David Dow - The Autobiography of an Execution

Fuck it. I was just so tired of this. I practically spit it out. I said, I represent the defendant.

He had started to glance down at his clipboard, but his head jerked up, like a fishing pole when the diving fish snaps the line. He had the heel of his right hand on the butt of his holstered gun. He bent forward from the waist so his face was framed in the window. I was not going to look away. He would have to blink.

I won. He broke the stare and stood upright and looked down at my license. I thought to myself, Shit. What have I done.

The trooper placed the clipboard under his arm and grasped the door frame with both his hands. He said, Sir, I have been in law enforcement for thirty years. I had a friend, a guard in Huntsville, who was killed when the Churrasco gang tried to break out. Do you remember that? He left a wife and three baby daughters. I still sit next to them in church every Sunday. I am a Christian, sir. I do not believe it is man’s province to carry out God’s punishment. Not all my fellow officers agree. I’ve always found it perplexing that God’s word is truth, but His creatures disagree as to its meaning.

He tore my ticket in half and dropped the pieces on the passenger seat. He said, I’ll radio up ahead so you don’t have any more problems. Please do me a favor and keep it under a hundred.

THE WARDEN WAS WAITING for me when I got to the prison at ten minutes after ten. A guard started to pass a metal-detecting wand over me. The warden waved him away and said, Follow me. We walked back to the holding cell where I had visited with Ezekiel Green not two weeks before. It was nighttime, like the old days, when they carried out executions at midnight, and as we crossed the small patch of grass, I looked up and saw a sky full of stars. I saw Saturn and next to it Regulus, brightest star in Leo, Leo the Lion, king of the jungle, powerful and fearless, the opposite of me.

Sitting at the ocean’s edge and staring out to sea, or lying in an open field and looking at the heavens, I experience the same feeling that might well be the opposite of awe. It is the powerful realization that nothing means anything. The universe is so big and so old, and we are so small and so ephemeral, that the very concept of our place in the world is an absurdity. None of my dichotomies makes any sense. Whether I am a good husband or a philanderer, a loving father or an absent one, a caring lawyer or an indifferent hack, is so trivial as to be irrelevant. Trivial is too big a word. They matter about as much as whether Winona chews up half a pair of Katya’s expensive shoes or whether I smash a cockroach. You can laugh at your smallness or cry. The result’s the same. Nobody cares whether Quaker lives or dies, and nobody should, because nothing is worth caring about.

Well, at least that’s what I tried to tell myself.

The danger of perspective is that it can cause one to conclude that everything is just an aesthetic choice. Whether you are good or bad, assuming those words even mean anything, is, morally speaking, roughly equivalent to whether you prefer chocolate or vanilla. You can disbelieve that if you want. Like I said, belief is a choice. But truth has nothing to do with whether you believe it.

WHEN THE WARDEN SWUNG OPEN the heavy door and I saw Quaker in the holding cell, he was listening to an Al Green CD and—I am not making this up—dancing. The warden looked over at the three guards and furrowed his brow. They dropped their heads but made no move to unplug the music. The warden quietly closed the door behind me. I did not hear it lock. Quaker held up his right hand like a cop stopping traffic and sang a song about being tired of being alone. He asked one of the guards to turn it down a little and said to me, I love the reverend. Then, What’s going on? Why’s this taking so long?

I asked one of the guards if I could sit in the cell with Quaker. He said, This’ll probably get me fired, then he swung open the door and I walked inside. I stuck out my hand. Quaker paused, still cautious and reserved, then smiled a huge smile and took my hand in both of his. He pulled me toward him, like I was a scared dog on a leash, which wasn’t far from the truth, and when he let my hand go, I felt as awkward as a boy on a first date who doesn’t know whether to kiss the girl. Quaker wrapped his arms around me, and I hugged him back. His eyes were moist, but—and this is the craziest thing—he seemed almost happy.

The phone rang and one of the guards answered it. Quaker said, It’s peculiar, I know, but I feel really good. I know why they call it being at peace. I’ve been buzzing on the inside for so long, and now it’s calm, like the ocean with no waves. Even this morning on the row, all this noise and banging, all the usual shit, but it was like muffled, like I was underwater or something.

The guard hung up the phone and told us it was time to go. Quaker smiled again and nodded at me. Shouldn’t he have been shackled? Was he shackled? He said, I hope Pascal bet right. I want to see my Dorris, and my babies. But you know what? Even if I don’t get to, I don’t want to be here anymore without them. You know what I’m saying, Professor? Either way I win.

I said, It’s been a privilege to represent you, Henry.

He said, Do me a favor and don’t be second-guessing all your decisions for once. I know what you did for me. I know you believe me. Tell them lawyers in your office how much I appreciate it.

I will. I will.

And here. Please give this to my mama and tell her I love her.

He handed me his Bible. He hugged me again. He whispered in my ear, Thank you. I might have felt his lips brush against my cheek.

The guard who had answered the phone said, I think we got to go now, Henry.

The guard called Henry by his name. Funny that’s what I remember.

TWO OF THE GUARDS took Henry by either arm. The third opened the door to the courtyard for me and pointed me toward the door for the witnesses. When the door closed behind me, I heard Henry singing.

My phone rang. Kassie told me what I had already inferred. She said, The Supremes denied us. It was five to four. The governor turned us down, too.

I felt my heart quicken. In the Supreme Court, there is something called the rule of four. With only a few exceptions, nobody has an automatic right to have the Supreme Court consider his appeal. You have to get permission. The legal device used to make this request is the petition for writ of certiorari. By a long-standing convention of the Court, if four justices want to hear the case, the Court will hear it. This rule of four can create an anomaly. When a death-row inmate is facing execution, it takes five justices to grant a stay of execution. So it is possible for four justices to want to hear the case, but unless a fifth justice votes to grant a stay, the inmate will be executed before the Court can consider his case, and if the execution goes forward, there will be no case to hear. In the esoteric language of the law, the case will be rendered moot by the death of the petitioner. Many years ago, Justice Lewis Powell would always provide the fifth vote for a stay if four of his colleagues wanted to hear a case, but since Powell’s retirement, nobody does that. Over the past few years, there have been more than a dozen inmates executed even though four justices wanted to hear their case, because no fifth justice would provide the necessary additional vote for a stay.