Okay, Santa, you want a more detailed hypothetical case? Here's one.
*******
Louse cracked one eyelid as he lay on his cot when he heard the footsteps echoing ever louder in the metal hallways outside his cell. The sinister grin that began to play about the corners of his mouth was made into an even more hideous rictus by the uneven, globby scars on his cheeks which made his smile look positively skeletal. “This should be fun,” he thought.
Three keys turned simultaneously and the outer door to the cell opened to reveal the warden, flanked by two enormous and heavily armed guards standing on the other side of the six-inch thick reinforced plexiglass that formed the second cell wall. Almost invisible behind the hulking guards was a small man with a balding head and neatly trimmed goatee. He wore a tastefully understated tie.
“Let me guess,” sneered Louse, “You’ve come here to rehabilitate me some more, right?”
“I am in fact here to help you,” said the small man with a faint tremor in his voice.
“On your feet, scum,” barked the warden, as the guards brought their weapons into a more ready position.
“What if I don’t wanna be rehabilitated any more”, said Louse, faking a yawn.
“Then we’ll make you,” said the warden grimly, knowing that he would do no such thing. There was no way he was letting any of his guards get in the cell with Louse. He wasn’t going to another funeral.
“Whatever you say, Warden,” Louse replied with a contemptuous drawl. Louse stood up. He wasn’t very impressive to look at, but the warden knew that contained in that stringy, pale body was the mind and nerve of a heartless, homicidal madman. No. Not a madman. Louse wasn’t mad. He was just mean as hell. “What you got to say to me today, Shrunk?” which was what Louse liked to call the diminutive psychiatrist.
“We’re going to try some regression again, Louse”, said Shrunk, “This time we’re going to go back to the first time you killed someone. Can you remember what you were thinking?”
“Yeah, I remember,” mused Louse. “I was thinking, ‘That’ll be the last time you beat me at Monopoly’, and you know? It was!”
“How do you think that made his family feel?” continued Shrunk, trying to pierce Louse’s armor of nonchalance.
“Wouldn’t know,” Louse shrugged. “They all died in the fire. I spent two years at reform school for that one, till I busted out. That’s the longest anybody’s ever held me. The psychiatrist shuddered involuntarily. Louse wasn’t exaggerating. The man was a regular Houdini. “After that, the Principle turned up with his throat slit. Go figure.”
“If we ever get the evidence to nail you on that one…” the warden began.
“You’ll do what?” Louse interrupted with a jeer. “I’m already serving three life sentences. You can’t execute me. You can’t torture me. What are you gonna do? Rehabilitate me some more? Evidence? Pah!” he spat.
The warden just fixed Louse with a menacing stare. Louse was right. There wasn’t a thing he could do. It was against the law to force prisoners to do hard labor, or even make license plates. They could simply sit down and refuse to work. With Louse, you didn’t want to even try, since he was so devilishly clever at turning things to his own advantage, like the time he had broken out of Daratsville, killing three inmates a guard and a weimaraner with a sharpened license plate.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Louse whispered with an evil wink. “That warden turned up dead too. So did the prison psychiatrist,” he said, fixing his stare on Shrunk. The tiny psychiatrist backed off a step and looked even smaller. “Ain’t it funny how these things keep happening to all the people I meet?”
“Louse, won’t you let us try to help you,” ventured Shrunk, gathering up his courage, “Surely you don’t want this for the rest of your life?” he said gesturing at the barren surroundings.
“You don’t know what I want,” Louse said quietly, “But I do, and I’m gonna get it too. And you ain’t gonna like it much. The Warden hated when Louse spoke in this quiet voice. It was so cold and calculating, almost as if he had his next escape already planned. The lack of threats was more frightening than the false bravado that so many of the other lifers used, especially since Louse had a way of making the things he wanted come true.
“Okay Louse,” said the Warden tersely, “We’ll be back next week. Maybe you’ll want to talk then.”
“You do that, Warden,” Louse taunted in a singsong schoolboy voice, “And when you come bring some more of that wonderful evidence with you. I sure do love looking at scrapbooks.”
The four men backed off and shut the outer door. The three keys turned in the locks again. Louse listend to them go with a serene smile still on his face. When the echoes of the footsteps died, he lay back down on his cot and started thinking about his plans again while repeating a little toneless mantra. “Evidenssssssssce”, he hummed.
