by Scott Pratt
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Judge Glass said. “A guilty plea at arraignment in a death penalty case?”
“This isn’t a death penalty case, judge,” I said. “No notice has been filed.”
I saw the light bulb come on as Judge Glass realized what I was trying to do. To my relief, he seemed amused rather than angry. He turned to the prosecution.
“What do you think about that, Mr. Baker?”
Baker stood, red-faced.
“This is unprecedented, your honor. He can’t do it.”
“There’s nothing in the Rules of Criminal Procedure that prohibits it,” I said. “The rules say a criminal defendant can enter a plea of guilty or not guilty at arraignment. We want to enter a plea of guilty. Mr. Baker hasn’t filed his death notice. He’s had plenty of time; he’s certainly let everyone in the media know his intentions.”
“I was going to file it today,” Deacon said, his voice even whinier than usual.
Glass snickered and looked at Randall. “Mr. Finch, do you understand what your attorney is attempting to do here today?”
“Yes.”
“Have you and your attorney discussed this thoroughly?”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand that if I decide to accept this plea, you’ll be giving up your constitutional right to a trial by jury?”
“Yes.”
Judge Glass sat back in his chair and ran his fingers through his snow-white hair. I could see the rusty wheels in his brain grinding. After a couple of minutes, he leaned forward.
“Mr. Dillard, if I refuse to accept this plea, I assume you’re going to file an appeal immediately?”
“That’s right, judge.”
“And if I accept the plea, I assume you’ll do the same, Mr. Baker?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, if I’m going to make a mistake, I prefer to err on the side of caution. I’m going to refuse to accept Mr. Finch’s guilty plea. Go ahead and file your appeal, Mr. Dillard. We’ll deal with scheduling after we find out what the wise men at the Supreme Court have to say about this.”
“Thank you,” I said. There wasn’t any point in arguing with him. I didn’t really expect Judge Glass to let a baby killer escape the possibility of a death sentence, but it was worth doing just to see the look on Deacon Baker’s face. I told Randall I’d file the appeal immediately and watched the bailiffs lead him back toward his isolation cell. The other inmates in the jail had let the sheriff know that if Randall got into the general population, he wouldn’t last an hour.
Since Lilly would be graduating soon and moving out, I knew her recital that night might be my last opportunity to watch her dance. Caroline told me she’d choreographed a solo for Lilly that was set to a song about sexual abuse. How ironic, I thought, given my situation with Sarah and some of the things Erlene had told me about Angel.
The dance was a lyrical, the song “ I’m OK ” by Christina Aguilera. Lilly had been dancing since she could walk. She was strong in acrobatics, tap, ballet, and jazz, but the lyrical dance was my favorite. I loved the smooth movements, the athletic jumps, the graceful turns.
My daughter was costumed in a long-sleeved, high-necked, solid white dress. There were puffs at each shoulder, and the chiffon skirt gave the illusion of a full circle when she turned. Rhinestones that had been glued onto the costume sparkled under the blue and gold spotlights. Her long auburn hair had been pulled back from her face, and she floated back and forth across the stage as if she were riding on her very own cloud. I was amazed at the changes in both her body and her skill level in the six months since I’d last experienced the pleasure of watching her dance. She was no longer a girl; she’d turned into a young woman, a beautiful and talented young woman.
I felt my heart soar as I watched Lilly turn her body into a powerful form of expression. Her long arms and slender hands caught the subtle accents of the music perfectly, and the flexibility and strength in her legs reflected the hard work and dedication required of a dancer. As the music built, a smile took over my face. She was so lovely, so pure. My day-to-day world was filled with cruelty and evil and ugliness. I experienced this kind of thing so rarely that at one point I realized I was lightheaded, apparently too moved to breathe. As I listened to the lyrics, I understood what Caroline had meant. The song was about a young woman who carried the guilt and shame of sexual abuse at the hands of her father
When the dance was over, I quickly made my way around to the back of the stage and asked another dancer to retrieve Lilly from the dressing room. When she emerged, I kissed her on the cheek.
