The bell above the door chimed as Rosemarie slid into the menswear store on Main Street. The strong odor of leather hit her, and she almost backed out. But the salesman came up and asked, “How may I help you?” and she froze, not sure how to ask for what she needed.
“I need help picking out a suit for my client to die in,” she blurted out.
“You mean to be buried in?” The confusion on the salesman’s face told her that this was not going to be as easy as she’d hoped.
“Actually, both. My client will be executed on Tuesday, and he wants to die with the dignity of wearing a suit, not the prison whites that he’s been wearing for the past 15 years,” Rosemarie said with a grimace.
After picking out a nice navy blue suit, white shirt and baby blue tie, Rosemarie realized that her client also needed shoes. Pulling out her phone, she tapped on Yvonne's number. When she picked up, her first words were "any updates?" And Rosemarie had to disappoint her once again.
"No, nothing new. Sorry! I, um, need your help. Do you know what size shoes Eddie wears? I'm at the store and realize he'll need shoes to go with the suit I just picked out."
Yvonne responded: "I think he wears a 10. At least, that's what our mom sent him last time he asked for sneakers."
Rosemarie thanked her client's sister and went back and picked out a pair of shoes, grabbed a pair of socks from a nearby rack and checked out.
On the way back to the office, her phone rang. When she looked at the number, her heart sank. It started with 47, so she figured it must be Lorraine, Eddie's long-time pen pal who was traveling to the states from her home in Oslo.
"Yes?" she responded and listened as Lorraine described the travel snarls that delayed her arrival in Houston and might mean she might not get to the prison before visiting hours ended. Rosemarie could hear Lorraine struggle to keep from crying as she lamented, "There is so little time left for Eddie. I want to be there for him!"
"He knows you're on your way. Just relax, and get here when you can. I'll hold down the visit until you arrive." Rosemarie responded, walking into the office and nodding to her paralegal, Grace.
"Lorraine," she whispered as she pointed to the phone.
Grace nodded and handed her a stack of papers that Rosemarie set on her desk next to the draft of the clemency application she'd worked on until midnight, knowing that it was Eddie's last possible chance to avoid being executed.
After hanging up with Lorraine, Rosemarie opened her laptop and began reviewing the clemency petition one more time. She started reading out loud—a habit picked up from her days in grad school when her professor recommended reading her essays aloud to get a feel for how an audience that was not inside her head might experience them. She went over the section where she discussed the events that led to the fatal shooting of the police officer, which landed Eddie on death row:
Edwin "Eddie" Bruce was barely 21 years old when he was pulled over by patrol officers in the small town of Celina, in Collin County. As an African American man, he had been taught from the minute he got his driver's license that he would need to keep his cool, keep his hands in view of the officers, and answer "yes, sir" and "no, sir" to any and all questions if he were ever stopped when driving. He watched in his mirrors as the two white officers came up toward his car, one on each side. Eddie rolled down the window and put his hands back on top of the steering wheel.
"Get out of the car!" shouted the officer next to the driver-side window. Eddie slowly opened the door and put his hands in the air in compliance.
"What's in your pocket?" the other officer shouted. Without thinking Eddie put his hands down to feel his pocket and felt the plastic water pistol he'd stuck there after the water fight that afternoon with his nephews. "It's just a water pistol" he tried to scream, but before he could get the words fully out of his mouth, he heard gunshot. He slammed his body to the ground, covered his head and looked toward where the sound of the shot came from. When he turned back, he saw the first officer, just 2 feet away from him, slump forward, blood gushing from his chest. Officer Grand died at the scene from the gunshot fired by his partner.
These are the undisputed facts. Eddie Bruce was driving home from a visit with his grandmother and nephews in Celina when he was pulled over by two rookie police officers, and one shot the other in a panic. Eddie was charged with capital murder of a peace officer because the policeman who shot his partner swore that Eddie pulled a gun and was going to use it. Even though the "gun" in Eddie's pocket was a squirt gun, the jury declared that he was responsible for the death of the police officer and sentenced him to death.
In the 15 years that Eddie has spent on death row in Livingston, he has not had a single disciplinary write up. For 10 years, he attended Bible study weekly, worked in the prison library and wrote to his sister regularly. Over the past five years, he has served as an informal legal adviser, and since converting to Islam, an informal imam for the men on his tier. Eddie's appeals are exhausted, and he now seeks mercy.
