by Reed Arvin
Standing next to Carl, vibrating slightly with excitement like a child eating his first Thanksgiving dinner at the grown-up’s table, is Jeff Stillman, first-year prosecutor just out of the University of Georgia. Stillman is tall, good-looking, pledged Kappa Alpha, and still wears the fraternity ring. He’s talking, and looking at him, I can’t help thinking he would make an excellent newscaster. He’s like a young Peter Jennings, only without the gravitas. Sort of a Jennings Lite. “I get this call from a Professor Philip Buchanan from Georgetown University,” he says. “He’s the founder of the Justice Project. Their goal is to review every death penalty case for the last ten years where there’s a chance DNA evidence can prove the convicted is not guilty.”
Rayburn looks displeased. “God, not more of that. These clowns are just gaming the system, driving us nuts. We’ve got ninety-five people on death row in this state. What’s he want to do, review every one of them?”
Stillman nods. “That’s what he says. He’s got funding from somewhere. It’s a nonprofit foundation or something.” Not newscasting, I think. Maybe sports.
Rayburn shakes his head. “They know we can’t afford the time. You’re talking about a crap load of paperwork.”
Stillman waves him off. “Not all at once. It’s going to take a long time. But he has a place to start. It’s pretty interesting, too, considering the guy’s already been executed.”
Rayburn looks up warily. “If he’s already been executed, I fail to see the point.”
“Somebody else just confessed to the crime.” For the first time, I start to seriously pay attention. The fact that my life is about to change is vaguely announcing itself now, a light humming in my synapses. I turn my head toward Stillman, and he’s smiling, as though he’s the bearer of good news. This impression, I’m pretty sure, couldn’t be more wrong. “It’s the Wilson Owens thing,” he says. “The guy who got executed last year.”
Rayburn looks at me, then bursts into relieved laughter. “I get it,” he says. “It’s the EMT thing. God, talk about beating a dead horse.”
Stillman gives a confused look, and Rayburn points at me. “You’re new here, Stillman. You don’t know Dennehy is famous.”
“For what?”
“For being the only man in history to get two different people convicted for killing the same man.”
Stillman looks surprised. “You mean like a wheel man on a robbery? That happens all the time.”
“No,” Rayburn says, smiling indulgently. “Two people acting independently, who don’t even know each other. It was one for the record books.” He settles in to explain. “Wilson Owens, career criminal, calmly stands outside the Sunshine Grocery in east Nashville smoking cigarettes. He’s working up his determination, because he’s getting ready to go inside the store and exchange the life of the manager for—what was it?”
“Three hundred forty-six dollars and nineteen cents,” I say. Rayburn’s going to get it wrong, of course—he embellishes the story more every time he tells it—but I don’t say anything. Once he starts in, there’s no point in stopping him.
“So Owens walks into the store,” Rayburn says, “he raises a Browning BPS pistol-gripped, sawed-off shotgun from inside his overcoat, and he empties it at point-blank range into Steven Davidson, the manager. Bad enough. But there’s a woman unlucky enough to be in the store at the same time. She’s in the back, and she takes off, moving pretty slow because she’s old and overweight. Owens, the bastard, has emptied his gun. He didn’t know she was in the store. So he calmly reloads from a TacStar side-saddle shell holder to take care of her. But by then, she’s past him, see, almost to the front door. So he shoots her twice in the back—I told you, he’s a bastard—and the shots splinter the lower vertebrae of her spine.”
“God,” Stillman says. “That’s merciless.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Rayburn says. He’s enjoying himself now, not because of what happened to Lucinda Williams, the sixty-eight-year-old victim, but because of what happened to Owens. “So picture the scene. We got the two victims down, and Owens loading up a bag with—damn it, Thomas, how much was it again?”
“Three hundred forty-six dollars and nineteen cents.”
“Right. Owens thinks both victims are dead, so he takes his money and leaves. But the thing is, the woman isn’t dead. She’s alive, although just barely. She lies there, four, five minutes. Pretty soon, the EMTs arrive. The woman’s got one hell of a will to live, because she’s still hanging on, still breathing. At which point, an EMT three weeks into the job proceeds to…what was it he did, Thomas?”
