The Last Plea Bargain by Randy Singer Page A

Prison in Jackson at three fifteen. There were 107 men on death row, all residing in the same wing of the facility, within yards of the execution chamber housed in a white building at the edge of the prison facility. Other states transported their prisoners to specially constructed execution rooms miles away from where the prisoners were held. But Georgia believed in efficiency.
    A handful of demonstrators had already gathered outside the facility, and Mace took the time to shake everyone’s hand. He was still amazed at how little public outcry this case had generated, even after his TV interview. The Troy Davis case, just a year earlier, had garnered widespread publicity. But nothing had changed. If anything, the public just grew more desensitized to last-minute desperation filings by death-row attorneys claiming that their clients were “truly innocent.” Most people now greeted such filings with a yawn.
    By midafternoon the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles had voted to deny clemency. The US Supreme Court had denied a stay based on the suspect nature of the sodium thiopental. The only hope left was the petition presently before the Georgia Supreme Court. If that petition was denied, the attorneys at Knight and Joyner would raise the same issue with a habeas filing in the federal courts—first with the Eleventh Circuit and ultimately with a single justice of the US Supreme Court.
    It was never too late. Troy Davis held the record. He’d been convicted in the 1989 killing of a Savannah police officer. Twenty years later, the Supreme Court granted a stay less than two hours before his scheduled execution. Davis later presented new evidence to a Georgia federal judge who ruled that the evidence amounted to nothing more than “smoke and mirrors.” Davis proclaimed his innocence with his last breath on September 21, 2011. How had Davis’s lawyers managed to keep their client alive for twenty-two years, yet Mace couldn’t keep Antoine alive for more than eleven?
    The answer, Mace knew, was the 1996 enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which seriously curtailed the habeas corpus rights of death-row inmates convicted after the law’s passage. But Mace also shouldered a fair share of the blame. A good lawyer would never allow an innocent man to die.
    Before meeting with Antoine, Mace inspected the lethal-injection chamber, which had already been prepared for that evening’s event. The room was small, cold, and sterile, about the size of an examination room at a doctor’s office. It was so white that it was nearly disorienting—the white walls and white tile floor interrupted only by a four-inch black baseboard and a bright-yellow door. The “bed” where they would strap Antoine featured a two-inch mattress covered in a white disposable sheet. There were black straps for his arms, knees, and ankle, as well as one that would lie across his shoulders.
    Mace had never witnessed an execution. But it was clear that the state wanted this to look like every other medical procedure. They would even swab Antoine’s arm with alcohol before inserting the needle for the IV.
    One wall of the execution chamber was a large window that allowed observers to watch the procedure. There were blinds on the inside that would be pulled back once Antoine was strapped in. Members of the victim’s family and District Attorney Masterson would be in the observation room. Mace would be there too, along with the prison chaplain, who had taken quite a liking to Antoine. They would be joined by five reporters, selected to serve as witnesses for the media, along with a few prison guards.
    Mace surveyed the execution chamber and shrugged at the prison guards. What was he supposed to do—complain that he wanted the walls painted a different color?
    â€œI’d like to see my client now,” he said.
    A few minutes later, Mace walked into a small room in the main