I don’t know if what was going through my mind started showing on my face, but Perhacs cleared his throat and put a hand on my shoulder as he got up to question Reggie.
“Mr. White, how’re you doing?”
“How’re you doing?”
“Mr. White, you know my client. You and he used to play softball together, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not on the same team, though?”
“No, sir.”
“And you also knew him because you know a man named Quinton Leath.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Got a bunch of … Quinton’s got a bunch of sisters?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He dated one, and you saw one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now we’re talking back in ’79 and ’80, aren’t we?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And this is a gentleman with whom you have spoken on a friendly basis off and on for years, haven’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When you meet him, you’re friendly to him, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when you and he have met, he’s been courteous in front of you?”
“Yes, sir.”
I could hardly sit there and listen to this. Perhacs just moved on to the next topic from the sisters, and he didn’t even get it right. I had told him everything about Reggie. What had happened, what he used to say about me. I had given Perhacs Reggie’s motive for lying, but he was acting like he was asking him about the weather.
“Now, in this conversation that you had with him in Hoover, it was you who told him about who was working out there, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He wasn’t taking any notes with any pad or pencil either, was he?”
“No, sir.”
Perhacs went on to ask him if he was married or about to be. I didn’t know what that was about. It didn’t even make sense.
“All right, and that’s all the conversation consisted of, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You left and went about your business?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He walked off?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s all I have.”
And that was that. No mention of the reward money. No catching him in his lies. No showing that he’d had it in for me for years. Nothing but the kind of talk you’d hear on my mama’s porch any old afternoon.
I went back to my cell every night after trial and replayed the day in my head. They had traced all the bullets—they called it chain of custody—from the victims, to the hospital, to the police, to the crime lab. The police testified about arresting me. They didn’t mention the blank piece of paper they wanted me to sign or the fact that they said the gun hadn’t been fired in a long time. Anything true that didn’t make me a killer was left out or just plain lied about. My only hope was our ballistics expert. Perhacs had hired him, and he had done the tests and concluded that the bullets didn’t match the gun. I knew they couldn’t have, but the State’s experts said they had. They were either bad at their job or lying, and it was hard for me to truly wrap my mind around the fact that all these people would just lie to put me to death. What had I done to them? Why me? The questions kept me up all night. I thought back to when I was arrested. I replayed that last afternoon over and over again in my head. Would I have walked to the porch if I had known what was going to happen? Or would I have run? Innocent men don’t run. Except sometimes innocent men need to run. This is true in Alabama and everywhere. If you’re poor and black, sometimes your best and only chance is to run. I imagined running up into the woods that bordered our backyard or down the street toward the highway. But where could I have run to? Everything I was and loved and cared about was in a few miles’ radius of that house. Would they have shot me? Probably. Sometimes I played the movie out in my head—me running and getting shot in the back—my mom crying, Lester showing up, and Sylvia, the neighbors all gathered around my body as I breathe my last breath. There was no good end to the running in my mind, but there were nights when it seemed like dying on the pavement would have been a whole lot easier than proving my innocence in a courtroom. I shouldn’t have had to prove I was innocent—they were supposed to prove I was guilty—but not in this courtroom.
I missed my mom and I missed Lester, and I hated that they had to sit in this courtroom and hear the lies. I had broken up with Sylvia about a year ago—told her to move on because I didn’t know how long I was going to be caught up in this mess. Sylvia was a good girl, and I knew her family wouldn’t want her with me until my name was cleared. I didn’t want her hanging on when I didn’t know myself when this nightmare would end. I had been in this county jail for what felt like forever, and I couldn’t even begin to think about what would come next if I was found guilty. My mind would just shut down when I tried to think on it. I had to believe that a miracle would happen. God never fails. Hadn’t my mom said as much to me since the time I could walk? God never fails. I needed them to catch the guy who had done it. I needed my ballistics expert to get on that stand and prove that there was no way my mama’s old gun could have killed anybody.
He was my only hope.
Wednesday, September 17, 1986
DA HITS TESTIMONY DEATH BULLETS NOT FROM GUN AT HINTON HOUSE
Prosecutors today challenged the testimony of a defense witness who said the bullets used in the 1985 slayings of two restaurant managers and the shooting of a third were not fired from the gun found at Anthony Ray Hinton’s house near Dora.
“He didn’t know what in the world he was talking about,” said Deputy District Attorney Steve Mahon during closing remarks this morning.
Andrew Payne, a retired Army colonel, is a professional witness who will come into court and testify about almost anything, Mahon said.
Payne said he is a consulting engineer and has testified in about 1,000 court cases. Two of those cases involved firearms identification, he said.
Mahon called Payne’s report “the height of irresponsibility.”
The firearms evidence is the main link prosecutors have to the murders.2
Andrew Payne never had a chance.
