![]() "Oh, why not? Y'all 'fraid we gonna get our-self electrocuted?" a prisoner asks. Ya know we can't leave y'uns out here when it gits to thunderin' an' lightnin'." The guards adopt a cajoling, rather than threatening, attitude. "Yard in?! Shit, man, we just got out here!" "Yard in!" the white-shirt yells, sparking murmurs of resentment among the men. The rumbles grow louder as drops of rain sail earthward, splattering steel, brick, and human. ![]() A bespectacled white-shirt turns his pale face skyward, examining nature's quickening portent. Once the inmates are encaged, the midsummer sky rumbles, its dark clouds swell, pregnant with power and water. Each man is pat-searched by guards armed with batons and then scanned by a metal detector. One by one, cells are unlocked for the daily trek from cell to cage. "Capitals! Fourth, fifth, and sixth tier-YARD UP!" the corpulent correctional officer bellows, his rural accent alien to the urban ear. ![]() The last yard of the day is finally called. Such a monster is not encountered in private life. ![]() Teetering on the brink between life and deathįor there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. ![]()
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