“Thanks, honey,” I said, “that was incredibly beautiful.”
“Are you all right, Daddy?”
“I’m great,” I said. “I’m absolutely fine.”
“Are you sure?”
She stood on her tiptoes, kissed me on the cheek, and pulled me toward her so she could whisper in my ear.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen you cry.”
June 16
6:00 p.m.
I would’ve preferred concentrating on Angel’s case, but I had to deal with Maynard Bush. Besides Angel and possibly Randall Finch, he was my last death penalty client.
I’d been appointed to represent Maynard by the criminal court judge in Sullivan County, and the trial was quickly approaching. The judge had also appointed a young lawyer from Carter County named Timothy Walker II to help me, but Walker had quickly learned he didn’t have the stomach for dealing with Maynard up close and personal. I couldn’t blame him, but that left the jail visits to me.
Maynard was one of the most intimidating, dangerous men I’d ever had the displeasure of defending. He had a long, violent criminal history and had spent most of his adult life in prison. He was pure predator, always looking for a weakness, always trying to gain an advantage. Dealing with him was a constant game of cat and mouse. The problem was that both Maynard and I wanted to be the cat. As a result, we weren’t getting along.
During a change-of-venue hearing three weeks earlier, Maynard had suddenly told the judge I wasn’t doing my job. He said he wanted a new lawyer. The judge knew better — Maynard was just trying to delay his trial — so he told Maynard he was stuck with me. The judge also granted our motion to change venue. The trial was to be held in Mountain City in June. I had only four weeks to finish preparing, and Maynard wasn’t cooperating. I’d arranged for a forensic psychiatrist to evaluate him. Maynard wouldn’t speak to the doctor. I’d hired an investigator to interview witnesses and check facts. When I sent him to the jail, Maynard profanely told the investigator to get lost. He did the same thing with the mitigation expert.
I’d stayed away from Maynard for three weeks, in part because I was busy, in part to make him think the stunt he pulled in court had genuinely offended me, but primarily because being around him made my skin crawl. Three guards brought him into the interview room at the Sullivan County jail a little after eight in the evening. It had been a long day, but I didn’t want to put off talking with Maynard any longer.
Maynard was about six feet tall, and years of methamphetamine and cocaine abuse had left him as thin as an anorexic. He had shoulder-length black hair he parted in the middle and a dark, smooth complexion. His eyes were almost as dark as his hair. I’d never asked him, but I assumed some Native American heritage, most likely Cherokee or Chickasaw. Both of his arms and his upper torso were covered with tattoos. Their intricate design announced to those who knew about such things that he was a member of the Aryan brotherhood. Most of the white inmates belonged to the brotherhood. It helped them stay alive. The tattoos on Maynard’s chest and back were religious symbols. There was a large dove on his chest and an even larger cross on his back. I’d seen them when a guard brought him in shirtless one day.
Maynard was wearing a standard-issue jumpsuit that was much too large for him. He sat down and folded his long, thin fingers across his stomach. It looked as though he could easily slide his wrists thr
ough the handcuffs, which were attached to a chain around his waist. The guards had secured the shackles around his ankles to the legs of his chair, which was bolted into the concrete floor. He didn’t look at me.
“Hello, Maynard,” I said. “How have you been since you tried to ambush me in court?”
Silence.
“There are a couple of things we need to discuss today if you’re feeling up to it. Are you feeling up to it?”
Nothing.
“I’ll take that as a yes. First of all, I need to know why you won’t submit to a psychological evaluation. I’m not insinuating that you have mental problems, Maynard. I just need to have you evaluated to see whether the doctor can find something that might help us.”
Maynard sat there like a stone. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing.
“I’d also like to know why you won’t talk to the investigator or the mitigation expert. They’re trying to help you. Don’t you get that?”
