Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [409]
Over at the plaintiff's table, Judy Wolbach was also feeling pretty mad. Jinks Dabney was a good courtroom attorney, but she herself had little experience in cases of this sort, and she was pissed off at her own ACLU. Why, in a major case like this, could they only come up with herself, unqualified, and with Jinks, only partially willing?
He was an awfully good lawyer, but not exactly an enthusiastic adherent of the ACLU. Jinks had a promising career ahead in Salt Lake, and it didn't help a rising young legal talent to be known among all these gung-ho Mormons as a civil liberties advocate.
Where were all the big ACLU boys from the big firms in the East who were supposed to contribute their massive liberal expertise? She couldn't comprehend it. A case as big and interesting as this, being left to the local talent.
Judy had tried every trick she knew, including the release she gave to the newspapers of her conversation with Melvin Belli to throw a scare into Bob Hansen. It could be disastrous for the Attorney General if Utah lost a few million bucks because of him. All she had gotten for her pains, however, was a truly weird and pompous response. Hansen said there was no question as to the constitutionality of Utah's death penalty statutes. No question? Why, only an idiot Legislature could pass a statute that didn't insist on an appeal for the death penalty. The whole idea, even among conservatives, was to be cautious about capital punishment. Nobody wanted bloodbaths anymore.
Even from a conservative point of view, the best way to obtain your capital punishment was by emphasizing every safeguard against killing a man for too little. Yet, Utah-good old Utah-had neglected to make the appeal mandatory. What could be more defective, an idiot child?
All the same, this taxpayers' action was awfully hokey for a suit, Judith thought. The only good thing about it was the letters she'd been able to send to the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Attorney General, and the Warden! All accused of wrongful acts and unlawful expenditures. She wished she could have seen their faces.
Those letters had been delivered by her own daughter, who, bless her heart, maybe because of the Jewish blood of her father, was a very politically conscious young lady, and had been upset when she discovered her mother was practicing law to make money. Thought that was wrong. One should not worry about money. One should just go ahead and file political suits. Bless her heart, Judy Wolbach thought. Thank God she feels that way. Still, the measure of how picayune were ACLU resources was that Judy might not have gotten those letters out to any defendants this Sunday without her daughter to serve as runner.
3
While he was waiting, Jinks Dabney began to think of stories he had heard about Judge Ritter. According to the gossip that came back to him from people who knew the Judge well, Ritter regarded himself as an outpost of good sense in a desert of craziness. The accusation that he was carrying on a vendetta against the Latter-Day Saints wasn't true, he would say. He didn't regard Mormons as worthy of a vendetta. While born a Catholic, and now a subscriber to no religion but the U.S. Constitution, the Judge had no patience with any desire to sway people's minds through religious doctrine. Still, he actively disliked the manner in which the Mormon Church owned the land, ran the banks, and controlled the politicians. That offended him more than their religious doctrine. That he merely considered silly. All those Joseph Smith miracles. On the other hand, he would never decide against them just because they were Mormons. Liked to think he had too profound a respect for the facts in a case.
Ritter's attitude toward incompetence among lawyers, however, was enough to put fear into the stomach of many a good member