of prosecution witnesses were passed around at law schools all over New England as examples of the art of cross-examination at its finest. More importantly, Redpath was one of a handful of lawyers with offices in Massachusetts who had actually represented defendants facing the death penalty in other states. All this made him technically eligible, under the complex rules governing death penalty cases, to take the appointment from Judge Norcross to represent Clarence Hudson in federal court.
There was another, private reason why Redpath was death qualified. As a teenager, he’d shocked his old-money family by joining the marines, desperate to get to Korea before the armistice brought an end to the fighting. The last months of 1952 and first part of 1953 gave Redpath a protracted intimacy with the horror of deliberate killing, and he hated it. He returned home a passionate opponent of the death penalty and a chain smoker.
As Redpath settled back in his chair, there was a knock, and Judy poked her head around the door.
“Bill, I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but …” She paused and sniffed the air, which had a sour aroma of smoke and burned sugar. “You did it again, didn’t you?” She flapped her hand disgustedly.
“I deny that,” Redpath responded in his deep voice, pretending to be lost in the memorandum.
“Didn’t you?” Judy approached his desk holding a slip of paper. “You remember what I told you? Phew, it stinks in here. You remember what I said?”
“I deny everything,” Redpath repeated, snuffing out his Lucky Strike in the overflowing ashtray and still refusing to meet her eyes.
“Well, you have a message from the federal court in Springfield.” She tossed the slip on his desk. “And, by the way, your in-box is on fire.” Then she flounced out, saying, “They ought to hang a freaking sign on you or something.”
Two hours later, after smothering the embers in his in-box, making some calls, and humbly requesting that Judy cancel his afternoon appointments, Redpath was on the Mass Pike heading west to Ludlow, where his new client was being held.
When Redpath arrived at the Hampden County Correctional Center, he thought at first that the conversation with his client would follow the same rocky path as the rest of the day. He and Hudson faced each other across a scarred pine conference table in a windowless room. The walls were pale yellow; the air carried the powerful smell of Lysol. Although discussions in this area were supposedly confidential, angry shouts from somewhere close by intruded regularly, and the room’s door had a mesh window behind which—every minute or two—a guard’s unsmiling face would hover and then float silently away. It was a lousy environment for a tête-à-tête.
Redpath began the conversation casually. “So how’d you get to be called Moon?”
Hudson was wearing an orange jumpsuit, tight across the shoulders and chest. He had a listless, distracted air and kept his eyes mostly on his hands. When he did bother to look at Redpath, it was as though he were gazing from the other side of a one-way mirror, only vaguely interested in what he was seeing. He seemed to be weighing whether to answer his lawyer’s irrelevant, and possibly condescending, question.
Redpath waited, keeping his face blank. He was worried but not intimidated. In his many years of experience as an attorney, he had found that indigent clients often treated him suspiciously in the beginning, especially black clients. Considering Hudson’s record, his restraint was hardly surprising; the defendant’s luck with appointed counsel hadn’t been very good. What must he be thinking about this ancient, possibly burned-out lawyer, chosen and paid for by the same government that wanted to assassinate him?
Still, Redpath thought, if Hudson couldn’t drop the attitude, there was no way he’d let him take the stand and testify. Right now, he was a perfect picture of someone who’d killed
There was another, private reason why Redpath was death qualified. As a teenager, he’d shocked his old-money family by joining the marines, desperate to get to Korea before the armistice brought an end to the fighting. The last months of 1952 and first part of 1953 gave Redpath a protracted intimacy with the horror of deliberate killing, and he hated it. He returned home a passionate opponent of the death penalty and a chain smoker.
As Redpath settled back in his chair, there was a knock, and Judy poked her head around the door.
“Bill, I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but …” She paused and sniffed the air, which had a sour aroma of smoke and burned sugar. “You did it again, didn’t you?” She flapped her hand disgustedly.
“I deny that,” Redpath responded in his deep voice, pretending to be lost in the memorandum.
“Didn’t you?” Judy approached his desk holding a slip of paper. “You remember what I told you? Phew, it stinks in here. You remember what I said?”
“I deny everything,” Redpath repeated, snuffing out his Lucky Strike in the overflowing ashtray and still refusing to meet her eyes.
“Well, you have a message from the federal court in Springfield.” She tossed the slip on his desk. “And, by the way, your in-box is on fire.” Then she flounced out, saying, “They ought to hang a freaking sign on you or something.”
Two hours later, after smothering the embers in his in-box, making some calls, and humbly requesting that Judy cancel his afternoon appointments, Redpath was on the Mass Pike heading west to Ludlow, where his new client was being held.
When Redpath arrived at the Hampden County Correctional Center, he thought at first that the conversation with his client would follow the same rocky path as the rest of the day. He and Hudson faced each other across a scarred pine conference table in a windowless room. The walls were pale yellow; the air carried the powerful smell of Lysol. Although discussions in this area were supposedly confidential, angry shouts from somewhere close by intruded regularly, and the room’s door had a mesh window behind which—every minute or two—a guard’s unsmiling face would hover and then float silently away. It was a lousy environment for a tête-à-tête.
Redpath began the conversation casually. “So how’d you get to be called Moon?”
Hudson was wearing an orange jumpsuit, tight across the shoulders and chest. He had a listless, distracted air and kept his eyes mostly on his hands. When he did bother to look at Redpath, it was as though he were gazing from the other side of a one-way mirror, only vaguely interested in what he was seeing. He seemed to be weighing whether to answer his lawyer’s irrelevant, and possibly condescending, question.
Redpath waited, keeping his face blank. He was worried but not intimidated. In his many years of experience as an attorney, he had found that indigent clients often treated him suspiciously in the beginning, especially black clients. Considering Hudson’s record, his restraint was hardly surprising; the defendant’s luck with appointed counsel hadn’t been very good. What must he be thinking about this ancient, possibly burned-out lawyer, chosen and paid for by the same government that wanted to assassinate him?
Still, Redpath thought, if Hudson couldn’t drop the attitude, there was no way he’d let him take the stand and testify. Right now, he was a perfect picture of someone who’d killed