As members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, you have the duty to make recommendations to the governor on matters of clemency. Eddie Bruce, his family, his supporters and me, as his attorney, implore you to refrain from expanding the harm from this tragedy by executing Eddie Bruce. The death of Officer Grand was a horrific tragedy, one that Eddie wishes had never happened. He has lived an exemplary life while on death row and will continue to do so in general population if you find in your heart the grace to make a recommendation to the governor that he grant clemency in this extraordinary case to this extraordinary man.
Rosemarie did a final spell-check and then hit send on the email containing the petition, along with the 363 pages of exhibits documenting Eddie's life, his art, his good deeds in prison and
petitions and letters from supporters from all over the world. It would arrive at the board of parole in-box in just nanoseconds. And it will likely take just a few minutes before the board formally voted and denied it—though she wouldn't hear anything before tomorrow morning.
Between now and then, she had to head to the prison to visit with Eddie. She also had to make time to speak with Eddie's mom and find out more details about the memorial service.
When she pulled up at the guard shack, Rosemarie pulled out her ID—both her driver's license and her bar card—and waited as the guard checked them against his list of approved visitors.
She'd made visit reservations weeks ago, but she still worried that some bureaucratic glitch would slow her down. But today she was waved forward to the parking area in just a few minutes. Just as she was about to get out of the car, her phone buzzed. She looked at the number and braced herself for the questions Carol Ryan would throw at her. Carol was one of the few reporters in Texas who still seemed to care about accurately reporting the intricacies of capital cases and the death machine the state ran in Huntsville.
"Hey, Carol. Just pulled up at the Row, so need to make this quick. How can I help you?" Rosemarie said.
"Any updates? Have you filed your clemency petition yet? Anything pending at SCOTUS still?" As usual, Carol's questions came at a pace that left little time for contemplation before responding.
"No, sorry." Rosemarie started. "We just got a ruling from the Fifth Circuit on our last petition, but the panel sucks, so didn't expect anything good to come from New Orleans, so the denial was no surprise. We filed the cert petition last night, and I just hit send on the clemency petition. I expect we won't hear anything on either of those until tomorrow. I'll let you know as soon as we hear something."
"Great. Thanks. I'm headed up to Dallas to try to interview the widow, but I'll have my cell, so just give me a call when you hear," Carol responded. Rosemarie's stomach dropped. She had met Josie Grand, the widow of the officer who died and knew she had taken her husband's death hard. She told reporters after she testified at trial that she wanted to see Eddie "die an agonizing death just like her husband had." She'd then attended every single hearing over the last 15 years, including traveling to New Orleans when the Fifth Circuit held oral argument last fall.
Rosemarie had tried to approach her to offer condolences on more than one occasion but was rebuffed every time. Josie would look at her with hatred and turn away. In some ways, Rosemarie looked forward to Carol's article just to hear more of what Josie was thinking these 15 years later.
Rosemarie switched her phone to airplane mode and stuck it in the glove compartment. No phones were allowed inside the prison, and she didn't trust the lockers in the lobby. As she walked up to the entrance, she thought about all the things left to do—and was saddened by the thought that there really wasn't much left. She'd sent off the clemency petition, but she knew (and she knew Eddie knew) that had about zero chance of being granted. And while they still had one more petition pending at the Supreme Court, the chances of that being granted were even less. Now all she could do was help Eddie prepare to die. And prepare herself to help his family and friends in the aftermath.
She had no idea how to do that. No class in law school prepared her for this: walking into a visiting room where a healthy, 36-year-old man needed her help to prepare to die. Although she won her law school's "client counseling" competition, even those skills weren't much good in this situation. So, Rosemarie took a deep breath, adjusted her shoulder bag and walked purposefully to the visiting room, knowing she'd do her best, though not having a clue what that meant.
Eddie was on the other side of a plexiglass wall, one hand holding the phone, the other planted flat against the glass.
"Hey, Ace!" he said, grinning so his dimples deepened. "I've been waiting for you to get here!"
Rosemarie sat down on the cold metal stool across from Eddie, put her hands up on the glass and made herself smile just as broadly.
