62

Regina Granger met me at the office on Monday morning and asked for a few minutes of my time. She closed the door and said she had cleared my schedule for the week. I had already planned on taking Tuesday off, which was the date for Marshall’s execution, as well as the day after. But she had reassigned all of my cases that week to other ADAs.

“You’re under a lot of pressure right now, and you need some time away,” she said. I wondered how much Bill Masterson had told her.

I started to protest, but the matter was not open for debate. When I realized I couldn’t change her mind, I thanked her for taking care of things. She gave me a big Regina Granger hug and then held the outsides of my arms.

“Jamie, there’s already been a lot of talk around the office about the affidavit you signed. You’re probably aware that Mace James is making the media rounds. For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing.”

I nodded and told her how much I appreciated her support. But it bothered me that my colleagues were talking.

“The press will try to interview you today,” Regina said. “You can do whatever you want—this is a personal matter—but I don’t think you need to throw any more fuel on the fire.”

“They’ll have to find me first,” I said. “And that’s just to get a ‘no comment.’”

“Attagirl.” Regina gave me a pat on the shoulder, told me to call her cell phone if I needed anything, and turned to leave. “I want you out of here in fifteen minutes,” she said over her shoulder.

I didn’t know what to do with myself the rest of the day. I went to the gym but after a few listless exercises realized that I didn’t have much energy. So I went home and started obsessing over the online articles and television snippets covering Marshall’s scheduled execution.

Predictably, James was making lots of noise about the fact that even the victim’s family now wanted the execution halted. He continued to talk about the polygraph and the unreliability of cross-racial eyewitness testimony. Not a word was spoken about the test Antoine had taken. It was frustrating to see the speculation about why Jamie Brock, notorious hard-nosed prosecutor, had now flipped and gone soft on the death penalty.

I ignored the calls from reporters that flooded my cell phone. But I had to do something to clear up the confusion.

I called LA and asked him if he could leak some information to his sources at the newspaper and TV stations. “My specialty,” he said.

By early afternoon, the story was more complete. There were unconfirmed reports that Antoine Marshall had taken a new type of lie detector called a BEOS test and failed. His brain waves supposedly proved that he had killed Dr. Laura Brock. Unnamed sources also revealed that Antoine Marshall had written a letter after receiving the test results, apologizing to the victim’s family. The reporters now speculated that this admission of guilt had struck a chord with me and caused my about-face on the issue of whether Marshall should be executed or given life without the possibility of parole.

I was prepared to be castigated by my colleagues, but instead I started receiving accolades from other prosecutors who defended my right to show mercy in my personal life even though I advocated for the death penalty when I represented other victims. Their praise was echoed by death-penalty opponents who welcomed me with open arms to the side of the angels. All the while, my own emotions swung desperately back and forth. Regina had been right to send me home.

My ability to think logically and unemotionally about this matter was gone. So much so that at 5 p.m. on Monday, when the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles announced its decision to deny the petition for commutation, I went into a downward spiral. Though Mace James still had twenty-six hours to pull out a miracle, I knew that this time it wouldn’t happen.

I felt a tsunami of guilt wash over me. Not only had I withheld information about my father’s success rate in front of Judge Snowden, but I had leaked information about Antoine Marshall’s confession. I had done so on the assumption that the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles would grant the commutation to a life sentence. I wanted everyone to know that even if they did, there was no doubt about Antoine Marshall’s guilt. But now that his execution was a certainty, I was having a hard time coming to grips with my own role in the process.

But why was this different from four months ago?

The answer to that question was the one reality I tried desperately to ignore. Four months ago, I had no doubt about Antoine Marshall’s guilt. But now, even with this new BEOS test, I couldn’t erase a nagging question from my mind.

What if my father was mistaken? There was no DNA evidence. No murder weapon. No corroboration for the eyewitness testimony of a man whom I was no longer sure I really knew. If he was willing to bribe or blackmail a state court judge, would he also be willing to fudge his testimony in order to make his eyewitness identification appear more certain?

Not my father. He had always been fair and merciful. There was no way my dad would have shaded the truth when it would put a man on death row.

But there was no way my dad would have exercised undue influence with a judge, either. And what about those expert witnesses Snowden had kept from testifying? Dr. Rutherford had seemed pretty persuasive to me.

And so I would be forced to watch the execution of Antoine Marshall with these doubts swirling in my head. Had my father put an innocent man on death row? And if he did, had I just taken away the last chance that man had of escape?