“Performed an unrecognized esophageal intubation.” Rayburn rolls his eyes, indicating he prefers English. “He stuck an air tube in the wrong hole.”
Stillman’s eyes widen. “You mean…”
“You got it,” Rayburn says, nodding. “First, Dennehy gets Owens convicted for murdering the woman. Then he sticks the EMT with negligent homicide for killing the same woman.” Rayburn bursts into laughter. “Damn, that took balls.”
“The EMT was found to have methamphetamine in his bloodstream,” I say quietly. “And a very troubled past he concealed on his job application. He had washed out of medic school once before, with the army. I couldn’t let that slide.” I hate this story for a variety of reasons: I don’t like to relive what happened to Steven Davidson, the manager, or to Lucinda Williams, the innocent bystander; and even though I take pride in my work, I don’t like boasting about sending somebody to the death chamber. To my mind, both are tragedies, although one is in the interest of justice. The EMT’s lawyer had begged me to grant his client a pretrial diversion, which would have expunged his record after fulfilling some parole terms. But I wasn’t going to sit across the table from Lucinda Williams’s widower and tell him that what happened to his wife rated a slap on the wrist. The EMT had made a mistake that, under normal circumstances, could certainly happen. But there are standard tests to avoid it, and the EMT didn’t perform them because he was six feet off the ground on meth.
“Come on, Dennehy,” Rayburn says. “It was brilliant, and you know it. Two slam dunks.”
“Didn’t they appeal?” Stillman asks.
“Three times,” Carl says. “It was inevitable, once the EMT got convicted. The defense wanted to know how they could both be guilty. Either one killed her, or the other did.”
“Makes sense,” Stillman says.
Rayburn smiles beneficently. “Which makes absolutely no difference to the law,” he says. “You can’t appeal merely on a logical basis. You got to have a legal basis. A misapplication of the law or inadequate representation. Something solid like that.”
Stillman looks over at me again. “So what really killed her?” he asks. “The gunshot wounds or the screwed up medical procedure?”
Rayburn and Carl swivel their heads toward me. Even though Stillman’s question is, as they say, the heart of the matter, I don’t like this kind of talk. On a murder case I wall myself off, getting as far inside the head of the accused as humanly possible. I’ve been known to lose seven or eight pounds on a case, just from forgetting to eat. But when it’s over, it’s over. I never want to hear the accused’s name again. “It was the usual dueling experts,” I say. In the first case, “ours maintained the gunshot wounds were fatal, no matter what the EMT did. Theirs maintained if that EMT hadn’t made the mistake, she’d be rolling herself around in a wheelchair today. In the absence of a consensus, it came down to the closing arguments.”
“Which is where Thomas shines,” Rayburn says. “He’s like that guy for the Yankees—Mariano Rivera. He’s a closer, God damn it.”
Carl smiles. “The man can close, no question.”
“Got covered on Court TV,” Rayburn says.
Stillman raises an eyebrow. “No kidding. Court TV.” He says the words reverently, like they’re holy.
“It was a long time ago,” I say. “Seven years.” What was the EMT’s name? Chuck. No, Charles. He was big on everybody using his fu
ll name. Charles Bridges.
“And it’s a dead dog,” Rayburn says. “If this Justice Project or whoever wants to try to run this thing through the meat grinder again, fine by me. Let them make Wilson Owens their hero. Because at the end of the day, the EMT thing was just a sideshow. Nothing is ever going to change the fact that Wilson Owens is the man who pulled the trigger of that gun. And nothing is going to change the fact that he’s the one who killed those people.”
Stillman’s relaxed smile doesn’t waver. He looks like he’s made of metal, he’s so unchanging. “That’s news to Kwame Jamal Hale,” he says.
The humming inside me ratchets up a notch. The bad feeling is growing. “Who’s Kwame Jamal Hale?”
“The man who swears he’s the one who committed those crimes.”
Carl, Rayburn, and I exchange glances. “You mean he made a confession?” Rayburn asks.
“Yeah,” Stillman answers. “This guy Hale says it was him, not Owens. He says he framed Owens over some beef they had. He said he wanted to take Owens down, so he set him up.”
