A Book of American Martyrs(106)
But then, the next Saturday I encountered Dawn Dunphy and a short heavyset woman at the mall, at first I thought the woman might be Mrs. Dunphy but turned out she was an aunt, and I was with my fiancé Rolly on our way to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Dawn stared at him and seemed very distracted by him; and the following Monday at school Dawn was waiting for me by my car and asked if my brother lived in the same house with me and if we lived with our parents, and I told her that Rolly was not my brother but my fiancé and she didn’t seem to hear this or possibly to understand. But after that things were not so friendly between us. I mean, on Dawn’s side. She didn’t smile at me so much and she didn’t drop into my classroom so much and I could see that I had disappointed her. It might have been around this time that her father’s second trial began, over in Broome County. It was on TV every night—not the TV camera in the courtroom but outside in the street, and reports on how the trial was progressing, and many pictures of Luther Dunphy—and Dr. Voorhees—every night. So it wasn’t a good time for Dawn Dunphy, I knew. And what she had to endure at school I could imagine. She’d show up in the morning for homeroom then disappear an hour later. She was missing classes, and her grades were poor. And one day she said to me with this strange look in her face, a kind of smile, but her eyes were not smiling, People say you are married, Miss Schine, and I said, Really? Who?—(because I doubted this could be true for Rolly and I had set our wedding date for June tenth and everyone who knew us knew this fact)—and Dawn said vaguely, Oh just people. That’s what they are saying. And I said, But why? Why’d they say such a thing? and Dawn said, with this mean little twist to her mouth, and her eyes narrowed almost shut, Because they say you are preg-nent, Miss Schine. Because your belly is getting big and you are preg-nent, Miss Schine. That is what they are saying.
I was so shocked, I could not stammer any reply. And Dawn Dunphy just laughed and pushed past me. And that was the end of what you might have called our friendship—whatever it was . . . That was the end.
TRIAL
The date was set for the trial. Then, the date was postponed.
A new date was set. Then, the new date was postponed.
“God will never allow you to be judged, Luther. I think that must be it”—so the chaplain said, laying a hand on Luther’s shoulder.
Wincing, Luther did not shake off the man’s heavy reassuring hand.
“IF THE SECOND TRIAL ends in a deadlock also, that’s it—the prosecutor won’t try again.”
And, “All we need is one hold-out, Luther! Out of twelve, one.”
With boyish excitement the court-appointed attorney consulted with his taciturn and somber-faced client whose lower face was covered now in a metallic-gray stubble and whose skin, creased and fine-wrinkled, had grown parchment-colored as if with the passage of decades. His eyes, though alert and seemingly watchful, were ringed with fatigue as if he rarely slept.
Both guards and other detainees in the detention facility admired Luther Dunphy for his Christian faith, kindness, composure. Most of all, not talking bullshit like everybody else.
Guards understood that they could trust Luther Dunphy. Doubt if he’d walk away from the facility if every door was unlocked.
Somebody tried to push him around, in the dining hall for instance, he didn’t fight back though you could see a look in his eye, like a match struck, what he’d do if he was in some other place without guards to inhibit him.
The size of Luther Dunphy. Even losing weight and his face getting thinner he was still a big man at two hundred pounds (or so) and in a prison facility it is size you respect, mostly.
Excess flesh melted from him. In his cell he did push-ups, sit-ups, rapidly touching his toes, flexing his arm and shoulder muscles as if he were lifting weights, running in place. Tirelessly he ran in place. His body broke out into a sweat but he barely panted, his heartbeat was slow and measured.
Some defendants talk. Some defendants talk nonstop. But some, like Luther Dunphy, do not talk much. These are the very best defendants.
God, that man was like a sphinx—with us at least. Like he didn’t really care about the trial because he believed himself to be in a place where it could not touch him. First time I’d ever met a zealot—a “religious fanatic”—up close. Luther Dunphy was absolutely convinced that he’d done nothing wrong—in fact, he had done something absolutely right: he’d taken orders as a “soldier of God.”
It was like he’d done what he had done. And he was not going to think about it further.
Right away he’d acknowledged that he killed the abortion doctor. He would not acknowledge that he’d killed the other man.
Yet, he was not insane. We dug up a psychologist from Toledo to argue yes, Luther Dunphy was “incapable mentally of participating in his own defense” but the judge didn’t buy it.
(Only crazy thing about Dunphy was, he’d refused to replace me with a private lawyer. He never accepted the Army of God defense fund money—he had some principle about that.)
At the first trial we lucked out—prosecution had an absolutely airtight case but not one but two wacky Christian females held out for not guilty. Everybody wanted to strangle the old bags including the judge but that was how it went down. Being that the trial was taking place in the same county, with the same juror pool of Protestant Christians, it wasn’t all that far-fetched a mistrial might happen again.