The Chamber Page #3
- R
- Year:
- 1996
- 113 min
- 543 Views
you're being given the opportunity
to provide the governor with cover.
- I love politics.
- If he stays the execution for no reason,
to the left he's a friend of the old guard,
and to the right he's soft on crime.
And as it was he who won the conviction,
he looks to the world like a flip-flop.
But if I come up with something,
he can follow his conscience.
Let's just say it expands his options.
So you've been assigned
my new best friend.
Something like that.
- I'll win this in the courts.
- Even better.
- It's not getting to the governor.
- Now you're talking.
If you need any help,
that's home, that's office.
Call me.
I found this in my motel room last night.
"Welcome to Dixie. Please try
and leave everything as you found it."
- Sounds like good manners to me.
- It was attached to a fake bomb.
What?
- What do you think I should do about it?
- I don't give a damn.
that gas I'll be forced to sniff
makes your lungs explode
and come flying out your mouth.
What motions are you planning to file?
We're going to pursue cruel and unusual.
and that's the best you got?
In 1984, Mississippi passed a law
changing executions
from gas chamber to lethal injection.
That law applies to folks sentenced
after nineteen hundred and eighty-four.
I was sent up here
in nineteen hundred and eighty.
- Now, what's your point?
- You're up on the law, aren't you?
I read all the decisions
of all the dead judges. Same as you.
I write some writs for guys on the row.
You got any stays yet?
Then keep your matchbook
law school advice to yourself.
By changing to lethal injection
that the gas chamber is a cruel execution.
May I remind Counsel,
speaking as the gasee,
I'll be just as dead one way as the other.
Sooner or later, yeah,
but I'll take later as a win.
Well, I've been losing
better appeals than this for 16 years.
I feel like those white guys that always lose
to the n*gger Globetrotters.
Why didn't my dad
get infected with this crap?
is that it? Be careful.
You destroyed him, you must like that.
I destroyed nothing.
He never tried to understand the Klan.
- We were right.
Look what you got now -
AIDS, drugs, bastard children.
- Killer bees.
- Well, they come from Africa!
- South America. Close enough?
- Why are you doing this?
Cos my life would be a lot easier
if I could just hate you.
But you can't, can you? I'm just too lovable.
Well, I'm working on it. Your father kills
himself in front of you when you're ten,
then at the funeral you find out
Grandpa's still alive - great!
Except he's a racist scumbag baby-killer.
Why is that not comforting?
Oh, stop, you're breaking my heart.
It was your hate
that drove him away, wasn't it?
Eddie was weak.
I never laid a hand on him.
Never got after him.
Never cared who his friends were.
Not even Quince.
Who?
Quince Lincoln,
a n*gger kid Eddie used to play with.
- I've heard that name before.
- It's nothing.
No, he used to mention that name,
he'd have these spells...
- Sergeant Packer!
- ...he'd mumble some story...
It don't mean nothing. Shut up about it.
- Who's Quince?
- It don't mean nothing! Shut up about it!
Let's go, Sam.
Come on.
- Yep?
- Were you asleep?
No, I'm up.
The court's going to reject
ineffective counsel.
Yeah, I expected that.
I'll be ready to file the appeal in
New Orleans when the court here rules.
in the morning. Good night.
- Hello?
- Nora?
Hi.
Does the offer to help still stand?
Sure.
I need to track down the FBI agent
who was in charge of Sam's case.
Sam was of no concern to us,
you understand?
He wasn't active in the really nasty stuff
so we didn't track him.
When did that change?
When the civil rights workers disappeared,
Hoover sent us in.
We spread money all over the place.
Those people were basically
ignorant rednecks, you know?
Didn't have a dime, so we preyed on
their craving for money.
Go on.
There's things I can talk about
and things I can't talk about.
And some things I won't talk about
cos I don't like you lawyers twisting the truth,
getting killers off
on some legal technicality.
That's bullshit.
Besides, it's too late
for new information, kid.
Courts won't hear it, you know that.
Courts don't have
the final say in this case.
You said he wasn't involved
- He didn't mean to kill.
Marvin Kramer was a creature of habit.
He was in that office every morning
before eight o'clock.
The bomb went off straight up at eight.
The timer was set for eight.
- That was never introduced to trial.
- I can't help that, it was in our report.
- I'd like to see that report.
- I can't help you, pal.
I'm just a fisherman now...
who'd just as soon see him gassed.
I've been around those violent a**holes
all my life.
Let them taste the other end of violence.
See how brave they are without their hoods.
You know what I'm talking about.
Why would our FBI friend not wanna
tell us about a 30-year-old case?
Cos you're in Mississippi now,
land of secrets.
There are bodies buried everywhere.
But no one's hiding anything -
they don't have to, Sam did it.
They just don't want you looking because
they're not sure what might turn up.
- Who is "they"?
- Everyone.
- No one. What's the difference?
- Well, maybe a lot.
Take you, for instance,
are you really here to help me?
Or did they assign you to spy on me?
You ever heard of
the Sovereignty Commission?
- Vaguely.
- It doesn't exist any more.
It started in the '50s.
It was an official state agency
dedicated to states' rights,
Some people think it coordinated
the White Citizens' Councils.
- What were those?
- Every town had one.
A local group of respectable white people.
Professional types.
Pillars of their community...
who told the Klan what to do.
So somebody like Sam
wasn't making decisions?
they were poor, uneducated bigots
who couldn't find their butts with a map.
The Citizens' Councils used them
- And the Sovereignty Commission?
- Kept the records.
- Please sign this.
- I ain't signing nothing.
The files are sealed by the state legislature.
As a defendant, only you can apply
to have your files opened.
You're set to die in 20 days,
this might help.
- Help him maybe, not me.
- Help who?
The governor, you dumbass.
Can't you see it?
He can't open the files so he gets you
to do it for him. To help me?
No, he put me here.
No, he's just fishing
for political dirt on his enemies.
What's in those files, Sam?
Nothing for you. Stuff they'd twist around
and use to hurt my people.
I'm your people. Don't you get it? I am.
You ain't my real people,
you ain't never met my real people.
I don't know how they got the story.
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"The Chamber" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 Nov. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/the_chamber_19907>.
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