...And Never Let HerGo

afraid.”
    A ND now, Judge Lee thought of all those things as he struggled to make the most awesome decision any man can make, and one few would seek to make.
    On March 16, 1999, he was finally prepared to sentence Tom Capano. The day before St. Patrick’s Day was cold, much colder than the two days in January when crowds had gathered to hear the decisions the jurors had made. Spring seemed months away, the sky was leaden, mounds of dirty snow covered the curbs in front of the Daniel J. Herrmann Courthouse, and spectators bundled up against the wind. With each increment of this seemingly endless legal procedure, the crowds had grown. Now there was no room to walk; reporters, cameramen, families, friends, bystanders, and the curious filled every spare inch of the sidewalk and the wide apron of steps. People even began to climb onto the concrete walls around the steps. Some watched with binoculars from Rodney Square across the street. The television trucks weren’t just from Wilmington and Philadelphia; there were network news trucks, too.
    Would Tom Capano get the death penalty? Most said no. They couldn’t see how the man could fall any lower than he already had. Others said he was “gonna fry,” even though the death penalty in Delaware is accomplished by lethal injection.
    “I feel so sad for his mother,” a woman said to her friend. “Look at her there in her wheelchair with all the cameras poking in her face—they shouldn’t treat an old woman like that.” But, of course, they did. Running backward, photographers aimed their cameras directly into the faces of Marguerite and Tom’s daughters.
    Above the clamor of people talking and the sounds of traffic on the busy corner opposite the Wilmington Public Library, a crazy, cacophonous noise penetrated the air sporadically. Two men in a long 1950s Cadillac convertible drove repeatedly around the block, apparently so they could show off their horn. They laughed and waved but the crowd only stared at them. Whichever side they were on,none of the people who had gathered here found anything remotely funny about this landmark day.
    The Faheys and the Capanos had arrived and gone up to the courtroom. Kay Ryan had come downtown with her daughters but she could not bear to walk past the cameras again. Her daughters entered the courthouse while she waited down the street in a friend’s car. She didn’t really want to hear what the judge would say.
    Marguerite’s wheelchair sat in the aisle near the railing on the right side of the courtroom in which Tom’s sentence would be pronounced. For some reason, now that it was almost over, the Capanos and the Faheys had reversed sides of the courtroom—but then, it wasn’t even the same courtroom. Another hearing was being held in Courtroom 302.
    Father Balducelli held Marguerite’s hand and her family crowded around. It had been one thing after another for her; Joey had undergone heart surgery and survived, again. Now she trembled as she waited to hear if her Tommy would survive.
    The room was packed, and for once, Judge Lee allowed people who could not find seats to stand along the walls. Tom walked in and looked toward his mother—toward his daughters. And once more, he mouthed, “It will be all right . . . It will be all right.”
    Judge Lee looked at the gallery, the attorneys, and the convicted man. No one knew what he might have been thinking during all the months of Tom’s trial; judges rarely betray their feelings. He had been unfailingly gracious and in control of his courtroom, but he had never once commented on the proceedings in any personal way.
    Now, he began to read the statement he had prepared.
    “This is the time established for the sentencing of Thomas J. Capano, who has been found guilty of murder in the first degree by a jury which also found the existence of an aggravating statutory circumstance by a vote of eleven to one, and recommended the sentence of death by a vote of ten to two. . . .
    “The Court is required to give great weight to the jury’s recommendation. I have completed that process.”
    But Judge Lee said he had found the law itself inadequate to describe what had happened during the trial just held, and he had decided to supplement his decision with further remarks.
    “The gradual revelation of the personality and character of the defendant,” he began, “clearly was a factor in both the verdict of the jury and its recommendation concerning appropriate sentence. It is a