Chapter 28
Verdict
The jury went out at eleven minutes past ten on the twenty-first of March.
Before that there were the closing arguments. Miriam Castellano spoke for forty minutes. She did not raise her voice once. She stood in front of the box and said that mercy was a beautiful thing, and that it belonged to the living. She said that the dead had no one to speak for them but the State. She said that if a person could decide, by her own private reckoning, who deserved to die, then the courthouse should be torn down and the lantern lit.
She said it was not hatred she asked of them. It was the opposite. It was the hardest love there was: the love of a rule that applies to everybody.
"Corinne Bellamy was wronged," she said. "I say that without reservation. I say it as a prosecutor and as a woman. But her wrong does not give her the key to the world. Nobody's does. And the day we say otherwise is the day the next girl, in the next lake house, finds that the only protection she has is whoever has the biggest gun."
She sat down.
Nate spoke for thirty minutes. He did not say that his client was innocent. He said that malice was the heart of murder, and that the law had always understood malice as the settled wish to harm without cause. He said that a woman who had gone to the law for five years and been told no in every possible language was not a woman acting without cause. He said the State's own agent had called her honest.
"I am not asking you to approve of what she did," he said. "I'm asking you to look at her. She is sitting right there. She has not hidden. She has not lied. She told you the worst thing about herself, in front of a room full of strangers, in a voice you could hardly hear. If that is malice, then I do not know what the word is for."
He stopped, and stood a moment with his hand on the rail.
"The prosecutor says justice is a rule that applies to everybody. She's right. So apply it. Apply it to the man who stood for eleven minutes. Apply it to the deputy who changed the tape. Apply it to the old men with the lantern. And then ask yourselves what it means that the only person in this courtroom who has ever been made to answer for it is the one sitting at this table."
He sat.
Judge Okafor charged the jury for fifty minutes. He read the law of murder, of malice, of voluntary manslaughter, of justification. He read it in his heavy, mild, courteous voice, and when he came to the instruction on provocation, he paused.
"I must tell you," he said, "that under the law of this state, a sudden and violent and irresistible passion may reduce a killing to manslaughter, if the provocation is sufficient. And I must tell you that it must be sudden. Time to reflect, time to cool, defeats it. You must decide, on the evidence, whether there was such time."
He took off his glasses.
"I will also tell you that this is the most difficult case I have tried in thirty-four years on the bench. I do not say that to influence you. I say it because I would like you to know that, whatever you decide, nobody in this room will think the less of you for taking your time."
The bailiff took the oath.
The twelve rose. They filed out through the door at the side. The old man in the corduroy jacket went last. At the door, he stopped, and looked back, and for the second time in two weeks he and the defendant held one another's eyes across the width of the room.
He nodded, once. It was not a promise.
Then he was gone.
They waited.
Corinne sat in a holding room behind the courtroom, with a deputy and a plastic cup of water. The room had a table, two chairs, and a window that looked onto a wall. She did not read. She did not write. She sat very upright, with her hands on her knees, and breathed.
At half past noon, Nate came in.
He looked terrible. He had shaved badly again. He sat across from her and put his hands flat on the table, and for a minute neither of them spoke.
"They sent a note," he said.
"What does it say?"
"They want to see the video again."
"Which part?"
"The end."
She nodded.
"Is that good?"
"I don't know," said Nate. "It means they haven't decided. Or it means they've decided, and they want to be sure. It could mean anything. I've been doing this for twenty years and I've never learned to read a jury." He rubbed his face. "Your brother's outside."
"Wes?"
"He's been there since eight. He hasn't said a word. He's got a, he's wearing a tie."
She smiled, in spite of everything. "Wes doesn't own a tie."
"He bought it. This morning. At the Walmart in Macon." Nate's mouth twitched. "It's green. It's got a, I think it has a pattern of small ducks."
She laughed.
It came out of her without warning, a short, cracked, helpless laugh, and she put her hand over her mouth. Nate began to laugh too. They sat there, the two of them, at a plastic table in a bare room, with tears running down their faces, laughing like children in church, until the deputy put his head round the door and asked if everything was all right.
"It's fine," said Nate. "It's fine. We're fine."
"Counsel."
"We're fine."
The door closed.
"Thank you," said Corinne.
"For what?"
