Conviction

by Richard North Patterson

  * * *

  Eula Price's funeral was beautiful, the church filled with mourners, the casket covered in flowers. When the choir sang "Amazing Grace," Terri could feel Eula's soul nestling with the angels.

  That was what Terri told him. None of it was so, save for the flowers, the Pagets' gift. But the business of the angels made Rennell's eyes glisten.

  "She was a good woman," Terri said. "And she loved you." The truth, at last.

  Rennell closed his eyes. Silent, Terri studied the book of string and cardboard he had brought to her. Its pages were bright-colored cards sent him by Eula Price, Scotch-taped to rough drawing paper, and the letters "DNA" were scribbled in crayon on the cover.

  "What's this book?" she asked.

  It took Rennell a moment to refocus. "It's about me being innocent, like my grandma knew I was. I want you to show it to those people."

  "Which people?"

  "Them that come to give me those tests. Tired of tests."

  Terri tilted her head. "Know what our tests were about, Rennell?"

  He grasped one curled hand with the other. "I'm not dumb," he said with sudden anger. "I was just a fuck-off, like Payton said. Didn't care about no schoolin'."

  Terri had never heard this before. For a moment it startled her, and then she saw that, in Rennell's mind, it made him like anyone else he knew—just another street kid who made bad choices. "What makes you say that?"

  "Don't want to see those people from the State no more." Rennell's face was a mask of rage. "Don't want them comin' at me. Don't want nobody fucking with me. Even you."

  With the jolt of a connection made, Terri remembered the story which made his aversion to hurting the powerless—including Thuy Sen—more plausible. "When you were in juvenile hall," she ventured, "people did something terrible to you. Things that made you even more afraid to sleep at night. Can you tell me about that?"

  Rennell shut his eyes again. The skin around his knuckles, clenched tightly together, seemed paler. "Nothin' happened."

  "It's okay to talk," she assured him. "Payton told me about it."

  Rennell's eyes flew open. "Don't want no more tests. Don't want no more people comin' after me. Had too much of that."

  Terri touched his wrist, waiting for him to calm. "I'll try," she promised. "That's all I can do."

  EIGHT

  ON THE MORNING RENNELL'S HEARING BEGAN, DEMONSTRATORS slowed the Pagets' progress to the entrance of the Federal Building. Near the glass doors, a clump of anti–death penalty protesters—including a prominent actor and a Pulitzer Prize–winning poet—faced a smaller but vehement group beneath a sign which read JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS. One of its members, a graying woman whose plump face might have seemed pleasant but for its anger, stepped in front of Terri.

  "I've seen you on TV," she said in accusation. "How can you be so sick and twisted?"

  Chris took Terri's arm, signaling his intention, if he must, to shoulder the woman aside. But Terri would not move. Calmly, she said, "If I'm 'sick and twisted,' so are Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and the Pope. And every Western democracy but us—"

  "Then send all our murderers to France," a man called out, "if they're so morally superior. Lawyers like you are the reason animals like him can force children to have sex."

  "Let's go," Carlo murmured. This time Terri did not resist.

  * * *

  Gazing down from the bench, Judge Bond, dressed in his crisp black robe, spoke so that his voice would carry to the reporters who filled his airy but Spartan courtroom. That and his manner, slightly preening, reminded Terri of the grand inquisitor in a venerable Italian opera.

  "The first phase of this hearing," Bond declared, "will focus on whether Rennell Price is mentally retarded and therefore immune from execution. As well as whether—assuming this argument is not foreclosed by AEDPA—mitigating evidence omitted at his original trial militates against imposition of the death penalty.

  "I'm limiting each side to a single witness." The judge curtly nodded in Terri's direction. "Unless, Ms. Paget, you've decided to call Mr. Price himself."

  "As of now," Terri answered, "we're relying on our expert."

  With that, she stood, preparing to place the burden of explaining Rennell Price on the shoulders of Dr. Anthony Lane.

  * * *

  Facing Terri from the witness stand, Anthony Lane, a double-breasted suit swaddling his bulky frame, looked far more professorial than the casual black man who had first met with Rennell Price. Part of Terri found this disconcerting—it reminded her of the gulf between the rawness of Rennell's life as he had lived it and its translation by a psychiatrist in a sterile courtroom light-years from the Bayview.

