Sheldon Perhacs Character Analysis

Hell, as far as the police and the prosecutor and the judge and even my own defense attorney were concerned, I was born guilty. Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of ten children—it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of twenty-nine without a noose around my neck. But justice is a funny thing, and in Alabama, justice isn’t blind. She knows the color of your skin, your education level, and how much money you have in the bank. I may not have had any money, but I had enough education to understand exactly how justice was working in this trial and exactly how it was going to turn out. The good old boys had traded in their white robes for black robes, but it was still a lynching.

“Would it make a difference if I told you I was innocent?”

“Listen, all y’all always doing something and saying you’re innocent.”

I dropped my hand. So that’s how it was going to be. I was pretty sure that when he said “all y’all,” he wasn’t talking about ex-cons or former coal miners or Geminis or even those accused of capital murder.

I needed him, so I had no choice but to let it slide. I had to believe that he believed me.

“I’ve been reading the papers. You see that there’s been other holdups? Other managers getting robbed at closing? I definitely can’t be doing that when I’m locked in here.”

“Yeah, I’ll look into it. They’re only paying me $1,000 for this, and hell, I eat $1,000 for breakfast.” He laughed, but it wasn’t funny.

I could do nothing but lay my head down in my arms and cry. I knew at that moment, I was going to be convicted of murder. I was innocent. And my one-eyed expert had just handed the prosecution a guilty verdict.

Nothing mattered anymore.

It took the jury two hours to find me guilty.

It took them forty-five minutes to determine my punishment.

Death.

In that moment, I felt my whole life shatter into a million jagged pieces around me. The world was fractured and broken, and everything good in me broke with it.

Some days, I could see he was tired, and I wondered about the wear on a person when so many lives depend on what you do each day. He carried a big burden, and it wasn’t just mine. He spoke of justice and of mercy and of a system that was so broken it locked up children and the mentally ill and the innocent. “No one is beyond redemption,” he would say. No one is undeserving of their own life or their own potential to change. He had such compassion for victims and for perpetrators, and an intolerance and even anger for those in power who abused that power.

Hell, as far as the police and the prosecutor and the judge and even my own defense attorney were concerned, I was born guilty. Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of ten children—it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of twenty-nine without a noose around my neck. But justice is a funny thing, and in Alabama, justice isn’t blind. She knows the color of your skin, your education level, and how much money you have in the bank. I may not have had any money, but I had enough education to understand exactly how justice was working in this trial and exactly how it was going to turn out. The good old boys had traded in their white robes for black robes, but it was still a lynching.

“Would it make a difference if I told you I was innocent?”

“Listen, all y’all always doing something and saying you’re innocent.”

I dropped my hand. So that’s how it was going to be. I was pretty sure that when he said “all y’all,” he wasn’t talking about ex-cons or former coal miners or Geminis or even those accused of capital murder.

I needed him, so I had no choice but to let it slide. I had to believe that he believed me.

“I’ve been reading the papers. You see that there’s been other holdups? Other managers getting robbed at closing? I definitely can’t be doing that when I’m locked in here.”

“Yeah, I’ll look into it. They’re only paying me $1,000 for this, and hell, I eat $1,000 for breakfast.” He laughed, but it wasn’t funny.

I could do nothing but lay my head down in my arms and cry. I knew at that moment, I was going to be convicted of murder. I was innocent. And my one-eyed expert had just handed the prosecution a guilty verdict.

Nothing mattered anymore.

It took the jury two hours to find me guilty.

It took them forty-five minutes to determine my punishment.

Death.

In that moment, I felt my whole life shatter into a million jagged pieces around me. The world was fractured and broken, and everything good in me broke with it.

Some days, I could see he was tired, and I wondered about the wear on a person when so many lives depend on what you do each day. He carried a big burden, and it wasn’t just mine. He spoke of justice and of mercy and of a system that was so broken it locked up children and the mentally ill and the innocent. “No one is beyond redemption,” he would say. No one is undeserving of their own life or their own potential to change. He had such compassion for victims and for perpetrators, and an intolerance and even anger for those in power who abused that power.