Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [311]
He had been, he said, considerably affected by that conversation.
Bessie Gilmore had impressed him as a person of great strength who was in great pain. One had to respect the spiritual and psychic stress of this ungodly situation. He told Mikal that he believed his mother would welcome a little help, but was not yet certain she wanted to assert herself in Gary's case. So she had asked him to discuss it with her youngest son.
Mikal knew this exposition was accurate, since Bessie had told him much the same, although with some suspiciousness of strangers calling. In turn, Mikal spoke to Amsterdam of his concern that people interested in abolishing capital punishment might not care about Gary so much as they were looking for an ideological ax to grind.
Amsterdam answered that he was not about to subordinate Gary's interest to the service of ideology. He was not a man to sacrifice the individual for abstract issues. However, he said, there was a limit to how much you could or even wanted to convince somebody over the phone. If Mikal was willing to talk further, Amsterdam would like to meet him.
Mikal was not unimpressed, but said he wanted to discuss the matter with his mother and sleep on it. In the meantime, he was curious how much the fees might come to. Amsterdam explained that his practice was exclusively pro bono. He accepted no fees. In fact, he would write into the retainer that all services were to be rendered free of cost of any sort.
They agreed to speak again two days later.
Over the period, Bessie came to think it would be a good idea to retain Amsterdam. She liked, she said, the voice of this man very much. She could feel confidence in it. Next morning she heard of Gary and Nicole's suicide attempt.
Mikal phoned the prison a few days later and Gary was in a terrible temper. He had just fired Boaz. Hoping this might prove an opening, Mikal said that the affair had become a circus. It was taking away any claim Gary could have to dignity. It was also wreaking its toll on the family. The last remark was a mistake. "What do I owe you?" Gary snapped. "I don't even think of you as a brother."
"You're running," said Mikal, "over a lot of people's lives."
Gary hung up. Mikal brooded about it. After a day or two, he decided to authorize Anthony Amsterdam to take action on Bessie Gilmore's behalf.
Amsterdam laid out to Mikal the moves he proposed to make. He was going to ask them to consider a Next Friend petition. They were going to claim that Mikal's mother was acting on behalf of an individual who was not able to protect his own interest. That gave them a right to sue the State of Utah. Next Friend was just a legal term to indicate closeness to the person on whose behalf they were suing, It did not have to be next of kin, but as a practical matter, that was good, since a Court would be more sympathetic to the idea if the Next Friend wasn't a crank or meddler, but, in fact, a close relative.
Discussing the brief he would file, Tony Amsterdam said he must touch upon a delicate point. In his opinion, Gary was a sick man and not acting in a competent manner. The fact that he'd been certified as sane came to no more than three form reports turned in by three form shrinks writing three form conclusions. It didn't tell you a goddamned thing. Even then, the doctors couldn't ignore the fact that Gary was suicidal. Having talked to Craig Snyder, Amsterdam would judge that discharging a competent lawyer, when you are under a death sentence, is a form of suicide in itself. Gary had raised questions about free will and self-determination,