The Chamber by John Grisham

Marvin’s face. According to the reporter, the reply from across the lawn had something to do with their desire to blow off the rest of Marvin’s limbs. Something this crude and cruel appeared to be true because Marvin went berserk. He screamed obscenities at the Kluckers, who were easing away, and he spun the metal wheels of his chair, lunging in their direction. He was yelling and cursing and crying. His wife and a few friends tried to restrain him, but he broke free, his hands furiously working the wheels. He rolled about twenty feet, with his wife in chase, with the cameras recording it all, until the sidewalk ended and the grass began. The wheelchair flipped, and Marvin sprawled onto the lawn. The quilt around his amputated legs flung free as he rolled hard next to a tree. His wife and friends were on him immediately, and for a moment or two he disappeared into a small huddle on the ground. But he could still be heard. As the camera backed awayand shot quickly at the two Klansmen, one doubled over with laughter and one frozen in place, an odd wailing erupted from the small crowd on the ground. Marvin was moaning, but in the shrill, high-pitched howl of a wounded madman. It was a sick sound, and after a few miserable seconds of it the video cut to the next scene.
    Adam had tears in his eyes the first time he watched Marvin roll on the ground, howling and groaning, and though the images and sounds still tightened his throat, he had stopped crying long ago. This video was his creation. No one had seen it but him. And he’d watched it so many times that tears were no longer possible.
    Technology improved immensely from 1968 to 1981, and the footage from Sam’s third and last trial was much sharper and clearer. It was February of 1981, in a pretty little town with a busy square and a quaint courthouse of red brick. The air was bitterly cold, and perhaps this kept away the crowds of onlookers and demonstrators. One report from the first day of the trial had a brief shot of three behooded Klansmen huddled around a portable heater, rubbing their hands and looking more like Mardi Gras revelers than serious hoodlums. They were watched by a dozen or so state troopers, all in blue jackets.
    Because the civil rights movement was viewed by this time as more of a historical event than a continuing struggle, the third trial of Sam Cayhall attracted more media than the first two. Here was an admitted Klansman, a real live terrorist from the distant era of Freedom Riders and church bombings. Here was a relic from those infamous days who’d been tracked down and was now being hauled to justice. The analogy to Nazi war criminals was made more than once.
    Sam was not in custody during his last trial. He wasa free man, and his freedom made it even more difficult to catch him on camera. There were quick shots of him darting into various doors of the courthouse. Sam had aged gracefully in the thirteen years since trial number two. The hair was still short and neat, but half gray now. He appeared a bit heavier, but fit. He moved deftly along sidewalks and in and out of automobiles as the media gave chase. One camera caught him as he stepped from a side door of the courthouse, and Adam stopped the tape just as Sam stared directly into the camera.
    Much of the footage of the third and final trial centered around a cocky young prosecutor named David McAllister, a handsome man who wore dark suits and a quick smile with perfect teeth. There was little doubt that David McAllister held grand political ambitions. He had the looks, the hair, the chin, the rich voice, the smooth words, the ability to attract cameras.
    In 1989, eight short years after the trial, David McAllister was elected governor of the State of Mississippi. To no one’s surprise, the widest planks in his platform had been more jails, longer sentences, and an unwavering affinity for the death penalty. Adam despised him too, but he knew that in a matter of weeks, maybe days, he