Decision (50 page)

Chapter 3

“You know what I think, Superstar?” her client said as Regard’s triumphant face, the solemn reverent crowd and the last strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner” faded from the screen. “I think you’d better get your pretty little tail up there just as fast as you can and file that appeal before those lily-livered old ladies—of whom,” he added scornfully, “I think there are nine, not one—let Yahoo scare them to death to the point where they can’t give me a fair decision based on the law.”

“I’m going this afternoon,” she said with some asperity, “as you very well know. It’s taken a little while to frame the appeal. I haven’t been sitting around doing nothing!”

“Well, well,” he said with a chuckle. “There’s real spirit for you. I know you haven’t. I just think we’ve got to
move,
now, that’s all. Particularly when he’s handed us the perfect issue on a platter. Kill me on TV, will they?” His face darkened. “He’s a damned fool. He won’t kill me anywhere, let alone on TV. All that’ll do is give the Court one more excuse to strike down the death penalty and reverse the decision. Not that they’d need any, if they had an ounce of guts. But I suspect they haven’t.”

“I have more faith in them than you do,” she said. “Your arrest was illegal, the trial was a farce, the evidence is all circumstantial, the verdict was obviously rendered under hysterical public pressure. They don’t need the TV angle.”

“They don’t need it,” he said, “but they’re damned glad they have it. You wait and see. Some of them will hide behind it. It’s convenient.”

“What do you care, if it gets you off?” she inquired dryly. “I didn’t know you had any principles about how it’s done.”

“I don’t,” he said with a cheerful grin. “I just want to see those bastards be honest with themselves and the country, that’s all. They’re supposed to uphold ‘equal justice under law,’ aren’t they? Okay, let’s see ’em do it—if they have the guts. Anyway”—he shrugged—“I’m home free.”

“I’m glad you’re sure of that. Maybe I shouldn’t bother even going up there. Maybe I should just mail in the appeal with a stamped, self-addressed envelope.”

“Don’t be smart,” he said with a sudden sharpness, eyes darkening again. “People get in trouble, being smart.”

“Was that what happened to Janet?” she inquired like a flash, and though he made as if to grab her wrist she snatched it away and stood up, just as the guard looked in.

“Any trouble, miss?” he inquired.

“No more than usual,” she said with a tight smile. “Thank you, guard. I’ll call if I need you.”

“I’d suggest you plain holler, miss,” he said, giving Earle a contemptuous look. “With this one.”

“Fuck you,” Earle said calmly. Then he dismissed him and turned back to Debbie again. “Don’t be smart,” he said again, softly. “Just don’t be smart. Who do you appeal to up there? The whole Court?”

“First to Pomeroy,” she said, remaining on her feet, well away. “He’s presiding judge of the Fourth Judicial Circuit, which includes South Carolina.”

He made a grimace.

“If he rejects it, and I’m not so sure he will, then we go to whoever I think will help us the most. There are at least four liberal possibilities. I’ll pick the one I think is likeliest to grant stay and turn it over to the full Court for review.”

“Well, steer clear of your hero, Barbour. He strikes me as a wishy-washy pantywaist. And he’s certainly no friend, either. Since he thinks I hurt his daughter.”

“Which you didn’t.”

He gave her a bland, ironic look.

“Nobody’s proved it.”

“I’ll choose whom I please,” she said sharply, feeling the hairs rise on the back of her neck as in the presence of something alien, which she now felt beyond question he was. Any attraction she had felt initially was gone, she told herself. He was simply a legal problem now. “You needn’t worry. It’s my job to protect your interests. Though,” she could not resist adding, more for her own reassurance than anything else, “God knows why.”

“Because you love me, Superstar,” he said sardonically. “It’s one of the great romances of the age. But unless you get me out of this place,” he added with a mock sigh, “I’m afraid we’re just never going to be able to do anything about it. And that would be a pity, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re weird, you know that?” she said. “Really weird.”

“Have a good flight, Superstar,” he said, turning away with a hearty yawn he made no attempt to conceal. “Have a good flight and give ’em hell.”

Quite absurdly considering what she had just so confidently concluded, she felt a sharp pang of dismay at his apparent indifference. Stop that, she told herself furiously,
stop that!
But she didn’t seem to be able to; and realized with a sudden chilling certainty that he very probably knew it.

Next morning at ten she was waiting at the bar when the Court convened, having paid the filing fee and filed with the Clerk the forty copies of petition required by Court rules. (Regard had been present also, filing his response immediately, though under Court rules he had thirty days in which to do it. They did not speak.) Her strategy was to seek recognition of the Court and announce the filing in person—thereby, she hoped, winning substantial initial publicity from those among the media disposed to be friendly to her client.

Her excitement was intense, her heart thumping heavily, as she prepared to perform this irregular and likely to be censured act. But she was not to have the chance. Instead she was as taken aback as everyone when the Chief Justice, as soon as the Court was seated, looked down calmly upon an audience filled with the little flags and lapel shields of Justice NOW! and said quietly,

“It is the consensus of the Court that the Court’s business for the term is sufficiently concluded so that an immediate adjournment is possible. Accordingly the Court stands adjourned until the fall term starting the first Monday in October.”

There was a startled gasp from audience, media and Court officials but he gave it no time to grow. His gavel came down with a sharp, decisive
thunk!,
he rose, his sister and brethren rose, they turned without expression and disappeared. The red velvet curtains fell softly together and that was that.

