I’d sought him out for comment previously, but he had declined to speak to me while Chester’s appeals were still pending in state court. He agreed to talk to me now only if I promised not to share the audio until after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled on Heffernan’s petition. He didn’t think they were likely to grant a stay.
PETER CLAYTON: I’ve been listening to your show. I always follow the media coverage of the cases I work on, but I’ve never experienced anything like this. Oral arguments at the Supreme Court are public proceedings, but there usually aren’t many people in the galleries, and American Justice had them packed for Chester March. I’m a trial lawyer, so I am used to arguing in front of a crowd, but I think Ed had a little bit of stage fright.
CARLOS WATKINS: They were pretty supportive of him.
CLAYTON: Yeah. And a tough room for me. I suppose I have you to thank for bringing them out. This has been—I’ll call it interesting. I did not expect these routine appeals in a case from the ’70s to cause this kind of a circus.
WATKINS: Happy to be of service.
CLAYTON: Ed has fans now. He has, like, groupies. That is so weird. You turned Ed Heffernan into a rock star. There are women on the Internet writing erotic fan fiction about how they want to strip Ed out of his Costco sweater and his stain-resistant Dockers and do shocking things to him. The world is a strange place. I wonder what Judith thinks about all this. That’s his wife. I don’t know if you’ve met her.
WATKINS: Do you know Ed well?
CLAYTON: I was his student. I took two of his seminars at Vanderbilt, going on twelve years ago. The guy’s brilliant. I’m only talking to you because he asked me to.
WATKINS: And you just beat him. How does that feel?
CLAYTON: I wouldn’t say I beat him. I’d say the court wasn’t willing to hand down a ruling at this time that would have brought about the policy shift Ed was advocating. If he’d won, it would have probably ended capital punishment in this state. Technically, execution by electric chair is still legal in Tennessee, but I don’t think we’d go back to electrocuting people if the Supreme Court overturned lethal injection.
WATKINS: Do you think that would be a bad outcome?
CLAYTON: I wouldn’t be here arguing for Chester March’s execution if I disagreed with it. Prosecutors have a lot of discretion in our criminal justice system, and I believe we have a duty to use that discretion to avoid wielding state power to immoral ends. That’s why I’ve fiercely advocated inside the AG’s office against seeking prison terms for low-level marijuana offenders.
WATKINS: If you know Ed, I’m sure you’re familiar with his arguments against capital punishment.
CLAYTON: I am. And I disagree with him. I think we’ve got maybe thirty-five inmates from West Tennessee on death row and fewer than sixty statewide for offenses dating back forty years. We’ve had six executions since 1976. We had a hundred and twelve homicides in Memphis alone in 2010, and that was a record low. We haven’t had fewer in a year since 1971. The police popped champagne to celebrate having only a hundred and twelve homicides.
Nationwide, there are maybe two dozen executions a year, and around fifteen thousand murders. We sentence more people to death than we actually execute, but capital cases are still a tiny fraction of the total set of murders. We reserve this sanction for the worst of the worst. Child murderers and sex killers. People who commit bias-related murders. Serial killers like Chester March, who killed three women that we know of. Terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. I’m aware of the suffering that the lethal injection supposedly causes, and I don’t think it’s disproportionate to the suffering these people have inflicted. In general, I’m a lot more concerned with the people who die by murder than the people who die by execution. Ed and I just disagree on how we balance our compassion for these perpetrators with our outrage on behalf of these victims.
CARLOS WATKINS (NARRATION): We tried to find a family member of a victim to talk to us about the death penalty, but nobody we contacted would go on the record. All death row inmates are somewhat famous, and all famous killers have fans, and the families of the victims are understandably frightened of those fans and tend to avoid speaking publicly.
