by Larry Lawton
Lawton, as usual, hung out with the white prisoners. In Yazoo City, only fifteen percent of the 2,000 inmates were white, and many belonged to gangs such as the Aryan Circle, the Texas Aryan Brotherhood, and the Dirty White Boys. Blacks and Hispanics made up the rest of the inmate population. The Crips and Bloods were black gangs, and the largest gang, the Pisa, made up of Mexican inmates, was the toughest gang of them all.
About a week after Lawton arrived at Yazoo City he witnessed a violent brawl. The doors of the cells opened at six in the morning, and all 110 prisoners in Lawton’s unit came out of their cells. Because money was tight, Yazoo City only had one guard for the late shift. After opening the cells in Lawton’s unit, the guard then headed to open the cells of the adjoining unit. With the prisoners milling around, suddenly two large prisoners, one black, one Hispanic, confronted each other like gladiators. Lawton would find out later that the two men had had a beef the night before, and this was how they were going to settle it.
As Lawton watched the two men square off, he was visited by a friend of his by the name of Big Ron. A quiet man in his fifties, Big Ron came from California. He liked to walk on the yard for exercise, and it was there that they met.
Ron’s original crime was bank robbery. After getting out of San Quentin, he moved to Missoula, Montana, where he was arrested for being a convicted criminal in possession of a gun. He was sentenced to ten years in Yazoo City.
Ron learned that Lawton knew his way around the law library, and he asked Lawton to investigate his case, to see if there was some way he could get out sooner. Lawton did that for a number of prisoners. Quickly Lawton became known as a stand up guy, a go-to guy. He had everyone’s respect.
After Big Ron walked over to Lawton’s cell, from there the two watched as the two rival gang members went at it. It was like a heavyweight fight, and it was brutal. After exchanging punches that met their mark, the black inmate managed to wrestle the Hispanic inmate to the ground, and began kicking him in the head. The bloody fight was broken up when the heads of the two gangs waded in and broke them up.
As they did, the guard, who was new to the job, returned. He had no idea what had gone on. It was time for breakfast, and the entire unit headed for the mess hall. When breakfast was over, the entire unit was put on lockdown. The prison officials learned of the brawl and were afraid that something major was going to happen between the two gangs, so they locked the place down tight for a week until they were able to find out what the fight was all about.
In an attempt to confiscate weapons, the guards went through every cell with a fine-toothed comb. A number of inmates were caught making wine in their laundry baskets. Lawton, who was an old pro, used fresh dryer sheets so the guards couldn’t smell the alcohol.
“I knew right off the bat this was a gang prison,” said Lawton.
Another time a member of one of the gangs arrived at the prison. That day he walked out of receiving and discharge onto the yard only to be attacked by ten members of a rival gang wielding knives. The yard was locked down immediately. The prison had screwed up. It should have known the rival gang was laying for him and kept him safe.
Gang fights could break out at any time for different reasons. One gang member disrespecting another was a common cause. A drug deal gone bad was another. If one guy didn’t pay up, before you knew it, inmates were beating on each other.
One time two of the white gangs were feuding, and the administrators went to Lawton and said to him, “You know these people. Can’t you talk to them?”
The Dirty White Boys, the minors of the Aryan Brotherhood, was feuding with a bunch of inmates from the Aryan Circle. The shot-caller – the head of the Dirty White Boys -- was in Lawton’s unit. Lawton called him and the shot-caller for the Aryan Circle together for a meeting.
He told the heads of the two gangs, “Are you fucking idiots? We have 2,000 people here. There are only 350 white guys, and you’re stabbing each other?”
“I got them thinking,” said Lawton. The violence abated.
*
One of the favors Lawton did for the other prisoners was “pull paperwork” on incoming prisoners. The inmates didn’t want to room with stool pigeons or pedophiles, and so they went to Lawton, who would make a phone call to a lawyer friend of his on the outside. The lawyer friend would pull the docket sheets in the case, find out the nature of the underlying crime, and mail the information to Lawton.
