Decision (51 page)

Chapter 4

Justice NOW! was back next morning: obedient to its leader’s demand, it was not relaxing. The crowd was smaller, the atmosphere less hectic, but the bronze doors were still closed to all but authorized entries and the extra police were still on duty all around the building. Outside Justice Pomeroy’s chambers a dozen officers now stood guard. Media only were allowed in the corridor, and they were held back thirty feet by temporary wooden barriers. Through them Debbie and Regard passed just before 10 a.m.

“What’s going to happen, Regard?” Henrietta called—her office had sent her up, to her surprise and delight, to be “in at the kill,” as she put it to her colleagues.

“Justice is goin’ to be upheld,” he said calmly. “What else could happen, here?”

“What do you think, Miss Donnelson?” someone else inquired.

“It’s just a rehearsal,” she said with studied indifference. “I don’t expect any surprises.”

“You don’t expect a stay, then.”

“I would be very much surprised.”

Regard swung around.

“Now, I’ll say,” he said, “that I am not so ready to dismiss a fine Justice as counsel is. I don’t know how Justice Pomeroy will rule—”

“Have you asked him?” someone inquired. He shook his head in mock dismay.

“Man, I’ve been on my
knees!”
Everybody laughed. “But he just isn’t talkin’, and he shouldn’t be. The one thing I do know is that whatever he decides will be
decided on the law,
because that’s the kind of Justice he is, Miss Donnelson to the contrary.”

“I didn’t say anything to the contrary,” she retorted sharply. “I just said I don’t expect any surprises. And I don’t.”

“The Justice is ready, counsels,” the public information officer said from the door in a disapproving tone. “Please come in so we can start the proceedings.”

“Yes, sir,” Regard said smartly.

“Certainly,” said Debbie.

At three twenty-three exactly the door swung open and they reappeared. Both looked tired, both were uncommunicative.

“How did it go?” the
New York Times
asked.

“We presented the arguments,” Debbie said.

“Do you feel you got a fair hearing?” CBS inquired.

“He’s a good Justice,” Regard said.

“He is that,” Debbie agreed, sounding faintly surprised.

“Come along, gentlemen,” the public information officer urged as they rounded the corner, disappeared from view and went their separate ways. “The Justice won’t have anything for you for a while, so if you want to wait it might as well be in the press room.”

“Can’t you give us any clue as to when it will be?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” the public information officer said.

“If we could only be sure of a time,” the AP said, rather wistfully.

“Tell him Henny wants to know whether she has time to go to the hotel, take a nap, powder her nose and have a couple of drinks and a steak,” she suggested. The public information officer, with a sudden humanizing grin, turned back, knocked discreetly on the door and was admitted. In a moment he reappeared.

“He says nothing until tomorrow morning. He hopes to have his printed decision for you by ten o’clock.”

There was a general groan of protest but everyone quickly accepted it and took off. Outside, the crowd gradually dispersed, the extra police went home, the bronze doors were locked once more. Lights burned for a long time in Moss’ office, but no one, now, kept vigil. Shortly before midnight the lights went out and five minutes later he drove out of the garage and went swiftly off through the still-sweltering night streets to his empty house.

He made one telephone call after he reached home. It lasted approximately ten minutes. Tay argued with him but could not claim to be surprised. And he did not argue very vehemently—so halfheartedly and uncertainly, in fact, that Moss finally dismissed him with an impatient “I don’t think you know what you really
do
think.” He could not deny it as Moss hung up and left him staring bleakly into the darkness above his lonely bed.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Justice Pomeroy for the Court.

This application for stay and review comes here on appeal from certiorari to the Supreme Court of South Carolina. At issue are the deaths of Sarah Ann Pomeroy, a minor; a mature female, Janet Martinson; an infant boy, name unknown; and the destruction of certain property at the atomic energy plant at Pomeroy Station, South Carolina. The verdict against applicant imposed by jury in the Court of General Session of South Carolina and upheld on automatic appeal by the South Carolina Supreme Court is death by electrocution.

