The Stand:BOOK I(43)

"Bad shit," Lloyd whispered.

Devins nodded, and gave Lloyd a slightly sour smile. "The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which reconfirmed that capital punishment was not cruel and unusual under certain circumstances. The court suggested that sooner was better …  from a legal standpoint. Are you beginning to get it, Sylvester? Are you beginning to see?"

Lloyd didn't.

"Do you know why you're being tried in Arizona rather than New Mexico or Nevada?"

Lloyd shook his head.

"Because Arizona is one of four states that has a Capital Crimes Circuit Court which sits only in cases where the death penalty has been asked for and obtained."

"I don't follow you."

"You're going to trial in four days," Devins said. "The state has such a strong case that they can afford to empanel the first twelve men and women that get called to the box. I'll drag it out as long as I can, but we'll have a jury on the first day. The state will present its case on the second day. I'll try to take up three days, and I'll filibuster on my opening and closing statements until the judge cuts me off, but three days is really tops. We'll be lucky to get that. The jury will retire and find you guilty in about three minutes unless a goddamned miracle happens. Nine days from today you'll be sentenced to death, and a week later, you'll be dead as dogmeat. The people of Arizona will love it, and so will the Supreme Court. Because quicker makes everybody happier. I can stretch the week-maybe-but only a little."

"Jesus Christ, but that's not fair!" Lloyd cried.

"It's a tough old world, Lloyd," Devins said. "Especially for ‘mad dog killers,' which is what the newspapers and TV commentators are calling you. You're a real big man in the world of crime. You've got real drag. You even put the flu epidemic back East on page two."

"I never pokerized nobody," Lloyd said sulkily. "Poke, he did it all. He even made up that word."

"It doesn't matter," Devins said. "That's what I'm trying to pound through your thick skull, Sylvester. The judge is going to leave the Governor room for one stay, and only one. I'll appeal, and under the new guidelines, my appeal has to be in the hands of the Capital Crimes Circuit Court within seven days or you exit stage left immediately. If they decide not to hear the appeal, I have another seven days to petition the Supreme Court of the United States. In your case, I'll file my appeal brief as late as possible. The Capital Crimes Circuit Court will probably agree to hear us-the system's still new, and they want as little criticism as possible. They'd probably hear Jack the Ripper's appeal."

"How long before they get to me?" Lloyd muttered.

"Oh, they'll handle it in jig time," Devins answered, and his smile became slightly wolfish. "You see, the Circuit Court is made up of five retired Arizona judges. They've got nothing to do but go fishing, play poker, drink bonded bourbon, and wait for some sad sack of shit like you to show up in their courtroom, which is really a bunch of computer modems hooked up to the State House, the Governor's office, and each other. They've got telephones equipped with modems in their cars, cabins, even their boats, as well as in their houses. Their average age is seventy-two-"

Lloyd winced.

"-which means some of them are old enough to have actually ridden the Circuit Line out there in the willywags, if not as judges then as lawyers or law students. They all believe in the Code of the West-a quick trial and then up the rope. It was the way out here until 1950 or so. When it came to multiple murderers, it was the only way."

"Jesus Christ Almighty, do you have to go on about it like that?"

"You need to know what we're up against," Devin said. "They just want to make sure you don't suffer cruel and unusual punishment, Lloyd. You ought to thank them."

"Thank them? I'd like to-"

"Pokerize them?" Devins asked quietly.

"No, course not," Lloyd said unconvincingly.

"Our petition for a new trial will be turned down and all my exceptions will be quickly heaved out. If we're lucky, the court will invite me to present witnesses. If they give me the opportunity, I'll recall everybody that testified at the original trial, plus anyone else I can think of. At that point I'd call your junior high school chums as character witnesses, if I could find them."

"I quit school in the sixth grade," Lloyd said bleakly.

"After the Circuit Court turns us down, I'll petition to be heard by the Supreme Court. I expect to be turned down on the same day."

Devins stopped and lit a cigarette.

"Then what?" Lloyd asked.

