by Scott Pratt
Johnson is short and doughy, with neatly cut black hair, a double chin, and a clean-shaven face. The monster is forty-one years old, but he looks no more than thirty. He’s spent nearly half of his life in prison, but if you replaced the hospital gown with a jacket, slacks, and a tie, he’d look like the neighbor who passes the collection plate in church on Sunday mornings.
The prison’s representatives are here, too. Warden Tommy Joe Tester is leading Johnson into the chamber, followed by two massive prison guards in black uniforms. The chaplain, a physician, and two stone-faced medical technicians wearing white coats follow only a pace behind.
Johnson stops his shuffle and looks out over the audience mournfully. No one from his own family has come to watch him die. Until this point, he has at least attempted to remain stoic, but his lips begin to tremble and his shoulders slump. As the guards help him onto the gurney, he begins to weep. The guards remove his cuffs and shackles and replace them with leather straps attached to the gurney. Then they step back against the wall.
“That’s it, cry, you son of a bitch,” I hear Tanya’s father mutter from his front-row seat. “Go out like the coward you are.”
The warden, dressed in a navy blue suit, steps forward holding a piece of paper.
“Phillip Todd Johnson,” the warden says in a nasal Southern twang, “by the power vested in me by the state of Tennessee, I hereby order that the sentence of death handed down by the Criminal Court of Washington County in the matter of State of Tennessee versus Phillip Todd Johnson be carried out immediately. Do you have any last words?”
There’s a brief pause, and then a pitiful wail.
“I’m sorry,” Johnson cries. “I’m so very sorry. I couldn’t help myself. May God forgive me.”
I don’t know what God’s attitude toward him will be, but the state of Tennessee doesn’t seem to be in a forgiving mood.
“May God have mercy on your soul,” the warden says as the executioners efficiently hook an IV into Johnson’s left forearm.
Three different drugs will be injected into his body: five grams of sodium thiopental, which will render him unconscious, followed by one hundred milligrams of pancuronium bromide, which will block the neuromuscular system and cause his breathing to cease, and one hundred milliliters of potassium chloride, which will stop his heart. Each of the three doses would be lethal on its own, but the state wants to make damned sure he’s dead and that he doesn’t feel a thing. Those who are enlightened about such things consider this to be the most humane method of killing a human being.
Johnson continues to cry as the chaplain prays. Suddenly, the microphone inside the death chamber is turned off. All we can do now is watch. The prison physician steps forward while one of the EMTs walks behind a wall, presumably to release the first dose of fatal drugs. I want to close my eyes, but I can’t. Even though I find the entire matter hypocritical and disgusting, I’m riveted. Thirty seconds after the EMT disappears, Johnson’s chest rises, his eyes flutter, and he is still. The thought crosses my mind that the death he’s just been given was so much more serene than the one he doled out to little Tanya. Even so, I wonder how what I’ve just witnessed could possibly be called justice.
I sit in the seat for a moment, feeling awkward, not quite knowing what to do. Then the family rises, and I do the same. The show’s over-figuratively for the audience and literally for Johnson-and I hurry out into the night.
4
I sleep fitfully in the hotel room. The voices that haunt me alternate between Phillip Johnson’s and a young girl’s. Both are begging for their lives, asking me to save them. But I’m frozen in fear, unable to move or even speak. I wake three times during the night, drenched in sweat. Finally, at five thirty, I roll stiffly out of bed, go into the bathroom, and splash cold water on my face. I look into the mirror and wonder whether the nightmares will ever end.
They’ve dogged me for most of my life, these snippets of violence and horror, exploding ordnance, and cries of anguish. They began when I was a young boy and stumbled onto a rape. My teenage uncle was raping my sister, who was only a year older than I. I tried to stop it, but my uncle overpowered me, threw me out of the room, and I wound up lying on the floor, helpless, listening to my sister’s muffled cries.
Later I marched off to the army in a misguided attempt to feel some kind of kinship with my father, who was killed in Vietnam six months after I was conceived. I wound up parachuting into Grenada with two battalions of Rangers from the Seventy- fifth Infantry. The things I saw and did there enter into my subconsciousness randomly, like pop-up targets on a firing range, nearly always when I’m sleeping. The images don’t appear as often as they once did, but when they do, they come complete with digital sound and brilliant color, and they remain as vivid as the day they happened.
If I’d had any sense, I would’ve chosen a career that promised to be relatively uneventful-something like accountancy or maybe pharmacy. But some irresistible force has always pushed me toward self-flagellation, and in my early twenties, I made the unfortunate decision to become a lawyer and subsequently-driven primarily by a need to support my family-entered the world of criminal justice with its sociopaths, psychotics, narcissists, and idiots. I practiced criminal defense for more than a decade, until I wound up getting shot by the deranged son of a murder victim. I took a year off after that, but eventually I was drawn back in as a prosecutor. The first case I prosecuted involved a group of Satan-worshiping Goths who murdered six people. Their leader-a psychopath named Natasha Davis-nearly killed me. Now, as I gaze into the mirror at a face that looks much older than it should, I wish I could somehow lift the top of my skull, remove my psyche with a spoon, and start all over again.