"Hey, Eddie. Good to see you too." Then, for a long beat, they sat silently, searching each other's eyes for a clue of how to proceed. Finally, Rosemarie said, "I bought you a suit. Navy blue. Baby blue tie too. Does that sound OK?"
Eddie took a deep breath and said, "Yeah, that sounds perfect. Though I guess that means you don't think there's a way to stop it, right?"
Rosemarie sighed. "No. To be honest, I don't. I wish I did. I wish there was something else I could think of to do …." Her voice trailed off.
Eddie looked down at his lap and was silent for a minute or two. Finally, he looked up and asked, "When will Lorraine get here? I want to make sure that I have time to see her, but I also want to see my Mama, and I don't want any drama between those two."
"Loraine's flight was delayed, but she should be here in about an hour. Your mom won't be able to come until tomorrow morning, so that should work out fine," Rosemarie replied.
For the next hour, Rosemarie and Eddie chatted about the absurdity of his situation; about memories of some of the men he'd known who'd been executed over the past year and touched on what he wanted to do with some of his "personal items," as the prison staff called them. He knew they would bring him a big red onion sack in the morning, but there were things he wanted to give to the other men on the Row before then, so they talked about how to make sure that would happen.
Finally, Loraine arrived, and Rosemarie stood to let her take over the seat across from Eddie. The three of them chatted briefly and then Rosemarie said, "I'm going to take off and finalize some stuff. I'll call your mom and sister and then plan to be back here tomorrow around noon to pick them up."
Looking straight at Eddie she asked, "Is there anything else? Last thoughts? Last wishes?"
"Well, I was wondering," he said with that magical twinkle in his eyes. "Could you maybe sneak me out of here late tonight?"
They both laughed loudly. It was a long-time joke. After every visit, Eddie would ask if Rosemarie would just take him home with her or smuggle him out to his sister's house, and she would politely decline. One last time, she declined.
Rosemarie drove back to the office and called Eddie's sister, Yvonne, to make the final plans for their meeting tomorrow. Yvonne and her mom would go visit Eddie as soon as visiting hours opened in the morning, then, around noon, guards would come and take him away to do his final packing before moving him over to "The Walls"—a prison in downtown Huntsville where the execution chamber was housed. Rosemarie warned Yvonne that Loraine had arrived from Oslo and had visited with Eddie that afternoon, but they should be prepared for her to show up again in the morning.
"But we all agreed that she got this afternoon, and we get tomorrow morning!" Yvonne wailed.
"I know, I know," responded Rosemarie. "But she feels that she came such a long way and . . . well, you know how she is. I'll do my best to keep her occupied and out of your hair, but she's a slippery one!" At that, Yvonne let out a short laugh and explained they would drive to the office after their visit.
After a fitful night's sleep, Rosemarie drove back to the office in the morning, checking to see if they had word from the pardons board or the Supreme Court. Grace was at her desk and handed Rosemarie a phone message. Glancing at the 202 area code, she figured it was the clerk at the Supreme Court. She appreciated the personal touch of getting a phone call instead of an email, but she also knew that it was not going to be a phone call with a happy ending. She called the clerk's office, and sure enough, the message was, “I'm sorry to have to let you know, but the court denied cert with no dissents.”
Rosemarie thanked her and hung up, feeling the tears well in her eyes. No matter how she had intellectually prepared for that result, it still made her deeply sad. It just seemed so damn unfair. And she felt so helpless. She knew she had done everything she could have possibly done, but the system was rigged against her and her client. Her mom often asked her why she kept doing this job when she always seemed to lose.
"I don't know, Mom. I guess we learn to count our wins differently," was her usual reply. Today, she wasn't even sure that any part of what she would be doing that day could be considered a win.
At noon, as Rosemarie was checking her email one more time, her phone rang.
"Hey, Yvonne," she answered. "Are you headed over here?"
The sobbing voice on the other end of the line seemed to answer in the affirmative before the call went dead.
"Hey, Grace," Rosemarie called out, “Can you make sure we have enough tissues and also some bottled water? Yvonne and her mom are headed our way.”
A few minutes later, Rosemarie heard the ping of an incoming email and looked to see that it was a reply to Eddie's clemency petition filing. "The Board Declines to Recommend Clemency" was all it said. A simple six-word sentence, but as it was the last possibility of stopping Eddie's execution, its banality hit her hard. She sank back in her chair, feeling utterly defeated.
