Dead Man Walking
Page 25
“Violence is such a simplistic solution,” I say. “Like these people trying to kill you now. What is your execution going to accomplish other than show that the state of Louisiana can be as violent as you were? And what’s this you said about admiring Hitler? People are reading these interviews and thinking you’re some kind of nut. It’s going to make it easier for people to say ‘good riddance’ when you’re executed. You’re not helping yourself or anybody else on death row by saying things like that.”
“Hitler was a leader. He advanced things,” he says. “He was a supreme being in one way and maybe a nut in another because he went a little overboard. But I admire people who do something, who act, and you gotta say that for Hitler — he acted.”
He asked for it, saying something dumb like that, and I tell him what I think — we’ve got all day to talk — and then what really comes out as we talk is that the Aryan Brotherhood in the federal penitentiary in Marion was a family to him.
“I’ve got two tattoos here underneath my sleeve,” he says, pointing to his arm, “the swastika and the skull, membership badges for the Brotherhood. A dude I had met in Terre Haute had sent a letter of recommendation for me to the brotherhood before I got to Marion, and when I got there, as soon as I arrived, they took me in, gave me cigarettes, drugs, the shirt off their backs. Everything they had they was willing to share. That was the best part of it, the sharing. You belonged, man. Once I got hold of a hundred Valiums and I shared them with the brothers. And when the other brothers got stuff, they shared with me. It was one for all and all for one. Once you’re in the brotherhood, it’s for life — you can’t get out until death. That’s what the skull represents.”
“What would have happened if you decided not to share the Valiums?” I ask.
“They would’ve killed me,” he says.
“Cozy family,” I say.
“It was. It really was,” he says. “And there’s mostly just whites in Marion, not many blacks, and, truthfully, the Aryans run the place. There’s not many fights or killings or much homosexuality.” He explains that Marion is the highest-security prison in the country, built in 1963 to replace Alcatraz, a “tough pen,” he says, where inmates get their heads shaved and wear Army uniforms and boots. “Being there taught me a lot about handling things, prepared me to handle things better here. They have better programs there and it’s easier to do your time. Here, it’s hard to do time. And in Terre Haute, where I was before I went to Marion, you get a dollar an hour for your work. Here you get two cents. At Marion you could join educational programs and play group sports. I liked football. You got to choose the group you wanted to play with. Here, those on the Row can’t play group sports. It’s one of our demands in the lawsuit.”
He talks about Marion as if it were an alma mater. He talks about the Aryan Brotherhood as if it were a fraternity.
He tells me about the time in Marion when he and a bunch from his tier went to the “hole” because of his “cold baked potato.” One day when he was served his lunch tray in his cell, he felt the baked potato and it was cold and he asked the guard to heat it in the microwave but the guard refused, and he threw the potato onto the tier, followed by his tray. Then other inmates threw their trays, followed by soap, toilet paper, books — and some set fires in their cells and everybody was yelling about “messing over Robert.” He chuckles. The memory of it pleases him — all the guys getting into the act like that, all protesting together over the cold baked potato.
“I must have been in the hole thirty-eight days or so for that baked potato. The hole there ain’t nice like the one here. You’re kept naked and you have terrible food, I mean terrible, and they come and hose you off every three days and you have to lather right away because they only give you a few seconds and they only give you one book to read, like one of those ‘See Dick run’ books.”
Obviously he had made it through all these experiences and lived to tell the tale. Obviously he is one tough dude. He takes a long draw from his cigarette, and for a good long time he talks about Marion. Captain Rabelais brings us cups of coffee, and I drink one cup to Robert’s three. It reminds me of Pat, being here, the coffee, the cigarettes, the talking and talking to keep the terror at bay. He’s going to die, he’s definitely going to die. Just follow the stream, let him take the lead, accompany him. But be honest, don’t condescend because he’s going to die.
And I have to keep positioning myself inwardly to grasp the reality of imminent death, because Robert Willie, through mysterious resources of his own, seems to have a firm foothold in the present moment and is calm and obviously enjoying this conversation very much.
Captain Rabelais brings lunch in heaping amounts, a tray for each of us, and I tell Robert about the fainting episode and the one rule in the prison I succeeded in changing, and Captain Rabelais keeps saying, “Eat, young lady, eat” and tells us there’s more where this came from and there’s this “Eat hearty, mates” spirit in his voice. Robert is eating with gusto and saying that this food is so much better than what they get on the Row, and I find myself eating all the meat loaf and mustard greens and half of the huge slab of corn bread.
Robert tells me of the “blowout” that happened in Marion last October when two guards and an inmate were killed. “They get real upset when guards are killed,” he says, and I recall having seen a newspaper article among his papers, a letter to the editor by an inmate at Marion, giving his version of the incident.
Robert says that after the guards at Marion were killed, a large contingent of guards, the “A-Team,” “systematically dragged out every member of the brotherhood and beat the shit out of them.” I remember the inmate’s article had talked about the beatings and that afterward even lawyers were barred from the prison and the whole prison was put on lock-down, with educational and recreational programs curtailed.
