Death Row Breakout

by Edward Bunker

  “At the back… around the corner.”

  “How we gonna get by the nurse?”

  “That’s what these green shirts are for.”

  “Let’s go do him up.”

  They walked past the nurse’s office without a challenge, and nodded at the chicano mopping the floors. Men in the rooms, mostly wearing nightgowns and jeans, glanced up as they went by, but suspected nothing and said nothing. With every step Clemens’ tension increased. When they turned the corner and saw the correctional officer reading a newspaper, Clemens got momentarily dizzy. He expelled a lung-full of air.

  The officer sensed, or heard them as soon as they turned the corner. The way they moved made him stand up and put the paper down. He saw the green blouses, but the hallway was a dead end ten feet away.

  “Hold it. Where’re you going?”

  Clemens literally lost his mind. The tension was too heavy and he snapped. “Gimme them motherfuckin’ keys, pig!” He didn’t wait for the response, but pulled his shiv and stuck it straight into the officer’s stomach, an inch below the rib cage.

  “AhhhhhAHHHHH. God!”

  Buford stepped forward and put a hand over Clemens’ chest. “Cool it,” and to the officer: “Better be givin’ up them keys.”

  “I don’t have them,” he said, blood spraying out of his mouth.

  In the cell, the witness, a black queen, heard the officer bang his back on the door when Clemens stabbed him. The queen got up to look through the observation window. She saw what was going on and ran to the window overlooking the air-well at the center of the building – and began screaming: ‘HELP HELP HELP MURDER! OH GOD HELP!’

  From nearby windows came responding voices, but not of help. “Shaddup you ding bat motherfucker!” “Shut the fuck up, dick sucker, snitchin’ nigger.”

  In the hallway, Clemens and Buford had the guard seated in the chair. Unable to resist, blood flowed from his mouth and down his shirt. He held his belly and hunkered forward. “Don’t have keys,” he said.

  “Yeah… yeah,” Buford was turning the guard’s pockets inside out. Nothing.

  Unexpectedly, the female nurse in white uniform came around the corner. She took a couple of steps before she realized what was going on. She turned and ran, with Buford in hot pursuit. Patients were sticking out their heads, but on seeing the nurse running and yelling they stepped back and closed the door. When they were questioned, and they would be, they would give the standard convict answer: “I didn’t see nuthin’, I didn’t hear nuthin’ – and I don’t know nuthin’.”

  The nurse’s office had a panic button, but Buford and his shiv were too close behind for her to turn in there. Instead she hit the stairway door and went through on the fly, screaming ‘HELP! HELP! HELP!’ as she leaped, fell and rolled down the stairs, miraculously not breaking any bones and still screaming at the top of her lungs.

  As Buford started down the stairway, his will ran out and fear filled him, sapping his strength. The nurse hit the first floor and ran into the main corridor.

  Clemens came up behind Buford. “Did she get away?”

  “Yeah, yeah. What’re we gonna do?”

  “C’mon!”

  Clemens led the way to the second floor and turned in. “Best pray right here.”

  “Pray. What the fuck…!”

  “Yeah, pray they pass on by to the third floor.”

  They heard the pounding feet and excited voices. “Go… go… on three.” Four officers bounded past to the third floor.

  Wordlessly, Clemens pulled Buford’s sleeve and led him out of the second floor and down to the first. The main corridor had a dozen or more convicts looking toward the door into the stairwell and buzzing.

  The corridor was long. The exit door was beyond the barred gate and infirmary. “Suck it up, dawg, an’ let’s go,” he said then started walking with Buford on his heels.

  The elderly guard on the barred gate was arguing with convicts on the other side. “…gonna want us,” the convict said. “We’re the surgery crew. They’ve been calling us on the loudspeaker. Here –‘He brought out a yellow ‘Assignment Card’. It said ‘Hospital – Surgery’

  “Wait,” said the guard as he picked up the phone and checked with Control, holding down his voice. “Stand aside. When they need you they’ll call.” At the same moment, he looked back over his shoulder to Clemens and Buford in their green hospital worker blouses. The guard nodded and turned the key in the barred gate. Buford and Clemens slipped out into the Big Yard.