Most of the time the information got through, because Lawton might well have been helping the inmate out. But the reason the prison system does not allow prisoners to bring in their paperwork is to prevent the identification of the rats and the pedophiles. As a result, the prison staff sometimes would call the prisoner and ask him, “Did you ask for Lawton to see your paperwork?” If he said no, they would immediately move him to give him protection. If they didn’t move him even though he knew someone was checking his record, he might make what the inmates called a “check-in” move. Worried he’d be targeted, he’d go to a guard, curse the guard out, and get himself thrown in the hole. It was really for protection, but he tried to make it look like he was a stand-up guy.
At Yazoo a new inmate came onto the prison yard. He was about 40 years old, white, and “dumpy-looking.” Lawton had been asked to check him out, and after the paperwork came back, sure enough, the inmate had been convicted of having sex with young children. The worst inmates are the ones who have sex with kids under 12. The scum of the scum, even lower than rats. They are targeted by everyone.
“When that happens,” said Lawton, “the cellie is the guy who hits him. This guy was watching TV in the middle of the TV room. His cellie came in, and he smashed him with his fist in the back of the head. The guy went down, and his cellie began kicking him in the face. Blood was everywhere. The guy was out of it. He layed on the floor, and everyone just left. There weren’t any cameras in the TV room, so no one knew who did it. The cops came running, and they took three inmates up to the office and put them in the hole.
“I didn’t have any feeling for those guys, so I didn’t give a fuck. But I didn’t want to get involved in a conspiracy charge to commit murder either.
“I have to say I was very well respected on the yard at Yazoo. Word got around the prison system that I was fighting for them, that I knew the law, and that I wouldn’t cave, that I would keep fighting. That is so rare. People break, and I can understand why. I never broke. I took everything that warden LaManna and that prick Rick Brawley threw at me at Edgefield, and I survived.”
After three months of living in relative peace, Rick Brawley, warden LaManna’s right hand man at Edgefield, was transferred to Yazoo City as its head of SIS, the investigation arm of the prison. Lawton was sure LaManna had sent Brawley there to continue the punishment for his letter writing campaign, and so for the next nine months Lawton once again was subject to abuse. Once Brawley arrived, he was in the hole most of the rest of the time spent at Yazoo City.
“Again, they were trying to break me,” said Lawton. “Every time they let me out of the hole, they found a way to put me back in. It made me stronger.”
“I was in the hole so long I started another letter-writing campaign, complaining about what they were doing to me for some bogus bullshit. I told senators, ‘The man punishing me was transferred here. This is a blatant disregard for my rights.’ I stayed in the hole in Yazoo for nothing.”
Lawton tried conciliation with Brawley. Lawton told him he would never be intimidated and would never quit, but if Brawley stopped the harassment he’d stop writing letters.
“All I want is to be left alone for the rest of my sentence,” Lawton told him. “Nobody cares about inmates, and you’re not going back on the yard,” said
Brawley. Lawton stayed in the hole.
“Finally, I was transferred out of Yazoo. I had less than a year to go, and when you get close to your rele
ase date, they are supposed to transfer you closer to home. Where did I go? Forest City, Arkansas, farther away still from Florida. They didn’t want to do anything to help me. Not a thing.”
Finally away from the clutches of LaManna and Brawley, Lawton did the rest of his time quietly at Forest City. He never once was put in the hole. Forest City, located eighty-five miles east of Little Rock, was brand new and was run well, even though Forest City was the worst gang prison of them all.
Though he was a short-timer with less than a year to serve, at Forest City he got a lot of respect from the prison system. He had easy access to the law library. The gangs knew about him, and inmates would ask him for legal advice.
“I had a lot of respect from blacks, Spanish, everybody,” said Lawton.
