drift away. Roberta went on and on, and with each name she added a brief commentary about the person or an anecdote.
Andrea was next. The touching ritual was followed. She described the burning of the Baptist church, the tension in Slone, the fears that things would get worse. Donte seemed to like that-the thought of his people fighting back.
The family had learned years earlier that it was important to arrive at the Visitors' Room with a pocketful of coins. Vending machines lined the walls, and the guards delivered the food and drinks to the inmates during the visits. Donte had lost serious weight in prison, but he craved a certain cinnamon bun coated with thick frosting. While Roberta and Andrea handled the first round of the visit, Marvin bought two of the buns, with a soft drink, and Ruth took them to Donte. The junk food helped his mood.
Cedric was reading a newspaper, not far from the attorney's room, when the warden popped in for a friendly hello. He wanted to make sure all was well, everything in his prison running smooth.
'Anything I can do to help?' he asked as if he were running for office. He was trying hard to appear compassionate.
Cedric stood up, thought for a second, and then got angry. 'Are you kidding me? You're about to put my brother to death for something he didn't do, and you pop in here with some happy horseshit about wanting to help.'
'We're just doing our jobs, sir.' Ruth was walking over.
'No, you're not, unless your job allows you to kill innocent people. You wanna help, stop the damned execution.'
Marvin stepped between them and said, 'Let's be cool here.' The warden backed away and said something to Ruth. They had a serious conversation as the warden walked to the door. He soon left. – The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has sole jurisdiction over capital murder cases and is the court of last resort in Texas before an inmate hits the federal circuit. It has nine members, all elected, all required to run statewide. In 2007, it still clung to the archaic rule that all pleadings, petitions, appeals, documents, and such had to be filed as hard copies. Nothing online. Black ink on white paper, and tons of it. Each filing had to include twelve copies, one for each justice, and one for the clerk, one for the secretary, and one for the official file.
It was a bizarre and cumbersome procedure. The federal court for the Western District of Texas, housed a few blocks from the TCCA, adopted electronic filing in the mid-1990s. By the turn of the century, paper filings were rapidly becoming obsolete as technology marched on. In law, both in courts and in offices, the electronic file became far more popular than the paper file.
At 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, the Flak firm and the Defender Group lawyers were notified that the insanity claim was denied by the TCCA. The court did not believe Donte was mentally ill. This was expected. Minutes after this denial was received, the identical petition was filed electronically in the federal court for the Eastern District of Texas in Tyler.
At 9:30 a.m., a Defender Group lawyer named Cicely Avis walked into the clerk's office at the TCCA with the latest filing by the lawyers for Donte Drumm. It was a claim of actual innocence based on the secretly recorded statements by Joey Gamble. Cicely routinely showed up with similar filings, and she and the clerk knew each other well.
'What else is coming?' the clerk asked as he processed the petition.
'I'm sure there will be something,' Cicely said.
'Usually is.'
The clerk finished his paperwork, handed a marked copy back to Cicely, and wished her a good day. Because of the obvious urgency of the matter, the clerk hand delivered a copy of the petition to the offices of all nine justices. Three happened to be in Austin. The other six were scattered around the state. The chief justice was a man by the name of Milton Prudlowe, a longtime member of the court who lived in Lubbock most of the year but kept a small apartment in Austin.
Prudlowe and his law clerk read the petition and paid particular attention to the eight-page transcript of the recording of Joey Gamble spilling his guts in a Houston strip club the night before. While it was entertaining, it was far from sworn testimony, and there was little doubt he would deny making the statements if confronted with them. No consent had been given to the recording. Everything about it was tinged with sleaze. The young man was obviously drinking heavily. And, if his statements could be delivered, and if he had indeed lied at trial, what would it prove? Almost nothing, in Prudlowe's opinion. Donte Drumm had confessed, plain and simple. The Drumm case had never bothered Milton Prudlowe.
Seven years earlier, he and his colleagues had first considered the direct appeal of Donte Drumm. They remembered it well, not because of the confession, but because of the absence of a dead body. His conviction was affirmed, though, and in a unanimous opinion. Texas law had long been settled on the issue of a murder trial without clear evidence of murder. Some of the usual elements were just not necessary.
Prudlowe and his law clerk agreed that this latest claim had no merit. The clerk then polled the clerks of the other justices, and within an hour a preliminary denial was being circulated. – Boyette was in the backseat, where he'd been for almost two hours. He'd taken a pill, and evidently it was working splendidly. He didn't move, didn't make a sound, but did appear to be breathing the last time Keith checked.
To stay awake, and to get his blood boiling, Keith had called Dana twice. They had words, neither retreated, neither apologized for saying too much. After each conversation, Keith found himself wide-awake, fuming. He called Matthew Burns, who was at the office in downtown Topeka and anxious to help. There was little he could do.
When the Subaru drifted onto the right shoulder of a two-lane road, somewhere close to Sherman, Texas, Keith was suddenly awakened. And mad. He stopped at the nearest convenience store and bought a tall cup of strong coffee. He stirred in three packs of sugar and walked around the store five times. Back in the car, Boyette had not moved. Keith gulped the hot coffee and sped away. His cell phone rang, and he snatched it from the passenger's seat.
It was Robbie Flak. 'Where are you?' he asked.
'I don't know. Highway 82, headed west, outside of Sherman.'
'What's taking so long?'
'I'm doing the best I can.'
'What are the chances of me talking to Boyette, now, by phone?'
'Slim. Right now he's passed out in the backseat, still very sick. And he said he was not talking until he got there.'
'I can't do anything, Keith, until I talk to this guy, okay? I have to know how much he is willing to say. Is he going to admit that he killed Nicole Yarber? Can you answer this?'
'Well, Robbie, it's like this. We left Topeka in the middle of the night. We're driving like crazy to get to your office, and the sole purpose, according to Boyette when we left Topeka, was for him to come clean, admit to the rape and murder, and try to save Donte Drumm. That's what he said. But with this guy nothing is predictable. He may be in a coma right now, for all I know.'
'Should you check his pulse?'
'No. He doesn't like to be touched.'
'Just hurry, damn it.'
'Watch your language, please. I'm a minister and I don't appreciate that language.'
'Sorry. Please hurry.'
CHAPTER 20
The march had been whispered about since Monday, but its details had not been finalized. When the week began, the execution was days away, and there was a fervent hope in the black community that a judge somewhere would wake up and stop it. But the days had passed and the higher powers were still asleep. Now the hour was near, and the blacks in Slone, especially the younger ones, were not about to sit idly by. The closing of the high school had energized them and left them free to look for a way to make noise. Around 10:00 a.m., a
