If you were looking aside and mentally adding up the hours until the execution of a young killer, all that registered was something dark flashing by. But if you happened to be gazing directly at the window in question and you happened as well to be feeling unprecedentedly calm, four-tenths of a second was more than enough time to identify the falling object as your husband of forty-seven years. Jonathan Franzen
About This Quote

This passage is quoted in the movie The Green Mile. John Coffey, a large man who has been convicted of killing two women, is on death row (and about to be executed). He is put into an isolation cell. On the wall of his cell there is a window that overlooks the prison yard.

One day, he falls out of his bunk and hits his head on the floor. The guard, Paul Edgecomb, looks at him through the window. Coffey is unconscious, so Edgecomb can't tell if he's dead or alive.

He opens the cell door and says to Coffey, “You wanna get up?” Coffey doesn't respond. Edgecomb kicks him in the side until he does respond. Edgecomb then drags Coffey back to his bunk and goes back into his office to call 9-1-1.

When he comes out again, Coffey is standing up and walking toward the window where Edgecomb was standing. Coffey speaks for the first time since being knocked out: “That's my wife over there with those two women you're watching execute me." He looks at her as best as he can through the glass and says, "She's beautiful." As he leaves the cell, he walks right through a line of officers blocking his way to reach her side.

Source: The Corrections

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