Time's Witness (75 page)

“I have heard Mr. Rosethorn on many occasions speak eloquently to juries of ‘mercy.’ He may do so today. Remember this. The State is not the enemy of mercy. Justice is not the enemy of mercy. Without
justice
, mercy has no meaning. We punish crime not for vengeance, but to preserve that fragile bond of civilized men, a democratic society. It is the moral right of a society to purge itself of all who would destroy it. To deter those who infect it with disease. To
reform.
To
restrain.
” Mitch wheeled around, shaking his finger at Isaac. “And, yes—and this is no cause for apology, and let no one persuade you otherwise—it is our right and duty
to enact retribution.
‘Righteousness exalteth a nation!’” His arm was trembling; he dropped it quickly, and took a deep breath, slowly calming himself. Then he shook his head. “To punish crime is not cruel, is not selfish, is not primitive. The laws of this noble state, the laws of this noble nation, are not ‘cruel and unusual.’ They are the envy of other countries, the hope of the oppressed. They are a burning and a shining light around the world. As jurors, it is your sacred duty to guard the flame of that light, to guard it so that America is never left in darkness. George Hall took a life unlawfully. He is guilty. It is
your duty to say so. Your oath binds you to that duty. Justice demands it. And in the name of justice, I ask it of each and every one of you.”

Some of the spectators applauded. I don’t think Mitch heard them. Shaking, he strode back to his chair, yanked it out and flung himself into it. Slowly, Hilliardson's white long neck twisted to glance at the clock President McKinley had sent via Boss Hanna to Cadmean's father. Swiveling back, he announced that as it was nearly twelve, he thought we should take this opportunity to luncheon; he was therefore calling an hour's recess, after which we would proceed with the defense's closing remarks. Isaac Rosethorn sat slumped in his chair, tapping the pads of his forefingers against the sides of his nose.

Isaac was in the lobby, bent over, his back against the wall by the portrait of Cadmean; he was staring at the marble floor. When I asked him to come have some lunch, he said he wasn’t hungry, that he’d told Nora to go on without him.

“You worried, Isaac?”

With a sigh, he straightened up. “I’m always worried.…But Mitchell Bazemore isn’t always that good. He had them listening. I’m afraid he did.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I haven’t quite decided, Slim.” He brushed at his hair with his fingers. “Can you drive with one hand? Drive me to the cemetery?” I knew which one he meant; I’d been with him there often. And this time, like before, I waited on the path below while he limped across the North Hills grass to the grave of Edith Keene. For ten minutes, he sat leaning against that stone marker whose mysterious message used to puzzle me as a child. GONE TO A BETTER PLACE. Behind him, the marble of the Haver obelisk glittered in the hot autumn sun.

I watched Isaac's lips moving as his hand soothed the grass with slow constant strokes. Finally he struggled to his feet, patted the crest of Edith Keene's tombstone, and fanning himself with his straw hat, he made his shambling way down the path again. I opened the car door for him. “You okay now?”

“Better,” he nodded.

“After this is over,” I said, starting the motor, “you ought to go away someplace nice. You always wanted to go to Rome.”

A mild snort. “When I want to go to Rome, I read Gibbon.” He straightened a crushed cigarette, blowing tobacco shreds from his speckled fingers. “Besides, I have to get to work. How do you open this window?”

I smacked the power button. “You
retired.
You’re old. You’re in miserable shape. You’re—”

He stared at me, shaking his head. “It's you who's in miserable shape, and I don’t mean your broken bones. And here's Nora—”

“Don’t start in, Isaac.”

“She's in love with you.” He said it flatly, simply. “It breaks my heart.”

I told him I had my own broken heart to worry about. He patted my knee, and stared out at the passing graves. “What do we know?” he said finally. “Who are we to talk about broken hearts?…Nomi Hall's never told me hers was.” Sighing, he closed his eyes. “Ah, dear God…let me do this right.”

“Mr. Rosethorn? Are you with us? I asked if you cared to make a closing statement?” Judge Hilliardson stared down at the defense table where the old lawyer slumped, his head bowed, his eyes shut. “Counselor? Do you care to—”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Yes.” Opening his eyes, Isaac pushed himself up from the table, and, as he spoke, took off his seersucker jacket and draped it carefully over the back of his chair. “This morning,” he began, tucking in the back of his billowy white shirt, “Mr. Bazemore was kind enough to praise my eloquence. Allow me to praise his. I have many times over the years heard our district attorney address this very jurors’ box on the subject of crime, when he’d”—and Isaac's lungs swelled, his cheeks filled—“
huff and puff
about the grand old flag, and he’d shake those forty death-penalty convictions he wears on his scalp belt, and he’d tell us that if we didn’t give him one more head on a stake, one more eye for an eye,
why vermin would run wild in the streets, and the Founding Fathers would weep in their graves!
As if
the very first meeting
against
capital punishment hadn’t been held at Ben Franklin's house!”

He paused, solemnly shaking his head. “But, today, Mr. Bazemore didn’t do that.… Never, never before, have I heard him speak so well. I was moved by his deep, unquestionable belief in what he said.” Walking across the court to where Mitch sat, frowning, Isaac stood before him in silence, then gave a slight bow. “I am genuinely moved.”

Mitch glanced up, then lowered his head again.

Slowly Isaac turned, and both arms rose in the open-handed gesture that court illustrators loved, as his voice lifted and quickened. “I am moved,
because
the prosecutor has given a powerful speech
in favor of the defendant.
He asks you to set aside prejudice and politics.
Yes! Do it!

