唯尽人事，死以为期

AMERICA’S fondness for the death penalty is disconcerting—and to no one more than David Dow, whose job is to defend death-row inmates in the most kill-happy state, Texas. Mr Dow’s frank account, “The Autobiography of an Execution”, weaves tales from his often-futile efforts—in which stalling, rather than stopping, his clients’ execution is frequently the only feasible goal—with scenes from his own family life. “We planned the execution around our vacations,” he writes of one of his clients, Henry Quaker.

美国对死刑制度的偏爱让人倍受困扰，而大卫·道最是不胜其扰。他在全美最为嗜杀的德克萨斯州担任死囚的辩护律师。在他的工作中，通常撤销死刑判决是不可能的，只有拖延当事人行刑的时间才是可行的目标，还常常连这也做不到。他在《一场死刑的前前后后》一书中坦言了工作经历的故事，期间穿插了他和家人的生活片段。关于他的一个当事人亨利·贵格，他写道：“我们尽量让行刑日期避开假期。”

Quaker’s grim case forms the core of the book. The beneficiary of a life-insurance policy on his family, the jurors are told, he was arrested for shooting his wife, from whom he had recently separated, and two children. Mr Dow is unable to save Quaker, largely because the case was badly mishandled by his initial lawyer, a common predicament for death-row inmates. Mr Dow attends the execution. Of the roughly 100 people on death row he has represented over his career, Mr Dow believes seven were innocent. (To protect his clients’ confidentiality, Mr Dow not only altered names but mixed up the circumstances of many cases that he has worked on. So Quaker’s tale, along with everything else in the book, is a composite of true circumstances, he explains.)

贵格生死案是这本书的核心内容。庭上陪审团获知，贵格是家人的一份人寿保险的受益人，因射杀新近分居的妻子和他的两个孩子被捕。大卫·道救不了贵格，主要是因为该案的前律师处理得很糟。对死囚区的犯人来说，这种困境司空见惯。行刑时大卫·道在场。他执业以来辩护的死囚约有一百人，其中他认为有七人是无辜的。（为维护当事人的隐秘性，大卫·道不但改了他们的名字，还把他经手的许多案子混合起来。所以，他解释道，贵格的故事还有书中的一切，都是真人真事的杂糅。）更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

Mr Dow is angry. “I used to support the death penalty. I changed my mind when I learned how lawless the system is,” he writes. His world is full of public defenders who fail to perform even the most basic duties in court, indifferent judges, cowardly public officials, and an absurdly rigid system which honours the letter of the rules over actual justice.

大卫·道语带愤慨。他写道：“以前我是支持死刑的。当我了解到这个制度是多么无法无天时，我改变了想法。”他的周围满是连最基本的责任都做不到的公设辩护律师，冷漠的法官，胆小怯弱的官员，以及死板荒谬、置法律条文于真正的正义之上的制度。

Mr Dow does not actually like many of his clients. And he points out some sorry truths of the American justice system. As in the Quaker case, Mr Dow generally gets to his clients too late, because the federal courts are loth to go back over the problematic trials of the state courts. His work is gruelling and awful—and then the client dies and the process starts all over again with somebody new.

事实上，大卫·道并不喜欢他的很多当事人。他指出了美国司法制度的一些让人难过的真相。由于联邦法院不愿重新审理州法院判决存在问题的案件，很多案子和贵格案一样，大卫·道找到他的当事人时已然太迟。他的工作让人精疲力竭，痛苦不堪。接着，他的当事人死了，换一个当时人后，整个过程又重头来一遍。

Knowing something of the deficiencies of the American justice system is useful for leafing through “Last Words of the Executed”, the final statements of hundreds of Americans who have been condemned through the centuries. Robert Elder has organised his book according to the manner of death. There are chapters on hanging; the firing-squad (Utah is due to execute a prisoner in June this way—America’s first such execution since 1996); the gas chamber; the electric chair; and lethal injection (the most common method used, though it once took so long to find a beefy Ohio inmate’s vein that he was granted a break to go to the toilet).

了解美国司法系统的弊端后，再来读《临刑遗言》一书就容易多了。该书是美国数百年来备受鞑伐的几百个死刑犯人最后的话。作者罗伯特·埃尔德按死刑的种类组织书的内容：绞死，枪毙（犹他州六月将会以此方式处决一名犯人——这是1996年以来美国第一例枪毙死刑），毒气室，电椅，还有注射毒素（这是最常用的方式，尽管一次处决一名肌肉发达的俄亥俄州犯人时，花了很长时间都找不到他的静脉，中间他还被允许上了一趟厕所）。

The last words are remarkable for their remorse, humour, hatred, resignation, fear and bravado. “I wish you’d hurry up. I want to get to hell in time for dinner,” a 19th-century Wyoming murderer told his hangman. Some rambled; others were concise. Several blamed the drink; others reasserted innocence, or (especially in recent years) railed against the death penalty. Some accepted their fate. “If I was y’all, I would have killed me. You know?” said a Texan, who had murdered his son’s former girlfriend and her sister, as he readied himself for lethal injection. America’s diverse heritage is stamped even onto its killers’ final moments.

这些遗言或表示忏悔，或故作幽默，或叫嚣仇恨，或充满无奈，或恐惧不已，或强装无畏。19世纪怀俄明州的一名杀人犯对刽子手如是说：“我希望你能快点。我还想赶上地狱的晚餐呢。”有人絮絮叨叨，有人寥寥数语。其中几个人归罪于喝酒误事。有人重申自己无辜，还有人（特别是近年来）痛骂死刑制度。一些人则接受了自己的命运。一名德州犯人谋杀了儿子的前女友和她姐姐。他在预备接受注射毒素时说：“我要是你们的话，早就杀了我了。”美国社会历来五花八门，多彩纷呈，这一点在死刑犯临终前也不例外。