Challenge 836 Response

The Legend of Potter’s Field

with John Haymaker

“The Legend of Potter’s Field” begins in issue 835.

The prison is located in “upstate New York.” The guards carry Soviet-issue AK47 rifles. How would the guards normally be armed?
Oops. A Google check suggests prison guards would normally carry pistols within the cell blocks and shotguns when on patrol. The assault rifle could be either the M4 carbine or Ruger Mini-14, both of which Wikipedia notes were used by NYPD. “Shotgun” would also be reasonable but would entail too many updates. Let’s simply use the word “rifle” at this point.
The prison has multiple-occupancy cells. Is the arrangement normal?
Yes, multiple-occupancy cells are normal, to alleviate overcrowding, though not on death row.
Would maximum-security prisoners ever be sent into a public space on a work detail?
I was thinking of the work party in Truman Capote’s Diamond Guitar. Inmates work outside the prison in forested public lands stretching twenty miles to the nearest city. That forest is not public, of course. But the question remains whether that backwoods situation would apply to a facility in upstate New York. Probably not, but given the dire conditions at a remote elevation, the warden in this story allows it.
What does Marty do — in addition to committing murder — to indicate he is a sociopath? Would a sociopath even think of his own death, let alone be fixated upon it?
Marty gives his loving Auntie and Cuz a phony will to serve his selfish ends. Marty’s fixation on his own suffering and even how people might perceive him after death is right in line with a sociopath’s mind-set: desiring — even demanding — pity above all else; see Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door, 2006.