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“Insane,” “Crazy,”
“Mad” - those were the labels everyone put on my friend
- everyone but the District Attorney and the twelve jurors who had
convicted him. The whole mess started one night a little over two
years ago. My friend, a security guard at a Fine Arts Museum, was
punching in for the graveyard shift as the day guard was punching
out. Holding the timecard -protruding from the clock - by the tips
of his fingers and waiting for the final minute of his shift, he
turned and said to my friend, “Be careful, the boss received
complaints from the curator that you were sleeping on the job.”
The very moment the day guard had
said this, the final minute clicked and he punched his card. The
sound of the mechanism inside the clock - the metallic crunch -
emphasized his warning.
I think perhaps, at the end of that
final minute when the clock punched, something bizarre happened
to my friend - something crunched in his skull - something that
led him to the curators house where he killed the poor man, his
wife, and her sister.
And now, some two years later, it
is time for him to pay -and with his life he'll pay. Scheduled to
be the last execution of its kind in the state, in eleven minutes
my friends' body -starting from his head down to his toes - will
complete an electrical circuit.
I was at the trial - sat through the
whole ordeal. The case was a big “to-do” in this quiet
northeastern town. Nothing of this sort had ever happened here before.
The local newspapers ran mad with the story. They labeled my friend
“The Smile-Cutter Killer.” He had taken a carton opener
to his victims' faces, cut permanent smiles in all three. He'd cut
upward from a corner of the mouth to one of the ears then carve
his way downward, curving underneath the jawbone, slashing the throat
on the way up to the other ear, and finally down to the opposite
corner of the mouth. He did this three times! How the jury concluded
him sane - I have no inkling!
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On the witness
stand, and against the phony-baloney smile of his public defender,
he blurted all. He told the jury, the spectators, and the world that
he was not only tired of the feigned smiles of the curator, his wife,
and her sister, but also tired of theirs as well! And that if he could
- he'd cut a permanent smile on the world!
After such a display, how could they
not judge him insane! Well, they didn't - and now my friend, in just
seven minutes, will fry.
He had motive, “revenge,”
said the jury afterwards to the press. And each one of them had said
it with the same phony-baloney smile my friend spoke of. The simple
utterance of the word alone puts a smile on ones face! Try it… REVENGE…
I wanted to testify, tell the world
about the voices my friend had been hearing, voices that began haunting
him the minute the smiling day guard taunted, “Be careful…”
The phony-baloney public defender would
have none of it, however. He wouldn't listen to me - wouldn't let
me testify. God knows I tried. At times during the trial I wanted
to come to his defense, wanted to tell the world about the side of
my friend they didn't know! They needed to know this side of him before
passing judgement! Surely, the jury would've known him insane - if
only they had seen my friend in the light I did - if they'd been told
of the voices that taunted within! The voices born from the phony
smiles of the world!
I had talked to my friend as he sat
the past two years on death row - many conversations with many voices.
One day, staring at him through the visitors' window, I asked, “How
could you commit such an act of violence? What drove you over the
edge?” And this is when I learned of the voices he'd been hearing
- the voices that taunted him - the voices within…
He replied by first repeating my question,
“What drove me over the edge, indeed… It was their phony-baloney
smiles! The way that heartless curator said one thing, but meant |
