Phantom Lady

7 The Eighty-Seventh Day Before the Execution

“Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say before this court passes sentence upon you?”

“What is there to say, when they tell you you have committed a crime, and you and you alone know you haven’t? Who is there to hear you, and who is there to believe you?

“You’re about to tell me that I must die, and if you tell me I must, I must. I’m no more afraid of dying than any other man. But I’m just as afraid of dying as any other man. It isn’t easy to die at all, but it’s even harder to die for a mistake. I’m not dying for something I’ve done, but for a mistake. And that’s the hardest way to die of all. When the time comes, I’ll meet it the best I can; that’s all I can do anyway.

“But I say to you now, all of you, who won’t listen and don’t believe: I didn’t do that. I didn’t do it. Not all the findings of all the juries, not all the trials in all the courts, not all the executions in all the electric chairs — in the whole world — can make what isn’t so, so.

“I’m ready to hear it now. Your Honor. Quite ready.”

Voice from the bench, in a sympathetic aside, “I’m sorry, Mr. Henderson. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more compelling, dignified, manly plea from anyone who has stood before me for sentence. But the verdict of the jury in this case gives me no alternative.”

Same voice, slightly louder, “Scott Henderson, having been tried and found guilty of murder in the first degree, I hereby sentence you to die in the electric chair, in the State Prison at—, during the week beginning October 20th, said sentence to be carried out by the warden of the prison, and may God have mercy on your soul.”