PRAISE FOR
THE HANGING JUDGE
“The protagonist of this novel is a judge, and, improbably enough, so is the author. The result is a marvelous entertainment, a page-turning mystery full of romance and humor, which takes us inside the fraught and rather secretive world of a judge’s chambers. In the best way—that is, indirectly—Ponsor informs us about the facts that ought to inform debate on the death penalty. What impressed me most of all was the book’s authority; it has the heft of authenticity.” —Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains and Strength in What Remains
“That rare gem: a crackling court procedural with authentic characters and beautiful prose.” —Anita Schreve, author of The Pilot’s Wife and The Weight of Water
“Novels have shown us what it’s like to be a juror, an attorney, even the defendant, but this is the first I’ve read that puts us up on the bench—a knowing, nuanced portrait of a judge and the often imperfect system he watches over.” —Joseph Kanon, author of The Good German and Istanbul Passage
“A masterful work that took me inside the courtroom, behind the bench, and into the hearts and minds of a cast of unforgettable characters… . Thrilling, perfectly paced, beautifully written, witty, so very smart and so satisfying.” —Elinor Lipman, author of Then She Found Me and The Family Man
“A compelling tale, with a cast of vividly drawn characters and a plot that twists and turns—it entertains, as a good novel should, but even better, it also informs, as only the best ones do.” —Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action
“A debut that reads like the work of an accomplished master. A suspenseful page-turner written from the unique perspective not of a lawyer or defendant, but of the judge. I’ve never before read a book—either fiction or non-fiction—that conveys the dilemma of the death penalty with such a combination of sophistication and humanity.” —Joe McGinniss, author of Fatal Vision and The Selling of the President
“Written with precision and heartfelt passion for the law, this riveting courtroom thriller brings the legal system to life. Filled with memorable characters, infused with a deep understanding of the death penalty and the complex interchange between crime, the police and the justice system, The Hanging Judge is an electric story, well told.” —John Katzenbach, author of Just Cause and Hart’s War
“Both an ode to the law in all its glory and a reflection on its sometimes tragic limitations, Michael Ponsor’s The Hanging Judge will appeal to courtroom insiders as well as readers more generally drawn to a taut story well told. Set in western Massachusetts, at the center of the action is a series of trials, historic, present-day, and of the heart. The verdict: this debut author—a federal judge in his other life—is guilty of a tour de force and, we can only hope, the start of a rich new career.” —Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle and Uphill Walkers: Portrait of a Family
THE
HANGING
JUDGE
Michael Ponsor
In memory of
Dominic Daley and James Halligan,
hanged by mistake at Northampton, Massachusetts,
June 5, 1806
And for Nancy, always.
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Prologue
PART ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
PART TWO
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
PART THREE
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
PART FOUR
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
Acknowledgments
About the Author
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Because I am a sitting federal judge who has presided over a death penalty trial and could be called upon to do so again, I feel bound to emphasize two points about this narrative.
First, the case of United States v. Hudson is entirely invented. I have tried to convey the tone and detail of a federal capital trial, but Judge David Norcross is not me, and Hudson bears no factual resemblance to the death penalty case tried in my court. Indeed, with one exception, none of the characters in the story is intended to resemble any human being, living or dead. The exception is Bill Redpath, the fictional defense counsel, who has been drawn in part from my memory of the late William P. Homans Jr., a courageous and skillful defense lawyer. I was privileged to work with Bill during the first years of my legal career.
Second, no one should presume that the opinions expressed or implied in this novel by various fictional characters regarding the American justice system in general, or the death penalty in particular, are necessarily mine.
Finally, the reader should know that Dominic Daley and James Halligan, to whom this book is dedicated, were flesh-and-blood human beings. A monument to the two men stands on the side of Route 66, about one mile west of the center of Northampton, Massachusetts. The portions of the book recounting their story are, to the best of my ability, historically accurate. The quoted passages in these segments are not my invention but have been taken from official records, letters, and other documents of the time.
Michael A. Ponsor, U.S.D.J.
Springfield, Massachusetts
February 14, 2013
PROLOGUE
Edgar “Peach” Delgado was down to his last three and a half minutes, though, of course, he didn’t know that. He strode out onto the front porch of his girlfriend’s house, grinning and pulling along a cluster of red, white, and blue helium balloons. Peals of female laughter and a small boy wearing striped pajama bottoms followed him out the door.
“With three sugars!” a woman’s voice called from inside.
The boy danced around, grabbing at the balloons and smiling up at Delgado worshipfully. Delgado bent to hand the trailing strings back to the child. “Go on and get yourself ready for school. I don’t care if it is your birthday. I’ll kick your butt.”
