The Executioner's Song

by Norman Mailer

  Stanger was, in fact, enjoying it. Up to that point, Gary had always been highly suspicious of him. That was fine with Stanger.

  He didn't believe in the death penalty, and wasn't convinced Gilmore was serious either. The action interested Stanger more than the merits of Gilmore's position. The action was beautiful. Something new every day. That was fun. Since Gilmore could—although Stanger didn't believe it—end up dead one day, he didn't want to get too close to his client.

  Everybody in that crowded, steaming, incandescent room fixed on him. He drew all eyes, all lenses. Schiller was now twice impressed with Gilmore as an actor. He did not rise to this occasion like a great ham actor, but chose to be oblivious to it. Merely there to express his idea. Gilmore spoke in the absolute confidence of the idea, spoke in the same quiet tone he might have employed if talking to only one man. So it became the kind of acting that makes you forget you are in a theatre.

  What a screen star this fellow would have made, thought Schiller, and was filled with elation at the thought that he had the rights to his life, and in the next instant swallowed the misery that the right to talk personally to Gary had been cut off. From now on, he might always have to ask his questions through intermediaries.

  All the same, it was natural to work on improving your relations with any human being you had to see all the time. When Stanger, therefore, made a promise to Gilmore over some small thing, he tried to carry it out. If he said he would bring pencils, he brought them, if drawing paper, drawing paper. Today in Court, however, was the first time Ron felt proud of working for the man. He hadn't known until now how Gilmore would prove under pressure. From Stanger's point of view, however, he was terrific this day, just as intelligent as hell.

  Behind the dais was a blue flag and four men at a long conference table who all looked to be Mormons to Schiller, all wearing glasses and blue suits. Schiller was taking in as many details as he could remember, it was history he kept saying to himself, but he was bored until the chairman told Gilmore he had the floor. That was when Gary Gilmore began to impress Larry Schiller, too. If it weren't for the white uniform of Maximum Security, Gilmore could have been a graduate student going for his orals before a faculty of whom he was slightly contemptuous.

  "I am wondering," he began by saying. "Your Board dispenses privilege, and I have always thought that privileges were sought, desired, earned and deserved, and I seek nothing from you, don't desire anything from you, haven't earned anything and I don't deserve anything either."

  GILMORE I had come to the conclusion that because of Utah's Governor Rampton, I was here, because he bowed to whatever pressures were on him.

  I had personally decided he was a moral coward for doing it. I simply accepted the sentence that was given to me. I have accepted sentences all my life. I didn't know I had a choice in the matter.

  When I did accept it, everybody jumped up and wanted to argue with me. It seems that the people, especially the people of Utah, want the death penalty but they don't want executions and when it became a reality they might have to carry one out, well, they started backing off on it.

  Well, I took them literal and serious when they sentenced me to death just as if they had sentenced me to ten years or thirty days in the county jail or something. I thought you were supposed to take them serious. I didn't know it was a joke.

  Ms. Shirley Pedler of the ACLU wants to get in on the act but they always want to get in on the act, the ACLU. I don't think they have really ever done anything effective in their lives. I would like them all, including that group of reverends and rabbis from Salt Lake City to just butt out—this is my life and my death. It's by Courts that I die and I accept that . . .

  CHAIRMAN Now, in spite of what you may think about us, you can rest assured that we are not cowards, and you can rest assured that we are going to decide this case on the statutes of the State of Utah and not on your desires . . . Is Richard Giauque out there?

  We are going ahead with people who have asked to speak.

  Richard, we have received from you a brief, and by the way, I commend you for it, it's a nicely written brief. I may disagree with some of your concepts but anyway, it was nice the way it was presented.

  At this point, Schiller watched a slim, blond man with a prominent nose, rather small chin, and a look of considerable elegance, stand up. Schiller assumed the man had to be a lawyer for the ACLU or some such group, and made a mental note to interview him when the time came, for he looked interesting. Giauque carried himself with the superiority of knowing he was probably more intelligent than nearly anyone he talked to. Perhaps, for this reason, he never once looked at Gilmore. Gary, in turn, stared at him with considerable intensity, and Schiller could feel the basis of Gilmore's rancor—a man from the other side of the tracks was talking about him.

  GIAUQUE Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a very brief comment here that goes to the power of the Board. We are asking that the Board continue the present Stay of Execution, until such time as the questions that we do not believe you can decide, have been decided by a Court.

  Society has an interest in this wholly apart from Mr. Gilmore's wishes. I do think that there are some facts here that ought to be looked into. One of them is whether or not he has voluntarily waived his legal rights, or whether or not he is asking the State merely to become an accomplice . . . It is not Mr. Gilmore's desire that is paramount here and I would merely ask, Mr. Chairman, . . . that the decision to utilize the death sentence not be made by Mr. Gilmore and not be made by this Board, but . . . be resolved by the Courts.

  CHAIRMAN Well, I am going to answer you . . . We are not going to continue this case to wait for somebody else to decide what the law may and may not be . . . We are here to see that the case does not continue forever, and back up everybody, and the State of Utah, on the capital punishment laws. From my personal standpoint, I would not favor a continuance.