When Yvonne and Imogene arrived, she embraced them both and offered them a seat on the ratty couch in her office. They sat, tears streaking down their cheeks, and accepted Grace's offer of bottles of water but declined the offer of food.
"I just need to sit here and pray," Imogene said with a groan.
Rosemarie left them to use her office in private as she went to the storage room, pulled out a black suit and took it to the back room to change. She wasn't sure what the protocol should be for visiting a client about to be executed, but she figured she should look like a lawyer, and Eddie would appreciate the formality of her in a suit.
Rosemarie knew she needed to start the drive over to Huntsville, as she was required to check in by 4 p.m., even though she would not be allowed to see Eddie until at least 5:30 p.m. So she did a last check in with Yvonne and Imogene and hugged them once more. They were going to witness Eddie's execution, and so she said she'd wait for them across the street afterward.
"Please let him know I love him" Imogene begged. "Oh, Mama, he knows that!" Yvonne responded. And Rosemarie nodded in agreement. "He does know. But I will still tell him again," she promised.
The warden stood outside his office, his felt cowboy hat in his hands. "Ms. Rosemarie, I need you to leave your bag in that locker over there and come on with me. I'll take you out to the visiting cell."
Rosemarie did as she was told. As they walked through a back corridor and outside toward the "death house," the warden stopped and reminded her: "You are not allowed inside the room with your client. He will be in the cell, and you will stand just outside it. There will be guards right nearby in case you need their protection."
Rosemarie looked at him, baffled. He thought she needed protection from Eddie? Hell, she thought, it was more like Eddie needed protection from them! But she just nodded and followed behind him.
When they got to the heavy metal door that led to the room next to the execution chamber, Rosemarie's stomach clenched, and she felt the bile rise. She remembered when she'd done a tour of the death house a year or two before, and how, as she approached the door, she whispered to her colleague Suzanne, "I think I'm going to vomit."
Suzanne shook her arm, "You can't. Do not let them know this is making you sick. They will revel in that as a win."
So, she didn't vomit then, and as much as she wanted to now, she took a deep breath instead and walked from the bright sunlight into the darkness of the holding cell.
Eddie was already there, pacing the 5 or 6 feet from one end of the cell to the other. He looked good in the suit—she wasn't sure they'd really let him wear it and was relieved that they had.
"Does it fit OK?" she asked.
"Yeah. Perfectly. Even the shoes!" Eddie responded with a shy grin.
There were metal bars, covered with mesh across the front of the holding cell. Rosemarie put her hands up against the mesh as she had done hundreds of times when visiting Eddie and her other clients on death row. Eddie did the same, but immediately one of the armed guards stepped toward her.
"Ma'am, take your hands down. You are not allowed to touch him."
She shook her head in amazement at the absurdity of there being a security risk because a half-inch of the flesh of her hand met the half-inch of flesh of her client's hand in a room with half a dozen armed guards standing 3 feet away. Nevertheless, she took down her hands.
"Eddie, I am so sorry," she started. And looked up as she realized she just had no words beyond those. She had no idea what she was supposed to say to this healthy man, still in the prime of his life, who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and whose race and gender meant that he was assumed to be guilty of a crime that actually was just a tragic accident—but he was going to pay the ultimate price for it anyway.
"Rosemarie, you have nothing to be sorry about. What's going to happen in there was not of your doing. It is a racist system and systemic injustice is at fault, not you. I know you did everything anybody could have done." Eddie started. "I want you to know that I don't blame you for anything. And I want you to know that what you did do was give me hope—and give me dignity. You treated me as a human being; one worth redemption, one worth your time. And for that, I am deeply, deeply grateful."
At that, Eddie turned away, and Rosemarie noticed that there were tears sliding down his cheeks.
When he turned back to her, she saw a new fear creeping into his eyes.
"I'm scared," he said. "You know, I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, went every Sunday with my Mama and sister, Daddy too when he was around. But in here, well, you know, I converted to Islam. And, I'm scared. What if Mama is right, and I need to accept Jesus as my savior to enter Heaven?"
Rosemarie froze. She had no idea how to respond. Nothing had prepared her for this. But she bumbled along.