Family members often give what’s called victim impact testimony in the sentencing phase of a capital case, where they talk about the pain and loss that the crime has inflicted on their families. Criminal defense lawyers view this kind of testimony as unfairly prejudicial against their clients, and the constitutionality of this kind of evidence was actually challenged and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in an appeal brought by Pervis Payne, an inmate here at Riverbend, who was sentenced to death for the double murder of Charisse Christopher and her two-year-old daughter, Lacie, in 1987, after a jury heard testimony from Charisse’s mother about the crime’s impact on three-year-old Nicholas, who was stabbed during the attack but survived. Payne insists he is wrongly accused and is currently seeking new DNA testing on evidence taken from the scene.
But while many victims’ family members offer testimony in support of prosecutors’ attempts to secure a death sentence, over the course of decades of appeals, they often change their minds, in some cases publicly forgiving the killers and calling on governors to grant clemency.
Family members who arrive to view executions at Riverbend are brought in through a side entrance, to avoid contact with the protesters who gather at the prison gates, and corrections officials keep the media away from them. They rarely speak on the record, so we don’t know how most of them feel about what they see here. A reporter from The Tennessean told me she has sometimes seen victims’ family members crying as they leave the prison.
Since nobody would talk to me about the experience of witnessing a loved one’s killer being executed, we can only speculate as to whether this experience brings comfort or catharsis, or whether it just dredges up old pain. But we know it can’t undo the loss they’ve suffered. Misery begets more misery.
25
“So, there are two things on our Nashville itinerary,” Tequila said. “First, we’re going to see this asshole get a lethal injection, and then we’re gonna get hot chicken. Or do you think we should get the hot chicken before we see the execution? Do you think we’re going to be hungry after we watch this guy die?”
“What is a hot chicken?” Rose asked.
“It’s a Nashville delicacy,” Tequila said. “It’s fried chicken sauced with a cayenne pepper paste so spicy that they warn you not to touch your eyes after you touch the chicken. They serve it on white bread with pickle chips.”
Rose grimaced. “That sounds horrible. Why does that even exist?”
“Supposedly, a gentleman named Thornton Prince III was running around on his lady friend, and for revenge, she doused his chicken in pepper. But it turns out that Thornton Prince liked pepper, and he thought it was delicious, so he opened Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, which has been in business since 1945.”
“That sounds unpleasant,” Rose said.
“It sounds like something I’ll actually be able to taste,” I reminded her. “Let’s go for the chicken afterwards, so you won’t have a stomach full of hot sauce if the execution makes you feel sick.”
“We can go whenever we want,” Tequila said. “Hot chicken is as delicious as a late-night snack as it is for breakfast.”
“Ugh,” Rose said.
The road trip wasn’t too bad. The car Tequila was driving us in was my 2006 Buick Lucerne CXS, which had the special distinction of being the last car I would ever own. The 2006 Lucerne’s front fender was adorned with porthole details that echoed the famous “ventiports” Buicks had sported in the 1950s. Back in those days, Buick competed with Ford and Chevy at the top of the market, and a bells-and-whistles model like Chester’s Roadmaster Skylark, with its scowling grille and its four portholes on the front fender, was just about the nicest ride a rich man could buy with his money.
In the twenty-first century, the once-revered Buick line was now a
range of sedate midrange sedans targeted at drivers who were old enough to remember when those portholes signified something more exciting. The wood details on the Lucerne’s dash were actually plastic. But the car had standard heated and cooled seats, which I enjoyed more than I cared to admit.
My CXS model also came with the same 4.6-liter Northstar V8 that GM put in the upper-end Cadillacs, and according to the pamphlet the guy at the dealership showed me, it could do zero to sixty in just under seven seconds. It wasn’t as muscular as my 1970 Challenger, but it was a lot quieter and the gas mileage was better. I’d never had much occasion to stretch the Buick’s legs, anyway. When I bought it, I was a little peeved that the only option was an automatic transmission, but that turned out to be for the best, because the aides at Valhalla didn’t know how to drive stick, and I don’t think Tequila did, either.
