THE JUSTICE OPTION

 THE JUSTICE OPTION

          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