  ‘LOCKUP! LOCKUP!’ blasted the public address system. Convicts looked at one another, shrugged and began to slowly file into the vast cell-houses.

  In the dark hours before dawn, the sound of boots crunching, and tall shadows made by prison floodlights, gave notice that guards were on the tiers. They took Buford first and went back for Clemens. On the way down the rear steel stairs, the night-sticks rose and descended. One blow gave off the hollow sound similar to that of a breaking egg. It was actually Clemens breaking his skull. He was in a coma for a week, and would be a mumbling idiot for the rest of his life. That saved Buford, for the guards were afraid of what they had done. Their reports said he had fallen down the steel stairs to the concrete floor.

  The sun was rising and the baby pigeons and other birds were making an inordinate ruckus that most convicts slept through when Buford was walked across the prison to the Adjustment Center. There was the bang and slam of gates opening and being shut until they got him into a cell on the bottom floor of the north side of the AC, a collection of around half a dozen men the officials thought were the most dangerous in the entire prison system of sixty-eight thousand.

  Death Row Breakout

  He had been waiting for the verdict that would mean death. There could be no other verdict. This was the end of the road, and Roger knew it. He’d been eyeing the jurors for weeks. The blacks would convict him for the deaths of the black preacher and his wife. The whites would nail him for the murder of a white cop. Never mind that he’d been stopped at a roadblock with his two hostages, and that it was the shots of the cops that had set his car on fire. The preacher and his wife were dead. He’d then shot the cop who had come up to the blazing car and was about to kill him, as he lay wounded and trapped behind the wheel. Who would believe that an ex-con could shoot a cop in “self-defense”? No one. He could see that in the jurors’ eyes as they glared at him.

  The prosecuting attorney had portrayed Roger as some kind of mad dog. And what does society do with a Mad Dog? That was what his partner was called, and he had had to kill him, as well. He’d made some mistakes along the way, but he was not insane. If he had one major failing, it was that he could not resist the adrenalin charge of the good caper. He’d studied that bank for weeks and had almost gotten away with the cash until his car broke down. The kind minister had stopped to give him a lift. And all it had gotten him and his wife was a fiery end. For that, Roger was sorry. For the cop, he was not.

  They’d called him and his sorry-assed defense attorney back into the courtroom for the verdict. All rose as the judge entered. The jury had found him guilty. This was the penalty phase. Was it going to be life imprisonment? He’d be out in 25 years, if lucky. Or was it death?

  The judge’s voice was a rolling chant, like a priest saying mass: “…the jury having found you guilty of violating Section 187, California Penal Code, murder, and having found special circumstances and having set the penalty of death, this court finds no reason to set aside such verdict.

  “Therefore, it is the Order, Judgement and Decree of this Court that you, Roger Nellis Harper, be delivered to the custody of the Warden of the California State Prison at San Quentin, where you will be put to death at a time and in a manner prescribed by law.”

  “The execution of the Death Warrant is herewith stayed pending automatic appellate review.”

  “Defendant is remanded. The case is closed. Court is adjourned – and may God have mercy on your soul.”

  Th
e gavel descended, the bailiffs closed around Roger, and he watched the judge move from the bench. How huge he was up there in his robes, how human and puny when stripped of his office.

  “See you at the jail,” said the appointed lawyer, but he never did. He waved at Roger while leaving the courtroom. Roger saw the absurdity and laughed.

  Four nights later, after midnight when the shift changed, he heard the rattling chains and knew they had come for him. An hour later, following paperwork and processing, they took him the back way to a three-car caravan. He was draped in more chains than a Christmas tree has tinsel, including leg-irons. Deputies with riot guns were abundant and, when Roger looked up, he saw a couple silhouetted against the night sky. There was an aura of tension, as if they half expected an attempt at armed rescue. It made Roger chuckle as he got into the rear of the station wagon. Some lying stoolpigeon had told gullible authorities that he was the Aryan Brotherhood’s “hit man” hired to an international drug cartel. The Sheriff’s Department had an appetite for such stories. Such threats required greater resources, bureaucracy grew. The truth was that few were the fools loco enough to attack even two armed deputies to rescue a friend. It was too likely that everyone would bite the dust, including the friend.

