The Laboratory
The Killing Court
In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. The decision, the longest in court history, earned a six-column headline on the front page of The New York Times and experts across the nation heralded the end of legalized killing in the United States. Four years later, the Court changed its mind.
The Killing Court is the story of the drama behind the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the death penalty and its swift and stunning reversal of course. Drawing on interviews with Supreme Court law clerks, lawyers, politicians who advocated for and against the death penalty, and the words of the Justices themselves, The Killing Court pulls aside the curtain on the making – and unmaking – of one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions of the 20th Century. It examines the compromises and strategic choices that helped shape these decisions – decisions which directly affected thousands of lives and shaped the political debate in America for the next four decades and beyond.
The Killing Court
(Excerpt)
Thurgood Marshall wondered how it all had come to this. Just four years earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. The decision, in a case called Furman v. Georgia, earned a six-column headline in The New York Times, the first since man landed on the moon in 1969. On its editorial page the Times praised the Court for curing the “cancer of capital punishment.” Millions of Americans rejoiced in that decision, none more so than Thurgood Marshall who believed capital punishment to be the clearest expression of American racism and the ultimate tool of oppression. Now, to Marshall’s astonishment, in just a few moments the Supreme Court would reverse itself.
The Court Chamber was filled to capacity that day, the second of July, 1976. People had waited on line for hours, some overnight, to be among the first to hear the decision of the Court. Except to the Justices themselves the outcome of this historic case, Gregg v. Georgia, was not known and very much in doubt. A sense of dread permeated the crowd. Many people seemed to guess what was coming; others merely feared the worst.
In their robing room, the Justices dressed in silence. Often they would chat with one another before entering the Chamber, but on that Friday no one said a word. Thurgood Marshall barely looked up. Even the climate conspired to set the appropriate milieu for this red-letter day. On an otherwise fine summer morning, in the midst of an otherwise mild stretch of weather in the nation’s capital, heavy clouds gathered over the Court Building, ominously shrouding the Chamber in darkness. Solemnly, the Justices took their seats on the bench, in front of the massive red velour curtains that dominated the courtroom. Chief Justice Warren Burger summarized the outcome of Gregg and its three companion cases. The audience immediately understood the significance of what he had said. The Chamber grew deathly quiet.
Q: An Unlived Memoir
Shortly before his wedding, professor and counter-historical novelist Evan Mandery is visited by a man, claiming to be his future self, who ominously admonishes him that he must not marry his fiancée, Quentina Elizabeth Deveril, better known as Q. Mandery is dubious of his older self. Over time, though, he becomes convinced of his older self’s authenticity and the horrifying story he tells of his future, and leaves his beloved Q.
But Mandery’s life is no better. Soon he is visited by another older self urging him to marry a bookish secretary in the history department. No sooner does he do this than another future self arrives to say the new marriage has ruined his life. In rapid succession he is visited by other future selves urging him to attend law school, to leave law school and travel, to stay home and make friends, which he does by joining a running club, to stop running because it has ruined his knees, to study the guitar, the cello, Proust, Buddhism, opera, eliminate gluten from his diet, try sky diving, learn to cook and, finally, be easier on his stomach.
First Contact posed the existential question whether an objective perspective is possible. Q poses its own existential question: whether progress can be real or is inevitably illusory. To answer this vexing question, Mandery takes us on a madcap romp through aging liberal New York.
We visit a rent-controlled apartment enterable only through a shoe store, where a team of environmentalists plots to save an urban organic garden with a march of vegetables on City Hall, a neo-Marxist miniature golf course where the fee is based on ability to pay and one must putt through Kropotkin’s nose, and the Grammercy Park Neoliberal-Transgender Great Books and Carrot Cake Society, whose nonagenarian members continue to consume cake frozen for more than thirty years.
In the real Mandery’s universe it is all related. The resulting story of transcendent love is unforgettable, meaningful, and hilarious.
Q: An Unlived Memoir
(Excerpt)
Q, Quentina Elizabeth Deveril, is the love of my life. At the time of my arrival, we are far along in the preparations for our wedding. All of the major preliminaries have been arranged – the reception hall, the choice of entrée, the entertainment. The vows have been written, compromises struck on how present God shall be and which God to choose. The honeymoon shall be in Barcelona with a side trip to Pamplona for the running. Only trifling matters remain such as coordinating the flowers for the centerpieces with the boutonnières of the groomsmen and the music to be played at the reception.
The wedding is to be held in Lenox, Massachusetts. The Deverils are New Yorkers thru and thru – lifelong Manhattanites – but they have summered for the entirety of Q’s existence at a home on the Stockbridge Bowl, in the heart of the Berkshires with the appropriate subscriptions to Tanglewood and Jacob’s Pillow. We are to be married at the inn where John and Joan Deveril stayed on their first visit to the Berkshires more than twenty-five years ago. It is intimated at a celebration-of-the-engagement dinner that this is the inn in which Q was conceived. Lenox is neither Q’s nor my first choice; all of our friends are New Yorkers and we would prefer, all things being equal, to have a city wedding. But John Deveril is a powerful and obstinate man. His construction company is the eighth largest in the country, responsible for two of the ten tallest buildings in Manhattan. More relevantly, Q is utterly devoted to John, and he is quite wed (pardon) to the idea of a Berkshires marriage. He thinks it will lend symmetry to his daughter’s life. All things considered, it seems best to let him have his way. I joke to Q that we should arrange funeral plots for ourselves in Great Barrington. She finds this quite funny.