"I think God is a loving God," she began. "And even in Islam, Jesus is a prophet, and you believe that, right?"
Eddie nodded.
"So maybe you can seek dua from him as you pray Shahada? I'm not sure, but I imagine God will know what's in your heart, right?"
Eddie nodded again but didn't look convinced. For the millionth time that day, Rosemarie thought, "They didn't teach me this in law school!"
Trying to think of a way to change the subject, Rosemarie asked, "How was the last meal?"
"Ah, just as I suspected," Eddie replied. "They say we can have whatever we want, but I asked for fried chicken and biscuits and greens, and what I got was the regular baked chicken that we always get with a sad little salad on the side."
"What about the Coke you were craving?" Rosemarie asked.
"Nah. No Coke. They gave me a glass of sweet tea—or what they called sweet tea anyway." Eddie responded with a wry laugh.
"You mean they took iced tea and stirred in some sugar? What the hell! Don't they know that sweet tea has to have the sugar stirred in while the water is still hot, so it melts right?" Rosemarie responded.
Eddie burst out laughing. "Wait a sec! I'm going to be killed in less than half an hour, and you're giving me cooking lessons?"
Rosemarie laughed along. But her brain was stuck on "be killed in less than half an hour." She felt like she needed to say something profound, but despite it being on her to-do list for the last two weeks, she never had been able to figure out what that might be.
"Eddie," she started, haltingly. "I want to tell you that when I started doing capital defense, I never ever imagined I'd have a client like you. I figured everybody on the Row was guilty. I figured they all either had some mental illness or another excuse. But you surprised me at every turn. I want to tell you how much gratitude I have for getting the chance to get to know you and work alongside you. I know this is not the grand speech that you deserve, but ..." Rosemarie trails off. "I guess thank you is all I've got. I'm grateful to have been your lawyer, and I'm grateful for this—as awful as it is, I'm grateful I had the chance to accompany you on this part of the journey."
"Well, that's more than enough," Eddie responded. And as they stood there for a bit longer in silence, each lost in thought, a guard interrupted. "Ma'am, you have 5 minutes, then we gotta move him out."
Rosemarie startled. "Damn! That went so fast!" And even though she had promised herself she would not cry in front of Eddie, she felt the tears well up again in her eyes.
"I almost forgot! Your mama told me to remind you that she loves you deeply. Yvonne too," she said.
"Awww. Thank you for that. Love is all we've got at this point. I do appreciate you reminding me of that," Eddie said as the guard gently took Rosemarie's elbow and led her to the door. As it opened out into the sunlight, Rosemarie turned back one last time—and watched as Eddie blew her a kiss.
Later, she went to meet up with Imogene and Yvonne, she saw that one of the guards had messed up and walked them down the same corridor as Josie Grand, the widow of the police officer who had been killed. Somehow Josie realized that Imogene was Eddie's mother. She turned to her and said, "You're his mama?"
Imogene nods. Josie shakes her head, "Y'all don't deserve this either."
Rosemarie nods in agreement: "Exactly. That's what the death penalty does, it takes one tragedy and expands the pain not only to victim family members like you, but to all the mamas and sisters and brothers of those charged in a capital case."
Josie nods her agreement, and the four women shake their heads as they go their separate ways.
Rosemarie joins Yvonne and Imogene as they meet Lorraine outside, just as a sunbeam breaks through the cloud cover.
"Look, Mama!" exclaims Yvonne. "There he goes." And the four women stand together looking up, awash in the sunbeam's light and their pain.
"Love is all we have," Rosemarie repeats as she walks away into the evening light, heading back to the office where she'll pull out the file of her next client and try to find some solace in the work, knowing it will be years before the pain of Eddie's execution would fade.
Rita Radostitz, a former public defender who represents a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, won the 2024 ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction with "Obbligato: What They Don't Teach You in Law School." Read more about Radostitz, including an interview, here.
The ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction awards a $5,000 prize to the winning writer of a story that illuminates the role of the law or lawyers in modern society. The winner is judged by a panel selected by the Journal’s editor and publisher and confirmed by the Journal’s Board of Editors. Entries cannot be longer than 5,000 words. The deadline for the 2025 contest is May 1, 2025. Read contest rules here.
