Since I witnessed the execution of a federal inmate last month, I’ve been ruminating on an odd genre of legend I came across in graduate school for Christian theology, in which the Devil takes humankind to court. |
In a relatively obscure manuscript tradition aptly labeled the “processus Sathanae” — Satan’s lawsuit — medieval authors imagined surreal trial scenarios in which the Prince of Darkness (or an infernal advocate) pursued hell’s claim to the souls of humanity in a celestial court, with God acting as judge. |
Satan was known to make several arguments in the course of his suit, some substantive (humanity is indeed wicked) and some procedural (the Virgin Mary tends to act as an advocate for humankind in these tales, and the counsel for perdition is always displeased with the advantage given to the defense). |
As a student, I was mainly interested in the matter of property law as considered by heaven. What I did not consider until much later — no longer in academia, but in this line of work — was that the suit of hell is always right on the merits. At least in these hearings, Satan has no need to lie. The human race convicts itself with its own works and ways. There isn’t any disputing what we have done; the only question is whether we will meet the end we’ve arranged for ourselves through so much evildoing. And if we don’t, hell demands, how can that be called fair? I don’t mean to spoil things, but the Lord always finds in humanity’s favor despite it all. |
So much for all that: Tomorrow, as I wrote this week, Corey Johnson is scheduled to be executed in Terre Haute, Ind., by an outgoing administration that seems to have dissolved in place. A stay has been issued, but it could just as easily be lifted. Johnson is clearly guilty of what he was convicted of — seven murders in the course of a crack-dealing operation based out of Richmond, Va., in the early 1990s — but he’s also intellectually disabled. While the law holds people with intellectual disabilities should be exempted from execution, mistakes made in his original trial seem to have all but foreclosed the possibility that he will be spared. Because of a tangled series of procedural rules in capital cases, it’s nigh impossible to adduce new evidence in old convictions. |
I watched the government execute another man last month, Alfred Bourgeois. It was neither good nor right, and no greater justice was served by it — just the grinding on of events set in motion by an erroneous trial in a wicked country, advancing solely on the strength of blind procedural commitments: Hey man, I’m just a law clerk, I’m just a career prosecutor, I’m just a U.S. Marshal, I’m just doing my job. Law often separates itself from justice, after all. This is why the Devil wins more often than he loses. |
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