  The caravan rolled. First the black and white with flashing lights and four deputies. Then the station wagon with Roger in a rear compartment and two deputies in front. Finally another black and white with four more deputies behind.

  When they reached the highway, the lead car turned off the flashing lights and the caravan rolled north through darkness toward San Quentin’s death house.

  Twenty minutes out, the Interstate crossed the State highway where the murderous battle had occurred. Without that night’s fog, it was open rich farmland. The blazing exchange was relived in his brain. He’d been violence hardened in reform school where boys fought every day. He remembered a counselor killing a boy by twisting a towel around his neck. Leaving no mark, it cut off blood to the brain. The man never lost a day’s wages. So Roger knew then that was the way the world was – and so it was. He’d seen two teenage chicanos stab each other to death. One fell dead at the scene, the other merely reached the hospital before his heart filled with blood. He died on the spot. Roger also saw a cop shoot a fourteen-year-old chicano off a fence, the boy silhouetted like a clay pigeon on the lighter ink of the night sky. They said he had a weapon and the inquest justified the killing. Yes, Roger was hardened to violence early on. Alas, that had not applied to Sidney and Florence. Over and over he remembered the wounded cop emptying his weapon, through the back of the car, and every time he saw it in his mind’s eye, he felt weak and queasy and, sometimes at night in the cell, tears came to his eyes. He’d known them only a few hours; it was long enough to feel their simple Christian goodness. Now they were dead and he was sentenced to die for their murder. For the deputy with the shotgun, who had fallen backward, wounded in the neck, and had drowned in the irrigation ditch, Roger had been sentenced a second time to Life Without Parole. The deputy’s death was tragic, but it was part of the game in Roger’s mind. The officer was paid to carry a gun and shoot people when necessary. If there was to be no risk, why give him the gun? Society vilified him, but he despised society and didn’t care what people thought. A surrender would have brought a razzing from his pals. A true hardcore never stained the flag by throwing down the gun.

  San Quentin, home of Condemned Row, is a sprawling mass of concrete and steel on a peninsula in Marin County, overlooking an extension of San Francisco Bay. It began when a Spanish prison ship ran aground. A plank was extended to shore, a building was erected, then another and another. Over time, these were torn down to be replaced by others, evolving into a community dominated by four giant cell-houses with fortress-thick walls, plus sundry auxiliary buildings. The South Cell-house was the largest in the world, a thousand cells housing two thousand numbered men. Condemned Row #1, however, was in the North Cell-house. Actually, it occupied a separate floor on top of the cell-house. That made it convenient to reach the two ‘overnight condemned cells’ and the gas chamber behind the North Cell-house. In recent years, so many men had been sentenced to death that Death Row overflowed the top floor of the North Cell-house and filled two floors of the Adjustment Center, creating Condemned Row #2 and #3.

  It was first light when the three-car caravan crossed the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge with the prison visible on the other side. Stars were fading into the morning. They were likely to be the last stars he would ever see. For a terrible moment he confronted the truth of death, of oblivion, of not being. His heart began to race. The vision was blinding, too much for the mind to contain. Non-being was not sleep.

  The outer gate opened. The road ran along the shoreline to another gate. The two escort cars pulled to the side. Only the station wagon with the condemned man went through the second gate. It pulled up to the East Sallyport; the pedestrian gate into the main security area. Less than a year earlier, Roger had walked out the other way. On both days the sun was bright on the bay.

  In Receiving and Release, the same grizzled Sergeant was in charge, and Roger recognized the inmate clerk. The other convict was new. He was probably a Lifer to have the job. He had the look of a wife killer – one crime; one time. Roger was fingerprinted, photographed and given a Condemned Row issue. It was the same as that given to mainline convicts except there were no razor blades, no web belt and, instead of heavy brogans, they issued his soft-soled slippers. The Sergeant was indifferent, and the convicts maintained a psychological distance. Death Row was a world removed from the rest of San Quentin. It had some communication with the mainline via tier tenders and a convict clerk; although they were skin searched coming and going, they could transport verbal messages – and things the right size could go in a ‘keister plant’, – up the rectum. Anything not metal would get through and, seeing as how drugs were the #1 item of desire, that was what they smuggled to those sentenced to die.