Silence.
“I’ve been through all of the evidence, including your background, Maynard. How about you and I get real with each other? You’ve spent most of your life in prison. Killed your first wife and got the charge reduced, murdered some dude who was screwing around with your girlfriend and got convicted, served fifteen years. Killed at least two men in prison and got away with both of those murders. As soon as you got out, you started hauling cocaine and meth. While you were at it, you sold and smoked and snorted practically anything you could get your hands on. Now you’ve killed and cut up a couple of teenagers. They can prove you tied the girl up and had sex with her before you shot her. They’ve got semen from her vagina; the DNA matches yours. They’ve got both victims’ blood all over that little house you rented. Got your signature on the lease at the storage place where you stashed the bodies. That was bright. Didn’t you think they’d start to smell after a few days? They’ve got the kids’ blood and your fingerprints on the chain saw you used to cut them up. And they’ve got a lot more.”
“I don’t care.”
“Really? Why not?”
“Cause I know I done wrong and I deserve to die.”
I nearly fell out of the chair. I’d defended people who had decided to accept their fate and their punishment, but in a death penalty case, it wasn’t so easy to do. There was no way the prosecution was going to offer Maynard anything. He had raped, shot and dismembered a young girl and shot and dismembered her boyfriend, and he was a career criminal. The only thing they’d accept would be Maynard’s pleading guilty to two murders and agreeing to the death penalty, and there was simply no way I was going to let him do that. If the state was going to kill him, it was my duty to make sure they could prove their case. I couldn’t just walk him into court and say, “Okay, we quit. Go ahead and kill my client.” We were going to trial whether Maynard wanted to or not.
“I can appreciate that,” I said, “but you have to understand that we’re going to trial anyway. Maynard, we just got a change of venue. At least you’ll get a fair trial in Mountain City.”
“I don’t want you to put on no witnesses for me,” Maynard said. “You put me up there, I’m gonna tell them I did it.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” I said. “Sit there like a deaf mute?”
“You just do the best you can. God will take care of the rest.”
“Don’t do that to me, Maynard. Don’t tell me you’ve found God in here. I know he’s here, because everybody in here finds him, but if I’m going to try to defend you, you have to help me a little. Don’t leave it in God’s hands. God helps those who help themselves.”
“There’s only one thing I want you to do,” Maynard said, “and it ain’t got nothing to do with the trial.”
“What’s that?”
“I’d like a little privacy is all.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I been writing to this woman on the outside. Her name’s Bonnie Tate. Me and her have got real close, you know? She’s the one that’s made me realize I don’t have to lie no more, God will forgive me and accept me into heaven. I think maybe I’m in love, Dillard. Can you believe it? Ol’ Maynard falling flat out in love with a woman I ain’t never even met. I even tried to write her a little poetry. But that’s the problem. It’s these guards. They look at my mail. They brought the poetry in and gave it to some of the other dudes in here. Them boys been messing with me ever since.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard about guards trying to embarrass and humiliate inmates with the contents of their outgoing mail. He was probably telling the truth.
“What do you want me to do?” I said.
“You don’t have to do much. They can’t read letters if I put ‘legal mail’ on the envelope, can they?”
“They’re not supposed to. Communication between client and lawyer is privileged, even if the client is an inmate.”
“All I want to do is put Bonnie’s letters in an envelope and address them to your office. So I’ll write ‘legal mail’ on the envelope, and underneath that I’ll write her initials. When you see it come into the office, all you have to do is either call her up and tell her to come get her letter or forward it on to her. I’ll give you her phone number and address.”
I thought about it for a minute. All he was asking was to be able to write love letters without being humiliated. But then I thought again about who I was dealing with.
“Sorry, Maynard, can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s probably illegal, and I like life on the outside just fine. If the wrong people found out what I was doing, they’d lock me up.”
“Well can you at least fix it so she can visit me?”