“The hell he did,” Rayburn grumbles. “Three women testified they saw Owens smoking outside the store just before the robbery. His DNA was found on the cigarette butts. Not this guy…what’s his name again?”
“Hale,” Stillman says. “Kwame Jamal.”
“Yeah, not Hale’s DNA. Wilson Owens’s DNA. And not tested by the old system. Damn it, Thomas, what was that called?”
“RFLP.”
“Yeah. Not that one. The new one.” He looks at me helplessly.
“STR.”
“Damn right. And the same women who said they saw Owens smoking cigarettes outside the store picked him out of a lineup. Twice.”
Stillman opens a file, pulls out a photograph, and tosses it on Rayburn’s desk. He’s acting real casual, like we always discuss important cases together. This has never happened, except possibly in his mind. “Hale is already doing life without parole at Brushy Mountain,” he says. “His crime of choice is framing people. He’s done it his whole life. He looks a lot like Wilson Owens, too.”
I look at the photograph, and Stillman is correct; I could swear Wilson Owens is staring back at me. “He’s out of his mind,” I say. “He’s grandstanding, looking for attention.”
“Kwame Jamal, my ass,” Rayburn says. “His real name’s probably Fred.”
“It’s Jerome,” Stillman answers, as though he anticipated the comment. “He just became a member of the Nation of Islam. Kwame Jamal is the new version.”
“What’s Farrakhan’s little army of hate got to do with this?” Carl asks.
“Before Jerome becomes a Muslim, he wants to make confession. So he’s saying he’s the guy who killed the people in the grocery store.”
I look at the photograph. The two men could be brothers. “I thought this Justice Project uses DNA to get people’s convictions overturned,” I say. “The DNA evidence is what convicted Owens. His saliva was all over the cigarettes. That, and the eyewitnesses, sealed the deal.”
“Which is my point,” Carl says. “Just because Mr. Hale confesses to a crime doesn’t make it so. We get confessions from wack jobs all day long. I once had a woman confess to killing JFK because their love affair went sour. She would have been fourteen years old at the time.”
Rayburn nods hopefully. “Muslims can be wackos, too,” he says. “Especially Nation of Islam. They’re the kings of wackos.”
“Buchanan and Hale want a meeting at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary,” Stillman says. “Hale says he’s ready to tell us what really happened that day.” He pauses. “He says he can prove it.”
There’s a moment of silence. “Well, God damn,” Rayburn whispers. “How does he propose to do that?”
“He says he’ll tell us when we get there.” Another pause. “As long as we give him a guarantee.”
“No death penalty,” I say, quietly. “That’s what he wants.”
“Well he’s not going to get it,” Rayburn says. “If we sent Owens to the death chamber, what makes him think…” He almost finishes the thought before he realizes that we are completely screwed. “If we don’t take the deal, they’ll say we willingly suppressed the truth about an innocent man just because we insisted on putting somebody else to death. That would look like shit.”
“Buchanan used words to that effect, yeah,” Stillman said.
Carl, who has seen his share of brilliant legal maneuvering, whistles softly. “It’s the smoking gun,” he says. “The anti-death-penalty lobby’s been looking for it for years. Positive proof the wrong guy went to the chamber. I never thought it would come on my watch.”
I nod, because I don’t know what else to do. Carl and Rayburn are right; we’re over one hell of a barrel. If we don’t sign the papers, this Professor Buchanan will probably have a press conference arranged within twenty-four hours telling the world we love executing people so much we’d actually rather suppress the truth about one of Nashville’s most cold-blooded crimes than stop doing it. In the suddenly quiet office, it sinks in that we are inches away from being the unwanted focus of every major media outlet on Earth as the people who finally fucked up the big one. But as powerful as these thoughts are—and they are seismic, believe me—they slip through my mind at light speed, rapidly discarded. If I burn professionally for my mistake, so be it. Because right now, all I can see in my mind is Wilson Owens on the day of his sentencing. He’s in his orange jumpsuit, his arms and legs shackled, tears streaming down his face. He’s begging for his life. He’s crying like a baby, something he probably had never done before in his adult life. As he’s dragged out of the courtroom, he’s staring me in the eyes, screaming my name, damning me to hell. I’ll get you, motherfucker, are the last words that echo into the courtroom before he disappears behind a door.
