The Chamber Page #3

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.

I'm thinking about how

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.

Three years at Michigan Law

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

the state admitted de facto

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?

We're having our Eddie talk,

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.

- You still think so?

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.

I'll expect your first draft

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

in the really nasty stuff.

- He didn't mean to kill.

- Of course he meant 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,

i.e. Fighting civil 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?

Like our FBI friend said,

they were poor, uneducated bigots

who couldn't find their butts with a map.

The Citizens' Councils used them

to do their dirty work.

- 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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