Subsequently on petition of the attorney general of South Carolina, the presiding judge in the trial directed that said execution be held in Columbia, South Carolina, on the Fourth of July, in a public place and before television cameras designed to broadcast it to continental United States and presumably by satellite to other nations.

Applicant’s principal arguments presented by his counsel were the nature of his arrest, in which his right to be informed immediately of his rights was violated; the nature of his trial, in which he claims certain errors of procedure to have been present; what he terms “the undue amount of public interest and pressure” exerted upon the trial and upon jurors by the activities of an organization known as Justice NOW!; the fact that the death penalty was imposed, thereby subjecting him to what he terms “cruel and unusual punishment” within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution; and the fact that what the media have chosen to designate “execution by television” has been added to the penalty, thereby subjecting him further to what he terms “cruel, unusual and monstrous” (italics added) punishment.

The attorney general of South Carolina, appearing for the State, replied in essence that the circumstances of applicant’s arrest were “subject to error in the heat of the moment” and “were not deliberate, willful, malicious or pre-calculated” in their interference with his right to be informed of his rights; that procedural errors if any in applicant’s trial were “so inadvertent and minuscule as to be virtually nonexistent”; that this case drew enormous national and international attention from the very beginning by the nature of the crimes themselves, and that the effect of Justice NOW! if any, was subsequent, superfluous and ancillary to the publicity and pressure already generated by nationwide concern about crime in general and these crimes in particular; that South Carolina’s laws provide that the death penalty cannot be imposed except by unanimous vote of the jury so instructing the trial judge, and also provide that all death sentences be automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court for review; that such unanimous vote of jury was forthcoming, that said appeal was made, and that the state Supreme Court did thereupon unanimously uphold the verdict; and that making the execution public and providing for its broadcast by television simply verifies the public’s right to know under the First Amendment and does not thereby transform a carefully restricted application of the death penalty into a wide-open imposition of “cruel, unusual and monstrous” punishment as alleged, but rather makes of the penalty a warning and a needed cautionary event for all others who may wish to transgress similarly or in part the laws of the several states and of the United States.

In ruling upon the application for stay of execution and review of the case by this Court, particular notice is taken of the heinous nature of the crimes committed; of the fact that the death sentence was imposed only after exhaustion of all procedures provided by the carefully structured laws of South Carolina; and that neither of the courts below saw fit to question the circumstances of applicant’s arrest, the conduct of his trial or the final judgment rendered thereon by a free and independent jury, upheld after due deliberation by the state’s highest court of review.

Application for stay and review therefore is

Denied.

POMEROY ORDERS DEATH FOR DAUGHTER’S KILLER! REJECTS STAY, HIGH COURT REVIEW! HOLGREN EXPECTED TO SEEK “FRIENDLY” JUDGE FOR SECOND TRY. JUSTICE NOW! AND PRO-LAW MOBS CLASH AT COURT. WORLD PROTESTS FLARE.

And sure enough, on the grand old principle of
Embarrass America whenever you can,
the mobs were in the streets of many major cities around the globe. Very few demonstrators had the slightest idea what it was all about but that made no difference. The defense of Earle Holgren was ready-made for protest and it did not matter much whether demonstrations occurred in nations with some vestiges of legal tradition or in nations where public executions were the rule. Mobs were organized and sent into the streets with a gleeful perception that this was one more easy weapon with which to belabor America.

Similarly in his own country Earle Holgren’s case was suddenly the focus of actual physical violence (fortunately not yet fatal) between Justice NOW! and its critics, whom the media instantly dubbed “pro-law.” “But
we
are pro-law, God damn it!” Regard said furiously when he saw the first such reference. His protest was futile. War by semantics had many skilled practitioners and now they employed it once again with the practiced ease acquired in many successful battles.

