God'll Cut You Down : The Tangled Tale of a White Supremacist, a Black Hustler, Amurder, and How I Lost a Year in Mississippi (9780698170537)

by Safran, John

  It’s District Attorney Michael Guest returning my call. I wanted an update on his preparations. Lucky I phoned. Michael says there may be no trial in two and a half weeks. There may be no trial at all.

  Michael says tomorrow morning Vincent will be unlocked from his cell. He’ll be led across the walkway that connects Rankin County Jail to the courthouse. He will stand before the judge. And if Vincent follows through on what he has said he’ll do, he’ll be pleading guilty to killing Richard Barrett.

  I’m thrown. On the one hand, it looks like finally I’ll see Vincent McGee in the flesh. Maybe I can pass him a note or something? That’s good. That’s terrific. On the other hand, if he pleads guilty, there’s no trial. Don’t I need one of those? Lawyers treading back and forth in front of the witness box, asking sharp questions? Emotional men and women, blurting the secrets of Vincent McGee and Richard Barrett?

  The Plea

  The ceiling lights bounce off the bald patches in a courtroom filled with male-pattern baldness. The security guard has no hair at all, his shiny globe poking in and out of a side door, waiting for things to start.

  We’re finally in court. Soon, Vincent will be here.

  The two white Mikes—DA Michael Guest and Vincent’s lawyer, Mike Scott—laugh with each other near the side door, too. Is that from where Vincent will appear?

  I crane my neck and scan the pews. Vincent will not be the only person pulled before the judge today, so it’s impossible to tell who, if anyone, is here for him. His mother, sister, and brother are not. Nor his stepfather, nor Vallena Greer from the Vincent McGee Defense Fund.

  Is anyone here for Richard? There’s a shorn-headed man in an army uniform that’s not one from the actual Army. Is he? Is Richard’s sister here?

  A dozen lawyers buzz like atoms in front of the judge’s bench (presently judge-less). I pass time deciding who has a crush on whom.

  I’m squeezed between Tim Hall, from the Rankin County News, and Jerry Mitchell, from the Clarion-Ledger. I guess Jerry Mitchell’s here for Richard, in a way, for one last article.

  Tim points his old finger at one of the buzzing atoms.

  “That’s the son of Ross Barnett,” Tim says, “the old governor. You know James Meredith?”

  James Meredith was the first black person to register for the University of Mississippi, and Governor Ross Barnett drafted legislation specifically to keep him out. President John F. Kennedy, fed up with Mississippi, ordered troops to accompany James to his first day of class, to ensure he got a seat without being lynched.

  That buzzing atom isn’t the great-grandson of Governor Ross Barnett, or his grandson. He is his son. In Mississippi, the incomprehensible past feels just one remove away.

  There’s a side door on either side of the judge’s bench, and Mike Scott ducks in and out of them like a Marx brother, until the bailiff comes out of the stage-right side door and says, “All rise! The Circuit Court of Rankin County is now in session. The honorable William E. Chapman III is presiding.”

  Judge Chapman whooshes in from the same stage-right door, wrapped in his black robe. His feet cannot be seen, so he appears to float across the floor. As he sits, air puffs up his black robe.

  “Thank you,” Judge Chapman says. “Whoever’s cell phone it is, get it off!”

  Judge Chapman reads though a roll call of lawyers like it’s school. One lawyer is absent, and Judge Chapman grouses.

  “Her grandma died,” explains a lawyer.

  “All right,” says Judge Chapman. “We’re on 22157—State v. Vincent V. McGee.”

  Chains chink from the darkness behind the side door stage left.

  The shackled feet of Vincent McGee wiggle themselves into the courtroom.

  Vincent’s suave face pulls into the light. His eyelids hang heavily. Satan’s beard pokes from his chin. A thin, wiry mustache frizzes out. On his cheekbone drips a tattoo of a teardrop. The teardrop heads toward what first looks like a blemish, but is a blotch of a butterfly tattoo. Beneath it all he still projects something urbane, like he could hang in the Rat Pack with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.