He pauses and is quiet awhile and says to please excuse him but he has to use the “can,” and I figure this is a good time to telephone and check out the possibility of the polygraph test. Amazingly, by the second phone call I reach Don Alan Zuelke, a family friend, who says he’s available and can come to the prison early tomorrow morning to administer the test. As we are lining it up, he says he must honestly say that if this test is to be administered in the death house on the very day of the client’s execution, there is a high probability that the sheer stress of the situation will skew the results because the test measures emotional stress. I weigh what he is saying. The cost of the test, about two hundred dollars, is a lot of money in this work where we scrabble even to pay telephone bills. Two hundred dollars for a test which is probably not going to be accurate anyway? Against that, I weigh a man about to die who wants to assure his mother that he’s telling the truth. “Let’s do it,” I say, and we make tentative plans, which I explain must meet with the warden’s approval. I tell him to make the test as early in the morning as possible and I give him directions to the prison.
I’m in Captain Rabelais’s office, and just as I finish the phone call I smell a cigar and in walks Warden Blackburn. Robert’s execution will be his third. I wonder if the deaths are starting to “get next to him.” I wonder how long it will be before he talks to Major Coody.
“How’s he holding up, Sister Prejean?” (He says “pree-jeen,” as most people do who don’t know French.)
“Amazingly well,” I say, and immediately, wish I hadn’t said that. I don’t want to grease the wheels. I want to jag, jar, and jimmy this death process any way I can. I know that’s what this warden wants more than anything else — for the execution to go as “smoothly” as the others have gone. Above all, he doesn’t want a Leandress Riley scene — any warden’s execution nightmare.
Riley was a black man executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber on February 20, 1953. He was small, only eighty pounds or so, and he was terrified. The guards had to carry him screaming and struggling into the gas chamber where, with difficulty, they strapped him into the metal chair and bolted the door. But jus
t before they dropped the cyanide pellets into the vat of acid, Riley managed to pull his slim wrists out of the restraints and jumped up, racing around inside the chamber, beating frantically on the glass windows where witnesses and media watched horrified. Prison officials had to stop the process, open the chamber, and strap him in again. This happened three times. And then he screamed in terror right up to the end, right up until he inhaled the gas.2
Word has it that most of the guards who worked on Riley’s “tactical unit” could never work another execution. I think Blackburn knows that if any inmate is a “fighter,” it’s Robert Lee Willie. I know he wants to get any kind of reassuring signal he can that this man is going to go “peacefully.” It is a reassurance I cannot give him.
I tell him of Robert’s request for the polygraph test and the plans I have just set in motion, and he approves the test provided it’s administered early enough in the day.
Now, once again, here’s the familiar feeling of the tight, cold grip of fear in the hollow of my stomach. Talking through the morning with Robert, I had forgotten where I was. But now, talking to Warden Blackburn, I know all too well where I am, and I say, “I have to get back to Robert.”
“Robert sent me a Christmas card, which was real nice and I thanked him,” Blackburn continues. “You know, it wasn’t my decision to send him here on Christmas Eve. I was willing to let him stay with his buddies on the Row until after Christmas. It was his choice,” he says.
I go back to the white metal door. It seems that this day is lasting a hundred years. It also seems that the day is flying. Death-house time is like no other.
Robert stands by the chair to stretch his legs a bit, and I stand up too.
“I shouldn’t have said all those things about Hitler and being a terrorist, all that stuff,” he says. “It was stupid.” He says that Blackburn told him this morning that there would be no more media interviews. “Actually,” he says, “I have a legal right to do more if I want to, but I don’t feel like doing any more. Still, the warden shouldn’t just exert his authority like that.”
I tell him that the polygraph test is set up for early tomorrow morning.
“Wow. Quick work. You did that already?” he says, and I can tell he’s happy it’s going to happen. It seems to mean a lot to him.
I tell him what Zuelke had said about the accuracy of the test being jeopardized by the stress of the situation. I want to prepare him because I sense he will probably be disappointed in the results. How can he not feel stress in a situation like this? I ask him, and I tell him that stress is not always a conscious thing.
“I wonder what would have happened if they had let me take this test after I was arrested like I asked them to,” he says. “I know they couldn’t have used the results in court or nothin’, but doubt, that’s what I was after. If the D.A. had doubts, maybe he would’ve offered me a plea.”
Warden Blackburn approaches us and says that time’s up for today and I’ll have to leave now. Robert takes a quick look at his watch and then at the warden. He’s been enjoying the company, and I know he’d like me to stay longer. There are no set rules regarding “special” visits in these “last days.” Robert shrugs his shoulders.
“Just a moment longer, Warden,” I say, “I’d like a chance to pray with Robert.” Blackburn nods his head and leaves. Robert winks. “That was an offer he just couldn’t refuse, ‘cuz ain’t he a minister or somethin’ in his church?” Robert says and smiles. One of the things he had told a reporter was that yes, he had religious faith and believed in Jesus Christ and had a spiritual adviser, but he was no “religious fanatic or nothin’,” not “one of those jailhouse religious hypocrites who only use religion for their own purposes.” He was an “ordinary person,” he had assured the reporter, and continued to “curse a lot.”
That had made me smile. I have never before met a man quite like Robert Willie.