  As they had planned, Lane tried to bridge the gap, framing the facts for Bond as plainly as he could. "Rennell Price," he said succinctly, "was cursed from birth. Or, more precisely, from the moment of conception.

  "His mother was intoxicated during pregnancy, blacking out from poisonous levels of alcohol in her first trimester. His nominal father—whose psychosis rendered him a sadist—gave Rennell beer so he could watch his two-year-old fall off the porch. Then his mother put more beer in his baby bottle so that Vernon Price wouldn't beat her because the child cried.

  "When Rennell was seven, Athalie Price took him to the hospital with a head injury, a concussion, clearly inflicted in his home—"

  "Which," Bond interjected, "if true, is tragic. But many children get concussions, Doctor—by accident or design. We can't hold them less accountable as adults."

  "Perhaps," Lane answered in a respectful tone. "But not many suffer from organic brain damage, caused by fetal alcohol syndrome and aggravated by deliberate blows to the head. In my opinion—based on testing and on his performance from early childhood—Rennell Price does."

  "Are these alleged organic problems," Bond inquired, "the cause of his supposed retardation?"

  "No," Lane answered crisply. "The damage inflicted by his family was their own special, and quite separate, environmental contribution. But Rennell would have been retarded if he'd been raised in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood—instead of in the Bayview, by a psychotic father and a retarded, alcoholic, paranoid schizophrenic mother—"

  "Then do you also infer," Bond asked sharply, "that Payton—on whose deposition so much of your petition rests—was retarded?"

  "No, Your Honor. But we think they had different biological fathers. According to their mother, Rennell's father was a 'sweet, slow boy down the street.' She may be mistaken, but she's probably too impaired to make it up.

  "It seems that Vernon Price believed that, too—which may be why he despised Rennell." As though recalling that his other audience was the media, Lane raised his voice, infusing it with irony. "Unlike Payton, Rennell derived no benefit from Vernon Price's intellect. Instead, he bore the weight of Vernon's psychosis."

  Pell, Terri noticed, had begun to regard Tony Lane with the raptness reserved for a dangerous expert. Behind her, she felt an absence of whispering or stirring, heard a silence so deep that she imagined a reporter flipping the page of a notebook.

  "What form did that take?" she asked.

  Lane folded his hands, gazing past her at those watching. "Rennell suffers from a sleep disorder: chronic nightmares, broken slumber, fear of falling asleep in darkness. We believe that started because the sounds of his father beating or raping his mother kept Rennell up at night—his bedroom was next to theirs. But no doubt his sleeplessness worsened at the age of four, when his father sat him naked on a white-hot space heater."

  One of Bond's law clerks, listening from the jury box, began fumbling absently with the knot of his tie. Bond himself squinted, as though the light in his courtroom had become too bright. But whether this was in sympathy or aversion, Terri could not tell. "What other events," she asked Lane, "may have contributed to Rennell's sleep disorder?"

  Lane turned to Bond again, pitching his voice to sound more confiding. "According to Payton's deposition, Vernon Price would ra
pe Athalie in front of the boys, sometimes penetrating her anus or vagina with a broomstick. The only restraint on Vernon's behavior was that the kids were not participants.

  "All that changed on the day when Vernon forced Athalie to take the child's penis in her mouth." Lane's tone remained even, allowing the words to carry their own weight. "Once she finished, Vernon lapsed into an alcoholic stupor. That was when Athalie went to the kitchen, got a butcher knife, and stabbed him in the heart."

  Bond's pursed mouth formed a small o. Terri could guess his thoughts: So this is where Rennell Price learned to force oral sex on children. "In your view," she inquired, "how did being forced into a sex act with his mother affect Rennell Price?"

  Lane seemed to gather himself. "To begin, I believe that Rennell's reaction to witnessing his father's murder—and being an unwilling party to the sex act which caused it—triggered a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, not dissimilar to that of soldiers who've suffered a horrific experience in combat. Except that Rennell was seven, not twenty, and the trauma Rennell wished to repress was that of a child forced into oral sex. From which, in his own experience, a terrible death resulted." Lane slowly shook his head. "Forget conscience, Your Honor, or the normal sexual taboos. In my opinion, for Rennell Price to force oral sex on a nine-year-old girl would have been a self-inflicted wound too difficult to bear. Long before Rennell was raped himself."