He did a great job with Perhacs, walking him through all the ways that the bullets didn’t match the gun. He was an expert, although a bit socially awkward and too nerdy for the jury to really relate to, but he did his job. His findings proved I was innocent. For a minute, I felt like a huge weight had lifted off my chest. I turned and sent a quick smile to my mom and Lester. And then it was the State’s turn to cross-examine. Mahon started out easy, nice almost, but it was a setup right from the start.
“It’s your testimony, sir, that you have used comparison microscopes in excess of a thousand times?”
“I would say yes, sir, about a thousand times.”
“And you were familiar with that comparison microscope that Mr. Yates has?”
“Well, not familiar with it. It’s the first time I’d ever used or seen an American Optical.”
“American Optical is a pretty obscure brand?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s an obscure brand but just that I had never operated one before.”
“As a matter of fact, when you were looking at the Smotherman projectile there at the laboratory of the Department of Forensic Sciences, you had to ask Mr. Yates how to cut on the light source for the comparison microscope, did you not?”
“Very possible. In fact, probably did, yes.”
“And as a matter of fact, after he told you how to do it, you reached over to your immediate right and threw the switch on an electric inscribing tool that was on a shelf next to the microscope, did you not?”
“Very possible, yes, sir.”
“You did that, didn’t you?”
It went from bad to worse after that. It turns out he didn’t even know how to use the microscope after he found the light. And then he didn’t know whether or
not there were controls to raise the glass up and down or how to switch the magnification lenses. He tried to ask the State’s experts for help? He dropped the bullets? I looked over at Perhacs—this was his fault. Didn’t he know all this? He looked surprised. Had Payne not told him how it went at the lab?
“Well, let me ask you this: Did you say, ‘I don’t seem to be able to see the bullet. I can see the mirror, and I can see my finger fine’?”
“It’s very possible that I said that. That would be one of the problems you would have when you were trying to locate the higher-power glass, and that’s why I asked for instructions.”
I took a deep breath. My expert was whining and complaining on the stand that the other experts wouldn’t help him. Things only got worse when they showed that some of his slides came straight out of a firearms book they held in their hands. A book that was from 1956. Mahon asked him to refer to page 6 in Payne’s book.
“Page six? Did you say six?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go ahead.”
“Wherein that paragraph at the bottom of the page begins with the title ‘The Charlatans.’” Mahon started reading from the book. “‘Following the invention of photographic and plastic impressions was a heyday of charlatans. Very few judges knew anything about firearms. They had heard rumors of marvelous developments. The world was willing to accept anything said to be specific, almost any…’”
“I think that word’s scientific rather than specific.”
Now Payne was helping the prosecutor read correctly the text that called him a charlatan? I think I even heard someone in the courtroom gasp.
“Yes, sir, scientific. I’m sorry. ‘Almost anyone was permitted to testify in court as an expert. Many had little knowledge but a natural core presence and a great deal of gall. For fifty dollars a day, a lot of money in those days, they would go cheerfully into court and swear to most anything. Would appear of outside calipers, an ordinary hand magnifying glass and a steel gauge and that was the third instrument you took—’”
“I think that’s a steel scale, if you will look at it more carefully.”
“You have your scale you took with you on the twenty-ninth of July with you today, do you not?”
“Yes. Sure.”
“Hold it up for the jury.”
I watched as Payne held up the scale that the prosecutor had just described as one of the hallmarks of a charlatan. Was this going over his head? Did he not see what everyone else in that courtroom saw?
“Sure. You know without trying to be facetious at this particular time, because this is such a serious matter that I hate to use any levity, but mine must be twice as good as the one they’re talking about in the book, because mine is graduated in sixty-fourths.”
Mahon ignored the attempt at humor and just kept reading.
“‘They would cheerfully swear away the life of an innocent man or free, for further depredations against society, the most atrocious criminal.’”
“Sure.”
“Mr. Payne, do you have some problem with your vision?”
“Why, yes.”
“How many eyes do you have?”
“One.”
“That’s all.”
I could do nothing but lay my head down in my arms and cry. I knew at that moment, I was going to be convicted of murder. I was innocent. And my one-eyed expert had just handed the prosecution a guilty verdict.
Nothing mattered anymore.
It took the jury two hours to find me guilty.
It took them forty-five minutes to determine my punishment.
Death.
In that moment, I felt my whole life shatter into a million jagged pieces around me. The world was fractured and broken, and everything good in me broke with it.
Two months later, right before Judge Garrett affirmed and read aloud the official death sentence, I told them what I hoped to be true—God would reopen this case, and if not, they could take my life, but they could never, ever touch my soul.
8
KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT
Dead men tell no tales.