I leave the bathroom and pull on a pair of sweatpants, a hoodie, and my ragged running shoes. The hotel where I’m staying is a block from Vanderbilt University, so I spend the next hour jogging through the campus and around the park across the street that surrounds the Parthenon. By six thirty I’m showered and seated in the hotel restaurant. A couple of minutes later I see my son walk through the door.
Jack is six feet three now, the same height as me. His hair is dark like mine but cut much shorter. His eyes are a chocolate brown and reflect a natural intensity and intelligence. He’s twenty years old, a junior at Vanderbilt, and a member of the baseball team, a program that prides itself on discipline and toughness. He carries himself with the confidence of an athlete, and as I stand to hug him, my heart seems to swell in my chest.
“Big Jack,” I say, wrapping my arms around his neck, “you look fantastic.”
“You look tired,” he says as he returns the hug and sits down across from me.
“Didn’t sleep very well.”
“So, how are you? Want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
“The execution. Are you handling it all right?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I say honestly. “It’s hard to believe I sat there and watched them kill a man.”
“A man who murdered a defenseless little girl.”
“I know. I’m just not quite sure what to think about it.”
“Then don’t think about it.” He smiles broadly. “Let’s talk baseball.”
I’m relieved he isn’t interested in hearing the details of the event I witnessed several hours earlier, and we begin to talk about our favorite subject while he wolfs down four eggs, two pieces of wheat toast, two apples, and a banana. We talk about coaches and teammates and opponents and Jack’s prospects of being drafted by a major- league team in June. I’m in favor of his staying at Vanderbilt through his senior year, but he’s a power hitter who also hits for average and rarely strikes out, and there’s a good chance the pros might throw some serious money at him in the draft this year. An hour flies by, and at seven forty-five he looks at his watch and gulps down the last of a glass of orange juice.
“Gotta go, Dad,” he says. “Class in fifteen minutes.”
“Sure,” I say dejected
ly.
“Something wrong?”
“Nah. I’m just not looking forward to the rest of the week.”
“What’s up?”
“I have a hearing tomorrow morning that I don’t think is going to go well, and your mom has invited Ray and Toni over for dinner Saturday night. She thinks they’re on the verge of splitting up.”
“I talked to Tommy yesterday,” Jack says. Tommy Miller and Jack have remained close despite being hundreds of miles from each other. They speak on the phone often and spend time together during the holidays, which is the only time they’re at home now. The last time I saw Tommy was at Christmas. He told me he loved Duke University and was doing well both in the classroom and on the baseball field.
“Yeah? What’d Tommy have to say?”
“He says things are bad. He’s worried about his dad. He also says he’s going to have to transfer in the fall because they can’t afford the tuition at Duke anymore.”
“I know. Your mom told me.”
Ray Miller’s situation has grown steadily worse since Judge Green threw him in jail on the contempt charge six months ago. The judge made good on the promises he made as Ray and I left the courtroom that day. Less than twenty- four hours after Ray was jailed, the judge issued an order suspending Ray from practicing law in the criminal courts of the First Judicial District. He then filed a dozen complaints against Ray with the Board of Professional Responsibility. Since the complaints were coming from a judge, the BPR-a useless bunch of paper pushers in Nashville-suspended Ray statewide without so much as a perfunctory hearing.
Green’s scorched-earth campaign has resulted in Ray’s being unable to earn a living, which in turn has caused him to be unable to make his mortgage payments, which will undoubtedly result in the loss of his house in the very near future. Two of his vehicles have already been repossessed by creditors, Tommy is being forced to leave Duke, and as the situation has worsened, Ray has fallen into a deep depression. He’s grown a beard, is drinking heavily, and has put on at least thirty pounds. I find myself going by to see him less and less often, because watching him deteriorate is nothing short of heartbreaking.
“So why is Mom having them over?” Jack asks.
“Sounds like it’ll be pretty miserable.”
“You know how she is,” I say. “She always thinks she can help, and even if she can’t, she thinks she has to try.”
Jack rises from the table and hugs me again.
“Tell Mom I love her,” he says, “and tell her there are some things a person just needs to stay out of.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“And you,” he says with a smile. “Can I tell you something without making you mad?”
“Depends on what it is.”
“I’ve learned something since I’ve been here. It’ll probably sound strange to you, but I’ve learned the only thing that’s real is the present. If you think about it, there’s really no future and no past. There’s only now, and that’s where we should concentrate on living.”
“I didn’t know you’d become a philosopher.”
“It’d be good if you’d give it a try, Dad. It’d be good if you’d stop worrying about the future so much, and it’d be even better if you could forget about the past.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’m serious. I know you’re my father and I’m biased, but I think you’re the best man I’ve ever known. You should go easier on yourself.”
“Thank you, son. I’ll try.”
He turns away, and as I watch him walk out of the restaurant, I feel a tear slide down my cheek.
5
“Would you state your name for the record, please?”
