In Cold Blood - Truman Capote [149]
to hear Green's final address to the jury. Green, a suavely tough little septuagenarian, has an imposing reputation among his peers, who admire his stage craft - a repertoire of actorish gifts that includes a sense of timing acute as a night-club comedian's. An expert criminal lawyer, his usual role is that of defender, but in this instance the state had retained him as a special assistant to Duane West, for it was felt that the young county attorney was too unseasoned to prosecute the case without experienced support. But like most star turns, Green was the last act on the program. Judge Tate's level-headed instructions to the jury preceded him, as did the county attorney's summation: "Can there be a single doubt in your minds regarding the guilt of these defendants? No! Regardless of who pulled the trigger on Richard Eugene Hickock's shotgun, both men are equally guilty. There is only one way to assure that these men will never again roam the towns and cities of this land. We request the maximum penalty - death. This request is made not in vengeance, but in all humbleness. ..." Then the pleas of the defense attorneys had to be heard. Fleming's speech, described by one journalist as "soft-sell," amounted to a mild churchly sermon: "Man is not an animal. He has a body, and he has a soul that lives forever. I don't believe man has the right to destroy that house, a temple, in which the soul dwells...." Harrison Smith, though he too appealed to the jurors' presumed Christianity, took as his main theme the evils of capital punishment: "It is a relic of human barbarism. The law tells us that the taking of human life is wrong, then goes ahead and sets the example. Which is almost as wicked as the crime it punished. The state has no right to inflict it. It isn't effective. It doesn't deter crime, but merely cheapens human life and gives rise to more murders. All we ask is mercy. Surely life imprisonment is small mercy to ask. . . ." Not everyone was attentive; one juror, as though poisoned by the numerous spring-fever yawns weighting the air, sat with drugged eyes and jaws so utterly ajar bees could have buzzed in and out. Green woke them up. "Gentlemen," he said, speaking without notes, "you have just heard two energetic pleas for mercy in behalf of the defendants. It seems to me fortunate that these admirable attorneys, Mr. Fleming and Mr. Smith, were not at the Clutter house that fateful night - very fortunate for them that they were not present to plead mercy for the doomed family. Because had they been there - well, come next morning we would have had more than four corpses to count." As a boy in his native Kentucky, Green was called Pinky, a nickname he owed to his freckled coloring; now, as he strutted before the jury, the stress of his assignment warmed his face and splotched it with patches of pink. "I have no intention of engaging in theological debate. But I anticipated that defense counsel would use the Holy Bible as an argument against the death penalty. You have heard the Bible quoted. But I can read, too." He slapped open a copy of the Old Testament. "And here are a few things the Good Book has to say on the subject. In Exodus Twenty, Verse Thirteen, we have one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill.' This refers to unlawful killing. Of course it does, because in the next chapter, Verse Twelve, the penalty for disobedience of that Commandment reads: 'He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.' Now, Mr. Fleming would have you believe that all this was changed by the coming of Christ. Not so. For Christ says, 'Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.' And finally - " Green fumbled, and seemed to accidentally shut the Bible, whereupon the visiting legal dignitaries grinned and nudged each other, for this was a venerable court-room ploy - the lawyer who while reading from the Scriptures pretends to lose his place, and then remarks, as Green now did, "Never mind. I think I can quote from memory. Genesis Nine, Verse Six: 'Whoso