  A little while later came the first break in the hearing. Gilmore was led out, and the members of the Board of Pardons quit the room.

  Few among the media gave up their positions. In fact, they looked to better them.

  By now, Earl Dorius was close to rage, as close as he ever got.

  He still hadn't prepared his Writ of Mandamus to the Tenth Circuit Court, yet here he was losing an entire morning at this hearing that was being conducted in the worst possible fashion. He couldn't understand how Sam Smith had ever allowed it. What did he see in the intermission—you had to call it an "intermission" rather than a recess, they were creating such TV theatre—but this fellow Schiller sitting in one of the chairs that belonged to the Attorney General's staff. Like a director's chair, it had been carefully marked with Bill Evans's name on masking tape. Dorius kept whispering to Evans, "Just pull that chair out from under him," which was about as uncharacteristic for Earl as anything he could remember. He didn't usually go around suggesting people lay their physical hands on other people, but the state of this place, the disregard of the media for the premises, was truly disgusting.

  Dorius was amazed at the lack of security. There were no electric scanners at the door, and nobody had been patted down by hand search. One strange cameraman after another came in with huge equipment bags. My God! Anybody could bring in a Magnum and blast a hole through Gary. The Warden should have had the ultimate authority to tell the press to stay out, but somebody higher than him didn't seem to mind the publicity. Dorius was disgusted with his own client. If they had to televise it, why didn't the prison, for heaven's sake, ask for a pool arrangement, one camera, one member of the radio medium, one writer? It was crazy the way everybody had jammed in. Still, Earl was impressed with one thing. It was actually possible this fellow Gilmore was not for show.

  At the County Jail, they let Gibbs out to the front office to watch the hearing with some cops and jailers. They were all glued to the TV set. Gibbs thought it was one hell of a soap opera. When Gary told the Court they were cowards, Gibbs started laughing so loud the cops gave him a f
unny look.

  Gary won by a vote of 3-2. On TV they said the likelihood was that his execution would be set for December 6th, in order to come in under the sixty-day rule from his sentencing on October 7th. Gibbs thought, Gary Gilmore may only be on earth another week.

  DESERET NEWS

  Salt Lake, Nov. 30—The National Coalition Against the Death Penalty, an association of more than 40 national, religious, legal, minority, political and professional organizations, issued a strong statement late Tuesday over the action of the Utah Pardon Board.

  "This makes possible the first court-sanctioned homicide in the U.S. in 10 years" the statement noted . . .

  Organizations participating in the coalition include the ACLU, the American Ethical Union, The American Friends Service Committee, The American Ortho-Psychiatric Association, The Central Conference of American Rabbis, and others.

  Chapter 12

  THE GOVERNMENT SERVANT

  Earl knew he wouldn't call it admiration, but during the Board of Pardons Hearing, he did get to feel good about the way Gilmore was conducting himself. The man was on a hunger strike, yet his intellect was keen. Dorius was glad to feel something positive. He had lost a great deal of respect when Gilmore tried to commit suicide. All that big dramatic talk about justice, and then the chicken way out. In Dorius's eyes, Gilmore was redeeming himself.

  Earl realized how ironic it was. The only thing he and Gilmore had in common was looking to expedite the execution, each for his own reasons. Hardly what you would call a bond. Still, there he was rooting for the man at this hearing as if they were members of the same team. But then, you had to applaud the other guy when he made a really fine play. Of course, Earl supposed his feeling had self-interest. The Gilmore business would probably be the only thing he'd worked on that they might still write about fifty years from now. After Gilmore, sob, sob, my life will be downhill. Truly, it was doubtful he would ever again be so active on a case of national and international concern. People he had met years ago in England on his LDS mission were even beginning to correspond with him again, people he had actually brought into the Church seven and eight years ago. So it had to please Earl that he was the first man in the office to recognize the importance of it all.

  He supposed the reason he now took pride in Gilmore was that the convict also respected the situation. It would be disagreeable to work on something this momentous and feel the individual at the very center was nothing but a con artist with shoddy motives.

  Gilmore's desire, if genuine, was in line with a few of Earl's own objectives.

  In recent years, some of the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court had been saying that the most poorly represented client in the country was state and local government. That teed Earl off personally.

  He wanted to improve the image of people who worked in government offices. If he had an ambition, it was not to get into politics, or see his name in lights, but to become known as the best advocate before the Utah Supreme Court. Be an authority on prison law. He wanted to establish a reputation for thorough research and high competence. In fact, if there was a constructive criticism he would make of his work, it was that he tended to research an assignment to death. It killed him to turn in sloppy work. For as long as Gary Gilmore was occupying his working life, therefore, Earl knew he would be putting in fourteen- and fifteen-hour days. Even his kids understood it had to cut into family life. Now, if the children picked up the phone, they could expect half the time to hear a stranger asking for their father.

