Back in the Memphis office, Darlene typed Dr. Swinn s report on
Sam while Adam and Garner Goodman worked on the legal case to
accompany it. The report was twenty pages long in its first version.
Swinn was a man who’d sell an opinion to the highest bidder, and
Adam hated him and people like him. He traveled the country
giving evidence, able to say this today and that tomorrow, depending
on who had the deepest pockets. But for the moment, he was
working for them, and he was good. Sam was suffering from
advanced mental breakdown. He had reached a point where he did
not know the nature of his punishment. He lacked the necessary
understanding to be executed, and therefore the execution would
not serve any purpose. It was not an entirely unique legal argument,
and the courts had not exactly accepted it with enthusiasm in the
past. But, thought Adam, what was there to lose? Goodman seemed
to be more than a little optimistic, particularly because of Sam's age.
He could not remember an execution of a man over the age of fifty.
They, Darlene included, worked until almost eleven.