One of his friends at Forest City was an inmate by the name of Bruiser, the head of the Aryan Circle. Lawton would pull paperwork for Bruiser to find out why new inmates were in prison. Whenever one of the new inmates asked to join the Aryan Circle, Bruiser would ask Lawton, who never took money for his services, to pull paper on the guy.
“I was sitting in the mess hall, and an inmate passed me a piece of paper with the new inmate’s last name and number. They wanted to know his background and what he was in for. I called my lawyer friend, and he sent me back the guy’s docket sheet.
“Bruiser and his cellie came to see me in my cell. This young kid wanted to become part of their gang. They join because of protection. And the kid was thinking they weren’t going to find out he was a pedophile.
“I told them, “This kid is no good.” When they found out, they got really mad. They said they were going to stab him, really fuck him up.
“I said, “Bruiser, I did this for you. Don’t kill this guy. I was adamant, because if he killed him I could be brought up on a conspiracy charge, and here I was, six months to go before I got out.
“Sure enough this guy was standing below the top tier, and they dropped a heavy buffer machine down on his head and crushed the whole side of his body.”
As at the other prisons, violence could erupt at any time. One day a group of ten Mexican inmates attacked a group of whites from the Aryan Circle on the yard. The fighting was fierce, and Bruiser was stabbed. Lawton was in his cell with him when the guards came to arrest Bruiser, who wasn’t hurt badly, and put him in the hole for fighting.
Lawton had a routine where he would get up at six in the morning, when the cell doors cracked, and go down to the white TV room. After Bruiser returned from the hole, he would join him and they would watch Country Music Videos.
“I started watching country music videos in Jesup,” said Lawton, “bus I became a huge country music fan because of Forest City prison. We would watch CMT every morning from six o’clock until eight o’clock. I very rarely went to the chow hall. I’d have a cup of coffee and maybe a little oatmeal that I bought in the commissary. I’d bring my plastic chair from my room, and I’d sit there and watch.
“One day this black guy with long dreadlocks came in and without asking us, turned on BET.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
Lawton without saying a word grabbed his dreadlocks and smashed his face right into the wall. The inmate, bloody, fell to the ground.
“I had to do that,” said Lawton. “In prison you don’t ever want to be perceived as weak.”
Bruiser knew if he didn’t do something that Lawton would face retaliation from the man’s gang. Bruiser, who was the white gang’s shot caller, had a meeting with the black gang’s shot caller. Bruiser told him, “He came into our TV room and disrespected us.” The incident was squashed.
With only a few months to go, Lawton decided it was time to stop pulling papers on new prisoners.
“Even when I knew they were dirty, I wouldn’t say anything,” he said. “I didn’t want to get into any conspiracies for killing a guy. Right before I left, I had a docket proving one of the new guys was a bad guy, and I shredded it. I had to make up excuses why I hadn’t gotten it. I stalled.”
Lawton left Forest City on a violent note.
“Right before I got out, seven white guys from another unit came into our unit and started fighting,” he said. “One guy was stabbed. I was playing chess in the common area, and I knew what was going on. They had a hit out on somebody, and the other gang fought back.”
In February of 2007 Lawton threw a Super Bowl/going away party for twenty of the regular guys who watched the tube in the white TV room. He even held a raffle.
Now he was counting the days. But never once did he let his guard down. He was very well connected with the Aryan Circle, so he wasn’t worried about gang violence, but he was concerned about jealousy from long-term inmates.
“You’re getting out, and they have thirty or forty years to go, so you don’t go around boasting about your getting out,” said Lawton. “You don’t go around prison saying, ‘Yeah, I’m getting out. I’m leaving soon.’ You could get killed doing that. You stay very low key.”
With one week to go Lawton’s mind was racing. He needed to keep busy so as not to go crazy, and so he spent the time playing games – chess, pinochle, backgammon, and gin rummy. He sat in the TV room and watched show after show. He’d sit in his chair up against the wall and eat a bag of Dorritos or a bowl of soup, and he continued to work out like a demon. In 45 minutes in the yard or around the unit he’d do 600 sit ups and 600 push ups. He’d do 150 handstand presses with his back to a wall. He was down to 187 rock-hard pounds.
