then he looked down at the words in front of him: I DID NOT COMMIT.

We are all innocent, he thought. It is proving it that is so hard.

Then, trying to banish the conversation from his mind, he picked up the letter and continued reading:

On May 4th, 1987, I had just returned home to my grandmother's house in the town of Pachoula, Escambia County. At the time I was a college student at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, just completing my junior year. I had been visiting her for several days, when I was picked up by the sheriff's office for questioning in a rape-murder that took place a few miles from my grandmother's place. The victim was white. I am black. An eyewitness had seen a green Ford sedan similar to one I owned leaving the scene where the girl disappeared. I was held without food or water or sleep and without a chance to talk to counsel for thirty-six hours straight. I was beaten several times by deputies. They used folded telephone books to pound on me, because those don't make any marks. They told me they would kill me and one held a revolver to my head and kept pulling the trigger. Each time the hammer clicked down on an empty cylinder. At the end of this they told me that if I confessed, everything would be okay. I was scared and exhausted, so I did. Not knowing any details, but letting them lead me through the crime, I confessed. After what they put me through, I would have confessed to anything.

But I Did Not Do It!

I tried to recant my confession within hours, but I was unsuccessful. My public defender attorney only visited me three times before my trial. He also did no investigation,, called no witnesses who would have placed me elsewhere at the time of the crime, failed to get the illegally obtained confession suppressed. An all-white jury heard the evidence and convicted me after an hour's deliberation. It took them another hour to recommend the death penalty. The white judge passed this sentence on. He called me an animal that ought to be taken outside and shot.

I have now been on Death Row for three years. I have every hope that the courts will overturn my conviction, but that may take many more years. Can you help me? I have learned from other prisoners that you have written editorials condemning the death penalty. I am an innocent man, facing the supreme punishment because of a racist system that was stacked against me. Prejudice, ignorance and evil have put me into this situation. Please help me.

I have written the names of my new lawyer and witnesses below. I have put your name on my approved visiting list, if you decide to come talk with me.

There is one other thing. Not only am I innocent of the charges against me, but I can tell you the name of the man who did commit the crime. Hoping you will help, Robert Earl Ferguson #212009 The Florida State Prison, Starke, Fla.

It took Cowart several moments to digest the letter. He read it through several times, trying to sort through his impressions. The man was clearly articulate, educated, and sophisticated, but prisoners who claimed innocence, especially Death Row prisoners, were the norm rather than the exception. He had always wondered why the majority of men, even confronting their own demise, stuck to an image of innocence. It was true of the hardest psychopaths, the mass killers who cared so little for human life that they would as soon kill someone as talk with them – but who, when confronted, would maintain that aura unless persuaded that confession might somehow help them. It was as if the word meant something different to them, as if the compilation of horrors they had suffered somehow wiped the slate clean.

The thought made him remember the boy's eyes. The eyes had been prominent in a number of his nightmares.

It had been late, crawling through the thick heat of Miami summertime night toward morning, when he'd gotten the call, rousing him from sleep, directing him to a house only ten or twelve blocks from his own. A city editor, gruff with the hour, jaded with the job, sending him to a horror show.

It was when he'd still been cityside, working general assignment, which meant mostly murder stories. He had arrived at the address and spent an hour pacing around outside the police line, waiting for something to happen, staring across the dark at a trim, single-story ranch house with a well-manicured lawn and a new BMW parked in the driveway. It was the middle-class home of a junior executive and his wife. He could see crime-scene technicians and various detectives and medical examiner's office personnel moving about within the house, but he could not see what had happened. The entire area was lit by pulsating police lights, throwing quick snatches of red or blue across the area. The lights seemed to thicken in the humid air. The few neighbors who'd ventured out had been uniform in their description of the couple who lived in the house: nice, friendly, but kept to themselves. This was a litany known to all reporters. People who have been murdered were always said to have kept to themselves, whether they had or not. It was as if neighbors needed to rapidly disassociate themselves from whatever terror had fallen out of the sky.

Finally, he'd spotted Vernon Hawkins leaving the house through a side door. The old detective had ducked away from the police strobes and the television cameras and had pushed himself up against a tree, as if in great exhaustion.

He had known Hawkins for years, through dozens of stories. The veteran detective had always had a special liking for Cowart, had tipped him off frequently, shown him things that were confidential, explained things that were secret, let the reporter in on the inexorably ugly life of the homicide detective. Cowart had surreptitiously slid beneath the yellow police line and approached the detective. The man had frowned, then shrugged and gestured for him to sit.

The detective lit a cigarette. Then he stared for an instant at the glowing end. 'These things are murder,' he said with a rueful laugh. 'They're killing me. Used to be slowly, but I'm getting older, so it's speeding up.'

'So why don't you quit?' Cowart asked.

'Because they're the only things I've ever found that get the smell of death out of my nostrils.'

The detective took a long drag and the red glow illuminated the lines in the man's face.

After a moment of silence, the detective turned toward Cowart. 'So Matty, what brings you out on a night like this? Ought to be home with that pretty wife of yours.'

'C'mon, Vernon.'

The detective smiled quietly and put his head back gently against the tree. 'You're gonna end up like me, with nothing better to do at night except go to crime scenes.'

'Give me a break, Vernon. What can you tell me about the inside?'

The detective laughed briefly. 'Guy naked and dead. Throat cut while he was in bed. Woman naked and dead. Throat cut while she was in bed. Blood all over the fucking place.'

'And?'

'Suspect in custody.'

'Who?'

'A teenager. A runaway kid from Des Moines they picked up earlier this evening. Drove all the way to the Fort Lauderdale strip to find him. They were into kinky threesomes. The only trouble was, after having their fun with the lad, he decided that their hundred bucks wasn't quite all there was to be had. You know, he saw the car, saw the nice neighborhood and everything. They argued. He pulled out an old-style straight razor. Those things are still a helluva weapon. First shot got the guy right across the jugular…'