The next morning I’m standing at a lectern in Criminal Court in Jonesborough, Tennessee, the seat of Washington County and the oldest town in the state. There are dozens of spectators beyond the bar, all anxiously awaiting the outcome of the hearing. The witness on the stand is an intelligent, frail-looking twenty-five-year-old with an acne-scarred face and straight, shoulder-length brown hair parted in the middle. He leans toward the microphone.
“My name is David Dillinger,” he says. I notice a quake in his voice. His anxiety is understandable since he’s traveled thousands of miles and is a stranger among us, but anxiety seems to be a way of life for Dillinger. When I interviewed him before the hearing, he had to leave the room half a dozen times to smoke.
“Where do you live, Mr. Dillinger?”
“I live at 401 West Fifth Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.”
“And what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a computer programmer for Royal National Bank.”
“Do you know the defendant?”
Dillinger shifts uneasily in the chair and looks over at the man sitting at the defense table.
“No. I don’t know him. I’ve never met him.”
Douglas “Buddy” Carver stares straight ahead from his spot at the defense table. There isn’t a trace of emotion on his sixty-year-old face. His thinning white hair has been combed to the side and held firmly in place by a sticky product of some kind, and he’s wearing a loud, red sport coat. Carver is a slumlord, one of the wealthiest landowners in northeast Tennessee. He’s also an extremely popular deacon at one of the largest Methodist churches in Johnson City and hosts a local television show called Bringing the Light that airs at five o’clock every Sunday afternoon. Most of the people in the gallery are supportive members of his church. They stared at me coldly when I walked into the courtroom.
“Would you please explain to the court how you became involved in this case, Mr. Dillinger?” I ask.
“I received notice that Mr. Carver had downloaded some images onto his computer.”
“You say you received notice. How were you notified?”
“By my computer.”
“Can you explain to the court how it worked?”
“I attached what’s known as a Trojan Horse virus to some pornographic material on an Internet Web site. The pornographic material depicted children. When the images were downloaded, the virus notified me. I was then able to get into the computer of whoever downloaded the images. From there, I was able to find out who was doing the downloading.”
“How many pornographic images of children were downloaded?”
“Twelve the day I found out about it, but when I got into the computer, there were about fifteen hundred more.”
“And what did you do, Mr. Dillinger?”
“I called Pedofind. It’s a nonprofit organization that tracks pedophiles in the United States and Canada. I gave them the information I had.”
“And after that?”
“All I know is that Mr. Carver wound up getting arrested, and here I am today.”
Pedofind had contacted the Johnson City Police Department, and they, in turn, had followed up. They gathered enough information to get a search warrant, executed the warrant at Buddy Carver’s home a week later, seized his computer, and arrested him a couple of days after that.
“Did you have any contact regarding Mr. Carver with any law enforcement agency in Tennessee before you found these images on his computer?” I ask.
“No.”
“Did you have any contact with any law enforcement agency anywhere about Mr. Carver before you found these images?”
“No.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dillinger.”
Cut-and-dried, I think. Straightforward. Nothing to attack. But I know there’s never anything cut- and-dried in the field of criminal law. I also know I’m in front of a judge who is strangely sympathetic to sex offenders in general and pedophiles in particular. I suspect he and the defendant might have something in common.
Judge Green has been taking notes and listening intently to the testimony, his glasses perched precariously on his long, thin nose. Buddy Carver’s lawyer is a fifty-year-old named William Kay who brownnoses judges so blatantly that everyone calls him Fudge. He has filed a motion asking the judge to throw
out all of our evidence (the pornographic images) because, he alleges, his client’s rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution have been violated. Specifically, Fudge is arguing that David Dillinger illegally searched Carver’s computer, thereby requiring the court to exclude the evidence he found and subsequently turned over to Pedofind.
Were David Dillinger a police officer, Kay’s argument would have legs. But Dillinger is a private citizen who took it upon himself to intervene in a situation that offended him personally. The guarantees under the Fourth Amendment don’t extend to searches conducted by private individuals-only to searches conducted by agents of the government. Fudge is arguing that because Dillinger contacted authorities as soon as he found the pornographic material and sought to have Carver prosecuted, he was acting as an agent of the government and was therefore required to obtain a warrant before searching the files of Carver’s computer. Fudge is wrong, but that doesn’t mean a thing.
“Cross, Mr. Kay?” Judge Green asks, and Kay gets up. He’s short and pudgy. His brown hair is matted and looks as though he just got out of bed.
“Mr. Dillinger,” Kay says as he waddles around the table toward the lectern, “why did you attach this virus to this particular kind of material?”
“Because it offends me.”
“How did you know where to find it?”
“Excuse me?”
I’m watching Dillinger intently. He sits on his hands and his face flushes. He’s already becoming flustered, so I stand.
“Objection, relevance,” I say. “How Mr. Dillinger originally found the material has nothing to do with whether Mr. Carver downloaded it to his computer.”
“Overruled,” Judge Green snarls. “Sit down, Mr. Dillard.”