"For the ducks."
The jury came back at ten past four on the twenty-second.
She had been told it would be a day, perhaps two. It had been thirty hours. They had asked for the video twice, for the transcript of her testimony once, and for a pad of paper and twelve pencils. They had sent out for sandwiches. They had been seen, by a bailiff, standing together in the corridor outside the room with their arms around each other.
The courtroom filled in ten minutes.
Corinne sat at the table with her hands folded. Nate was at her right. Behind them the benches were packed, to the walls, with reporters and townspeople and four women with a white paper lantern that the bailiff had decided not to see. At the back, in a tie with small green ducks, Wes sat with his hands on his knees and his chin up, like a man waiting for a train.
Judge Okafor came in.
"Be seated."
They sat.
"I understand the jury has reached a verdict." He looked at the bailiff. "Bring them in."
They came in single file.
She did not look at any of them. She had decided, in the holding room, that she would not. She fixed her eyes on the back wall of the courtroom, on a patch of old plaster about the size of a hand, and she counted. She counted the ticks of the clock. She counted her breaths. When she reached forty, the jurors were seated and the room was silent.
"Madam Foreperson," said the judge. "Has the jury reached a verdict?"
"We have, Your Honor."
The voice was not a woman's. She turned her head.
It was the old man.
Mr. Eugene Tolliver stood at the end of the front row with a folded sheet of paper in his hand. He had put on a clean shirt. His white hair had been wetted and combed. He was a very tall, very thin, very grave figure, and he held the paper out in front of him with both hands, as if it were hot.
"I'm the foreman," he said. "I'm sorry. They said, Madam is, they made me."
"The jury is entitled to select anyone it wishes," said the judge, with something like a smile. "Please hand the verdict to the clerk."
The clerk took it. She read it. Her expression did not change. She handed it up to the judge, who read it too, slowly, without a sound, and handed it back.
"The defendant will rise."
Corinne rose.
Nate rose beside her. She felt his sleeve touch hers. Behind her, a bench creaked, and someone drew a quick breath.
"Madam Clerk. Please read the verdict."
The clerk lifted the paper. Her voice was thin and dry, and carried to the back of the room.
"In the matter of the State of Georgia against Corinne Ann Bellamy. As to Count One, the murder of Owen Maddox: we, the jury, find the defendant guilty."
She did not move.
"As to Count Two, the murder of Grant Pruitt Junior: guilty."
Somewhere, a woman made a small sound.
"As to Count Three, the murder of Terrence Boyle: guilty."
She counted. She was at thirty-one.
"As to Count Four, the murder of Dale Sutter: we find the defendant not guilty by reason of justification."
A tremor ran through the room. A man in the gallery stood up, and was told to sit.
Not guilty.
Of him.
She did not feel what she had expected. She felt a sort of ringing quiet, like the quiet after a bell. She had thought she would be relieved. She was not. She was only very tired, and she was aware, in some far-off, orderly corner of her mind, that she had been waiting for the one word she could not stand to hear.
"As to Count Five," said the clerk, and paused.
It was a very small pause. It was a breath.
"The murder of Caleb Moss. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty."
She stood.
She stood in the grey light with her hands folded and her eyes on the patch of plaster, and she did not blink. The room swayed, very slightly, like the deck of a ship. She felt Nate's hand close on her elbow. She felt, behind her, a long soft sound, like the exhalation of two hundred people, and then a single clear cry, a man's cry, high and cracked and furious. It was Wes.
"No. No. That's, you can't. She, he, she didn't, they did it. They did it to her. Don't you, you can't."
"Order."
"They did it to her!"
"Mr. Bellamy, I will have you removed."
"I don't care! I don't care!"
The bailiffs moved. Corinne turned her head. She saw her brother standing in the aisle in his duck tie, with his fists clenched, and two deputies closing in, and she raised her hand, palm out, very slightly.
Wes.
He stopped.
It's all right.
His face worked. His mouth opened and shut. And then, slowly, as if all the strings had been cut at once, he sat down on the end of a bench with his hands over his eyes. A woman in a green coat moved over and put an arm around him.
"The jury will be polled," said Judge Okafor.