“He asks you to act in the name of justice.
Yes, I ask it too.
I am not here to plead for mercy for George Hall. If he had wanted mercy only, we wouldn’t even
be here
now! George would have taken ‘the deal’ offered before his first trial. He would have taken the deal, midway through
this
trial. He would have bargained away justice in exchange for mercy, as
confessed killers
have done, who have spent less time in prison than George has already served; who have spent
no time
on death row, where George has
lived alone
in a metal cage,
far smaller than your jury box, for seven relentless soul-aching years with no companion but Death! Think of it! Try to imagine one day, one twenty-four-hour day, in that cell. Now, try to imagine
sixty-two
thousand
of those hours.”

Isaac waited, staring at the jurors, then he pointed back at the defense table. “Imagine the courage to keep silent,
but
refuse to plead guilty to a lesser charge. Now try to imagine how much George Hall wants
justice.
”

He waited again, pulling loose the knot of his tie. “Not because he has earned justice by his suffering. Though that is true. Not because seven years ago he was treated unjustly. Though God knows
that
is true. But because, as a citizen of this nation, he was
born
with
the right to justice. He was
born
with it!”

George's eyes followed Isaac, as the old man limped toward him, on his way to the prosecutor's table.

“Yes, Mr. Bazemore, it is our moral responsibility in a free society to ensure justice. But for
all!
To do so, we lift our eyes, yes, not to the power of kings and armies, but to the power of
words
, to our Constitution, to our Bill of Rights.” The old stout arm was flung like a spear at the gilded seal above Judge Hilliardson's head. “A Bill of Rights
first insisted upon
by the delegates from North Carolina as an absolute prerequisite to their signing of the Constitution. A Bill of Rights that takes its power from a great Anglo-American principle—the principle of
equal protection under the law.
”

Returning to the jury rail, Isaac spoke as if what he was telling them was the most important thing they would ever hear. And the truth is, I think he believed that. “
If ever and when ever
, a law is used disproportionately, that principle of equal protection under the law is violated.
If ever and when ever
, punishment is meted out unequally—to the poor, to the foreign-born, to a racial minority, to the friendless or the unlettered—that punishment is cruel and unusual. And ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if ever that great principle was violated, it was violated by the charges twice brought against George Hall. If ever a punishment was cruel…it was George Hall's seven years on death row…waiting to die in silence…to save the lives of those he loved.”

Isaac's back was stooped, his shirt, wettened, clung to it. His head dropped forward, the white hair almost touching the rail, and he was quiet for so long, my heart began to race. But then slowly his back straightened, his head lifted, and his hands clasped at his breast.

“Counsel for the State is right. Law must be a burning and a shining light. But it must be that for
all.
It must burn past power and wealth and position. It must shine through the color of a man's skin. Laws used against this one for his creed and that one for her sex, laws that are not deaf to accents and blind to origins—those laws make a mockery of our courts and our conscience. Justice grieves.”

Walking back to his chair, he picked up a thick law book lying open there, and held it out in his hand. “No matter if the
letter
of the law be fulfilled, if its
spirit
is violated, then it is null and void. Then, as Mr. Bazemore's Good Book says, it is broken words in a valley of bones.” His hand tilted and the book slid with a
frightening crash onto the table. The sound echoed down the room, as he turned to the jury. “The spirit of this nation's greatest law lives in one simple sentence. It starts, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.’ You know the one I mean?”

The jurors looked at him. I saw the farm widow unconsciously nod. “That's right,” Isaac told her. “
Self-evident
that George Hall was created equal to you and to me, and to Judge Hilliardson there on the bench, and to Governor Wollston over in Raleigh, and to the president up in Washington.
Self-evident
that, as our equal, George Hall has a right not to be intimidated and harassed and threatened because he's black. George stopped believing he had those rights. And two hundred years of history stand as witness to why he
should
doubt! Doubt he has a right to expect that if he goes to the law about the crimes of the powerful, it will listen. Doubt that if he goes to the law about murderous threats, it will protect him and his loved ones.

“Like all of you, he had the right not to fear that an arresting officer would as soon shoot him as not. The right not to be a sacrifice in a disgusting cover-up of the tangled greed and misguided personal and political allegiances of powerful people! The right not to be rushed through a shabby trial because he was poor and black, and not to be condemned to death for an act that no white man who’d shot a black in self-defense would
ever
even have been
charged
with.
The right to be treated equally.
That
inalienable
right is
the real shining torch you jurors are guarding! Because if it can be taken away from George, it can be taken away from anyone—even someday from you, from your neighbor, even someday be taken away from your child.”

Isaac moved along the rail and stood directly in front of Mrs. Boren; his dark sad eyes gazed straight into hers. “By that light, look at George Hall.…Look at the courage it took to go to his employer. The decency it took to believe—sadly enough,
unwisely
believe— his employer would do the right thing. You know George has told you the truth. Just as you know Moonfoot Butler is a liar, and the cowardly Judas who telephoned Pym and Russell to tell them where they could find George that night. You know
why
those two ‘policemen’ went to Smoke's that night to seek George out? To goad
him into a fight, and then pretend he was resisting arrest so they could kill him!” Mrs. Boren stared back at him until finally he bowed his head, and patted the rail as if it were her hand.

“But George didn’t intend to kill Robert Pym, even after Robert Pym assaulted him.
Reason
tells you, he would have felt around under that table for his glasses, and put them on, so he could
see
to shoot to kill, if that had been his intent! It was a fated, misfortunate shot that Pym was killed. All George was trying to do was save his own life. And you’ve heard from witness after witness after witness that George was
right
to believe his life was in danger! That is the God's truth.”