COURT QUITS IN FACE OF HOLGREN CASE! the headlines said. JUSTICES DUCK IMMEDIATE RULING ON TV DEATH! HIGH COURT SIDESTEPS “ROMAN HOLIDAY” ISSUE. POMEROY GETS FIRST CRACK AT DAUGHTER’S ALLEGED KILLER.

“We cannot condemn too severely,” the
New York Times’
editorial said, “the transparent way in which the Supreme Court of the United States has turned tail and run in the face of the major challenge to human decency and constitutional safeguards posed by the proposed ‘death by television’ of Earle Holgren, the alleged South Carolina bomber.

“This craven flight ill becomes the heirs of Chief Justice John Marshall and other illustrious jurors who have preceded present members on the nation’s highest bench.”

And so agreed the
New York Times,
the
Washington Inquirer,
the
Los Angeles Times,
the
Boston Globe
and others holding the same view.

But from the headquarters of Justice NOW! in Columbia came a statement signed by Regard, Ted Phillips and forty of their fellow attorneys general, urging Moss to remain on the case and upholding the proposed televised execution of Earle Holgren as “a needed and salutary warning to criminals who in recent years have terrified America’s decent citizens and run rampant through all our cities and neighborhoods.”

And a hastily taken Gallup poll stated that 63 percent of their countrymen felt that both Moss and Tay should remain on the case; and that 74 percent approved of the television proposal.

In certain luxurious—and pragmatic—network offices in New York and Hollywood the conviction was growing, with an outward show of reluctance but an inward rapidity, that the First Amendment—“the people’s right to know”—and possibly a certain amount of monetary profit might, after all, go very logically together.

The crowd had begun to gather almost as soon as news of the Court’s adjournment came over tube and radio. After lunch it grew rapidly in size. By 3 p.m. it surrounded the building on all sides, particularly heavy on the front steps, at the side entrance and at the garage entrance on Second Street. All the Justices but one had departed almost immediately, well aware that some sort of demonstration might occur. The extra District police assigned on Sunday were back on the job, and the Court police, usually called upon to do little more than chide tourists politely for trying to carry cameras into the chamber, stood nervous but determined at their posts. Law clerks and staffs had been dismissed for the day and had departed almost as soon as their bosses. The great bronze doors had been shut and locked in daytime for the first time in many years: no one, in fact, could remember when the last time had been. Reporters and television camera crews circulated through the crowd picking up random quotes and clips for the evening news. The signs and banners of Justice NOW! were everywhere in the suffocatingly hot afternoon. The sky was a lowering gray. One of the District’s frequent summer thunderstorms threatened to let fly at any moment.

Inside the anteroom of the Marshal’s office, Regard and Debbie sat side by side on a leather sofa. Debbie had left the Court after adjournment to meet Harry Aboud for an hour’s consultation and then had eaten lunch with him at Maison Blanche. Pledges of support had been received from quite a few distinguished fellow guests. Regard had stayed at the Court at Moss’ invitation to eat lunch with him in his chambers, but despite earnest arguments and importuning had received no indication from a taciturn Justice what he intended to do, only that he expected to have an announcement by 4 p.m. This information had been given the media by the press office soon after lunch. Its publication had greatly increased the crowd. Now the two counsels had come together again, waiting. They still had not spoken.

Outside Moss’ chambers a lone policeman stood guard. The corridor was empty, as was virtually the entire building. The library was closed, the Great Hall deserted, the press room abandoned. Everything waited on one man.

Alone in his office he sat at his desk and doodled on a yellow legal pad, his mind going over and over conflicting arguments, back and forth, back and forth, until he finally told himself that he must do something or go mad.

There were no rules binding on Justices, only on lawyers appearing before them. No one could prevent his sitting on the case and he was under no obligation or requirement to justify his ruling. A simple
Granted
or
Denied
would be entirely sufficient. But he felt he owed it to himself, to his wife and above all to Sarah to state his reasons. He was glad he had set himself a deadline, otherwise he felt he would never decide.

Once he called Sue-Ann at the plantation, asked what he should do. She told him she didn’t know, but whatever it was, she would support him. “I love you,” he said. “I love you,” she said. The cute laughing ghost of their daughter came into both their minds. He hung up, more saddened and confused than ever.

Finally at three-thirty he gave a deep sigh, tore up the doodles and tossed them in a wastebasket. Outside, tension was rising in the crowd; through his window he could hear its uneasy murmur. There would be critics waiting to pounce, whatever he did. They would charge him with easy decision, easily made, but he knew what he had been through. He began to write, with a hand that noticeably trembled.

Finished, he called the Marshal and dictated. Two minutes later the Marshal called in his secretary and dictated also. Five minutes after that, Debbie and Regard were handed identical pieces of paper. The Marshal, moved by some hearkening-back to the past that made it seem a natural thing to do, walked firmly out through the Great Hall, had the guards open the bronze doors for him, and stepped out on the top step. Abruptly the crowd became silent. For a few seconds the only noise came from the slow, curious passage of traffic in the street.

“Appeal to stay the verdict in
Holgren
v.
South Carolina
to permit review by the Supreme Court of the United States,” the Marshal read in a clear, steady voice, “has been received by Justice Pomeroy as Circuit Justice, Fourth Judicial Circuit. After deliberation Justice Pomeroy has decided not to disqualify himself. Arguments will be heard in chambers at ten a.m. tomorrow.”

A great shout went up.

Regard gave Debbie a triumphant look as they left the Marshal’s office.

Debbie turned on her heel, expressionless, and walked away.

***