  When he and his wife went to a party, everybody wanted to know the ins and outs. For that matter, Earl didn't mind telling. After all the hard work, it was kind of a fun payment to fill people in on what he was doing. Still, he also tried to get the idea across, as reasonably as possible, that they weren't a gang of boobs over at the A.G.'s. Were actually trying to do a job they could be proud of.

  Earl knew better than to announce to the world that he was in the job he wanted, and his work gave him the roots he had always craved. During those years in law school when, to keep his young family afloat, he had had to put in killing hours working as a law clerk afternoons and nights, there had been one driving force to carry him through, one dream to take him through missionary work, college, marriage and law school, the idea that finally he would be able to settle down somewhere and get a few things established. Now he had a home instead of an apartment, and was the father of a growing family, liked his job, was proud of his wife, and spent a lot of the with his children. It could be seen, he knew full well, as a reaction to the continuous moving around of his youth.

  Earl's father—and he didn't say this to be critical, but simply accurate—had been somewhat of a loner. His dad's idea of entertainment had been to take his easel and canvas and go off on his own, then come back at the end of the day with a beautiful landscape.

  All through Earl's childhood, living around Virginia, Los Angeles and Salt Lake, his father had been an attorney with the Pentagon, and they kept him moving, Since Earl had no brothers, and his only sister was married by the time he was thirteen, he was practically an only child, and had an oddball inner life. He became, for instance, the best cartoonist of his school in the fifth grade, and wrote letters to Walt Disney asking if they would hire his talent despite his youth.

  In high school in Virginia, however, he did get to be popular. He played in a dance band and was pretty good at high-school sports, got heavily involved in basketball and track until he broke his leg giving a gymnastic demonstration. It wiped out his athletic career, but got him elected junior class president and he was about to run for student body president, was even dating the head cheerleader, when boom! family had to move to Los Angeles. His dad was being relocated, and Earl, once more, was being dislocated.

  He was a nobody going to University High School in West Los Angeles. Huge student body. He ate lunch alone, didn't know a soul.

  It was the one time in his life when he felt like being disobedient. He wanted to return to Virginia and live with his uncle and see his girl again.

  His father was saddened by this unhappiness. Maybe that was enough recognition. Earl said, "I'm sorry, I'll stay," and did, but his senior year in high school was not the happiest.

  Then his dad had a transfer to Utah. That was not as bad. His folks, being LDS, had always kept a little place in Salt Lake where they would go for summers. Since the cheerleader back east was no longer a viable alternative, Earl began to date the sister of his best friend in Salt Lake. They never stopped dating until they were married.

  He figured life had left him more stable than the average man his age, but only because he knew his faults. Knew he had a temper.

  These days, he contented himself by screaming at the TV set. "Look at that imbecile," Earl would shout at the tube. But only in the privacy of the family. When he was younger, his father would take him aside, counsel him, and refine that temper, to the point where now, conducting an oral argument in front of a Court, he never shouted at his opponent. It was all right to be forceful, but Earl tried to keep contention out of the presentation. That was why he took such pride in Gilmore at the Pardons Hearing. It was as if, within his mind, he kept telling Gilmore to hold his anger.

  Earl knew what he could do well and what he couldn't, and cross-examining witnesses had never been his strongest point. One reason he liked the Gilmore business was that he was drawn to cases which required analysis of new legal facets but didn't ask you to get bogged down by resistant testimony. Earl knew he was weak at framing questions in such a way that he could use the witness's answers against him ten questions later. He wanted to get right to the heart of the issue. Maybe he had been interrupted a couple too many times in his young life, but he knew that, as lawyers went, he had no large ability to set up pertinent questions and then lead an adversary down the primrose path. He thought it was corollary to how he kept his acquaintances limited. Even now, the circle of his family and friends didn't go beyond his wife, his brother-in-law, their immedia
te friends, a few neighbors, and office acquaintances. Most of his closest friendships were made through work.

  His alliance with Sam Smith was a good example. He could almost describe the Warden as a dear friend, yet they never saw each other socially. It was more that the two of them had practically learned their prison law together. Sam had been made a Warden just about the time Earl first came to work in the Attorney General's office.

  Getting to know Sam, Earl had also learned a great deal about prison problems, and thought the Warden was more liberal than people gave him credit for. For one thing, he allowed contact visits in Maximum.

  That was exactly what had made Gilmore's suicide attempt possible.

  If they had kept Gilmore away from people, the drugs might never have passed through. Earl had spoken about that, but Smith said, "Oh, well, it hurts those boys in their rehabilitation if they can't have any physical contact with the outside world." From Earl's point of view, the Warden, if anything, erred on the side of benevolent administration and that was what got him into situations where people would call him incompetent.

  In Earl's belief, the bottom line of Warden Smith's secret story was that he was all heart. Far from being strict or stern, Earl wondered how many Wardens got up early to go over and have breakfast in Medium Security with their inmates rather than take it with their own family. It was one reason Earl felt he had to protect Sam from all those newspaper suits to gain access to Gilmore.