But he had done it, and he had done it with confidence and public zeal, and he had called her a monster on television, and the fact that he had been deceived did not give him back those five years of Elena’s life or undo the near-execution of a mother in front of her child.

He would carry it, not because the law required him to, but because a person with a conscience, confronted with the harm they have done even in good faith, does not get to simply set it down.

Chapter 22 — The Stay

At a quarter to ten that night, with barely more than an hour left on the clock, the Presiding Judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals issued a mandatory, immediate administrative stay of execution.

The news moved through the Huntsville Unit like a shockwave.