David Dow - The Autobiography of an Execution

That’s why Quaker congratulated me, and this is why he said he doesn’t want to be like him: In place of the death sentence, Van Orman will spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

But I’m a death-penalty lawyer and Van Orman won’t get executed, so I count it as a victory. One of my clients committed suicide a week before his execution. That’s a victory. Another died of AIDS. A victory.

My client Randy Baze is not on death row anymore, either. He was seventeen when he and two buddies hijacked a car, killing its owner. I was in the middle of losing one appeal after another in his case when the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the states can execute people who were younger than eighteen when they committed murder. After the Court ruled in our favor, Baze tried to stay on death row anyway. He didn’t want to move. He knew that if he moved to the general prison population, he would fall to the bottom of my to-do list, just like Van Orman, and he was right. He has compelling legal issues in his case, but they are not matters of life and death, not anymore. I can’t even remember what they are.

One day, if I have some extra time, I’ll go back to court to win Van Orman’s and Baze’s total vindication.

If I have some extra time.

IWALKED IN THE DOOR and poured myself a glass of the expensive bourbon Katya had bought me for our anniversary. She was drinking wine.

She said, Do you deserve the good stuff today?

I think I do, I said. Nobody got killed.

She said, For a change. We clinked our glasses together. She said, I picked up a chicken for you to roast. And Lincoln wants you to be sure to save the wishbone.

From the library Lincoln said, Hi, Dada. Mama said you would save the wisher bone for us to break in the morning when I have my breakfast. I said that sounded fine. He said, Will you read me a book now?

The three of us climbed the stairs to his room. After a book and a bedtime story, before Katya and I told him good night, I said, Hey amigo, what are you going to wish for if you get the bigger piece of the wishbone tomorrow?

He said, I’m not supposed to tell you, but I will anyway. I’m going to wish that I have a great life. And guess what, Dada? My wish already came true.

ITOLD KATYA about Quaker’s letter. She said, You can’t force him to appeal if he doesn’t want to.

I said, Actually, I think I can. He doesn’t have the right to let the state execute him for a crime he didn’t commit.

She said, How are you going to prove that he’s innocent?

Good question, I said. I told her about Quaker’s reference to Van Orman.

She said, Van Orman is incapable of living outside an institution. If he weren’t in prison, he’d be in some other facility, or homeless. You didn’t betray him. You gave him the best life you could.

I said, There’s been a load of compromisin’ on the road to my horizon.

She said, Thanks for not singing it. Can we eat now?

IN APRIL 1972, I was twelve. My Little League team, the Mets, played the Pirates in the championship game. Our pitcher was the only twelve-year-old in the league who could throw a slider. Lots of kids could throw a curveball, but Andrew Peters could throw a bona fide slider. He went to junior college to play baseball. He got drafted his sophomore year, dropped out, and pitched two years in the minor leagues before he ruined his arm and gave up on his dream and joined the Marines. He was killed in the first Gulf War. I know this because his son Timothy goes to law school where I teach, and he told me last week when he came by my office to introduce himself.

I was the catcher on the Mets. Andrew was the coach’s son. The Peters family lived one street behind mine. When Andrew would make an error during a game, Coach Peters didn’t say anything. But at night, I would hear him screaming through the window.

Coach Peters would call the pitches. He sent me a signal, and I would relay it to Andrew. It was the bottom of the last inning. They were batting. We were ahead 2–1. Their first hitter leaned out over the plate and got hit on the arm. Coach Peters was shouting at the umpire from the dugout that the player had walked into the pitch, but the umpire sent him to first base anyway. Their best hitter was next. Andrew threw two quick strikes. Coach Peters signaled a slider, and Andrew threw a beauty, right on the outside corner. The umpire called it a ball. Coach Peters raced out of the dugout screaming. The vein on the side of his neck looked like a dancing Gummi Bear. A short man, he had been an NCAA wrestling champion. There were pictures of him holding trophies hanging on the walls of their house.

The umpire just stood there. Coach Peters walked back to the dugout, kicking at the dirt. When he got there he must have said something I didn’t hear, because the umpire pulled off his face mask, looked at Coach, and said, Cool it, Drew. Coach Peters picked up a bat and stared at the umpire. It seemed like a long time went by. Then he started walking toward the plate. The other team’s third-base coach tried to cut him off. Coach Peters swung the bat, and I heard the other coach’s ribs crack. Then there was mayhem. All the coaches, on their team and ours, and all the umpires jumped on Coach Peters. Years later I would recall the scene when watching videos showing five-man teams of helmeted prison guards rushing into a cell on death row to subdue one of my clients. They held Coach Peters there until two policemen arrived. The police put handcuffs on him and took him away. Andrew was crying hysterically, screaming, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Coach Peters didn’t turn around. He sat in the backseat of the squad car for an hour, until the police let him go.

Timothy said, My dad was friends with Henry Quaker. Before Dad went back to Iraq, Mr. Quaker helped him find a job. Timothy pronounced it “eye-wrack.” He said, Mr. Quaker had dinner at our house a few times. He would always bring me a book. I don’t believe Mr. Quaker did what they said he did. Timothy told me who his dad was. He said, You knew my dad, didn’t you? I told him we had grown up together, that we played ball on the same team. He said, I hear through the grapevine that you use students on your cases. If you need some students to help on Mr. Quaker’s case, I volunteer. I told him I’d think about it.

DEPENDING ON WHOM you ask—Katya or me—we dated for somewhere between seven and two years before getting engaged. She teases me about why it took me so long. It’s because she’s exactly the type of person I never thought I’d marry. She’s beautiful, athletic, artistic, and understanding. I’m bookish, plodding, and unforgiving. Falling in love with her created in me a cognitive dissonance that took awhile to subside. I’m not a good enough writer to know how to say this without sounding corny, but the day I decided to propose was the day I realized I would never run out of things I wanted to talk to her about and I would never get tired of looking at her. Two and a half years into our marriage, she got pregnant.

We were not trying not to have a kid, but we were not trying to have one, either. We liked our life. We saw a movie or two every week, we went to bars and restaurants, we talked about books. Once a month or so, Katya would go out dancing. (That she would do without me; as Dirty Harry said, a man has got to know his limitations.) We’d read stories from the newspaper to each other over breakfast.