  Vincent chink-chink-chinks across the courtroom carpet to the lectern facing Judge Chapman. A security guard adjusts the microphone for Vincent’s plump lips. His hands aren’t cuffed together; they’re cuffed separately to a chain wrapped around his waist. This chain pulls in a baggy yellow jumpsuit, revealing a slender young man.

  “If you’ll raise your right hand, please, sir,” Judge Chapman says. (So that’s why Vincent’s hands aren’t cuffed together.) “Do you solemnly swear and affirm that the testimony you will give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “Murble,” says Vincent.

  “Pardon?” says the judge.

  “Yessir,” says Vincent.

  “Do you understand,” says the judge, “that you are now under oath and your answers will be sworn answers under penalty of perjury?”

  “Yessir,” say Vincent’s plump lips.

  “You were born on February 17, 1988?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Your social security number is . . .”

  The last three digits are 666, matching his devil’s beard.

  “You completed eight years of school and obtained a GED certificate?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Are you under the influence of any drugs or alcohol?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have you ever been treated for any mental illness or disorder?”

  “No, sir.”

  Judge Chapman may have rolled through this a thousand times with a thousand men in colored jumpsuits, but he sounds stern and emotionally present, gravely conscious of where Vincent’s words will lead him.

  Vincent is harder to work out. All we can see is his back. He rolls his square shoulders now and then like a boxer warming up. Or maybe like a crazy person on the train. Lifting my butt from the pew and craning my neck, I can sometimes make out a slice of his face. He seems to be staring into the distance even when looking at the judge. When he drops his eyes to his shackled feet, his long, feminine eyelashes bat up and down.

  “Did you read and sign your petition to enter a guilty plea?” says the judge.

  “Yessir,” says Vincent.

  “As count one: You did, without authority, willfully, unlawfully kill Richard Barrett, a human being, without malice, in the heat of passion but in a cruel or unusual manner by the use of a dangerous weapon and not in necessary self-defense. Do you understand those elements?”

  Insomuch as neck muscles can talk, his suddenly sinewed neck suggests he’s agitated with this description.

  “Yessir,” says Vincent. So maybe Mike Scott’s hint that Vincent would argue self-defense was part of the same game as Michael Guest’s death penalty. The negotiations are done.

  “With respect to count two, those elements are: You did willfully, unlawfully, maliciously, and feloniously set fire to a dwelling house—the property of Richard Barrett. Do you understand those elements?”

  “Yessir.”

  Judge Chapman moves to Vincent’s third crime.

  “You did willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, knowingly, intentionally, and burglariously break and enter into the dwelling house of Richard Barrett, with the intent to commit the crime of arson therein. Do you understand those elements?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Do you understand that you have a right to a trial by jury,” says the judge, “and each of the twelve jurors must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of your guilt before you can be found guilty and sentenced?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Should you choose to go to trial,” says the judge, “you would have the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses who would testify against you and the right to subpoena witnesses to testify on your behalf. Do y
ou understand those rights?”

  Vincent pauses from his reflexive yessirs. His eyes take a peek at the heavens. His shoulders rise and lower as he breathes in and out. He looks at the judge, this time really looking, not staring into infinity.

  He squeezes a soft and rueful yessir from his lips.

  “Do you understand I can impose the maximum sentence on each crime?” says the judge. “That is, twenty years on the first one, twenty years on the second one, and twenty-five years on the third one. All of those consecutive would mean you’d be sentenced to a term of sixty-five years in the penitentiary.”

  “Yessir.”

  Judge Chapman twists to District Attorney Michael Guest.

  “What’s your recommendation?” Judge Chapman asks.

  Michael says his office is recommending the maximum, sixty-five years.

  Judge Chapman twists back to Vincent.

