"No, course not," Lloyd said unconvincingly.
"Our petition for a new trial will be turned down and all my exceptions will be quickly heaved out. If we're lucky, the court will invite me to present witnesses. If they give me the opportunity, I'll recall everybody that testified at the original trial, plus anyone else I can think of. At that point I'd call your junior high school chums as character witnesses, if I could find them."
"I quit school in the sixth grade," Lloyd said bleakly.
"After the Circuit Court turns us down, I'll petition to be heard by the Supreme Court. I expect to be turned down on the same day."
Devins stopped and lit a cigarette.
"Then what?" Lloyd asked.
"Then?" Devins asked, looking mildly surprised and exasperated at Lloyd's continuing stupidity. "Why, then you go on to Death Row at state prison and just enjoy all that good food until it's time to ride the lightning. It won't be long."
"They wouldn't really do it," Lloyd said. "You're just trying to scare me."
"Lloyd, the four states that have the Capital Crimes Circuit Court do it all the time. So far, forty men and women have been executed under the Markham guidelines. It costs the taxpayers a little extra for the added court, but not all that much, since they only work on a tiny percentage of first-degree murder cases. Also, the taxpayers really don't mind opening their pocketbooks for capital punishment. They like it."
Lloyd looked ready to throw up.
"Anyway," Devins said, "a DA will only try a defendant under Markham guidelines if he looks completely guilty. It isn't enough for the dog to have chicken feathers on his muzzle; you've got to catch him in the henhouse. Which is where they caught you."
Lloyd, who had been basking in the cheers from the boys in Maximum Security not fifteen minutes ago, now found himself staring down a paltry two or three weeks and into a black hole.
"You scared, Sylvester?" Devins asked in an almost kindly way.
Lloyd had to lick his lips before he could answer. "Christ yes, I'm scared. From what you say, I'm a dead man."
"I don't want you dead," Devins said, "just scared. If you go into that courtroom smirking and swaggering, they'll strap you in the chair and throw the switch. You'll be number forty-one under Markham. But if you listen to me, we might be able to squeak through. I don't say we will; I say we might."
"Go ahead."
"The thing we have to count on is the jury," Devins said. "Twelve ordinary shleps off the street. I'd like a jury filled with forty-two-year-old ladies who can still recite Winnie the Pooh by heart and have funerals for their pet birds in the back yard, that's what I'd like. Every jury is made very aware of Markham 's consequences when they're empaneled. They're not bringing in a verdict of death that may or may not be implemented in six months or six years, long after they've forgotten it; the guy they're condemning in June is going to be pushing up daisies before the All-Star break."
"You've got a hell of a way of putting things."
Ignoring him, Devins went on: "In some cases, just that knowledge has caused juries to bring in verdicts of not guilty. It's one adverse result of Markham. In some cases, juries have let blatant murderers go just because they didn't want blood that fresh on their hands." He picked up a sheet of paper. "Although forty people have been executed under Markham, the death penalty has been asked for under Markham a total of seventy times. Of the thirty not executed, twenty-six were found 'not guilty' by the empaneled juries. Only four convictions were overturned by the Capital Crimes Circuit Courts, one in South Carolina, two in Florida, and one in Alabama."
"Never in Arizona?"
"Never. I told you. The Code of the West. Those five old men want your ass nailed to a board. If we don't get you off in front of a jury, you're through. I can offer you ninety-to-one on it."
"How many people have been found not guilty by regular court juries under that law in Arizona?"
"Two out of fourteen."
"Those are pretty crappy odds, too."
Devins smiled his wolfish smile. "I should point out," he said, "that one of those two was defended by yours truly. He was guilty as sin, Lloyd, just like you are. Judge Pechert raved at those ten women and two men for twenty minutes. I thought he was going to have apoplexy."
"If I was found not guilty, they couldn't try me again, could they?"
"Absolutely not."
"So it's one roll, double or nothing."
"Yes."
"Boy," Lloyd said, and wiped his forehead.
"As long as you understand the situation," Devins said, "and where we have to make our stand, we can get down to brass tacks."