Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [198]
He served time for those. And he's learned something because of that time. Do you know what it is? He's going to kill his victims.
Now that's smart. If you are going to make your living as a robber, that just makes sense, because a dead victim's not going to identify you. He'd have gotten away with this most likely free and clear except for some dumb bad luck. He accidentally shot himself. Those things happen, I suppose, when you have been drinking a little bit, and fooling around with guns. Now he's also got a history of escape, three times from some sort of Reform School and once from the Oregon State Penitentiary. Now what does that tell you? If you people tell us lock Gary Gilmore up for life, whatever that means, we can't guarantee it. We cannot guarantee that he won't escape again.
He's got a history of it. He's apparently pretty good at it. If he's ever free again, nobody who ever comes in contact with him is going to be safe, if they happen to have something that he happens to want. Now he's got a history of violence in the prison. Even the other prisoners, if you tell us to send him to prison, cannot be guaranteed safety from his behavior. What then is the point at this time of allowing him to continue to live? Rehabilitation is hopeless. He's a danger if he escapes, he's a danger if he doesn't. Obviously, nothing can be done to save this man at this point. He's an extremely high escape risk. He's an extreme danger to anybody. Without even considering all these factors, however, I submit to you this: for what he did to Benny Bushnell and the position that he's put Bushnell's wife in, he has forfeited his right to continue to live any longer and he should be executed, and I recommend that to you.
Wootton sat down, and Snyder came toward the Jury to give his final remarks. He spoke with considerable emotion.
MR. SNYDER I suppose that nobody feels worse about what happened to Ben Bushnell and to his family than I do. This has been a very difficult case for me personally to even try. I think that it puts the Jury in a position that I would not want to be in, because in spite of the fact that this type of crime was committed in this particular case, what we are dealing with here is human life. Mr. Gilmore is a person, too. And although Mr. Gilmore has a history of prior conduct which hopefully we can all learn something from and which hopefully none of us will have to come in contact with again, he is a person and, in my opinion, he has a right to his life. I don't think there's anything more personal to any individual than his right to live. And you are in the position at this point where you have to decide whether to take that life from Gary Gilmore or whether to let him live. I don't excuse what Mr. Gilmore did, I don't even pretend to try to explain it, but I think he does have the right to live and I would ask that you give him that opportunity. I think the sum of what Mr. Wootton says is well taken. I think that Mr. Gilmore's history is certainly something that he's not to be proud of. I don't think any of us are . . . Mr. Gilmore does have something maybe he can't cope with, but it's not something that we ought to take his life for . . .
Mr. Gilmore is the type of person that needs treatment more than he does to be killed. He needs, I think, to be punished for what he does, and the law provides for that by a term of life imprisonment. And I don't think that Mr. Wootton's fears about rehabilitation or that if he ever gets out again, that type of thing, are founded. Mr. Gilmore's thirty-six years old.
MR. GILMORE Thirty-five.
MR. SNYDER Thirty-five years old. He is going to