Delgado trotted down the steps and walked up to the corner of Walnut and High Streets. The Flats area of Holyoke, Massachusetts, was a beat-up part of town, but this autumn morning was so pretty even the dented trashcans and peeling storefronts looked prime. He swung his legs easily, feeling beneath his green Celtics jersey the .50 caliber Israeli Desert Eagle snug against his tailbone. He wouldn’t feel dressed without it.
Delgado was headed to the Cumberland Farms, where his cousin Joselito worked, to pick up some free coffee and saltines for his pregnant girlfriend, Carmella. It was the Tuesday after the Columbus Day weekend, and above him the October sky conta
ined not a wisp of cloud.
Standing on the corner, Delgado rubbed his eyes and sniffed hard to clear his head. He’d been up late with connections down in Hartford, picking up half a brick to cook up into crack. He recalled with a twinge in his gut how during the negotiations some punk had stuck a pistol in his ear. People did useless shit like that all the time now. His own troops, the Walnut Street Posse, were under siege, and the safe parts of the Flats were getting tighter every day.
For maybe the twentieth time, Delgado decided he’d quit the street. This spring, he would be setting a grandson on his mother’s lap. He could lose the Eagle, stop hustling, and start acting like a proper dad. He glanced down the street at the Walnut Street Clinic, smiling to himself, remembering how crazy he’d gotten during Carmella’s last appointment there, tracing the shadow of his boy’s unit on the ultrasound and laughing like a fool.
Three houses down, Ginger Daley O’Connor, a pediatric nurse, maneuvered her minivan into a parking spot, uncharacteristically late for her volunteer shift at the clinic. As she exited the car, she tugged at the ends of her short, dark hair. She’d been rushed, and it was still damp.
Like Delgado, she was cheered by the sunny October morning, the best time of year in New England. The sawdust and gasoline smell of the Flats reminded her of the crowded apartment where she and her brothers had grown up. For all its grime and problems these days, she still loved to breathe the air of the old neighborhood.
When Ginger pulled open the slider to grab her yellow fleece, an avalanche of sports equipment, tangled helmets and shoulder pads, began tumbling out. She shoved the mess back in with her foot, slammed the door, and crossed the street, scowling. Twice she’d told the boys to get their hockey junk out of her car. Time for another little talk.
As Ginger approached the clinic’s entry, a brown-and-white beagle puppy tied to a parking meter wriggled happily toward her. She could not resist bending to give the precious thing a scratch behind the ears while it sniffed at the toes of her green Nikes. When she straightened up, she caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of her eye: an emerald-colored Celtics jersey in a splash of sunlight up by the Cumberland Farms store and a car slowing down.
Peach Delgado was about to step off the curb, then hesitated when he noticed a gray Nissan Stanza crawling through the intersection. A man who looked vaguely familiar threw him the Posse sign from the rear passenger window and called out.
“Yo, Peach, what’s up?”
Delgado did not respond right away. He was on the border of WSP territory, and he knew it was a common trick for gang enforcers to flash a rival’s sign. He stroked his mustache with his thumb and forefinger, considering. After a pause, he took another look up at the mild blue sky, decided it was too early for this kind of trouble, and halfheartedly flashed back, the three middle fingers of his left hand slapped downward on his thigh—an inverted W standing for the gang’s bywords, Loyalty, Duty, and Honor.
The Nissan’s rear window blew out in a clatter of gunfire, a smacking sound like a handful of marbles thrown against a chalkboard. Three bullets pierced Delgado: right thigh, stomach, and chest. There was no time even for fear.
Inside the Cumberland Farms, Joe Cárdenas, startled by the shots, stumbled around the counter into the doorway and saw his cousin Peach face-down in what looked like a spreading puddle of dark oil. One of his legs was twisted against the curb, and his right hand was stretched into the crosswalk as though he were grabbing for something. His body squirmed a little then shuddered into stillness. A hard voice inside the Nissan shouted, “Siempre La Bandera, motherfucker!” and the car took off, squealing around the corner.
The sound of the sharp cracks and breaking glass also brought the beagle’s owner, a neighborhood sixth grader, running to the clinic’s entrance. What she saw on the sidewalk was a middle-aged white lady trying to push herself up off the pavement with one hand, while she held on to her throat with the other. The lady’s eyes were wide-open, staring.
The girl dashed out to rescue her puppy, who was tangled around the meter and making deep red, clover-shaped paw prints on the concrete. Then she noticed the blood spurting like water from a hose through the lady’s fingers, pouring down the front of her yellow fleece and onto the concrete. The girl began screaming. Panicked spectators were crowding the sidewalk. Someone called 911, but it seemed like it was forever before anyone got there.
