by Scott Pratt
Several years after Gant was convicted, after DNA testing had been developed, his wife paid a private laboratory nearly forty thousand dollars to test three pieces of evidence from the crime scene: a pair of panties his niece was wearing, a nylon stocking his mother-in-law was wearing, and a pubic hair found on the niece’s sheet. The lab was able to extract DNA samples from all three pieces of evidence, and none of them matched Gant. Armed with this new evidence, his appellate attorneys were able to get a hearing in front of a judge, who summarily denied their request for a new trial. The Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s ruling, and Gant remains here in this terrible place. I’m convinced he’s innocent, but once a jury finds a man guilty in a death penalty case, the odds against overturning the verdict are overwhelming.
“What are you doing down here?” Gant asks pleasantly. He’s put on some weight since I last saw him, and the hair at his temples has turned gray, but he seems in good spirits.
“I’m here to witness an execution, believe it or not.”
“Johnson?”
“Right. The murder he was convicted of happened in our district. My boss dumped this on me at the last minute. How’s your appeal going?”
“It isn’t. Unless Donna can somehow hand them the guy who did it on a silver platter, I’m the next one on the gurney.”
Donna is Gant’s wife. I see her at the grocery store once or twice a month, but I avoid talking to her whenever possible. Despite the fact that her mother was murdered, Donna has steadfastly maintained her husband’s innocence and has become obsessed with getting him exonerated. Back when I was representing Brian, she swore to me that Brian was at home in bed with her the night the crime took place, and she testified to that at trial, but the prosecutor successfully argued to the jury that she was just protecting her husband.
“When are you scheduled?” I ask.
“Three weeks from today.”
“Jesus, Brian, I had no idea. Have you run the DNA profile Donna got from the lab through the Department of Correction database? They might get a hit.”
“We’ve tried, but they refuse to do it.”
“Your lawyers can’t force them?”
“How could they force them?”
“Get an order from a judge.”
“What judge? Every judge I’ve run across has upheld my conviction. I’m just a convict now. I’m on death row. No one is interested in helping.”
“Anything I can do?”
“I appreciate the offer.”
“I’m sorry about everything, Brian. I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job.”
His eyes soften and he smiles, and I immediately feel even more guilt.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways, my friend,” he says. “Don’t blame yourself. You did what you could, and I have no hard feelings toward you. The Lord will take care of this, and if He sees fit not to, then I won’t question His judgment. If He calls me to heaven, then He must have a purpose for me there. I’m at peace.”
“You have to keep fighting.”
“Like I said, I’m at peace. I’ve placed myself in God’s hands and washed myself in the blood of the Lamb. I’ll accept my fate with a song on my lips and love in my heart.”
We sit there for a few minutes in awkward silence. I can’t think of anything else to say. Finally, Brian stands up.
“I think I’ll head on back to my cell now, Mr. Dillard, but I appreciate your coming. I really do. It makes me feel good to know you care. God bless.”
Eight hours later, just before midnight, I’m back at the prison, only now I’m sitting on a folding chair on a polished concrete floor just outside the execution chamber. Dull gray paint covers the concrete block walls, and pale light emanates from fluorescent bulbs hidden behind sheets of opaque plastic in the drop ceiling. The room is colorless, the air so still it’s stifling. I’m feeling queasy and claustrophobic, and I want nothing more than to get the hell out of here.
The condemned is a white man named Phillip Johnson. Twelve years ago, Johnson brutally raped and murdered eight-year-old Tanya Reid no more than ten miles from my house. He did unspeakable things to the child, then dumped her body in a culvert near the South Central community and covered it with brush. A couple of boys looking for frogs in the creek bed discovered Tanya two days later.
I’d been practicing law for only a few years when the crime occurred. I hung out my own shingle in northeast Tennessee as soon as I graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Law, and I wound up practicing criminal defense for many years. I was an outsider looking in during Johnson’s trial, but from everything I heard and read, there was no doubt about his guilt. He was a sex offender who’d already served seven years for fondling a young girl and was on parole, living in nearby Unicoi County, the day he snatched Tanya Reid from her driveway. His semen was found on the little girl’s body, and her blood and hair were all over the backseat of his car.
I’ve been sent here to witness the execution on behalf of the people of the First Judicial District and my boss, the man they elected as their attorney general. His name is Lee Mooney, and he was supposed to do this himself, but he called me into his office yesterday and said he’d decided to attend a conference in Charleston and would be gone until Friday evening. He then assigned this unpleasant task to me. I wasn’t offered the option of refusing.
Tanya Reid’s family is here—her mother, father, and three grandparents—and they smile at me tentatively. I’d introduced myself to them earlier, just as my boss had instructed. They’re simply dressed, quiet, grossly out of place so near this chamber of death. I remember the parents’ pleas on television the day after their child was abducted. They appear to have aged more than double the twelve years it’s taken to bring their daughter’s killer to what they believe is his rightful end. Their hair is gray, their shoulders slumped. They’re languid nearly to the point of being lifeless.
I must admit I’m conflicted about the death penalty. Philosophically, or intellectually, I just can’t cuddle up to the notion that a modern, civilized government that forbids its people from killing should be allowed to kill its people. But when I imagine putting the proverbial shoe on my own foot … well, let’s just say I know in my heart that if someone had kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered either of my children, I’d want them dead. I’d want them to suffer. I also know that I’d be perfectly capable of doing the killing myself. Maybe the state legislature should consider passing a law that allows the victim’s family the option of killing the condemned. They could also give them the option of killing the condemned in the same manner in which the victim was killed. Perhaps that particular form of revenge would provide the closure they seem to crave so deeply.
Sitting in the front row are two representatives from the media back home, both young female newspaper reporters, dressed in their dark business suits. So much time has passed since the crime occurred that the state and national media have moved on to more pressing matters. Tanya Reid is old news, perversely obsolete in our fast-moving society. As I look at them, I can’t help but wonder what kind of effect this is going to have. These young journalists, at once inexperienced and arrogant, have a condescending air about them as they prepare their “concerned” look for the live shot outside the prison later on. I wonder how they’ll feel about their love affair with professional voyeurism after they’ve watched a man die fifteen feet from their notepads.
At precisely the appointed time, they bring Johnson out into the death chamber in a white hospital gown, cuffs, and shackles. A steel wall separates the witnesses from the condemned. There’s a window, much like the one through which newborn babies are viewed in a maternity ward. I muse over the irony for a moment, then put it out of my mind… .
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 jac
ket, 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 dejectedly.
“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, a
nd 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.
