Change of Heart Read Free

will never learn how to do long division, or how to ride a horse, or do a back handspring. She’ll never go to sleep-away camp or her junior prom or high school graduation. She’ll never try on her first pair of high heels or experience her first kiss. She’ll never bring a boy home to meet her mother; she’ll never be walked down a wedding aisle by her stepfather; she’ll never get to know her sister, Claire. She will miss all ofthese moments, and a thousand more—not because of a tragedy like a car accident or childhood leukemia—but because Shay Bourne made the decision that she didn’t deserve any of these things.”
    He then took another photo out from behind Elizabeth’s and held it up. Kurt Nealon had been shot in the stomach. His blue uniform shirt was purpled with his blood, and Elizabeth’s. During the trial we’d heard that when the paramedics reached him, he wouldn’t let go of Elizabeth, even as he was bleeding out. “Shay Bourne didn’t stop at ending Elizabeth’s life. He took Kurt Nealon’s life, as well. And he didn’t just take away Claire’s father and June’s husband—he took away Officer Kurt Nealon of the Lynley Police. He took away the coach of the Grafton County championship Little League team. He took away the founder of Bike Safety Day at Lynley Elementary School. Shay Bourne took away a public servant who, at the time of his death, was not just protecting his daughter … but protecting a citizen, and a community. A community that includes each and every one of you.”
    The prosecutor placed the photos facedown on the table. “There’s a reason that New Hampshire hasn’t used the death penalty for fifty-eight years, ladies and gentlemen. That’s because, in spite of the many cases that come through our doors, we hadn’t seen one that merited that sentence. However, by the same token, there’s a reason why the good people of this state have reserved the option to use the death penalty … instead of overturning the capital punishment statute, as so many other states have done. And that reason is sitting in this courtroom today.”
    My gaze followed the prosecutor’s, coming to rest on Shay Bourne. “If any case in the past fifty-eight years has ever criedout for the ultimate punishment to be imposed,” the attorney said, “this is it.”
     
    College is a bubble. You enter it for four years and forget there is a real world outside of your paper deadlines and midterm exams and beer-pong championships. You don’t read the newspaper—you read textbooks. You don’t watch the news—you watch Letterman. But even so, bits and snatches of the universe manage to leak in: a mother who locked her children in a car and let it roll into a lake to drown them; an estranged husband who shot his wife in front of their kids; a serial rapist who kept a teenager tied up in a basement for a month before he slit her throat. The murders of Kurt and Elizabeth Nealon were horrible, sure—but were the others any
less
horrible?
    Shay Bourne’s attorney stood up. “You’ve found my client guilty of two counts of capital murder, and he’s not contesting that. We accept your verdict; we respect your verdict. At this point in time, however, the state is asking you to wrap up this case—one that involves the death of two people—by taking the life of a third person.”
    I felt a bead of sweat run down the valley between my shoulder blades.
    “You’re not going to make anyone safer by killing Shay Bourne. Even if you decide not to execute him, he’s not going anywhere. He’ll be serving two life sentences without parole.” He put his hand on Bourne’s shoulder. “You’ve heard about Shay Bourne’s childhood. Where was he supposed to learn what all the rest of you had a chance to learn from your families? Where was he supposed to learn right from wrong, good from bad? For that matter, where was he even supposed tolearn his colors and his numbers? Who was supposed to read him bedtime