  “Is that the recommendation you expected to hear?”

  “Yessir.”

  “At this point,” says the judge, “it’s not too late to stop the hearing. But it will be if I accept your guilty plea. And I want to be certain that you want to plead guilty. Do you want to plead guilty?”

  “Yessir.”

  And that’s that. Vincent is sentenced to sixty-five years in the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

  Vincent’s head droops forward like he’s beginning to deflate.

  “The court costs, fees, and assessments in the amount of $846 will be waived,” says the judge. “Anything further?”

  “No, sir,” says Michael Guest.

  “No, Your Honor,” says Mike Scott.

  “All right. Good luck, Mr. McGee.”

  A sorry-looking Vincent exits stage right, disappearing into the shadow behind the door.

  The Press

  For his first court appearance, when I was still in Melbourne, the police tightened Vincent into a bulletproof vest. This was to be Rankin County’s trial of the century: Perhaps a Klansman would stand up from the pew and pull a pistol from his sock. No bulletproof vest was strapped on Vincent today.

  For his first appearance, CNN, MSNBC, and the other national news channels planted their tripods on every square foot of carpet in the courthouse. The party is thinner today: Tim and Jerry from the two local newspapers, an Associated Press stringer, and true crime writer John Safran. A local TV crew stumbles in at the end, when it is all over.

  We bunch around District Attorney Guest in the marble hall outside the courtroom.

  “Sixty-five years is a long time,” I say. “So what was his motivation for accepting that?”

  “You know,” says Michael, “if he would’ve gone to trial and if the jury would have convicted him of capital murder, he would’ve had no chance to ever get out of jail. With this plea, I would say it would be highly unlikely that Mr. McGee will ever leave the state penitentiary, but he would be eligible for parole at roughly seventy-five years old. And so, if he is in good enough health and is able to live that long, then he would have a chance to, you know, walk the streets a free man again.”

  My brain kicks around this explanation. It doesn’t make any sense to me. How could Vincent have been persuaded that the best he could hope for was to get out of jail at seventy-five? Why wouldn’t he work up his defense and go to trial? The death penalty had been taken off the table months ago, so that wasn’t hanging over him as a threat. But perhaps it had served its purpose as a bargaining tool.

  I recall what local lawyer Mark told me. The chance of Vincent’s being acquitted by a jury was slim, but not the maddest thought. A jury in a conservative county could feel sympathy for a man—even a black man—they felt was repelling a gay sexual advance.

  “Was it important for him,” I ask Michael, “that he didn’t want things to be flushed out in the trial, in the public view?”

  “You know,” says Michael with a smile, “I would say that that was probably a factor that went into his consideration—based on all of the circumstances surrounding this.”

  I rattle that around my head. Did Vincent McGee just take sixty-five years rather than have it revealed in court that something gay went on between him and Richard? I’ve been focused on whether Richard might have made an advance. But not what that advance, if it happened, would have meant to Vincent.

  I walk out the front of the courthouse. Looking back, I watch the door to Courtroom Two. After Vincent was sentenced, the press left the room, but no one else. Everyone in those pews was there for some other case. No one had turned up for Vincent. No one had turned up for Richard.

  Plan B

  So much for the big set piece. I was counting on the trial to settle the questions of what Richard Barrett was thinking that night, and what Vincent was thinking.

  Calm down, Safran. Earnest didn’t mope off when the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, slipped from his fingers. He ran up the staircase and got him.

  So. Plan B.

  The district attorney’s office has already done a lot of the work. Subpoenas had already been sent to witnesses, and if they’re not going to give their evidence in the courtroom, maybe they’ll give it to me. The subpoenas were filed at the Rankin County clerk’s office. The name Wayne Humphreys was on the first subpoena. He’s one of the investigators. Adele Lewis was on another. She did the autopsy. And I’ve got my own list of people I want to talk to. I want to know why Vincent was “in the heat of passion”? What had Richard done? Why didn’t Vincent want to go to trial?

