In the first part, the author introduces the scene of the action, a trial, and the main characters: Jimmy Floyd, who brutally killed a seven-year-old girl and is now accused of it, Clayton Rutherford, the judge of the trial, Sheldon Erdmann, the Public Defender and Joseph Allen Blanchard, the lead prosecutor. In this part the defence puts some witness forward, who as a supposedly practicing psychiatrist states that the accused has a cognitive disfunction and thus had no control of what he did. But because of the clever questions of the prosecution it becomes clear that probably this testamony was just bought.

The following second part first gives the reasoning of the defence, the arguments against capital punishment: The mental condition of the accused is mentioned, furthermore that executing prisoners does nothing to reduce the homocide rate. The defender also points out that death penalty brutalizes society and is a way back to barbarianism. Afterwards the arguments of the prosecutor are presented. He states the case as he sees it: That capital punishment is, after all, the best deterrent against murder. Besides he says that death penalty is so expensive because of the many detractors and the endless appeals (one argument of the defender is also that death penalty is so expensive). He then points out that other enlightened persons, for example Gerhard Johann von Scharnhorst, supported the capital punishment and that this person could hardly be seen as a barbarian. Concluding his statement he raises the question, what would happen if the murderer escaped again.

In the third part of the text the jury debates about the arguments given. They come to the conclusion that Jimmy Floyd should not be executed. And so it happens. After the trial has come to an end and the defender and the prosecutor discuss the case of Jimmy Floyd again. The story ends with the fact that the murderer has escaped from prison and has killed another girl. The author gives the ending a moral twist, because the girl being murdered at the end turns out to be the daughter of the woman, who was the main opponent of the execution in the jury.

I think there is no doubt about the fact that Al Jacobs is a strong defender of the death penalty. He constructs the whole story in a certain way in order to stimulate the emotions and thus to influence the attitude of the reader in favour of capital punishment. Above all the moral twist at the end produces a feeling of hate concerning the accused and maybe some kind of disappointment, too. The author also manages to evoke indignation by showing that the defence is just based on corruptible witnesses and paid statements. Maybe at the end the reader asks himself the question what sense it made for the community not to execute the accused. And maybe he comes to the conclusion that it was pointless to keep him alive and that by killing him this mindless destruction of another innocent life could have been spared.

I think this is what Al Jacobs wants the reader to feel. Even though the jury was convinced by the defence, the author arranges the plot for the reader that he can hardly be convinced. Al Jacobs underlines that also the defender himself is not very convinced of what he worked for. At the end it becomes clear, that for him it was not a matter of defending human frailty and human rights, but that he "simply represented the defendant". "It is my job", he says, " to present an accused in the most favorable light and to raise doubts and sympathy as best I can. That’s how the system operates."

This shows also Al Jacobs`s criticism towards the whole legal system. Clearly Al Jacobs wants a more radical system in which murderers are not given the chance to escape from the death penalty. (U.B., 12th year, March 2006)

Read the short story in full length here.