Stephen King - The Stand

“Listen to me, Sylvester, and listen very carefully.”

“My name’s not—”

“You don’t have the slightest idea how big a jam you’re in, Sylvester.” Devins’s gaze never faltered. His voice was soft and intense. His hair was blond and crewcut, hardly more than a fuzz. His scalp shone through pinkly. There was a plain gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand and a fancy fraternity ring on the third finger of his right. He knocked them together and they made a funny little click that set Lloyd’s teeth on edge. “You’re going to trial in just nine days, Sylvester, because of a decision the Supreme Court handed down four years ago.”

“What was that?” Lloyd was more uneasy than ever.

“It was the case of Markham vs. South Carolina ,” Devins said, “and it had to do with the conditions under which individual states may best administer swift justice in cases where the death penalty is requested.”

“ Death penalty!” Lloyd cried, horror-struck. “You mean the lectric chair? Hey, man, I never killed anybody! Swear to God!”

“In the eyes of the law, that doesn’t matter,” Devins said. “If you were there, you did it.”

“What do you mean, it don’t matter ?” Lloyd nearly screamed. “It does so matter! It better fuckin matter! I didn’t waste those people, Poke did! He was crazy! He was—”

“Will you shut up, Sylvester?” Devins inquired in that soft, intense voice, and Lloyd shut. In his sudden fear he had forgotten the cheers for him in Maximum, and even the unsettling possibility that he might lose a tooth. He suddenly had a vision of Tweety Bird running a number on Sylvester the Cat. Only in his mind, Tweety wasn’t bopping that dumb ole puddy-tat over the head with a mallet or sticking a mousetrap in front of his questing paw; what Lloyd saw was Sylvester strapped into Old Sparky while the parakeet perched on a stool by a big switch. He could even see the guard’s cap on Tweety’s little yellow head.

This was not a particularly amusing picture.

Perhaps Devins saw some of this in his face, because he looked moderately pleased for the first time. He folded his hands on the pile of papers he had taken from his briefcase. “There is no such thing as an accessory when it comes to first-degree murder committed during a felony crime,” he said. “The state has three witnesses who will testify that you and Andrew Freeman were together. That pretty well fries your skinny butt. Do you understand?”

“I—”

“Good. Now to get back to Markham vs. South Carolina . I am going to tell you, in words of one syllable, how the ruling in that case bears on your situation. But first, I ought to remind you of a fact you doubtless learned during one of your trips through the ninth grade: the Constitution of the United States specifically forbids cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Like the fucking lectric chair, damn right,” Lloyd said righteously.

Devins was shaking his head. “That’s where the law was unclear,” he said, “and up until four years ago, the courts had gone round and round and up and down, trying to make sense of it. Does ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ mean things like the electric chair and the gas chamber? Or does it mean the wait between sentencing and execution? The appeals, the delays, the stays, the months and years that certain prisoners—Edgar Smith, Caryl Chessman, and Ted Bundy are probably the most famous—were forced to spend on various Death Rows? The Supreme Court allowed executions to recommence in the late seventies, but Death Rows were still clogged, and that nagging question of cruel and unusual punishment remained. Okay—in Markham vs. South Carolina , you had a man sentenced to the electric chair for the rape-murder of three college co-eds. Premeditation was proved by a diary this fellow, Jon Markham, had kept. The jury sentenced him to death.”

“Bad shit,” Lloyd whispered.

Devins nodded, and gave Lloyd a slightly sour smile. “The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which reconfirmed that capital punishment was not cruel and unusual under certain circumstances. The court suggested that sooner was better… from a legal standpoint. Are you beginning to get it, Sylvester? Are you beginning to see?”

Lloyd didn’t.

“Do you know why you’re being tried in Arizona rather than New Mexico or Nevada?”

Lloyd shook his head.

“Because Arizona is one of four states that has a Capital Crimes Circuit Court which sits only in cases where the death penalty has been asked for and obtained.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You’re going to trial in four days,” Devins said. “The state has such a strong case that they can afford to empanel the first twelve men and women that get called to the box. I’ll drag it out as long as I can, but we’ll have a jury on the first day. The state will present its case on the second day. I’ll try to take up three days, and I’ll filibuster on my opening and closing statements until the judge cuts me off, but three days is really tops. We’ll be lucky to get that. The jury will retire and find you guilty in about three minutes unless a goddamned miracle happens. Nine days from today you’ll be sentenced to death, and a week later, you’ll be dead as dogmeat. The people of Arizona will love it, and so will the Supreme Court. Because quicker makes everybody happier. I can stretch the week—maybe—but only a little.”

“Jesus Christ, but that’s not fair!” Lloyd cried.

“It’s a tough old world, Lloyd,” Devins said. “Especially for ‘mad dog killers,’ which is what the newspapers and TV commentators are calling you. You’re a real big man in the world of crime. You’ve got real drag. You even put the flu epidemic back East on page two.”

“I never pokerized nobody,” Lloyd said sulkily. “Poke, he did it all. He even made up that word.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Devins said. “That’s what I’m trying to pound through your thick skull, Sylvester. The judge is going to leave the Governor room for one stay, and only one. I’ll appeal, and under the new guidelines, my appeal has to be in the hands of the Capital Crimes Circuit Court within seven days or you exit stage left immediately. If they decide not to hear the appeal, I have another seven days to petition the Supreme Court of the United States. In your case, I’ll file my appeal brief as late as possible. The Capital Crimes Circuit Court will probably agree to hear us—the system’s still new, and they want as little criticism as possible. They’d probably hear Jack the Ripper’s appeal.”

“How long before they get to me?” Lloyd muttered.

“Oh, they’ll handle it in jig time,” Devins answered, and his smile became slightly wolfish. “You see, the Circuit Court is made up of five retired Arizona judges. They’ve got nothing to do but go fishing, play poker, drink bonded bourbon, and wait for some sad sack of shit like you to show up in their courtroom, which is really a bunch of computer modems hooked up to the State House, the Governor’s office, and each other. They’ve got telephones equipped with modems in their cars, cabins, even their boats, as well as in their houses. Their average age is seventy-two—”

Lloyd winced.

“—which means some of them are old enough to have actually ridden the Circuit Line out there in the willywags, if not as judges then as lawyers or law students. They all believe in the Code of the West—a quick trial and then up the rope. It was the way out here until 1950 or so. When it came to multiple murderers, it was the only way.”

“Jesus Christ Almighty, do you have to go on about it like that?”