I knew exactly what was going on in the minds of the jury during the sentencing phase of Owens’s trial. The jury was wavering because of confusion about the EMT, and unless I lowered the hammer, they were going to let Owens off with his life. I know, because when he begged the court for mercy, his pleas were moving me. I thought he was guilty, no question. But I could also see how fucked his life was, how complicated his story was, and at that moment, as I watched him cry, it seemed like nothing but more of the same hell to put him to death. I remember the exact instant I said to myself, No, this is my job, and I’m going to do it. So I took Owens apart in the minds of the jury, dissecting his humanity bit by bit. I showed them pictures of Steven Davidson’s disfigured body, even though Owens’s lawyer tried to get them excluded as prejudicial. I paraded Lucinda Williams’s family onto the stand—in the midst of their still-fresh misery—and let them cry tears equal to Owens’s, canceling them out. I challenged the jury to do the right thing. Those were my very words: do the right thing.
Rayburn’s voice breaks into my thoughts. Apparently, my internal dialogue has been playing out on my face, like a movie projected on a screen. “You OK?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I lie. I’m so far from OK I need a map to get back. “So this Professor Buchanan wants a meeting.”
“Right,” Stillman says. He’s still smiling, the bastard. I’m not saying he wished any of us harm. He was just exercising the luxury of knowing that he had come on board several years after the Owens case was history, so whatever stink landed on the rest of us was only going to be an interesting water cooler story for him. “Buchanan says no more than three people from the office. He doesn’t want Hale overwhelmed by an army of lawyers. But one of them has to be Thomas.”
Rayburn looks at me. “Think it’s because you were lead prosecutor on Owens?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
Rayburn turns back to Stillman. “Who knows about this?”
“On Buchanan’s side, who knows? In this office, just the four of us.”
“Let’s keep it that way.” Stillman looks like a crestfallen puppy, and Rayburn points a finger at him. “Not a word, Stillman. When does Buchanan want t
o have this meeting?”
“He’ll give us a few days to coordinate between him, the prison, and our office. He says he’ll keep the lid on until then. Anything longer, he goes public.”
“OK,” Rayburn says. “Between now and then, I want business as usual. No continuances, no canceled meetings. If this thing breaks out, the whole office will go nuts.”
The meeting breaks up, but Rayburn calls my name before I leave. “Hang on a sec, will you, Thomas?” he says. Stillman stops, too, and Rayburn waves him off. “Just Thomas, if you don’t mind.” Stillman slinks out, and I wait for the door to close behind him.
“Yeah?”
“Kind of lousy timing, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have another death penalty case coming up. The thing with the immigrant from Sudan.”
“His name is Moses Bol.”
Rayburn nods. “We decided to go for the maximum. Everybody agreed.”
“Bol raped and murdered a woman in her own apartment,” I say. “It meets the standard.” I watch the DA a second, trying to figure out what he’s driving at, when it hits me. “You’re wondering if I have the stones to prosecute a death penalty case while we’re being hung out to dry on the Sunshine Grocery murders.”
Rayburn leans his frame back in his chair. “I wouldn’t blame you for sitting this one out, Thomas. If there’s any Kryptonite in your superpowers, it’s your conscience. You have one.”
“I can do my job, David.”
“Still, you see my point. Kwame Jamal Hale’s confession is a hell of a distraction for somebody who needs maximum focus. Moses Bol is an immigrant, and the victim is white and female. People are pretty damn jumpy over this deal, already.”
Rayburn’s statement about nerves being frayed in Bol’s neighborhood is a capsule of understatement. The demographics of the forty square blocks bordering Tennessee Village, the subsidized housing development in which the U.S. government saw fit to drop off its most recent crop of the world’s castoffs, is as close to its conflagration point as any can remember. A turf war between the white, lower-middle-class in the area and any of at least twelve new nationalities a few blocks away is getting ugly. “I agree.”