  The Letter

  I lick the Cheetos dust off my fingers. I flap my hands to dry them. I don’t want Cheetos dust on my keyboard.

  Tonight, a white Mississippian preacher crackles from the clock radio in the room.

  “The Nazis were formed in a gay bar in Munich!” he says. “This is mainstream history!”

  He says Hitler’s inner circle was gay. He says his family hosted a German exchange student a few years back. The student told him, “We learn in school that the top Nazis were gay, because we want to learn from history so the Third Reich and the Holocaust never happen again!”

  I’ve been in Mississippi so long, this is the second time I’m hearing him babble this story out. Although last time it was he who told the exchange student that the top Nazis were gay and she collapsed, crying, “Why didn’t our teachers tell us?”

  My hands are now dry. I begin to type.

  Vincent McGee

  MDOC#: 122412

  Current Housing Unit: CMCF R & C TRANSIENT

  Institution: CMCF

  Post Office Box 88550

  3794 Hwy 468

  Pearl, MS 39208

  Dear Vincent,

  I am an Australian writer, writing a book about your case.

  Would you be able to place me on your visitors list, so I could meet you?

  I’ve been told you are allowed to fill out a visitors list with ten visitors’ names. I’ve also been told you create this list at Receiving & Classifications.

  Please write back to tell me if you have placed me on your visitors list. I have included an envelope, stamp, and paper.

  All the best,

  John Safran

  7.

  EVERYBODY TALKS

  The Sheriff’s Office

  I nod to the stone Confederate and curve down behind the courthouse to the sheriff’s office. It’s tucked in the same building as Rankin County Jail. Above me is the walkway in the sky where the prisoners clomp from jail to court.

  Vincent is no longer here. After his plea, the van drove him to the enormous Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl. Not far from Vincent’s home, as it happens.

  Fourteen sheriffs eyeball me from the wall of the sheriff’s office. From sepia Sheriff Harrison (1920–1924) to black-and-white Sheriff Laird (1944–1948) to today’s full-color Sheriff Pennington. The a
ir is sticky and the day is nearly over. Everyone here is a little sloppy and giggly, like schoolkids at three o’clock before Christmas break.

  Investigators Tim Lawless and Wayne Humphreys are old men with cherub cheeks. When you’re this Caucasian, there’s nowhere for the burst capillaries to hide. Tim Lawless is a third-generation Mississippi policeman. His father and his grandfather both served in Jackson. Wayne Humphreys is a detective and the local polygraph examiner.

  Both were on the McGee case and subpoenaed for the trial that never happened. I don’t know why I’ve ended up with these two men and not some other combination of investigators involved. And I don’t know what I’m allowed to ask them.

  We sit in the plainest of boardrooms with a polystyrene cup of water each. Tim Lawless pats a pile of folders, then points through the wall.

  “That’s where we interviewed Vincent. The interview room there.”

  I say wow even though it’s just a wall and I can’t see the room on the other side.

  “Have you checked with him?” Tim chuckles to Wayne.

  “Him” is Sheriff Pennington.

  “No.” Wayne chuckles back.

  Tim gets up and returns with the sheriff. He is in his sixties, tall, fit, broad shoulders. In Mississippi the old men have better bodies than the young men, who have succumbed to Xbox and Goldfish crackers and sandwich bread that tastes like cake.

  “I’m writing a book on Richard Barrett and Vincent McGee . . .” I fumble out, like a guilty Jew.

  The sheriff stares at me blankly.

  With my history, with his history, it’s like a penguin meeting a giraffe.

  “. . . and Rankin County and Mississippi,” I fumble further.

  I tell him about Race Relations and Michael Guest and Australia and the book, but it all comes out like a blind man stumbling over rearranged furniture. The sheriff interrupts me.

  “Well, you send us three copies,” he says, and leaves.