I’d set up jail visits for plenty of clients. It seemed like a reasonable request.
“Now, that I can do. Put her on your visitor’s list.”
“You know something, Dillard?” he said. “I didn’t like you much when I first met you. Thought you was like all them other mush-mouthed lawyers. But at least you try to do the right thing. You been coming up here to see me pretty regular and you been straight with me. I ain’t saying I want to marry you or nothing, but you’re a pretty decent dude.”
I didn’t know what to say. A vicious, cruel, remorseless, murdering sociopath was doing his best to convince me he liked me, and I wondered why.
“Can I ask you a question?” he finally said.
“Sure.”
“How come you do this kind of stuff, Dillard? Ain’t no way you could like it much. How come you defend men like me?”
The question took me by surprise, and I leaned back in the chair for a second. I didn’t want to get into talking about my motivations, and I didn’t want to tell him I was getting out.
“Why do you care?” I said.
“C’mon, Dillard, humor old Maynard. How come you take these death penalty cases?”
“Most of them are appointed. But if you have to know, Maynard, I guess I have this sort of simple philosophy about it. I just don’t think it’s right for a government to pass laws telling its citizens they can’t kill each other and then turn around and kill its citizens. It just seems hypocritical to me.”
Maynard grinned. “You’re a do-gooder, Dillard. That’s what you are.”
“Maybe. Something like that.”
“You’ll take care of the visits, then?” he asked when I didn’t say anything else.
“Yeah, Maynard. I’ll set it up.”
I thought it was the least I could do for a man who was soon to be condemned to die.
June 16
9:15 p.m.
It was after nine o’clock when I finally finished with Maynard. It was almost dark, but it was clear and warm and I could see the stars twinkling above the lights in the jail parking lot. I was tired and wanted to get home quickly, so I took a short cut along a back road that bordered Boone Lake. As I drove along with the windows rolled down, I started thinking about how Angel was getting along at the jail. She was locked up wit
h murderers, child abusers, drug addicts, thieves, hookers, and cons. So was Sarah, but Sarah was tough as nails. It had to be incredibly difficult for a young girl. I imagined what it would be like to be caged most of the day and herded like sheep the rest of the time, to be taunted and bullied by guards and inmates, to be subjected to all kinds of physical indignities, to have absolutely no privacy. And if she really was innocent? The thought made me cringe.
I was about halfway home when I noticed headlights in my rear-view mirror. They were approaching fast. I thought about pulling over and letting whoever was in such a hurry pass, but I was on a narrow, curvy stretch of road with steep slopes on both sides. To my right were rocky cliffs, and to my left, thirty feet below, was the lake.
The vehicle behind me turned its headlights on bright when it got to within fifty feet or so. I had to turn the rear view mirror down to keep from being blinded. I slowed and looked in the side-view mirror. The vehicle was right on my tail.
I started tapping the brakes to try to get whoever it was to back off. They didn’t. I sped up around a sharp curve but almost lost control in a patch of gravel. When I got the truck straightened back out, the vehicle bumped me.
“Why, you sorry son of a…” I slammed on the brakes, and the truck skidded to a halt in the middle of a short straightaway. I kept an old aluminum baseball bat under the seat, and I fully intended to use it to on the person behind me. I reached down and felt for the bat, hoping whoever it was didn’t have a gun.
With a sudden loud crash, my truck jerked forward. I twisted around and looked out the rear windshield over the bed. I could tell that the vehicle silhouetted behind me was a pick-up, bigger than mine, but between the surrounding darkness and the glare of the headlights, I couldn’t make out the color. It was pushing me along the road.
I turned back and grabbed the wheel, trying to hold the truck straight and pushing on the brakes with all my strength. The tires screamed, but the truck began slowly to turn toward the lake. I tried to turn hard to the right, but the truck behind me had gotten its bumper into my left-rear fender and was turning me. I was moving faster by the second, and I had absolutely no control.