I put my hands upon the screen as close as I can get to him and say a prayer. He bows his head and I find myself looking at the top of the black knitted hat, which he will give to me as a gift there at the end right before he walks to the chair, the black hat that covers the head of the Outlaw, the Aryan brother, the “Marlboro Man,” the “Rebel” — the kidnapper/rapist/murderer. I ask God to give him what he needs — mercy, courage, remorse for the pain he has caused — and freedom of heart to accept death when he meets it. I also pray for the Harveys, who will be there to watch him die.
At the end of the prayer he says, “Amen. Thank you, ma’am, for the nice prayer. I don’t know if I can be everything the prayer says, but I’m sure gonna try.”
I leave him with a parting word about the God I believe in not being a God of blood who demands torture and death but a God of love, of compassion. I refer him to the Gospel of John, to a passage he might want to read before he goes to sleep tonight (his last full night on earth), where Jesus talks about living freely and dying freely:
I lay down my life
in order to take it up again
No one takes it from me;
I lay it down of my own free will …
(John 10:17–18)
“Not that they’re right to take your life,” I say to him. “It’s wrong and it ought to be resisted and denounced, but you have within yourself the freedom to choose the way you die — with love or hate.” And I tell him that I care about him, I value his life, and I will stand by him until the end.
And I’m out of the death house and into the pale yellow December sun. Robert has asked me to come tomorrow at two in the afternoon when his mother and brothers will visit. I dread that, watching the pain of his family in such a place. Todd is only eleven years old.
But that’s tomorrow and I don’t want to think about it. Today — now — that is what I’ll think about. I’m driving through the curvy Tunica hills out to Highway 61 and Baton Rouge and Mary Ann’s house for supper tonight, where her five children are all home from college for Christmas.
Christmas?
Robert had sent out Christmas cards from the death house.
A snatch of a Christmas carol comes to me and I fiddle with the words.
God rest ye merry gentlemen
let nothing you dismay.
We’ll pick our day to execute
In June or Christmas day …
I think of the running debate I engage in with “church” people about the death penalty. “Proof texts” from the Bible usually punctuate these discussions without regard for the cultural context or literary genre of the passages invoked. (Will D. Campbell, a Southern Baptist minister and writer, calls this use of scriptural quotations “biblical quarterbacking.”)
It is abundantly clear that the Bible depicts murder as a crime for which death is considered the appropriate punishment, and one is hard-pressed to find a biblical “proof text” in either the Hebrew Testament or the New Testament which unequivocally refutes this. Even Jesus’ admonition “Let him without sin cast the first stone,” when he was asked the appropriate punishment for an adulteress (John 8:7) — the Mosaic law prescribed death — should be read in its proper context. This passage is an “entrapment” story, which sought to show Jesus’ wisdom in besting his adversaries. It is not an ethical pronouncement about capital punishment.
Similarly, the “eye for eye” passage from Exodus, which pro-death penalty advocates are fond of quoting, is rarely cited in its original context, in which it is clearly meant to limit revenge.
The passage, including verse 22, which sets the context reads:
If, when men come to blows, they hurt a woman who is pregnant and she suffers a miscarriage, though she does not die of it, the man responsible must pay the compensation demanded of him by the woman’s master; he shall hand it over after arbitration. But should she die, you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stroke for stroke. (Exodus 21: 22–25)
In the example given (patently patriarchal: the woman is c
onsidered the negotiable property of her male master), it is clear that punishment is to be measured out according to the seriousness of the offense. If the child is lost but not the mother, the punishment is less grave than if both mother and child are lost. Only an eye for an eye, only a life for a life is the intent of the passage. Restraint was badly needed. It was not uncommon for an offended family or clan to slaughter entire communities in retaliation for an offense against one of their members.
Even granting the call for restraint in this passage, it is nonetheless clear — here and in numerous other instances throughout the Hebrew Bible — that the punishment for murder was death.
But we must remember that such prescriptions of the Mosaic Law were promulgated in a seminomadic culture in which the preservation of a fragile society — without benefit of prisons and other institutions — demanded quick, effective, harsh punishment of offenders. And we should note the numerous other crimes for which the Bible prescribes death as punishment:
contempt of parents (Exodus 21:15, 17; Leviticus 24:11);
trespass upon sacred ground (Exodus 19:12–13; Numbers 1:51; 18:7);
sorcery (Exodus 22:18; Leviticus 20:27);
bestiality (Exodus 22:19; Leviticus 20: 15–16);
sacrifice to foreign gods (Exodus 22:20; Deuteronomy 13:1–9);
profaning the sabbath (Exodus 31:14);
adultery (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22: 22–24);
incest (Leviticus 20:11–13);
homosexuality (Leviticus 20:13);
and prostitution (Leviticus 21:19; Deuteronomy 22: 13–21).
And this is by no means a complete list.
But no person with common sense would dream of appropriating such a moral code today, and it is curious that those who so readily invoke the “eye for an eye, life for life” passage are quick to shun other biblical prescriptions which also call for death, arguing that modern societies have evolved over the three thousand or so years since biblical times and no longer consider such exaggerated and archaic punishments appropriate.