The Hanging Judge, a Novel.

• Author: Weiner, Rory B.

The Hanging Judge, a Novel

By Michael A. Ponsor

Anyone who ponders the ethics of the death penalty must confront two irreconcilable, self-evident truths: The government is never permitted to execute an innocent person, and its justice system is administered by humans who make mistakes. This is the tension that runs through The Hanging Judge, a fast paced, entertaining, yet serious, novel by Judge Michael A. Ponsor, senior U.S. district judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Judge Ponsor personally experienced this tension when he presided over the 2000-2001 death penalty case of Kristen Gilbert, the nurse found guilty of first-degree murder for killing patients at the Northampton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds, Massachusetts. (Full disclosure: I was one of Judge Ponsor's law clerks during the Gilbert trial.) Although Massachusetts had abolished the death penalty in 1984, and had not conducted a death penalty case in almost 50 years, the federal government took jurisdiction of the case by indicting Gilbert under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, which allows the federal government to seek the death penalty for murder in a federal facility. The jury spared Gilbert the death sentence; she received life without parole. After the case, Judge Ponsor described his experience as "the most complicated and stressful thing I've ever done." "Mistakes will be made," he reflected, "because it is simply not possible to do something this difficult perfectly, all the time."

The Hanging Judge is Ponsor's fictionalized account of this experience. In the book, the recently appointed Judge David S. Norcross for the District of Massachusetts in Springfield presides over the death penalty case of Clarence "Moon" Hudson, a self-proclaimed reformed gang member, drug dealer, and murderer, who has settled down with an upper-middleclass wife and a new baby. He is accused of a drive-by shooting of a rival gang member. The politically motivated U.S. attorney directs the case be moved from state court to federal court by indicting Hudson under the RICO statute to seek the death penalty. His motivation is driven, in part, because the drive-by shooting also took the life of an innocent...