Only the Truth by Pat Brown Page A

pregnant woman on death row and leaving a baby
motherless! How cruel and coldhearted it is to use an unborn baby to keep
oneself out of the gas chamber!"
His voice went
on but I lost track of what he said after the part about Charlene using me just
to make a baby. Mr. Green had told me that was what she was doing and that it
would backfire on her in court. But, ever since the Wiggingtons had showed up in town, he had changed his tune, telling me maybe Charlene
hadn't really been thinking about the court case when she bribed the jailer to
let me be with her. I tried to think back to see if her wanting to have sex
every night in the jail was anything but her wanting to love me and I can't
remember anything she did to make it seem like she was just using me.
Everything was the same in our lovemaking as it had been at the house except
for the bars surrounding it. I only wished she had called me ‘Sweet Billy Ray’ the
way she used to every time we made love in our bed.
     
    ********************

     
    I asked Mr. Green what he thought when we broke for lunch.
    "Why would she tell the police officer she wanted to be with Sweet
Billy Ray but never call me that when we was making love in the cell?"
    Mr. Green just shook his head.
    "I ain't no psychiatrist, Billy Ray. I can't say why she would do exactly this or
that."
    Mr. Green smiled at me.
    "Billy Ray, you have to start thinking positively now. We got ourselves
a defense and you have to support Charlene one-hundred percent."
    He leaned forward and spoke in a hushed voice across my pepperoni pizza
plate.
    "The prosecutor has to prove Charlene is a psychopath who planned this
murder with total free will. He has to prove that she knew what she was doing
before she did it and she worked to cover up her crime after she did it because
she knew what she did was wrong. Psychopaths are smart and they know right from
wrong. This is what his argument is going to be."
    I could follow that. I had been starting to understand this psychopath stuff
from everyone telling me that Charlene was one of them.
    "Now, I have a different thing to prove to the jury. I have to prove to
them that Charlene was crazy at the time of the murder; that something drove
her to do it that she had no control over, and her behavior before and after
the murder only supports that she was out of her mind when she killed Mr.
Doe."
    Mr. Green pushed himself back to his upright position and got up from the
table.
    "You just watch my opening statement this afternoon. I'll make Mr.
Dawson look like one unfeeling bastard."
    I watched Mr. Green as he walked away and wondered if he lied and changed
his tune as much as Charlene. Maybe lawyers weren't so different from the
clients they represented. Now it was hard to know who to trust.
     
    ********************
     
    Mr. Green sure did turn things upside down. Just before lunch I could see
the jury members looking at Charlene like she was some kind of poisonous
insect. By the end of the afternoon, they were looking at her as if she were a
lost puppy they wanted to adopt and take home to their children.
    Mr. Green didn't do all that loud yelling and pointing and wild gesturing
that Mr. Dawson did. He talked quietly and firmly and made Mr. Dawson look like
one of those snake oil salesmen trying to fool his audience into buying
something they don't need.
    The defense attorney got up quietly from the table and took his glasses off.
He laid them carefully on top of the case files. He walked towards the jury and
looked them over from left to right. He looked into all of their eyes and let
them look into his.
    He started with a statement.
    "A terrible event has occurred in a place where nothing like this has
happened in the last decades we can remember. No one has been murdered in their
home for reasons unknown and never have we had a woman in this town on the
stand fighting for her life."
    He paused.
    "We find ourselves at quite a loss. We want justice done for this
victim and we want to