  With these words, Lane had veered sharply into guilt or innocence—just as Terri had designed—while creating sympathy for Rennell. Bond hesitated, seemingly torn between annoyance at this detour and interest in what Lane had to say.

  "What about retardation?" the judge finally demanded. "That's supposed to be the focus of your testimony."

  "I'm coming to retardation," Lane promised. "But that's not what makes Rennell Price a tragic figure. It's everything else about him.

  "Rennell was genetically predisposed to retardation, substance addiction, and mental difficulties. He was completely unwanted from birth, and suffered chronic neglect, physical illnesses, and extreme abuse since infancy. By early childhood, he was mentally, socially, and emotionally impaired. His history shows severe learning problems, mental retardation, organic deficits, and trauma. He was raised in poverty, in a chaotic environment that lacked supervision, guidance, or any positive role models. He was failed by his home, school, and community, all of which deprived him of a basic foundation for healthy development." Lane paused, his face and manner filled with a sad conviction. "Rennell Price, Your Honor, is the worst case of neglect and abuse I've ever seen."

  Bond regarded him, fingertips steepled together. "Perhaps so, Dr. Lane. But I hear any number of habeas corpus petitions, and I can't recall one where the petitioner's childhood was not portrayed as a horror story."

  Lane held the judge's gaze. "Perhaps so," he answered quietly. "But Rennell Price's childhood is the perfect storm."

  After a moment, Bond's expression became inscrutable. "All right," he said. "We'll recess for ten minutes," he said. "Then perhaps you'd care to address why we would find this man retarded. Which, rather than guilt or innocence, is the proper purview of your profession."

  The courtroom stirred, tension released in a Babel of voices and shifting bodies. Terri turned to her husband and murmured, "How do you feel about calling Rennell now?"

  With cool eyes, Chris watched Gardner Bond as he retreated from the bench. "Ask me later," he said.

  NINE

  "A SCORE OF SEVENTY," ANTHONY LANE ADVISED THE JUDGE, "IS not an absolute ceiling on retardation. And seventy-two is not a passing grade—"

  Bond held up a hand. "How do we impose a standard, Dr. Lane?"

  "By looking at whether retardation was clear from childhood, and the degree to which it affected Rennell's capacity to act in daily life." Lane's voice was cool. "Which, as we know, is a long, sad story—a devil's brew of heredity, brain trauma, and abuse. The only question is whether a number justifies ignoring all that."

  Stepping closer to the witness stand, Terri interposed a question of her own. "The Supreme Court's opinion in Atkins, Dr. Lane, emphasized the difficulties of a retarded man in coping with the legal system. Can you describe how retardation landed Rennell Price on death row?"

  Lane settled back, hands folded in his lap, assuming a more academic tone. "I'd describe it as a series of misperceptions and disconnects, beginning with Rennell's first interrogation and ending when the jury and judge sentenced him to death.

  "Inspector Monk saw a sullen crack dealer unable to conceal his own sense of guilt. What Monk actually faced was a frightened boy of extremely low intellect, searching for answers which would please the police—"

  "Didn't Rennell," Bond interrupted, "admit seeing Thuy Sen at a store?"

  "Maybe he did," Lane answered with a shrug. "Maybe he was just guessing. The real mystery is why he didn't confess to killing her.

  "All too often, retarded people make false confessions to ingratiate themselves, or simply to put an end to repeated questioning. No matter how many times Monk asked him, Rennell came back to 'I didn't do that little girl.' But he couldn't make the police believe him."

  "Perhaps," Bond retorted, "because he couldn't account for his whereabouts."

  Though the judge's comment was delivered as a counterthrust, Lane nodded in amiable agreement. "Precisely. Monk imagined seeing a child molester without an alibi. What he really saw was someone without any capacity to remember, or any specific sense of time or place—let alone of where he was the day Thuy Sen disappeared.