It took eleven minutes. Each of them stood and said the word. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. She watched each face. She watched them look at her and look away. She watched the hygienist, in the back row, say guilty on Count Five with her chin trembling and tears on her cheeks. She watched the young man from the solar company say it with his jaw set. She watched the mail carrier, whose voice cracked on the last syllable.
When the old man's turn came, he stood. He did not look at the judge. He looked at her.
"Count Five," said the clerk. "Mr. Tolliver. Is this your verdict?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Is it the verdict of the jury?"
"It is."
"Thank you."
He remained standing.
"I'd like to say a thing," said Eugene Tolliver. "If it's allowed."
"The jury is not required to explain," said Okafor.
"I know. But I'd like to." He drew himself up. His long hands trembled slightly on the paper. "We've been thirty hours. We'd have been longer, if they'd let us. And I want you to know, Ms. Bellamy, that on the first four, it was easy. It was, I mean, we had an argument, but it wasn't hard. And on the fifth it was the hardest thing any of us ever did."
"Mr. Tolliver—"
"I'm not going to say we're sorry." He spoke over the judge, in his dry slow voice. "I'm not going to say that. We aren't. We did what the law said. But I want you to know that we looked at it every way. We went round the table four times. And every single one of us said, he asked her to. And every single one of us said, it doesn't matter. And that was the, that was the thing." He swallowed. "It doesn't matter. I'd never understood that before. A man can say please, and it's still not."
He sat down.
The room was silent.
Corinne looked at him.
She did not nod. She did not smile. She held his gaze for a long moment, and then, very slowly, she inclined her head, as one does to a person who has given one something one cannot repay.
The sentencing phase began on the twenty-fourth.
It was shorter than the trial. It was also worse. It consisted of a succession of people stepping into the box, one by one, and saying what she had done to them.
Owen's sister said she had not been able to sleep. Tee's mother said, in a low dead voice, that her son had been a weak boy, and that he had been trying to make it right. Lauren Pruitt, in her black dress, said that she did not wish for the death of the defendant. She said it in a whisper, and she was asked to repeat it, and she did, and a muscle jumped in Castellano's jaw.
Caleb's mother was the last.
She was a small, bent, grey woman in a floral blouse. She was seventy-one. She had been a school cook for thirty years, and had a stoop from it. She came to the stand with a cane and sat, and put her handbag in her lap, and looked straight at the defendant for a long time, with an expression that Corinne could not read.
"I'm Ruby Moss," she said. "Caleb was my boy."
"Mrs. Moss," said Castellano gently. "Would you like to tell the jury about your son?"
"I would."
She told them. She said that he had been a quiet boy. That he had cried at Old Yeller. That he had wanted to be a doctor and had not had the grades, and had joined the volunteer ambulance, and had been good at it, and had left, and would never say why. She said that he had not been right since the summer of 2019. That he had stopped eating. That she had found him once in the garage at three in the morning, sitting on the floor with a bottle, and when she asked what was the matter, he had said, I did a thing, Mama, and I can't undo it.
"I thought he'd done something to a girl," she said. "I won't lie to you. I thought it. For years. I thought he was ashamed because of what he'd been part of. And I never asked, because I couldn't bear to know." Her voice wavered. "And then they showed me the video. And I understood. He'd been ashamed, all right. But not for the reason I thought."
She turned her head.
"Ms. Bellamy."
Corinne looked up.
"I want to say something to you."
"Mrs. Moss," said the judge, "you may address the court."
"I know." The old woman lifted her chin. "But I want to say it to her."
Nobody stopped her.
"They told me you counted," said Ruby Moss. "That he asked you to, and you did. And I've thought about that. I've thought about it every night. And I can't tell you what I feel. I don't know. I only know that he was my boy and he's gone. And I know he wanted you to do it. I know it the way I know my own hand." Her eyes filled. "He'd have wanted to pay. That's how he was. He couldn't stand to owe anybody. Even a penny."
She stopped. She drew a long shuddering breath.
"And I want to tell you," she said, "that I forgive you. I don't think I'm supposed to. I don't think it's fair. But I do. I want it on your paper. I forgive you. And I want you to forgive him."
The room made no sound.
Corinne sat very still.
She had expected hate. She had prepared for it, in the cell, at three in the morning, by reading and re-reading the worst sentences she could imagine. She had made herself a stone. She had told herself that whatever anyone said, she would not move.
