The Executioner's Song (129 page)

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THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

application to Justice Marshall. It was sent back in a few minutes signed, “Application denied.”

Now, Bronstein asked it be given to Justice Brennan for submis sion to the entire Court. Michael Rodak went out with it, and a min ute later, Francis Lorsen, the Deputy Chief Clerk, came back to tell Bronstein that the Supreme Court had been in the robing room, ready to start a regular session, but that they had turned back in order to consider Bronstein’s application. That was highly unusual. Five minutes later, Rodak handed Bronstein a short letter. It said that the full Supreme Court, through Chief Justice Burger, had denied the Stay at Io:o3. It was now three minutes after eight in Utah, and every last legal resource had been used. Nothing could prevent the execution of Gary Gilmore.

THE TURKEY SHOOT

In the Minimum Security room to which Schiller had been escorted by the guards were a lot of people he didn’t recognize. One by one, they would pass in, try not to look confused, take a folding chair and sit down. Nobody was talking to anyone else. It did not have the atmosphere of a funeral, but there was an utter and polite calm.

Then Toni Gurney walked in. For the first time, Larry saw somebody he could say hello to and chatted with her. It was not so much that he was the man who broke the ice, but at least one con versation had begun, and soon a lot of people began to converse.

After a while, Vern came over and pointed out a fellow Schiller had noticed, a rather icy-looking man, wearing an obvious toupee, ac companied by two severe-looking women. Schiller assumed the fel low was a mortician, but Vern said, “That’s the doctor who’s going to take Gary’s eyes out.”

Then Stanger came into the room and he was furious. Judge Bullock had delayed the order. Now, Gary could be executed at any time during the day. “Would you believe that, Larry?” Schiller could see that Stanger didn’t want Gary to be executed, and, in fact, when Moody came up, Ron still maintained that this would be another dry run. The execution was simply not going to come down. Schiller

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heard someone in the corner say, “They may keep us here three hours.”

Just then a guard came running in from the back door and yelled some words over his shoulder. “Overturned,” he cried out. “It’s on.” At that moment, Stanger, for the first time, understood that Gary Gilmore was going to be shot. It went through him like he had been kicked in the chest. Then he felt chilled. It was an appalling sensation. The strangeness of the reaction went all through him. For the first time in his life, Ron could feel the ends of his nerves. His heart could have been caked in ice. He looked over at Schiller taking notes on the back of some paper and thought, “I’m sure glad he’s recording all this, because I can’t even move. I don’t know if I can walk.”

Then they started to transfer the guests. As they led him to the car, Stanger knew he must look ready to throw up. He felt as close to death as breathing, and wondered if he were going mad, because he would have bet a million Gary Gilmore would never be executed. It had made his job easy. He had never felt any moral dilemma in carrying out Gary’s desires. In fact, he couldn’t have represented him if he really believed the State would go through with it all. It had been a play. He had seen himself as no more important than one more person on the stage.

Out in the parking lot, the reporters were being awakened. There was a lot of banging on the doorsof vans. “The firing squad is coming,” someone shouted.

Robert Sam Anson, covering it for New Times, was taking notes: “Once again, everyone is running. A hundred yards away, in Maximum, a police car, followed by a van, has pulled close to the gate. Now Sam Smith strides toward the building, erect, determined, coatless, oblivious to the cold. At 7:47, a small party of people emerges from the Maximum door; even at this distance, Gilmore can be seen quite distinctly. He is wearing white pants and a black T-shirt …. ‘It all looks pretty good,’ one of the guards comments. ‘All that’s left now is the paper work,’ his partner answers.

“With the appearance of Gilmore, the reporters become a mob, a

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herd spooked into stampede. Camera lights tilt crazily up into the air as their bearers struggle to shift them into position. Producers are shouting orders. Directly in front of the prison building, Geraldo Rivera, attired in black leather jacket and jeans and looking cool, the way only Geraldo Rivera can look cool, is shouting into his mike. ‘Kill the Rona segment. Get rid of it. Give me air. You’ll be able to hear the shots. I promise. You’ll be able to hear the shots.’ “

When Gary came out of Maximum Detention, he was escorted to the van and seated behind the driver. Meersman sat next to him and then Warden Smith came in, and three new guards. The van drove slowly with the seven men, the only car moving in all that quarter mile of prison streets from Maximum Detention to the cannery.

As soon as they started, Gary reached in with both manacled hands to a pocket of his pants and took out a folded piece of paper and put it on his knee so that he could look at it. It was a picture of Nicole clipped from a magazine, and he stared at it.

When the driver of the van turned the key for the motor, the radio, having been on before, now went on again. The tension in the van was sufficient that everyone jumped. Then the words of a song were heard. The driver immediately reached down to turn the radio off, but Gary looked up and said, “Please leave it on.” So they began to drive and there was music coming from the radio. The words of the song told of the flight of a white bird. “Una paloma blanca,” went the refrain, “I’m just a bird in the sky. Una paloma blanca, over the mountains I fly.”

The driver said again, “Would you like me to leave the radio on?” Again Gary said, “Yes.”

“It’s a new day, it’s a new way,” said the words, “and I fly up to the sun.”

As they drove along slowly, and the song played, Father Meersman noticed that Gary no longer looked at the picture. It was as if the words had become more important.

Once I had my share of losing,

Once they locked me on a chain,

Yes, they tried to break my power,

Oh, I still can feel the pain.

THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG

No one spoke any longer and the song played through.

No one can take my freedom away,

Yes, no one can take my freedom away.

When it was done, they drove in silence and got out at the cannery, one by one, disembarking in the way they had practiced in the early hours of the morning when these same prison guards had walked through the scene with a model standing in for Gary. Now, they brought him into the cannery, very, very smoothly. Meersman felt that the practice had paid big dividends.

