Excerpt from Signs of Life: Book 1

The trial, if you can call it that, was a joke. Paul may only be half black, but to the Caucasian courtroom, that’s enough. The cashier was white, and that is pretty much all anybody needed to hear. An all-white jury, white judge, white bailiff, white lawyers, and even a white stenographer all seemed to be sneering at Paul during the abbreviated event. When Paul took the stand and tried to answer the questions, everything he said came out all wrong. When he tried to open his mouth, he began stuttering and stammering, unable to put together any kind of defense. Every time he tried to explain what actually happened, he was cut off by a slick-talking lawyer. The fact that he was covered in blood and running from the store didn’t help his case, but nobody even seemed to care that the weapon was never found. To them, it was a cut and dry case. This is insane, Paul thought to himself. How can I be here, facing this, when all I tried to do was stop Tico from beating that man. If it had been only five years earlier, Paul would have gone to jail, but because of the newer, stiffer penalties, the writing was on the wall. “Paul Robert Gold, you have been found guilty of first degree murder,” droned the fifty-five-year-old judge with dull, brown hair as she peeked down from her perch and announced: “In accordance with the state of New York’s Zero Tolerance Policy, you are to be executed by lethal injection.” Normally, one would expect to hear a gasp or a moan from the courtroom, but instead, an eerie silence existed as the world has become callous after frequent executions. “Do you have anything you’d like to say?” she hissed. Paul tried to open his mouth, tried to speak, to shout that he had been trying to help the man. But he couldn’t catch his breath; the words wouldn’t come out. “Then, may God have mercy on your soul,” she shouted as she bashed her gavel.