  "Payton says Rennell was asleep. In an even deeper sense than that, he was—each day and every day. For Rennell, one day was like any other, an indeterminate moment spent in a darkened room."

  The somber description made Gardner Bond pause. "What about Jamal Harrison?" Terri interposed. "His story to the police helped persuade Assistant D.A. Mauriani to seek the death penalty."

  "It's the same phenomenon. Harrison believed Rennell smiled because Payton had just told him Jamal would take care of Eddie Fleet. But Payton says it was simply because he'd promised Rennell that things would be okay." Lane's tone softened. "As always, Rennell believed him. Which is why we're all here."

  "Did Rennell's retardation affect his relationship to Yancey James?" Terri asked.

  "Yes," Lane answered gravely. "At the preliminary hearing, Judge Warner asked Payton, then Rennell, whether they'd agree to waive James's conflict of interest in representing them both. When Rennell's turn came to answer, Warner heard the answer yes. But what he really heard was a retarded teenager taking cues from his older brother. In terms of Rennell's comprehension, the judge could have been speaking in Bulgarian.

  "As for James, once Payton had tacitly confessed his guilt, James assumed that Rennell must also be guilty. To James, Rennell's insistence that he 'didn't do that little girl' was merely a failure of imagination—for which Payton compensated by inveigling Tasha Bramwell to lie for both of them." Lane's smile was etched with irony. "The only 'true' part of her story was that Rennell slept through the afternoon Thuy Sen died. Which, given his deficits in memory, surely came as news to Rennell. But all the jury saw was an inept lawyer offering a pathetic alibi to cover up for two degenerates."

  To Terri, Lane's measured account of Rennell's fate, accumulating step by step, seemed to have sobered those who watched. The courtroom felt preternaturally quiet. "How do you relate retardation," Terri asked, "to the question of whether Rennell was innocent and wrongly convicted?"

  "To me, they're intimately related. Knowing that he was innocent, if Rennell were a man of functional intellect he would have known that Eddie Fleet was framing him and, in all likelihood, favored his lawyer with some conclusions about why. A man of functional intellect might even have challenged Payton about what happened." Sitting back, Lane seemed to imagine Rennell at trial. "Rennell just sat there. With respect to Eddie Fleet, he was truly innocent."

  "Unless Rennell knew himself to be guilty," Bond objected.


  This, Terri knew, was the opening Tony Lane had been waiting for. "In my view," Lane replied, "retardation only made him look guilty. Aside from the compelling psychological reasons I gave you for believing that he'd never molest a child, there's not the slightest evidence in his life that Rennell would ever do so."

  Larry Pell leapt up at once. "Your Honor," he interrupted, "we've been more than tolerant of Dr. Lane's digressions from his area of expertise. But Rennell Price's guilt or innocence is a question for this Court, not for a mental health professional who has no personal knowledge of what happened on the day Thuy Sen was killed. We object to any further speculation."

  With an air of agreement, Bond swiveled his chair toward Terri. "Mr. Pell," she answered, "objects to a great deal. He objects to our calling Eddie Fleet. He objects to our calling Dr. Tammy Mattox to testify to Rennell Price's personal history." Turning on Pell, she asked, "You do still object, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "In which case," she said to Bond, "I'd like Dr. Lane to set forth the reasons that the accusation of murdering Thuy Sen is in conflict with Rennell's entire life."

  Trapped by the presence of the media, Bond gave a grudging nod. "Go ahead."

  Quickly, Terri asked Lane, "What factors in Rennell's past suggest that he is not disposed to the crime for which he was sentenced to death?"

  "It's more an absence of any factors suggesting that he is." Pausing, Lane summoned the list that he and Terri had rehearsed. "Unlike Eddie Fleet—who has a rich legal history of physically abusing women—Rennell has no such history. Unlike Eddie Fleet, Rennell has no history of violence whatsoever. Either before his imprisonment or after. Unlike what we believe is true about Eddie Fleet, Rennell Price has no history of sexual misconduct—"

  "Including with children?"

  "Yes," Lane said firmly. "In fact, we can find no evidence that Rennell Price ever had sexual relations—consensual or forcible—with anyone. In this sense, as well, it seems that Rennell is innocent."