The Confession

It is Tuesday morning. Donté is scheduled to die Thursday evening at 6pm. The private investigator tells Flak that Joey Gamble might recant. Joey’s worries about a perjury charge are moot—the statute of limitations has long run out. Flak also gets a phone call from “some minister” (103) in Topeka who claims to have information about Nicole’s killing. Flak dismisses the call as “another nut” (103).

When the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denies Flak’s motion for clemency, Flak decides to visit Donté in prison. He brings along a noted clinical psychiatrist to evaluate Donté. Texas has outlawed executing people with mental illness but proving that imprisonment has led to mental illness is at best a long shot.

Meanwhile, Nicole’s family prepares a massive extended family dinner. The big shot national crime reporter interviews Reeva, who tears up on cue: “She had cried in public for so long that she could now chatter away while the tears flowed” (113). Once again using racist dog-whistle terminology, she says that the “animal” who killed her daughter “deserved to die” (114). The TV crew packs up and heads to the airport—they are covering another execution, this one in Florida.

After getting the brush-off from the Flak Law Offices receptionist, Reverend Schroeder calls his friend Matthew Burns, who works in Topeka’s prosecutor’s office, for advice. Burns stresses that to prove that Boyette is telling the truth, the defense team is going to want him to lead them to Nicole’s body. The problem is that Boyette is on parole and by law cannot leave Kansas—but Boyette claims only he can find where the body is in Missouri.

Schroeder proposes that Boyette make a video confession in which he reveals where Nicole is buried. Boyette, groggy from medication, his head throbbing, refuses to make the video. Schroeder fears the tumor is killing Boyette’s “desire to help the cause” (124). Burns advises Schroeder to let the matter go, now claiming that he is just a lying sociopath seeking attention and messing with the pastor:  “The odds are heavy,” he says, “[Texas] got the right guy” (127).

When the innocent Donté arrived on death row in October 1999, it was a nightmare. The windowless cell was narrow, the racket of inmates screaming and praying never stopped, food (or what passes for food) slid in through a slot, his family was not allowed to visit, and he was allowed out of his cell for only one hour a day. What most terrified Donté, however, was the steady rate of executions—seven in his first month alone.

In isolation, Donté grew depressed. He tried to keep himself busy by replaying his old football games. But after a year, he grew despondent, sleeping most of the day. When the appeals courts upheld his conviction, Donté tried to summon up the energy to read, exercise, meditate, and write letters: “He would find the will to stop his slide into insanity” (134). But this brief period of activity did not last.

As his execution draws near, the 27-year-old Donté, now haggard and skinny, has lost hope. Flak arrives and the two talk through the phones in the visitors’ room. After the psychiatrist observes Donté, she agrees to sign off on Donté’s mental decline, certifying that “confinement had driven him insane” (137). The only time Donté shows any emotion is when he begs Flak not to let his mother witness the execution.

Leaving the prison, Flak gets a call from the private investigator. Joey Gamble wants to talk.

On Flak’s website, Schroeder reads an extensive account of the trial, which featured questionable testimony from a so-called jailhouse snitch who, in return for a sentence reduction, told the jury that Donté had bragged about the crime. Despite clear problems with this evidence, trial judge Vivian Grale refused Flak’s motion to have the snitch’s testimony and Donté’s coerced confession tossed.

Six years after the trial, Slone was rocked by the revelation that while the trial was going, prosecuting DA Paul Koffee and Judge Grale, both married with families, were having an affair. Although Grale resigned in disgrace, Koffee was reelected. Most shockingly, an appeal court found insufficient evidence that the affair had impacted the verdict.

That night Boyette calls Schroeder. He does not want “that boy” to die (146) and wants to visit “my little Nikki” one last time (145). Boyette agrees to make the taped confession but demands to be taken to Joplin to locate Nicole’s body: “I have to be there for that” (147). Schroeder is conflicted: He has no reason to believe Boyette is telling the truth and aiding a violent criminal on parole to leave the state would put Schroeder in legal jeopardy. But he still hopes to stop an innocent man from being killed.

On Wednesday morning, Flak files an appeal based on the psychiatrist’s findings. He doubts the appeal will work.

He then visits an old family friend, a retired judge who commiserates about the injustice of what happened to Donté. Without a body, witnesses, and evidence, Koffee simply strung together a convincing story that played on the all-white jury’s bigotry to secure the conviction. The judge, regretting not acting earlier, agrees to call the governor, but offers little hope for any delay.