The Death of Punishment by Robert Blecker

Author:Robert Blecker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

25

Death Watch

I hadn’t thought much about Daryl Holton in the months following his last-second stay of execution and our unpleasant follow-up phone call. He’d conned me, and his life left a bad taste. I long since shifted my focus to losing battles in New Jersey, then Illinois. But one day a letter arrived from Daryl. “I feel compelled to write and at least offer an explanation based admittedly on hindsight. Given the tone of our last conversation, I understand if you’re not interested.” After reading US Supreme Court briefs in a “minimally similar” competency challenge, Daryl feared the Sixth Circuit would stay his execution, he explained. Thus, he petitioned the Supreme Court to demonstrate his competence to file a petition. Daryl had no “delusion that the Court would grant relief. The points were purely academic. The Supreme Court denied my petition without comment. WHEW! So that’s it in a nutshell. I understand if you could care less. I’ve thought of our conversations and wondered how you are. The hair has finally started to grow back on my lower legs. I’m still bald but not a Buddhist. Drop me a note if you can.”

I ignored Daryl’s letter for several weeks. But eventually I replied. “One part of me is definitely disappointed in you for being around to read this letter and in me for writing it,” I confessed while acknowledging Daryl’s damned clever explanation for picking up his appeal: He filed to live so that he could die. “This death penalty focus wears me down—I’m really tired of it,” my letter truthfully admitted. “But the need for justice and the naïve belief that it’s possible in this world drive me on.”

Daryl wrote back immediately, expressing delight at our renewed contact and surprise that New Jersey ever had a death penalty as everyone there was insane and therefore constitutionally exempt. Daryl sent me a one-act play he’d just written, spoofing me. “Not much new to report here,” he said but added a P.P.S.: “Oh, almost forgot. The state filed a motion to reset my execution date.”

“So how’s this for self-centered arrogance?” my return letter began. “I’m sitting here, drinking my Poland Spring water, deeply conflicted between wanting justice and having you around a little longer to give me shit. So I woke up early this morning thinking about you being killed at the end of the month, at last for real, and I feel lousy. I hope you put me on your visitors’ list. But what’s left to say?” my letter confessed. “I’m planning on going down there execution night to mingle among the protesters outside and say to the chanting mob—‘Look, oppose the death penalty, but don’t claim he didn’t make a knowing choice.’ And so I’m getting psychologically geared up to see justice done and freed to start making sense of this strange interlude. When suddenly, popping onto my computer screen, news that the Governor has imposed a 3-month moratorium on all executions. And again I’m feeling unhappy, but this time because you’ll be alive, and once again justice won’t have been done.

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