—PROSECUTOR BOB MCGREGOR, CLOSING ARGUMENTS
Birmingham, December 17, 1986
It’s strange when life can move so fast and so slow at the same time. I can’t tell you exactly what happened in the twenty-four-hour gap between when the judge sentenced me to death and when they came for me. I was officially a condemned man, and none of the guards or the other inmates would meet my eye. It was like the death penalty was a contagious disease and everyone thought they could catch it from me. I was still in shock, and I could feel a rage inside me bubbling below the surface. I was now the worst of the worst. A human not fit for this life. A child of God who was condemned to die. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. How did I suddenly become the most dangerous person in the jail?
My cell in county had been home for the past year and a half. The guys in C block who had money seemed to come in and go out a lot faster than the guys like me who were poor. If you had a court-appointed lawyer, like Perhacs, your case always seemed to be delayed, trial dates moved back, hearings postponed. Some guys who came in after me had already been tried and gone up to death row in Holman, and others were given life sentences. Hardly anyone was found innocent. The van for death row came on Mondays and Thursdays, so I figured it would be the following Monday before I left. I wanted to talk to my mom and Lester. I hadn’t been able to use the phone since my sentencing, and I wanted to make sure my mom was okay and tell her I was okay so she didn’t worry.
I wasn’t okay, though. For the thirty-six hours since I left that courtroom, I had been replaying every word of the trial and sentencing in my head. I hadn’t slept, and I hadn’t eaten, and I hadn’t talked to anybody. Perhacs had told the judge and prosecutors that he had gotten a call at his office and at his home from a guy saying he was the real killer, and nobody had tracked that down. We had a discussion about it with the jury out of the room, but nobody cared. Nobody had hunted that man down. McGregor had told the jury that I killed those people because I knew if I got caught, I would get life without parole because of my earlier trouble with the car theft. I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. I wasn’t any of the things he made me out to be, and every time I thought of him, I felt this boiling black hatred start to rise. Why had he picked me to railroad? How was he sleeping tonight? I thought about him high-fiving the other DAs, maybe the judge, maybe my own attorney—“We got another nigger off the street, boys, and sent to die!” Were they all in on it? How did they get people to lie for them? The bailiffs lied. Reggie lied. Clark Hayes, a grocery clerk I didn’t even know, had lied when he said he saw me following Smotherman around Food World. The State’s firearms experts, Higgins and Yates, lied or they just plain got it wrong—there was no way those bullets matched my mom’s gun. I thought about poor Payne—he was destroyed on that stand, humiliated, mocked, and made to look like a liar himself. Around and around and around, the scenes from the trial played out in my head. Why hadn’t Perhacs put up my mom and Lester and my neighbor and the people from my church to tell the jury who I was and what I was about? He just let the jury sentence me to death without any discussion or testimony. I didn’t understand. I hoped Perhacs did better with my appeal—I was innocent—and I know he knew it. The lie detector test proved it. Maybe Lester and my mom could come visit before they came for me, and we could plan what lay ahead. I couldn’t think too much about death row yet—I couldn’t even wrap my brain around what that was going to be like. I wanted to go home. I wanted to cut my mom’s grass and sit with her outside at sunset. I wanted to take her fishing. God, why didn’t I go fishing with her more when she loved it so much? How was she going to get around? Who was going to help her keep up the house? Lester would, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted to do it; it was my job. I missed Sylvia. I missed her sweet kisses and her skin that smelled like spring flowers after the rain. I hadn’t smelled anything good in a year and a half. Only the sweat of
men forced to wear the same clothes for weeks at a time. I wanted to feel the rain on my neck, the sun on my face. I wanted to take a walk at sunrise. I wanted to play baseball and basketball. I wanted to drink sweet tea and eat my mom’s grits, and, Lord, I wanted some of her cobbler. I hadn’t had real food in so long. I wanted my simple life back. I wanted my own bed and a hot shower and a pillow so soft I could sink my face into it. I wanted to feel carpet under my feet, and grass, and anything soft. God, how I missed soft things; sweet-smelling, soft things. I wanted to drive. I wanted to get in my little car and drive to all the places I used to imagine driving to. I wanted to see somewhere other than Alabama. I had never been anywhere more than a few hours away from home. I wanted to see the West Coast, and go to Hawaii, and visit England, and travel to South America. I wanted to get married and have children and show them the same kind of love I had as a kid. I wanted to go back to being able to laugh and joke with people. I wanted my life back. I wanted Praco. I wanted my freedom back. I didn’t want to be locked up like some rabid animal in a cage. I didn’t want to be told what to eat and when to eat it. I didn’t want people watching me shower and watching me shit. I wanted my dignity. I wanted my freedom. I wanted to cut the fucking grass in my own backyard without the police showing up to haul me away. I wanted justice.
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