PART ONE
1
Fifteen miles south, well beyond the sound of the sirens, the Honorable David S. Norcross, U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts, Western Division, looked down from the bench, preparing for his millennium. Today, according to his law clerk, would be his eighty-fourth sentencing. At an average of twelve years per sentence, which was conservative, this meant that in two years on the bench he would have handed down more than one thousand years in prison. He had assumed that by now this would be getting easier. He’d assumed wrong.
Fate had reserved an especially grim task for the judge this morning. The alleged crack dealer he was sentencing was an obese kid in his mid-twenties with a thin ponytail and a spatter of acne across his forehead. Unlike most defendants, however, this one was quite possibly innocent. Certainly, if the case had been tried to him, and not to a jury, Norcross would have found a reasonable doubt and acquitted the man. But the eight women and four men who made up the jury had believed the government’s informant, apparently, and Norcross’s hands were tied.
The defendant was hunched over the counsel table, bouncing his shoulders and knees as though he were chilly. Was he okay? He seemed to sense the judge’s concern and looked up. Their eyes met for a bottomless instant, and the young man squared himself and nodded. He was not going to fall apart.
Norcross, relieved, returned the nod, but as he drew breath to speak, a gulping sob rose from one of the two women seated at the rear of the courtroom. The judge held off, not wanting to seem indifferent, and curious to know which woman the sound came from. The mother or the girlfriend?
It was the defendant’s mother, bent forward with both hands over her face. It was almost always the mother. The girlfriend sat with a baby in her lap, her hard eyes staring into the air in front of her.
Norcross never knew what to make of this. The mother might be refusing to believe that her son had gone back to his old street life. The girlfriend might know, or suspect, that he had and might be royally steamed. But maybe these women just had different ways of confronting despair, an emotion Norcross knew well. He took a sip of water and replaced the paper cup at arm’s length where it would not soak the presentence report if he knocked it over.
All the applicable procedures had been respected; the defendant had received, technically speaking, his fair trial. The attorneys had made their pitches, and the defendant had exercised his right of allocution—his entitlement to speak before being sentenced, no matter how hopeless the situation might be. In a few minutes now, the sentencing would be over. This evening, the judge would go home, pour himself a Jack Daniel’s, and unburden himself in a long soliloquy to his dog.
Norcross shifted his gaze to the right, still hesitating. Through the tall windows behind the jury box a distant bouquet of red and orange was visible and behind that the gold line of a hill under a bright sky. The foliage was at its peak.
A murmur from somewhere in the courtroom brought him back. Time to put the knife in.
“Pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, and having considered the factors enumerated at 18 U.S. Code Section 3553(a), it is the judgment of this court that the defendant be remanded to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for a term of life without possibility of parole.”
The mother’s moan—“Oh God!”—set the defendant’s knees jiggling again. He rubbed something out of his eye, but he held on. The baby, squeezed too hard perhaps, began whimpering in his mother’s arms. Norcross pushed his papers to one side.
“Defendant will remain in the custody of the United States marshal pending designation of the facility where he will be permanently housed. Will there be anything further?”
Defense counsel and the assistant U.S. attorney stood and spoke simultaneously.
“No, Your Honor.”
The defense lawyer’s eyes were smoldering with disgust, but he could not fairly blame the judge. The term was mandatory. The AUSA, compelled by the statute and, the judge suspected, by her politically ambitious boss to reject all deals and insist on a sentence she must have known was out of whack, looked away and shuffled her papers glumly. Crack was bad stuff, sure, Norcross thought but, even assuming the defendant is guilty, do we really have to lock him up for the next fifty or sixty years?
“We’ll be in recess.”
The courtroom deputy called out, “All rise!” Everyone stood, even the mother and the stone-faced girlfriend. The defendant got to his feet, blinked back at the crying infant, and automatically pressed his wrists behind his back. While the judge walked out of the courtroom, he heard the familiar scritch of the cuffs going on.
David Norcross was a tall man, and as he loped down the hallway to his chambers, his head bobbed as though he were ducking under a beam every third step. His law clerk Frank Baldwin trotted two steps behind him like a fat squire pursuing a lanky knight.
“Well, that sure sucked,” Frank said amiably.
“Go talk to Congress,” Norcross said over his shoulder. “Two priors plus fifty grams of crack equals life. No discretion. I’m not a judge. I’m an adding machine for crying out loud.”
Frank drew closer. “Some priors! Senior year in high school he sells two baggies of pot. Then he hits some guy with a stick in a fight over his girlfriend.”
“It was enough to tie me down.” Norcross quickened his step, eager for the comfort of his large desk and the distraction of the next case.
“Do you really think he set up the deal? I mean …”
Norcross broke in. “The jury thought so, Frank. The buck stops there.” He shoved open the door to his chambers suite.
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