In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

105 Chapter 10 The Turmoil . . . in real life, the distinction between good and evil is never as clear cut as the “good guys” and the “bad guys” or the characters in Star Wars. —The Reverend William J. Carl III, inaugural sermon, January 21, 1979 Hardin returned to his desk on the east end of the eighth floor of the Kefauver Federal Building and sat down for a long moment. He then took a step that in the short space of a dozen hours would change the trajectories of a dozen careers, including his own. In this momentary pause, he made a few notes and looked out the window facing the old Customs House. This time, the hands on the clock of the high tower across the street seemed to be racing forward to bad events. In his solitude, Hardin considered his options—which were now extremely limited. The US attorney has enormous power in the federal system. The Justice Department includes ninety-four US attorneys scattered throughout the nation and its possessions, and they are the government’s chief law enforcement authorities with respect to federal laws. They are appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and report to the attorney general in Washington. Each US attorney, among other duties, represents the various federal agencies and in that capacity works closely with the field agents of the FBI to coordinate investigations and prosecutions of federal cases. All search warrants , arrest warrants, and grand jury subpoenas must have his approval and are then valid and enforceable on US citizens throughout the world. State governments meanwhile are sovereign with respect to state constitutions and statutes, however, and officers of the state and federal governments are sensitive to this “delicate balance,” as courts have described it, with each 106 COUP obliged to respect the authority and prerogatives of their counterparts in the “other” government. Both the formal requirements and the informal traditions of this complex federal system were among many issues on Hardin’s mind this morning . But so were the gathering evidence from the field, the rising public and private furor over the release of prisoners, and the implications of that ticking clock across the street. He had served earlier in his career as a state prosecutor in Tennessee’s trial courts, had subsequently been associated as a practicing attorney with two of the preeminent icons of the state bar—Jack Norman Sr. and John Jay Hooker Sr.—and he had been a state court judge as well. And, yet, now Hardin was the nation’s chief law enforcement officer for the Middle District of Tennessee, and he was certain something drastic had to be done. He was worried that the state officials whom he believed had the direct power to act were not acting or, at a minimum, were moving much too slowly. In contrast, Hardin believed Blanton was making the most of his own shrinking time frame—acting swiftly, starting on Monday evening, to release a large number of prisoners before his absolute power to do so as governor expired, on Saturday. What would Blanton now do with this new list, Hardin wondered, and how quickly might he do it? Fifty-two signed on Monday, a new roster now in preparation for tonight or tomorrow? How many more names—how many more lists—might surface before Saturday morning? By this time, a new and more disturbing name had been mentioned: James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was the most notorious prisoner in any of Tennessee’s penitentiaries. He was kept in maximum security at Brushy Mountain State Prison, in the remote mountains north of Knoxville. Under a broken, corrupt system of clemency for cash, if cash payments were all that stood between Ray and freedom, might he be next? In a 2011 interview, US district judge Tom Wiseman mentioned Ray as one whom authorities feared might be released in January 1979. Wiseman was a new federal judge in January 1979—his appointment by President Carter had been confirmed only five months before. I wanted to speak with him chiefly for his recollections of McWherter’s rise to power. But early in our conversation, he asked me to help jog his memory by reviewing the chronology of the Humphreys case. When I finished the story and said the investigators were subsequently worried that other, more hardened criminals might be paroled by Blanton, the judge interrupted and finished the sentence for...

Share