She moved.
She could not help it. A single tear fell from her left eye and ran, very slowly, down the side of her face, and dropped onto the pad in front of her. It blotted the pencilled word. It was the first thing she had ever failed to take down.
"Thank you, Mrs. Moss," she said.
It was barely audible.
The old woman nodded. She got up, with the cane. She walked to the rail, and a deputy took her arm. At the door she stopped, and turned, and said, in a small clear voice that carried across the whole room:
"He carried you out. I'd like you to remember it. Not the other thing. Him, carrying you."
"I do," said Corinne.
"Good."
She went out.
On the twenty-fifth, the defence rested without calling a witness.
Corinne had asked it. Nate had begged. He had a list of forty people, Dr. Okonkwo, Ms. Fairchild, a woman from the survivors' group, a judge, a priest. He had a psychologist. He had three experts on trauma. He had a box of letters. He said they would plead for her life.
"No," said Corinne.
"Why not?"
"Because I won't ask."
"It isn't asking. It's, it's evidence."
"It's mercy," she said. "And I won't. Not for the first four, because the jury's done it. And not for the fifth." She looked at him. "I can't say to twelve people that he deserved to die less than I deserve to live. I won't. I'll take what they decide."
"They're going to decide death."
"Maybe."
"You can't want that."
"I don't want it." She was very calm. "But I won't plead against it. I'll make a statement. For the record. That's all."
Nate stared at her for a long time. Then he took off his glasses and put his face in his hands, and stayed there. When he looked up, his eyes were red.
"I'm going to say something," he said, "and I want you to hear it. I've defended forty-one people. And I've never, I'll never, I've never been prouder, and I've never been more angry at a client. In my life."
"I know."
"Don't smile."
"I'm not."
"You are. A bit."
"I'm sorry."
He laughed. It broke in the middle.
On the twenty-sixth, she made her statement.
It lasted ninety seconds. She stood at her place, in the grey suit, with the pad in front of her, and did not look at it.
"I don't ask you to spare me," she said. "I'd like that to be clear. I did what I did. I killed five people. Four of them did something that no one should survive having done. One of them did something and then did something else, and I will never be able to say which was more his. If you decide that I should die for it, you won't be wrong. If you decide that I shouldn't, you won't be wrong either. I only ask that whatever you decide, you do it knowing the whole of it. That's all I've ever asked. It's all I'm asking now."
She paused.
"Thank you for listening. Most people didn't."
She sat.
The jury retired at 11:14. They were back at 2:50.
The verdict was read by the foreman. His voice was very low, and it was the only sound in the room. He read it from the paper in his two hands, steadily, one count after another, until he came to the end.
Count One: life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole.
Count Two: life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole.
Count Three: life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole.
Count Five: death.
He lowered the paper.
"We were unanimous," said Eugene Tolliver. "On all of them. I'd like that put in. I'd like it noted that it was not close."
"It is noted," said Judge Okafor.
The room was very quiet. Outside, the rain had stopped. A single bar of low yellow light came in at the high window and lay across the floor, across the table, across her folded hands.
"Ms. Bellamy," said the judge. "Please stand."
She stood.
"I have listened to this case for three weeks. I have listened to you for three weeks. I will say two things, and then I will do my duty." His voice was heavy, and tired, and quite steady. "The first is that the State of Georgia failed you. I say that from this bench, in open court, and I will say it in writing. The second is that the law of this state requires me to impose the sentence the jury has returned."
He put on his glasses.
"Corinne Ann Bellamy. For the murders of Owen Maddox, Grant Pruitt Junior, and Terrence Boyle, I sentence you to three terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, to run consecutively. And for the murder of Caleb Thomas Moss, I sentence you to death. The sentence will be carried out at such time and in such manner as the law provides, after the exhaustion of all appeals."
He lowered his gaze.
"May God have mercy on your soul," said the judge.
"Thank you, Your Honor," said Corinne.
She said it plainly. She said it quite clearly, as a person says it who has been handed something. And in the corner of the room, behind the long dark box of his machine, Gerald Pike lifted his head and looked at her, his heavy grey face blank with something she could not name. His fingers had stopped on the keys.
Then, very slowly, as if every motion hurt him, he began again to type.