  Meanwhile, in the Control Room, the Control Sergeant inserted the tag, Harper, Roger N., A20284B, in the slot on the board: Cell #C.R. 1/56. He reached for the phone and dialed Death Row. “Howdy Blair, got a dead man walkin’ your way. A two or two eight four. Harper… goes into fifty-six. Got it?”

  “We’ll have it ready for him.”

  Roger, still in waist-chains but without leg-irons, walked behind a guard who cleared the way, calling out, “Dead man walking.” It made convicts step far back. He’d seen it often from the sidelines; now he was the main attraction.

  Behind him came a second guard and, on the catwalk along the outside of the cell-houses, was a rifleman with a carbine. They were more wary of some maniac on the mainline killing one of the condemned – someone like Sirhan, Ramirez or Manson – than that anyone would escape or do any damage. They were always in cuffs and waist-chains.

  As they entered the big yard and turned left to walk along the length of the North Cell-house, Roger looked out across the yard, half of which was under a high weather shed, like a giant hay shed, and was always shaded and cool. The sun shone bright on the other half, and there were clusters of pigeons and several seagulls.

  Convicts were few; none he knew. They stood expressionless as the retinue passed through.

  At the North Cell-block entrance, the gun-rail ended. They stepped into the rotunda. An open door led into the cell-house; noise came out at them. Across the rotunda was a locked steel door. That way led to the elevator landing and a green steel door. Beyond that door were the overnight condemned cells, where the doomed were moved for the last night. Next to the cells was another door, beyond which was the green, octagon-shaped gas chamber. It was four steps from the overnight cells to oblivion. Last mile, my ass…

  The sound of the elevator turned Roger’s thoughts away from the green door. One of the escorts pulled the elevator door open. They got aboard and it rattled upward – to the floor above the North Cell-house.

  They stepped onto a landing. A face peered throug
h a tiny window in a door and identified them. Then came the sound of a big key being turned: the door opened. Beyond, waited a half circle of two correctional officers and a Sergeant, plus an armed guard in a gun cage providing backup.

  Roger knew the Sergeant. His name was Blair and he’d worked in San Quentin for thirty years without writing a single disciplinary report. He had the seamed face of a happy old boozer. He looked at Roger and shook his head. “Sorry to see you like this, Harper. I thought you might make it out there.”

  Roger shrugged. “I fucked up.”

  “Nobody’s perfect,” said Blair.

  While the Sergeant examined the paperwork, Roger looked through a small, double-gate sallyport onto a tier. Half a dozen condemned men were out of their cells. Two paced up and down, side-by-side, while the other four played bridge on the floor at the far end, using a blanket for a card table. Death Row was the only place in the prison that allowed card playing.

  Roger recognized one of the walking men, Jellico by name. He had been a key clerk in the prison hospital who never caused any trouble. It was a complete surprise when he was paroled and went on a murder spree through Frisco’s gay community. Using his last victim’s credit cards, he went to Las Vegas and partied for over a week, until the credit cards led the police directly to him. They found a taped confession. When caught, he said, “Fine, I want the gas chamber. I’ll do it again if you don’t execute me.” The jury obliged.

  Roger recalled reading that Jellico had an execution date. As he had not read anything for over a month, the execution had to be imminent. The law required the death warrant to be executed between sixty and ninety days.

  “Better lock ’em up while we run him in,” Sergeant Blair said.

  A guard banged a big key on a pipe. The sound rang out. “Okay, grab a hole in there.”

  The other guard unlocked a heavy padlock on a simple hydraulic handle. He pulled the lever, raising the heavy security bar above the tops of the gates. Each inmate pulled his gate open, stepped inside and shut it. When the tier was clear, the guard dropped the security bar. When the bar was down, the gates were blocked shut. Each gate also had its individual lock.