Mr. Deveril’s mulishness is nowhere more evident than in the discussion of the music to be played at the wedding. A swing band will provide the bulk of the entertainment, but a DJ is retained to entertain during the band’s rest breaks and to offer something for the younger set.
Mr. Deveril prepares an extensive array of directives for the disc jockey. These guidelines, seventeen pages in all, contain a small set of favored songs, including the Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup,” the Mysterians’ “Ninety-Six Tears” and anything by Jerry Lewis; a list of disfavored songs, which includes anything by anyone whose sexuality is ambiguous or otherwise in question – thus ruling out Elton John, David Bowie and Prince (despite my argument that the secondary premise is faulty), any music by any artist who has ever broadcast an anti-patriotic message – thereby excluding Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and (to my great dismay) Green Day, and any song written between the years 1980 and 1992; and a final list of songs, appended as “Attachment A” to the personal services contract between the DJ and the Deverils, the playing of any of which results in irrevocable termination of the agreement and triggers a legal claim for damages by the Deverils against the disc jockey, said damages liquidated in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars. For further emphasis, as if any were required, at the top of Appendix A, Mr. Deveril handwrites the following: “Play these songs and die.” The list includes the Chicken Dance, the Electric Slide, and anything by Madonna and Fleetwood Mac.
I happen to like Fleetwood Mac. Mr. Deveril has nothing against Fleetwood Mac per se, but he recalls that Bill Clinton used “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” as the theme song for his presidential campaigns. John Deveril hates many things including the Chicken Dance, the Electric Slide and Madonna, but he has a special, virulent loathing for our ex-President Bill Clinton.
I happen to also like Bill Clinton, but I raise no objection. Neither do I protest the venison that will be served at dinner, nor the ten thousand tulips that have been ordered for the reception hall despite my allergist’s strict instructions to the contrary, nor the (Republican) Presidential look-alikes who have been hired to mingle with the crowd and sit at the dinner tables corresponding to their numerical order in the presidency. It is objectionable enough to have people resembling Nixon and Ford and Bush (forty-one; John Deveril has no tolerance for forty-three) circulating among the crowd, but I wonder, as a purely practical matter, what the people seated at tables nineteen and thirty-four will have to talk about at dinner with doppelgangers of Chester Arthur and John Deveril’s favorite ex-President, Calvin Coolidge.
Yellow Cab Blues
Copyright 2010 Evan Mandery
Needleman knew it was going to be a bad day right from the get go. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to find a cab because of the rain and when he finally flagged one down, it was one of those old taxis with the announcements from celebrities telling riders to put on their seatbelts. Needleman got Paul Sorvino: “Actor, singer, chef, New Yorker, seatbelt wearer.” No one wants to hear a pretentious actor’s resume at 6:30 in the morning. He probably hadn’t seen the inside of a taxi in thirty years. And did he seriously think that anyone cares that he cooks? No. No one cares. Especially not Needleman, who frankly did not even think all that much of Mira Sorvino.
Needleman far preferred the old Joe Torre greeting. “Don’t forget to take your receipt and personal belongings. I’ll see you at the stadium.” If they had to have those stupid messages in the cabs, Torre’s was the ideal: simple and to the point. Torre was a man’s man. Needleman believed it was Joe Torre who once said that pizza was like sex. Even when it was bad it was still pretty good.
* * *
With a start, Needleman realized that the cab driver had made a wrong turn. Instead of continuing south on Broadway, the cab driver had turned left on 66th Street, apparently heading for the Central Park transverse road. This was a common error among cab drivers making the trip crosstown from the West Side. The appealing allure of the park road is that it has no traffic lights, but whatever time is gained in the park is more than offset by the delays on the East Side caused by the Queensboro Bridge. Broadway was the way to go. Broadway down to 57th Street, across to Lexington, then down to 47th and the worldwide headquarters of Bear International. On average, Broadway was two minutes faster than the park route, which is a considerable difference on a twenty-minute trip. Needleman could tell you the best route between any two points in the city. But he said nothing. The cab driver didn’t tell Needleman how to be a stockbroker and Needleman wasn’t about to tell him how to be a cab driver.
There was flooding on 48th Street where the cabbie needed to turn to get from Madison to Lexington, so he drove down to 46th Street, which was flooded too.
“We’ll go west to get around,” the driver said without taking his eye off the road. He turned right on 45th Street, presumably intending to turn back up Fifth Avenue and make another attempt at approaching the East Side from an uptown street. Traffic was heavy on Fifth Avenue and after attempting to force the cab into the flow of traffic, the driver continued west on 45th Street.
“We’ll go west to get around,” he said. “Save time.”
He continued driving west – straight into the Lincoln Tunnel and Hoboken, New Jersey.