Crescent City Connection

easily influenced by unscrupulous lawyers. We believe this is how the system has evolved. Yet we do not care enough to try to correct it.
    Are we willing to serve on juries ourselves? Certainly not. We have bigger fish to fry. We have our jobs and our families—we cannot be troubled by a little thing like justice. And so the system has been subverted. And so we are without hope.
    In Chief Albert Goodlett we had a chance at a real change in one of our major cities. In the only city in the world, possibly in the history of the world, that currently has two officers on Death Row. In what is possibly the worst police department in, once again, the history of the world.
    There is much in a name. Chief Goodlett was a good man. An honest man. A competent man.
    And he was shot to death by an unworthy enemy, an enemy of the church, the state, the Lord—of our very system of justice and the only decent chance it has had in years.
    Nolan Bazemore was scum. He was not fit to lick the boots of Chief Albert Goodlett, and there will not be a single detractor among those who read this letter, black or white. This is not a racial issue. Yet Nolan Bazemore was a racist—an ignorant racist peckerwood who deserved to die. Nolan Bazemore was guilty of cold-blooded homicide and he was guiltier still of another outrage—of destroying our Hope! Just when we had Hope, he destroyed it.
    Had he stood trial, Nolan Bazemore, poor as he was, ignorant as he was, would have had a lawyer, and that is right and good. But that lawyer would have had that courtroom full of psychiatrists. They would have presented a defense that would have shamed us all as Americans and there is not a one among us who is not aware of it. We would have heard that Nolan Bazemore was deprived of love, he ate too many sweets, or he had a rare disease that caused hatred of people of color, and we would have watched helplessly as he was found innocent of the murder of a good man.
    This is the truth, fellow Americans—there will not be one who reads this letter who expected him to be convicted, any more than Billy Ray Hutchison was convicted. Because we do not expect our system of justice to work, and we are not disappointed. IT DOES NOT WORK!
    And so we The Jury claim responsibility, as the newspapers say, for the trial, conviction, and execution of Nolan Bazemore. It saddens us deeply that such action is necessary and yet we know that it is, and you, Detective Langdon, know that it is, and you, fellow Americans, know that it is.
    We refer you to the Bible:
    Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
    Romans 12
    In anger and in wrath I will execute vengeance.
    Micah 5
    If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries, and will requite those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh.
    Deuteronomy 32
    He said, I will rise, I will cover the earth … That day is the day of the Lord God of hosts a day of vengeance, to avenge himself on his foes, The sword shall devour and be sated, and drink its fill of your blood.
    Jeremiah 46
    The letter was signed, “Very sincerely yours, The Jury.”
    A “c.c.” note indicated the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, and New Orleans Times-Picayune had also received it, along with various television stations.
    Sergeant Adam Abasolo had come up behind them as they were reading it. “Well,” he said. “Gets my attention.”
    “That,” said Skip, “says it all.” She felt her lips tight against her teeth.
    She hated this. It terrified her. It scared her a great deal more than mindlessness, or simple craziness. This was complicated craziness. This was a very effective mind at work. And it made her want to run screaming into the woods.
    She felt her heart beating, her pulse racing, and realized that part of what she was feeling was anger.
    We might expect our system to be falling apart, but we’ve got other expectations, too—criminals are supposed to be stupid. I don’t need goddamn Professor Moriarty here.
    Part of it was irrational anger, but part of it was rational. She was pissed off at anyone who had a brain that functioned as well as the letter-writer’s and still went around killing people. A person who most assuredly knew right from wrong, and who had chosen wrong.
    Chosen evil.
    She shivered. It gave her goose bumps. And made her think of Errol Jacomine.
    Her heart pounded