Last nite I flew in my dream

like a white bird through the window … Tonite i will tell my soul to fly me to you.

All through the trip from Maximum to the cannery, all the while “La Paloma Blanca” was playing, Father Meersman did not have any particular feelings as such. Like anything else, one had to proceed to each particular stage in order that it all run smoothly. That was the uppermost thing in his mind, to be thinking ahead to the next step, so that even getting into the van, there wouldn’t be any stumbling.

It had been beautifully planned, Father Meersman thought. Even to the care with which they had arranged that as the vehicle with Gary Gilmore in it moved from Maximum to the cannery, all the traffic in the prison compound would stop with no vehicles moving while this one vehicle made its way, so that for the purposes of security, everything was protected. The authorities had timed this transfer with a stopwatch whereby they knew as far as you can humanly know how long it would take for the van to go to this corner and then to that corner, and Father Meersman had occupied himself so intensely in the logic of these steps that he did not have a feeling he could really reflect on other than his paramount concern that Gary

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Gilmore not be upset in any way through this whole thing. It was Gary Gilmore’s calm frame of mind he wanted to carry through the procedure smoothly and have finished smoothly, and on the flow of such quiet thoughts, his black wintertime coat wrapped around him, Father Meersman arrived with the others at the cannery.

Now, it was important to make sure that the van be as close to the steps as possible. Gary would be wearing shackles, and uppermost in Father Meersman’s mind was that he should not have a long, slow, painful walk. In fact, Father Meersman did not take his mind away from the mechanics of these activities until the entire procedure had come to its conclusion and they had mounted the nine or ten wooden steps that would take them into the room of execution, and Gilmore was set in that chair. Then Father Meersman felt they were home, and everything would go smoothly.

Noall Wootton left the Warden’s office to walk over to the cannery. He was taking his time. With luck, it might all be over before he got there, but the Utah County Sheriff made a point of stopping to pick him up, and they drove to a door in a warehouse .where the Assistant Warden, Leon Hatch, waved Wootton in. It was a big room with gray cement-block walls. That was all he could see, for he went immediately to the rear. Noall was struck with how many people were there. A lot of huge guys were in front of him. Wootton couldn’t see a thing. That was fine. He didn’t want to get in anybody’s way. He just stayed in the back with the empty paint cans, the old tires, and the discarded machinery.

Out in Denver, Earl Dorius was wandering down the corridor when he noticed Jack Ford of KSL on the telephone. As soon as Jack came out of the booth, Earl inquired what was going on at the prison, and heard that they were proceeding, and the car carrying Gilmore had just reached the cannery.

This was the first time, during what Earl thought of as the entire ordeal, that it became real a man was about to be killed. Now he felt

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in his own nerves the tension that Gordon Richards had felt when Earl first gave him the message, and these feelings also gave Earl a clue to the sentiments of the prison personnel. He passed through a very heavy feeling of anguish for the Warden. It would not be easy for his friend, Sam Smith, to order the execution of a man.

Earl decided that he, however, really did not feel any pity for Gilmore. The impact this man had had on the families of his victims, even the vastly lesser impact on Earl’s own life these last few months when he hardly saw his children, was not conducive to feeling much compassion. Only sorrow for the Warden.

After Judith Wolbach left the courtroom, she looked down from a high window in the corridor at the gray dawn coming in, and became aware of an emotional void in herself. The thing most disturbing to Judith at this moment was that she felt so dirty. She hadn’t even had a chance to go home that night or change her shirt. Just felt sweaty and tired and really disgusted. It shocked her that she had no other reaction. She thought the Bench had exhibited despicable behavior, and she felt nasty about Dorius, and that was it.

Outside Minimum Security, cars were waiting for the people who would witness the execution, and at the end of a short drive, Schiller saw a camper back up against the cement-brick building they called the cannery and he said to himself, “That’s the executioners.” Then he heard a noise above and was startled. The press release put out by the prison had stated that the air space above the prison up to x,50o feet was going to be off limits. But there was a copter directly overhead. Later, Schiller found out that a newspaper had been able to get away with it and take pictures of Gilmore being transferred, because the release had specified airplanes, not helicopters.

Just in back of the cannery, Schiller saw a black canvas structure that had been built out on the loading platform like an extra room, and he realized the executioners must be waiting in there. Then his car went around another corner of the building, and he saw

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Veto, Moody, and Stanger get out of the automobile ahead and go up the entrance steps. When it was his turn to walk through the door, Schiller could see from the corner of his eye that Gary was to his right and strapped in a chair. What hit him before he even took a true look, was that Gary’s end of the room Was lit, not brightly like a movie set, but lights were on him, and the rest of the room was dark. He was up on a little platform. It was like a stage. With the chair so prominent, it felt more as ff an electrocution was going to take place than a shooting.

As Schiller walked forward, the rear view of Gary’s head changed to a profile, and then he was able to see a little of his face. At that point, Gilmore acknowledged his presence, and Schillernodded back. The next thing he noticed was that Gilmore was not strapped tightly into the chair. It was the first detail that really hit him. Everything was loose.

There were straps around his arms and legs, but they all had a good inch of slack. He could have pulled his hands right out of their restraints. Then, as Schiller continued to move forward, he saw a painted line before him on the floor, and an official said, “Stand behind that,” so he wheeled and faced the chair. Now, with Gilmore again on his right, Schiller could see to his left a black blind with slots in it, and he estimated the distance at twenty-five feet from himself and about the same distance from Gilmore. Then, he took a good look.

It was the first time Schiller had seen Gary in person since December. At this moment, he looked tired, depleted, thin, older than Schiller had ever seen him, and a little glassy-eyed. A tired old bird with very bright eyes.