The drive to Nashville was short enough that the Buick made it on one tank of gas, and my car didn’t have a Bluetooth, so Tequila couldn’t hook his Internet phone up to my stereo and play his godawful music. Rose sat in the front with him; he was leaving town after this trip and probably wouldn’t be back until Thanksgiving. And maybe that was going to be her last Thanksgiving. Ordinarily, I probably would have tasked Tequila with taking me on this jaunt, and Rose would have stayed behind; we were just going to see the execution, get Tequila’s chicken, maybe sleep a few hours at a motel, and then drive back. I don’t think Rose had any powerful desire to witness this event. But William wanted to spend time with her before he left, and I felt wrong leaving her behind, so we’d brought her with us. Even now, she was making sacrifices for us. For me, really.
Maybe I should have skipped the execution, in light of other things that were going on. But these connections to the past felt so important, now more than ever, and I had promised to watch Chester die.
It was unusual to be permitted to bring two guests to an execution; this kind of invitation doesn’t typically even come with a plus-one. Since I had mobility issues and needed assistance, I probably could have got Tequila in, but Peter Clayton, the man from the attorney general’s office, really came through for me in getting the prison to let Rose to join us as well. I think Clayton fixed it with the corrections people for Tequila and Rose to witness the execution as a way of razzing Watkins. A bunch of American Justice listeners had booed him during his oral arguments before the Tennessee Supreme Court, and he hadn’t seemed pleased about that.
Clayton said it hadn’t been too hard to arrange two guests for me because there were no families of victims coming to see Chester off. Margery’s parents passed years ago. Evelyn Duhrer’s closest living relative was a niece who lived in Oregon. She had declined to come to Nashville for this. Cecilia Tompkins had no next of kin on record. Chester also didn’t have any family, except Forrest’s daughter. She had apparently wanted to witness the execution, but the last time Chester saw his cousins had been at his trial, when they testified against him, so he asked that she not be allowed to attend. I’m sure he also would have objected to Rose and Tequila, but I guess nobody told him they were coming.
There was a crowd of demonstrators around the prison’s front gate as we pulled up. On our left side were death penalty opponents. One guy had a sign that said ALL KILLING IS WRONG, and a bunch of people were wearing T-shirts that said SAVE CHESTER. On the other side, a smaller crowd of supporters had signs that said things like BURN IN HELL. I also saw a woman with a sign that said FUCK ME ED HEFFERNAN. So there was room here for many agendas.
The parking lot was outside the prison’s main gates where the demonstrators were gathered, and normally, to get into the prison, a visitor would have to walk in past that crowd. but following directions Clayton had provided, Tequila drove past the parking lot and pulled up to the main entrance. The crowd encircled the car, and I worried that Carlos Watkins’s listeners would recognize me, but the prison guard manning the gatehouse yelled at the protesters to step back, and he waved us past his checkpoint and into the prison complex. Tequila’s directions instructed him to pull up next to one of the nondescript buildings that apparently housed the execution chamber, and Clayton, who must have been informed of our arrival by the guard on the gate, came out to greet us. I opened my door but stayed in my seat, waiting as Tequila fetched my walker from the trunk and began unfolding it. Clayton waved at him to stop.
“You can’t bring that inside the prison,” he said.
“How am I supposed to get around, then?” I asked.
“We’ll have to see if the prison has a mobility aid you can use. Your walker is not going to be allowed in the building. It could be broken apart, and the pieces of it could be used as weapons, and it’s made from hollow tubes that could be used to smuggle contraband.”
“They can’t really think Buck is going to smuggle contraband into the prison?” Rose asked.
“The rules of this place aren’t exactly built on a foundation of trust,” Clayton said with a shrug.
“I’ll go see what they have that you can use,” Tequila said. “Just wait here for me.”
He went into the prison with Clayton. I turned to Rose. “Look at me,” I said. “I can’t even get out of the car until he gets me something to lean on.”