One unfortunate aspect of all this, known only to his counsel, was its effect on the defendant: an ego already almost out of control became even more arrogant as the reports flooded in. Another aspect was its effect on television. As if by magic sympathetic network support for the “pro-law” group at home and the excessive attention paid to the demonstrators abroad suddenly dwindled away. As if some giant hand had come down and wiped it from the screen—as indeed several giant hands had done—the pro-Holgren movement virtually disappeared overnight from the tube.

The editors and managers of the printed media suddenly realized that they were alone in their extended coverage of what Regard steadfastly described to all his callers and interviewers as “a small over-publicized minority” favoring Earle’s case and opposing the proposed televising of his death.

Debbie flew back down to Columbia after the ruling and saw Earle that evening. She had not thought it possible for him to become more complacent, more arrogant, more certain of his own superiority and uniqueness. His attitude dispelled her illusions immediately. An almost psychotic—why “almost?” she asked herself suddenly, finally admitting what she knew to be true—euphoria seemed to surround him as he called her “Superstar” and crowed over his enemies.

“They’ve shot their wad,” he predicted scornfully, “Pomeroy’s ruling was the high-water mark. From now on there’s going to be a return to sanity. The Court isn’t going to stand for that kind of nonsense. The law is going to prevail. The TV bit puts the cap on it. Pomeroy has his gripe—”

“Just a dead daughter,” she remarked again, this time with a real bitterness, and he said, “Hey, whose side are you on?” in a tone that for a moment sounded genuinely aggrieved. Then he shrugged.

“He has his gripe,” he conceded lightly, “and everybody knows it. So he’s had his chance. So now we go to somebody else and get a sensible ruling—the full Court reconvenes and takes it up—and then we’ll get somewhere.”

“You really think the full Court will reverse your sentence?” she asked in a tone of such skepticism that he gave her a sudden angry glare. “You really are in a dream world!”

“Then why don’t you get out of it?” he demanded with sudden naked savagery. “Why don’t you just get the hell out, Miss Superstar, and stop bothering me? I’ll get Harry Aboud or somebody else. Or I’ll do it myself! I don’t need you!”

“You need something,” she said. “God knows what it is or who can give it to you, but you do need something, all right.”

“Go on!” he said.
“Out!”

But she did not move, nor did her eyes flinch from his nor did she indicate in any way that she was both frighteningly angry and frighteningly panic-stricken at the thought that he might really banish her from his life. It must be like training a cobra, she thought with a wild, helpless wryness: it’s deadly but it must be fascinating to see if you can keep it from striking you. Particularly when, unlike the ones you see in sideshows, this one was neither sedated, milked of its poison, nor yet fully defanged.

“You aren’t going,” he remarked presently; and a pleased, knowing smile that she hated but knew she deserved spread across his face.

“Why, Superstar,” he said softly, “I believe you really do like my hairy bod, after all. Or is it my scintillating wit and great brain? It could be, you know! I’ve all three.”

“You haven’t got as much of anything as you think you have,” she said, finding it hard to breathe but forcing her voice to stay steady, even though his smile suddenly deepened and with a mocking gesture he made as if to start unzipping his fly to prove her wrong. “You’re one step—two steps, maybe—away from the electric chair, and you act as though you’re still on a picnic where everybody bows down and says how smart Earle Holgren is. Well, you’re not smart. You’re dumb. You’re just plain dumb!”

But at this, which she fully expected would goad him into some word or gesture that would at last solve her dilemma for her and force her away for good, he only smiled; and leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head, his legs spread wide, crotch outthrust and an insolent grin on his face, he watched her steadily while a flush slowly mounted her face and she felt as though her legs would collapse beneath her. This man was a psychopath, a murderer, a strange lost being outside the bounds of normal living—but she was helpless. So she rationalized it as she had to, hating herself for it but using the only excuse that retained even the slightest hold on rationality: she was a lawyer, he was her client, and her duty still lay with him until all channels that might preserve his life had been exhausted.