The night before Lawton was to get out he called over all the people somewhat close to him – “I always say somewhat because you don’t have too many real friends in prison.” – and gave away most of his possessions.
“You don’t think it’s a big deal, but I was giving away a radio, a cooking bowl, my cup and spoon, a sweatshirt – it becomes a big deal. People – big drug dealers -- were rifling through my crappie clothes.”
That night Lawton didn’t sleep. He was awake when the guards came for him at five in the morning.
“You’re on Cloud 100,” said Lawton. “You’ve been in prison for eleven years, and all of a sudden you’re going to be a free man.”
Before he could get out, he had a go through what they call a roundabout. He had to visit the medical department, the law library to return materials, the commissary to close his account – he had to go to each department of the prison -- and he had to be signed out.
The morning of his final day in prison a guard came to Lawton’s cell an hour before unlocking the general population and he told Lawton, “Pack up and head to R and D.”
Lawton got dressed, said good bye to his cellie, and on the way out of the unit he threw the rest of his prison clothes in a heap on the floor. In R and D Lawton was processed out and given civilian clothes -- a pair of jeans, a polo shirt, a pair of boots, and a military-style belt.
“Everyone in the world can spot a guy coming out of prison,” said Lawton.
At R and D he was also given his released papers, a bus ticket, and the $275 he had in his commissary account. Most inmates who are released leave with $25. The clerk counted out the bills and handed them to him. Lawton, who never trusted the system, was leery.
“While I was in prison I had been reading USA Today, so I thought I was keeping on top of things, but there was so much I didn’t know,” he said. “Remember, in prison you don’t see real money.”
In the eleven years Lawton was in prison the look of American currency had changed drastically. The president’s picture was enlarged, and color had been added to the bills.
When they handed me the new bills, I asked the cashier, ‘Where do I exchange the bills?’ I thought it was monopoly money.”
“What do you mean?” asked the clerk.
“Do I take this to the bank and get real money?” asked Lawton. “Where do I get
the real money?”
“That is the real money,” said the clerk.
“What do you mean it’s real money?” asked Lawton.
“I was skeptical,” said Lawton. “I thought they were trying to fuck me. I thought, These guys are stealing my money. I was very distrustful – of everyone.”
“To me it looked like Mexican money,” said Lawton.
Lawton’s family and friend wrote and asked if he wanted them to drive to Forest City to pick him up, but Lawton said no. He wanted to feel his first taste of freedom by himself. He wanted to get on a bus without handcuffs. He wanted to be free to see the world. Oh, what a mistake that was.
In March of 2007, after eleven years of incarceration, finally Lawton was out of prison. He was 46 years old.
CHAPTER 14
Free At Last
After Larry Lawton walked out the front door of the Forest City fortress with a bus ticket and two hundred and seventy five dollars in cash, the prison van was waiting to take him to the bus station. The van dropped him off right on time so he didn’t have to wait around long. When the van drove off, Lawton stood there all alone.
The Greyhound bus pulled up, and Lawton handed the driver his ticket. From this small town in Mississippi he was headed to a halfway house in Tampa, Florida, a trip of about a thousand miles. He walked to the middle of the bus on the aisle and took his seat next to a good-looking blonde in her early twenties.
“I got on the bus and sat down, and I felt good,” said Lawton. “I took my hands and raised them up like I was signaling victory. I thought, Oh my God, I can move around. I can get up. Nobody is telling me what to do. When I raised my hands, I was cheering inside, because I had been in handcuffs and shackles for so long. The people on the bus must have thought I was a wacko.
“The girl I sat down next to had a cell phone in her hand. I knew about the new cell phones from reading about them, but I had never seen one before. It was so small. When I entered prison, cell phones were big and gray with large antennas. I had to be looking at it like I was a nut.