Herbert Richardson's electrocution was the culmination of a capital case built on a fatal explosion, an exceptionally brief trial, and appeals that did not secure meaningful review of his background or the question of intent. After eleven years on death row, Richardson was executed despite a last effort to obtain a stay. The final hours bring the case's abstractions—legal rules, state authority, and punishment—into the room with a newly married couple, a grieving family, and a condemned man who had asked for a hymn to accompany his walk to the electric chair.

The Crime and the Capital Case

Richardson had become convinced that his former girlfriend, who had moved away from him and refused contact, would return if he could make her feel threatened and then rescue her. He built a small bomb and placed it on her porch in Dothan, Alabama. The plan was meant to frighten her, not to kill anyone. When the girlfriend's ten-year-old niece picked up the package, shaking its clock to see whether it ticked, the bomb exploded and killed her instantly. Her twelve-year-old friend, standing beside her, was traumatized. Richardson knew both children; they had come to his house for breakfast, and he had often welcomed neighborhood children, cooked for them, and paid them to run errands. Watching across the street, he ran to the house after the explosion and found grieving neighbors.

Police found pipes and other bomb-making materials in Richardson's car and yard. Although the victims were Black and poor, the prosecution sought the death penalty, and the book connects the case's treatment to Richardson's status as a Northerner and an outsider. In a county that was 28 percent Black, the prosecutor struck every Black prospective juror. Addressing the all-white jury, he invoked Richardson's association with Black Muslims from New York City and argued that he deserved no mercy. The prosecution also advanced an unprecedented transferred-intent theory to make the killing death-eligible, although Richardson had not intended to kill the child or anyone else. His position was that the act amounted to reckless murder, punishable by life imprisonment rather than death.

The defense did not present evidence about Richardson's childhood, military service, war trauma, relationship with the victim, or fixation on his former girlfriend. His appointed lawyer spent almost no time preparing: Alabama law capped appointed counsel's compensation for out-of-court preparation at $1,000. The trial lasted just over a day, and the judge sentenced Richardson to death. The lawyer later told Richardson he saw no reason to appeal because the trial had been as fair as he could expect. Richardson insisted on appealing, but the lawyer filed no brief. A volunteer lawyer later challenged the intent questions, without success. Richardson remained on death row for eleven years.

The Last Appeal

With the execution set for August 18, Bryan Stevenson pursued emergency relief. A trial judge denied a request for a stay, ruling the evidence untimely and therefore not something he could consider. The remaining days brought repeated filings. On the day before the execution, Stevenson petitioned the United States Supreme Court for review and asked it to stay the execution, knowing that the Court granted review in only a small fraction of cases and that it would likely make the final decision on whether the execution could proceed.

The execution was scheduled for 12:01 a.m. on August 18. Stevenson had faxed the petition late on August 16 and spent the following morning in his Montgomery office watching the telephone. A clemency petition sent to the governor included family affidavits and color photographs and described Richardson's military service and post-traumatic stress disorder. The case for mercy also rested on facts the trial had left out: Richardson's mother died when he was three; he had experienced physical abuse and struggled with drugs and alcohol as a young teenager; and he returned from Vietnam traumatized and disabled. Those circumstances had not been put before the jury that sentenced him.

Richardson had corresponded over the years with a woman from Mobile, and they decided to marry a week before the execution. As a military veteran, he was entitled to have an American flag presented to his survivors. He designated his new wife to receive it and repeatedly asked Stevenson to confirm how the flag would be delivered, even requesting written assurance. The concrete concern over that flag persisted as the execution drew near: Richardson had little to leave his wife, but he wanted the recognition earned through his service to reach her.

The Denial and the Farewell

At a little before seven on the evening before the execution, the Court's clerk called to report that the stay motion and petition for review had been denied. The call ended with notice that copies of the order would be faxed. Stevenson was struck by the procedural detail: within hours Richardson would be dead, and there would be no further appeals or records to keep. He had promised to be with Richardson and drove to the prison in Atmore, roughly two hours away.

The prison allowed Richardson's family to visit until about 10 p.m., when guards would begin preparing him for execution. Stevenson met Richardson's bride and her family and spent the visit watching the clock. Richardson tried to keep the gathering light, telling the family how he had persuaded Stevenson to take his case and joking that Stevenson represented only people who were smart and charming. He also said, “He’s too young to have represented me at trial, but if he had been there I wouldn’t be on death row now.” The joke held together a painful judgment about the defense he had received and an effort to comfort those around him. Stevenson observed that Richardson seemed unusually energetic and gracious, even as his wife grew more tearful.

As the appointed hour approached, officials gestured for the visitation officer to end the meeting. Richardson's wife wrapped her arms around him and refused to let go; her sobbing deepened as her sister and other relatives began to cry. The officer returned and said it was time to leave. Richardson had asked that a recording of “The Old Rugged Cross” be played as he walked to the electric chair, and the prison had agreed. Stevenson began humming the hymn as officers gathered outside the room. He then quietly told Richardson's wife that they had to let him go. Richardson saw the officers and slowly pulled away from her, asking Stevenson to take her out of the room.

The Execution and Its Meaning

Less than thirty minutes before the execution, Stevenson was taken to the cell next to the execution chamber. Richardson had been shaved in preparation for the electric chair. The chair had not been modified after the disastrous execution of John Evans, and Stevenson was also thinking about the botched execution of Horace Dunkins a month earlier. Richardson appeared shaken. He took Stevenson's hands and asked to pray. Afterward, he thanked Stevenson for standing with him, acknowledging that the moment was difficult for his lawyer too.

Richardson reflected that more people had asked what they could do to help him in the last fourteen hours of his life than had asked during the years when he was growing up. The remark turned the approaching execution toward the long period when help had been absent: his mother's death, abuse, early struggles with drugs and alcohol, and the trauma he brought home from Vietnam. As officers took him away, a tape recorder in the hallway played “The Old Rugged Cross.” The hymn Richardson had requested accompanied his removal from the room, not a reprieve from the sentence.

Stevenson describes the execution as surrounded by regret and shame. Even officials who had prepared themselves to carry it out appeared uncomfortable. His account contrasts their visible unease with the public abstractions used to defend capital punishment: the systematic killing of a person who posed no immediate threat looked different when its physical details could not be kept at a distance. On the journey home, Stevenson thought about Richardson, the families on both sides of the crime, and the people who had shaved and restrained him so that the state could kill him. The next day's press coverage included officials expressing happiness that an execution had taken place, but Stevenson contrasted such statements with the discomfort of those who had confronted the act itself. Richardson's electrocution thus closes not with a legal vindication or a family reunion, but with the hymn, the denied appeal, and the unresolved moral weight of a killing carried out in the name of justice.