Hardly any daylight comes
through the tiny barred window of my cell in the Sayonara Prison. But it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to see anyway, except another
ugly brick wall.
I’m serving a life sentence for a murder
which I did not commit, and so I have been locked up to rot in permanent
solitary confinement. My world is a ten-by-ten
cement box containing a bolted-down cot, table, and chair, and me. I do not have a TV, telephone, or radio. There is nothing to distract me from my
miserable existence except the little window and the brass key given to me by
the warden when I was placed in this cell.
I am fiddling with the key now. Sliding it back and forth on the table. This
key is the most important thing I’ve ever owned. I will use it to release
myself from this confinement, one way or another.
It seems as though I’ve been locked up forever. I’ve lost track of
time. I never know what day it is. Or what month. Or what year.
Maybe I’ve been in this cage for a year, or maybe five years. Or maybe it’s only been a month. But I can stand no more of existing in this
state of black futility.
So I’m going to accept The Justice Option.
The
Justice Option was conceived by a condemned killer who had been on death row for
more than twenty years. The Option was adopted by the Sayonara Council
after it had previously chaired several heated and unproductive debates on the
issue of capital punishment. During
those stalemated conferences, The Sanctity of Life Committee had repeatedly
threatened to kill the death-penalty advocates.
At the ballot box, the citizens of Sayonara produced no better
result. The pro or con votes were evenly
split.
It was the doomed prisoner’s strange
letter to the Council that finally resulted in a solution.
The letter outlined a method by which convicted
felons would determine whether their punishment was to be death or life in
prison.
The
bizarre proposal was presented for a vote to the Sayonara denizens, and it was
overwhelmingly approved. The public
was glad to be relieved of the guilty responsibility to agree to terminate
another person’s life, and most people did not want to ever know when a
selective termination occurred.
Initially, a defendant convicted of a capital offense was
sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole, while simultaneously
being granted the right to invoke The
Justice Option at any time. The incarceration
would be in permanent solitary confinement.
No visitors would ever be permitted, and there would be no TV, radio, or
telephone. The only interaction with other human beings
for the rest of the prisoner’s life would be with prison personnel.
Not much of a life is it?
It is a horrendous and unbearable life.
So I have accepted that there is no way
to end my suffering other than to invoke The
Justice Option.
I shout into the corridor for the guards
to come to me, and then I sit on my bunk and twist my key into an imaginary
lock as I wait for what may be my final connection with other human beings.
Soon, two brute-sized guards are standing
on the other side of my bars. One guard
carries a small black lockbox. The other
guard unlocks the cell gate with one hand, and keeps the other hand on the butt
of his holstered weapon.
The men step into the cell, and the
guard with the lockbox sets it on the table.
“Open
it,” the guard with the weapon commands nastily.
I stare at my key. The small brass piece
feels hot enough to burn through my hand.
I know that my fate is sealed, and everything will depend on what I
remove from the lockbox.
I turn the key and lift the lid.
In the box there are a dozen pills. Six of the pills are composed only of
granulated sugar. The other six pills each contain a lethal dose of
cyanide. The Justice Option is for me to choose one of the pills and to
swallow it. If I should renege on the option,
the guards will take the box away and leave me locked in my cell, and I will
never again be provided with food or water.
I will be required to die a slow, agonizing death of starvation or dehydration.
Of course, if I do elect to swallow a
pill, and it is laced with cyanide, I will die almost instantly. But if I am lucky enough to swallow a sugar
pill, I will immediately be released from prison and will be given a full
pardon.
Or so goes the promise.
It is a promise that must be taken on
faith. A prisoner in solitary
confinement can never know if others have gained freedom by ingesting a sugar
pill. Of course, it must also be taken on
faith that some of the pills contain only sugar.
But it doesn’t matter. I am resigned to whatever the outcome is. Death can be no worse than to spend the rest
of my life enduring an existence that has no time or space.
I swallow the pill.
“Okay, now listen
up, pal,” the lockbox guard says. “I
don’t know what pill you took, but if it was the cyanide, it’s going to act
pretty damned fast. So if you got any
last words, then you better spit them out.”
I shriek, “I just want to tell my wife and
kids that
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