“It’s all right, Buck,” she told me. “Most people don’t even get close to ninety. We’ve had a lot more good years than we had any right to expect.”
“And now we’ve got nothing but bad ones left, and not very many of those,” I said. I turned sideways in the seat and dangled my legs out of the open door. I lit a cigarette.
“Can I have one?” Rose asked.
I handed her the one I was holding and lit another. “Be careful with these,” I said. “They will give you cancer.”
She laughed, bitterly, and we both blew plumes of smoke into the heavy July air. It was 5 P.M., but it still looked like midafternoon.
“You know, we passed a sign on the way in that said no tobacco products were supposed to be used on the prison grounds.”
“What are they going to do?” I asked. “Lock us up?”
She laughed again.
“It’s not a bad evening,” I said. Nobody wanted to live near a prison, so Riverbend was on Nashville’s outskirts, past the airport. It was called Riverbend because it was situated at a bend in the Cumberland River. Beyond the fences we could see the water and, past that, wooded hills.
“You always find the nicest places to take me,” Rose said.
I flicked ash onto the pavement. “Thank you for coming on this trip. I know you wouldn’t have chosen to spend this day driving up here and doing this. I hope you understand why I need to be here.”
“It’s because the more you lose, the more you cling to the past,” Rose said.
“It used to be that I could deal with things,” I said. “If it was something about money or something at work, or if I was going after somebody who scared me, it was always best not to talk about it. If I took care of things myself, I could spare you, and Brian and Mother, from having to worry. Now I can’t fix anything, but my instinct is still not to talk about things. I don’t want to make this harder for you. I don’t want to be a burden. And I don’t know what I can do or say that will help.”
“You make me laugh,” she said. “That was always, by far, your most redeeming characteristic. Even if your idea of dinner and a show is witnessing an execution and then going to a shack to get horrible chicken that is painful to eat. I know you, Buck. I’ve always known you. I knew what I was getting into when I married you. I don’t expect you to fix this. I don’t expect you to come up with anything that makes it better. There’s no way to do that. I just need you to stop running away from it.”
We both threw our cigarette butts on the ground, and Rose stomped on them and kicked them under the car while I stashed my pack and my lighter in the pocket on the back of the seat. I knew those wouldn’t make it past the prison’s security check. Tequila came out of the building pushing a wheelchair, the flimsy kind with the c
loth back.
“They don’t have a walker?” I asked.
“Apparently walkers are dangerous weapons,” Tequila told me. “You can either sit in this, or you can hold my arm and walk in.”
“How far is it?” I asked.
“I’d recommend the chair,” he said.
“Goddamnit.” I gripped his arm to steady myself as I climbed out of the car, and I slid into the wheelchair. He pushed me around to the curb cut and up the accessibility ramp into the building. Rose and Tequila walked through a metal detector, but I had to climb out of the wheelchair and let a corrections official run a wand over me, on account of the pins in my shoulder and in my hip. Once we were past the security check, Peter Clayton caught up to us and walked us down a fluorescent-lit hallway and through a door into a room about the size of a large closet. The walls were constructed from concrete blocks, painted white, and there was nothing but a couple of folding chairs in it, and a window. The window had blackout blinds on the other side, and they were snapped shut.
“When it’s time to rock and roll, these blinds will open, and we’ll be able to see into the execution chamber,” Clayton said. He pointed to an intercom speaker on the ceiling. “We’ll hear if he has any last words he wants to say, and the audio will remain on for the duration of the execution, until he is pronounced dead.”
“Is this two-way glass?” Tequila asked.
Clayton shook his head. “Clear glass. He’ll be able to see you. Most of the time, the victims’ families want their faces to be the last thing these guys see before they go. It’s soundproof, though. You can’t hear what’s going on in the chamber unless the microphone in there is on, and they can’t hear what you’re saying in here.”
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