Just Cause

The lawyer poured himself another drink and gulped at it. No, you won't be, Cowart thought. But Ferguson will.

'What about the blood evidence?'

'Type O positive. Fits half the males in the county, I'd wager. I cross-examined the technicians on that, and why they didn't type it down to its enzyme base better, or do genetic screening or some other fancy shit. Of course, I knew the answer: They had a match and they didn't want to do something special that might screw it up. So, hell, it just seemed to fit. And there was Robert Earl, sitting there in the trial, squirming away, looking hangdog and guilty as sin. It just didn't do no good.'

'The confession?'

'Shoulda been suppressed. I think they beat it out of that boy. I do, sir. That I do. But hell, once it was in, that was the whole ball of wax, if you know what I mean. Ain't no juror gonna disagree with that boy's own words. Every time they asked him, "Did ya'll do this, or did y'all do that," and he answered, "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir." "Yes, sir." All those yes, sirs. Couldn't do much about them. That was all she wrote. I tried, sir, I tried my best. I argued reasonable doubt. I argued lack of conclusive evidence. I asked those jurors, Where is the murder weapon? Something that positively points at Bobby Earl. I told them you can't just kill someone and not have some sort of mark on you. But he didn't. I argued upside and downside, rightside and leftside, over, under, around, and through. I promise you, sir, I did. It just didn't do any damn good. I kept looking over at those folks sitting in the box and I knew right away that it didn't make no damn difference what I said. All they could hear was that damn confession. His own words just staring at him off the page. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Put himself right in that electric chair, he did, just like he was pulling up a seat at the dinner table. People here was mighty upset with what happened to that little girl and they wanted to like get it finished, get it over, get it all done with right fast, so they could go on living the way they was used to. And you couldn't find two folks in this town who'd got up and said a nice thing about that boy. Something about him, you know, attitude and all. No sir, no one liked him. Not even the black folks. Now I'm not saying there weren't no prejudice involved…'

'All-white jury. You couldn't find one black qualified?'

'I tried, sir. I tried. Prosecution just used their peremptory challenges to whack each and every one right off the panel.'

'Didn't you object?'

'Objection overruled. Noted for the record. Maybe that'll work on appeal.'

'Doesn't it bother you?'

'How so?'

'Well, what you're saying is that Ferguson didn't get a fair trial and that he may be innocent. And he's sitting right now on Death Row.'

The lawyer shrugged. 'I don't know' he said slowly. 'Yeah, the trial, well, that's right. But innocent. Hell, his own words. That damn confession.'

'But you said you believed they beat it out of him.'

'I do, sir. But…'

'But what?'

'I'm old-fashioned. I like to believe that if'n you didn't do something, there's nothing in the world'll make you say you did. That bothers me.'

'Of course,' Cowart responded coldly, 'the law is filled with examples of coerced and manipulated confessions, right?'

'That's correct.'

'Hundreds. Thousands.'

'That's correct.'

The lawyer looked away, his face flushed red. 'I guess. Of course, now what with Roy Black on the case, and now you're here, maybe gonna write a little something that'll wake up that trial judge or maybe something that the governor can't miss, well, things have a way of working their ways right out.'

'It'll work out?'

'Things do. Even justice. Takes time.'

'Well, it sounds like he didn't have much of a chance the first time.'

'You asking me for my opinion?'

'Yes.'

'No, sir. No chance.'

Especially with you arguing his case, Cowart thought. More worried about your standing in Pachoula than putting someone on the Row.

The lawyer leaned back in his chair and swished his drink nervously around in his hand so that the bourbon and ice tinkled.

Night like impenetrable black water covered the town. Cowart moved slowly through the streets, stepping through the odd lights tossed from streetlamps or from storefront displays that remained lit. But these moments of dull brightness were small; it was as if with the sun falling, Pachoula gave itself over completely to the darkness. There was a country freshness in the air, a palpable quiet. He could hear his own footsteps as they slapped at the pavement.

He had difficulty falling asleep that night. Motel sounds – a loud, drunken voice, a creaking bed in the next room, a door slamming, the ice and soda machines being used – all intruded on his imagination, interrupting his sorting through of what he'd learned and what he'd seen. It was well past midnight when sleep finally buried him, but it was an awful rest.

In his dreams, he was driving a car slowly through the riot-lit streets of midnight Miami. Light from burning buildings caressed the car, tossing shadows across the front. He had driven slowly, maneuvering carefully to avoid broken glass and debris in the roadway, all the time aware he was closing in on the center of the riot but knowing that it was his job to see it and record it. As he had pulled the car around a corner, he spotted the dream mob, dancing, looting, racing through the flickering fire lights toward him. He could see the people shouting, and it seemed to him they were calling his name. Suddenly, in the car next to him, a piercing voice screamed, panic-stricken. He turned and saw that it was the little murdered girl. Before he could ask what was she doing there, the car was surrounded. He saw Robert Earl Ferguson's face and suddenly felt dozens of hands pulling him from behind the wheel as the car was rocked, pitching back and forth as if it were a ship lost at sea in a hurricane. He saw the girl being pulled from the car, but as she slipped from his wild, grasping hands, her face changed terribly and he heard the words 'Daddy, save me!'

He awakened, gasping for breath. He staggered from the bed, got himself a glass of water, and stared into the bathroom mirror as if looking for some visible wound, but seeing only a ridge of sweat plastering his hair by his forehead. Then he went back and sat by the window, remembering.

Some half-dozen years earlier, he had watched the frenzy as a mob pulled two teenage boys from a van. The boys had been white, the attackers black. The teenagers had unwittingly wandered into the riot area, gotten lost, tried to escape, only to drive themselves farther into the melee. I wish it were a dream, he thought. I wish I hadn't been there. The crowd had surged about the screaming youths, pushing and pulling them, tossing them about until finally they had both disappeared beneath a siege of kicking feet and pummelling fists, crushed down by rocks, shot by pistols. He had been a block distant, not close enough to be a helpful eyewitness for the police, just close enough to never forget what he saw. He had been hiding in the lee of a burning building beside a photographer who kept clicking pictures and cursing that he didn't have a long lens. They waited through the deaths, finally seeing the two mangled bodies abandoned in the street. He had run then, when the mob had finished and had poured in another direction, back to his car, trying to escape the same fate, knowing he would never escape the vision. Many people had died that night.