Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [183]
The same week as the Newsweek story, I received a call at home. “Is this Mikal Gilmore?” asked the voice at the other end. “I’m from the Los Angeles Times, and I would like to talk to you about your brother Gary Gilmore.” I told him that he had the wrong Gilmore and hung up. That afternoon. I had the number changed. I knew I couldn’t escape from what was happening, but I was not going to participate in it. It is unimaginable, the vertigo you can feel when events throw your life to the top of the world.
I resented the way this whole event was being viewed—as something that was inevitable, as a horrible fate that could not be refused or altered. I could not understand modern American courts throwing aside the processes, structure, and logic of law simply to meet a challenge of bravado or to appease a suicidal demand. It was as though everybody was caught up in the novelty, the excitement, the vicarious deadliness of the event, and nothing could stop it.
I decided I’d had enough. Regardless of my brother’s wishes, I was going to consult legal authorities in Utah, to learn what the family could do to seek a halt to the execution.
THE NEXT DAY OUTGOING UTAH GOVERNOR Calvin Rampton ordered a stay, referring the matter to the State Board of Pardons and earning the epithet of “moral coward” from Gary. The same night, I received a call from Anthony Amsterdam of Stanford Law School, a longtime and well-versed opponent of the death penalty and a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court. He outlined possible courses of action for the family. A family member could retain counsel to seek a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court, the duration of which would be determined by the Court’s willingness to review the case and the subsequent decision of that review. Realistically, it meant that Gary could be subjected to a new trial.
I passed the information on to my mother, who also spoke with Amsterdam. We agreed it would probably be wise to retain him pending the pardons board decision.
On Tuesday morning, November 16, the day after Gary’s scheduled execution, Amsterdam called me with the news that Gary and Nicole had both attempted suicide with an overdose of sedatives. That was my first real indication that any attempts to save Gary’s life might prove futile. We can sentence people to die, I thought, but not to live. Gary, though, had an extensive history of suicide attempts, and he had once claimed that few had been in earnest. But that had been years ago, with razor blades and broken lightbulbs. To my knowledge he’d never attempted suicide with drugs.
I had one more phone conversation with Gary in that period, between his hospital release and the pardons board hearing. He had been fasting to protest the hospital’s refusal to allow him any communication with Nicole, and he was in a bad temper. I tried to tell him about the toll the whole affair was taking on the family, what a circus it had become, and how that seemed to belie his claims to dignity. “What do I owe you?” he snapped. “I don’t even think of you as my brother anymore.”
I lost my temper. I was weary from the pressure. “I’m sick of the way you’ve shoved everybody around,” I said. “You’re running over a lot of people’s lives for you own sake, and you only insult and berate those who don’t want to see you die.” He hung up on me.
On November 30, the pardons board decided to allow the execution. In anticipation of that decision, I had flown to San Francisco to deliver a retainer to Anthony