"Then?" Devins asked, looking mildly surprised and exasperated at Lloyd's continuing stupidity. "Why, then you go on to Death Row at state prison and just enjoy all that good food until it's time to ride the lightning. It won't be long."

"They wouldn't really do it," Lloyd said. "You're just trying to scare me."

"Lloyd, the four states that have the Capital Crimes Circuit Court do it all the time. So far, forty men and women have been executed under the Markham guidelines. It costs the taxpayers a little extra for the added court, but not all that much, since they only work on a tiny percentage of first-degree murder cases. Also, the taxpayers really don't mind opening their pocketbooks for capital punishment. They like it."

Lloyd looked ready to throw up.

"Anyway," Devins said, "a DA will only try a defendant under Markham guidelines if he looks completely guilty. It isn't enough for the dog to have chicken feathers on his muzzle; you've got to catch him in the henhouse. Which is where they caught you."

Lloyd, who had been basking in the cheers from the boys in Maximum Security not fifteen minutes ago, now found himself staring down a paltry two or three weeks and into a black hole.

"You scared, Sylvester?" Devins asked in an almost kindly way.

Lloyd had to lick his lips before he could answer. "Christ yes, I'm scared. From what you say, I'm a dead man."

"I don't want you dead," Devins said, "just scared. If you go into that courtroom smirking and swaggering, they'll strap you in the chair and throw the switch. You'll be number forty-one under Markham. But if you listen to me, we might be able to squeak through. I don't say we will; I say we might."

"Go ahead."

"The thing we have to count on is the jury," Devins said. "Twelve ordinary shleps off the street. I'd like a jury filled with forty-two-year-old ladies who can still recite Winnie the Pooh by heart and have funerals for their pet birds in the back yard, that's what I'd like. Every jury is made very aware of Markham 's consequences when they're empaneled. They're not bringing in a verdict of death that may or may not be implemented in six months or six years, long after they've forgotten it; the guy they're condemning in June is going to be pushing up daisies before the All-Star break."

"You've got a hell of a way of putting things."

Ignoring him, Devins went on: "In some cases, just that knowledge has caused juries to bring in verdicts of not guilty. It's one adverse result of Markham. In some cases, juries have let blatant murderers go just because they didn't want blood that fresh on their hands." He picked up a sheet of paper. "Although forty people have been executed under Markham, the death penalty has been asked for under Markham a total of seventy times. Of the thirty not executed, twenty-six were found ‘not guilty' by the empaneled juries. Only four convictions were overturned by the Capital Crimes Circuit Courts, one in South Carolina, two in Florida, and one in Alabama."

"Never in Arizona?"

"Never. I told you. The Code of the West. Those five old men want your ass nailed to a board. If we don't get you off in front of a jury, you're through. I can offer you ninety-to-one on it."

"How many people have been found not guilty by regular court juries under that law in Arizona?"

"Two out of fourteen."

"Those are pretty crappy odds, too."

Devins smiled his wolfish smile. "I should point out," he said, "that one of those two was defended by yours truly. He was guilty as sin, Lloyd, just like you are. Judge Pechert raved at those ten women and two men for twenty minutes. I thought he was going to have apoplexy."

"If I was found not guilty, they couldn't try me again, could they?"

"Absolutely not."

"So it's one roll, double or nothing."

"Yes."

"Boy," Lloyd said, and wiped his forehead.

"As long as you understand the situation," Devins said, "and where we have to make our stand, we can get down to brass tacks."

"I understand it. I don't like it, though."

"You'd be nuts if you did." Devins folded his hands and leaned over them. "Now. You've told me and you've told the police that you, uh … " He took a stapled sheaf of papers out of the stack by his briefcase and riffled through them. "Ah. Here we are. ‘I never killed nobody. Poke did all the killing. Killing was his idea, not mine. Poke was crazy as a bedbug and I guess it is a blessing to the world that he has passed on.'"

"Yeah, that's right, so what?" Lloyd said defensively.

"Just this," Devins said cozily. "That implies you were scared of Poke Freeman. Were you scared of him?"