Trial and sentencing of Charlie Decker

The trial and sentencing of Charles Everett Decker on August 27, 1976, was the legal terminus of the morning-long hostage crisis at Placerville High School. Convicted in Superior Court of the willful murders of Jean Alice Underwood and John Downes Vance, Decker was simultaneously declared not legally accountable for his actions by reason of insanity. The court's judgment, signed by Judge Samuel K. N. Deleavney, remanded him to the Augusta State Hospital for treatment until such time as he could be certified responsible to answer for his acts—a condition Decker himself dismissed as equivalent to waiting for "shit sticks on the moon, baby." The verdict thus transformed a convicted killer into a patient, substituting indefinite psychiatric confinement for a fixed criminal sentence and leaving the legal system's final word on his actions suspended between punishment and therapy.

The Verdict and Its Legal Framework

The formal writ of the court, dated August 27, 1976, stated that Charles Everett Decker had been convicted of the willful murder of Jean Alice Underwood and the willful murder of John Downes Vance, both human beings. However, the judgment immediately qualified this conviction by noting that five state psychiatrists had determined that Decker could not at that time be held accountable for his actions, by reason of insanity. The court therefore ordered that he be remanded to the Augusta State Hospital, where he would be held in treatment until such time as he could be certified responsible to answer for his acts. This bifurcated ruling—conviction coupled with a finding of incompetence—meant that Decker was neither fully exonerated nor fully punished; he was placed in a legal limbo where his release depended on a psychiatric certification that might never come. Decker's own caustic gloss on the condition—"until shit sticks on the moon, baby"—captured his perception that the judgment was a life sentence disguised as a therapeutic measure.

The Aftermath: Institutionalization and Correspondence

By December 5, 1976, Decker was receiving mail at the Augusta State Hospital. A letter from his friend Joe McKennedy, postmarked Boston, reported that Decker's mother had said he was "just about all healed up" and that the last of the drains had been removed three weeks earlier. The same letter noted that Decker was not talking much, a silence that Joe found uncharacteristic and troubling. Joe also mentioned that the hospital censored portions of his letter deemed "possibly upsetting to patient," indicating that Decker's institutional life was subject to external control over what information reached him. The letter conveyed news of former classmates—Sandra Cross had decided not to attend college, Carol Granger's valedictory speech had been reprinted by Seventeen magazine, Irma Bates was dating a "hippie" from Lewiston, and Grace Stanner was getting married—but the censored passages suggest that some developments, possibly involving Pig Pen and Dick Keene, were considered too disturbing for Decker to read.

Decker's Final Reflections

In the book's closing chapter, Decker reports that he has not had any bad dreams for almost two weeks. He does jigsaw puzzles, eats custard he hates without complaint, and takes a small, private satisfaction in the fact that the staff thinks he likes it. "So I have a secret again," he writes. "Finally I have a secret again." His mother has sent him the Placerville High School yearbook, but he has not yet unwrapped it. He thinks he might be able to look at the senior pictures without trembling, but only once he can fully convince himself that there will be no black streaks of ink on their hands. "That their hands will be clean. With no ink," he repeats. "Maybe next week I'll be completely sure of that." The custard secret, trivial as it is, makes him feel "like a human being again." The narrative ends with Decker turning off the light and saying good night, leaving him in a state of fragile, provisional calm within the walls of the hospital.