David Dow - The Autobiography of an Execution

KATYA HAS A CHILDHOOD FRIEND who grew up to be an artist you’ve probably heard of. They’re like college roommates. They talk and text and e-mail every day. Sometimes I’m jealous of their closeness. I don’t have any friends like that, except Katya and Lincoln, and the dog. Ten years ago, we were in New York at my law-school reunion, and the artist invited us to dinner at her fancy apartment. Katya had told her that I like to cook. Almost as soon as we were introduced, the artist asked me to make a pitcher of martinis, and after I mixed them and poured three glasses, she told me how to light the grill, where the salad ingredients were, and that she liked her steak so rare that it would still moo. (I did not hold this against her; Katya likes hers the same way.) The two of them went one way, carrying their glasses and the pitcher, and I stayed in the kitchen, looking for the tools I needed to make dinner. By the time I brought the food to the living room, where we ate off a coffee table while sitting on the floor and watching America’s Next Top Model , Katya and the artist were drunk as skunks.

I mention the point about inebriation solely for the sake of lending credibility to what I am about to say: This artist is a detestable human being. My experience is that drunk people don’t lie, and in her drunken state, she was racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, narcissistic, and altogether unlikable. Twenty years before, while she was involved in a relationship with two other people (who might or might not have known about one another), she got pregnant by a third—well, at least she thinks it was the third. You might consider it a sign of redemption that she agreed to marry the probable father, except that she started cheating again a month after their kid was born.

I’m a libertarian. If people want to be married to lecherous spouses, let them. But my own life is too short to waste even the briefest moment with people like her, and that would be true no matter how long my life happens to be.

When we were back in Houston, and enough time had passed, I told Katya I was amazed that she could be friends with this terrible person. She said, She’s been my friend since she was eight years old, which is way before she was a terrible person. What am I supposed to do? Abandon her? There are beautiful things about her I know about that you don’t, because you are too judgmental to see them. If you have a friend, you have to take them as they are.

There’s not really anything I could say to that. I am judgmental. I’ve already admitted as much. We agreed to disagree about the artist. The next time we were in New York, I stayed at the hotel bar while Katya and she went to dinner.

I have a theory about great artists, which is that they are ordinarily awful human beings. To be a great artist, you have to be so self-centered, so indifferent to everything but your own artistic sensibility, that the whole world, including the people who love you, are just means to your end. Too bad it doesn’t work in reverse. Wouldn’t it be terrific if you could become a great writer or painter or musician by being a shitty person? And don’t write me with a list of exceptions; I am aware that there are some. All I am saying is that in general, my advice to you is that if you should meet a famous artist, do not go to her house for dinner.

But clichés are clichés for a reason, and that dark cloud too had its silver lining. Dinner at the famous artist’s house changed me as a death-penalty lawyer. Until I met her, my focus was on the law, on why some legal rule or principle meant that my client should get a new trial. I’d do exhaustive research, write a powerful legal argument, and then watch no one pay it any heed. The problem with this lawyerly approach is that nobody cares about rules or principles when they’re dealing with a murderer. The lawyer says that the Constitution was violated every which way, and the judge says, Yeah, but your client killed somebody, right? For all our so-called progress, the tribal vengefulness that we think of as limited to backward African countries is still how our legal system works. Deuteronomy trumps the Sixth Amendment every time. Prosecutors and judges kowtow to family members of murder victims who demand an eye for an eye, and the lonely lawyer declaiming about proper procedures is a shouting lunatic in the asylum whom people look at curiously and then walk on by.

Then (if I might say so myself) I had a perfectly cooked piece of grass-fed sirloin while sitting on the floor of the racist artist’s brownstone, and my entire focus changed. My clients were better people than this piece of garbage, and they even killed somebody. That was the magic moment my focus changed. My clients did a terrible, sometimes unforgivable, thing, but most of them were worth saving. It was a moral realization, not a legal epiphany. Sometimes the most immoral, detestable person you’ve ever met can teach you an ethical lesson worth knowing. That’s a lesson, too.

LINCOLN AND KATYA had gone to Galveston. They even took the dog, which was good for the three of them but bad for me, because it meant that when I talked to myself, the dog was not in the room, so I could not pretend that I wasn’t.

It was January 5. On the wall calendar in my office, I had four dates circled in red. O’Neill was scheduled to be executed in one week, on January 12. Green was scheduled to get executed three days later, on January 15. Quaker was scheduled for execution on February 4, and we had his hearing in the trial court on January 27. A typical month had three or four dates with marks-a-lot circles. It was a fairly ordinary agenda for a death-penalty lawyer in Texas.

I took two chocolate glazed donuts out of the Shipley’s box. Kassie said, Two donuts? That’s a record.

I said, Katya and Lincoln took all our food to Galveston. All I’ve got at home are oranges, coffee, ice cream, beer, peanuts, and bourbon. And I’m pacing myself.

Kassie said that she would try to locate Tricia Cummings, the woman that Green said was supposed to have been killed by Cantu. Gary was going to try to find Cantu and take another run at him. I told him that he needed to take Melissa Harmon with him. I was going to call Melissa to tell her about the story that Cantu had left a gun at the scene, and to see whether she could have a chat with Detective Wyatt.

Jerome said, What about me?

I didn’t want him doing anything that couldn’t be interrupted, because I had a feeling that O’Neill was going to cause some interruptions. I said I thought he had his hands full with O’Neill. He said there was nothing left to do but wait. I said, Fine, help Kassie track down Cummings. He looked at me like I had just asked him to rinse out the coffee mugs, but he didn’t say anything. I said, All right, fine. Can you also follow up on the blood? The lab never did call me back. He nodded and almost smiled, slightly mollified.

Melissa Harmon and I met for breakfast the next morning at the Buffalo Grille. I was eating oatmeal. She was eating chicken-fried steak and fried eggs. I said, You’re a real health freak.

She said, Steak and eggs is a classic. You want some?

I shook my head. I told her about my conversation with Green and asked her if she would be willing to talk to Wyatt about the gun. She slowly chewed a piece of meat. After she swallowed it she said, Can you think of a way for me to have that conversation without accusing him of something unethical?

I said, If I could think of that, I’d have the conversation with him myself instead of paying your exorbitant rates.