The following day the tier officer escorted one of the Bloods involved in the altercation to the shower. As he walked by Cox’s cell, Cox speared the inmate between the cell bars, striking him in the right shoulder. The spear was four feet long and sharpened to a point.
This incident earned Cox his seventh trip to the Adjustment Center.
Cox’s previous offenses included fighting on the group exercise yard, conspiracy to assault staff, and inciting other inmates. On two occasions he was found with “an inmate manufactured weapon.” A cell search turned up a pair of dismantled sunglasses, “one of the temple arms . . . melted down exposing the metal within.” Likewise, an X-ray search of his legal material revealed a black plastic shank four inches long and five-eighths of an inch in diameter that was sharpened to a point.
Cox also was sent to the AC for refusing to allow guards to handcuff him to search his cell.
Another citation stemmed from Cox leading the Condemned exercise yards in cadence while chanting: “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, Will Not be Stopped, Machine, Machine.” This was an old George Jackson, Black Guerrilla Family maneuver, prohibited as a “paramilitary exercise.”
Finally, Cox had two counts of “behavior which could lead to violence.”
In the first, he and CW “took an aggressive stance” toward a sergeant in the East Block Condemned Visiting Room. “Cox ripped off his shirt and threw it on the floor and appeared threatening toward staff.”
In the other incident, this time in the AC, Cox told an inmate that if staff “try to strong-arm us we will all go off,” followed by “If they start fucking with you let me know, we will all get down.”
The other inmate replied, “You know that.”
Cox then yelled down the tier: “Is everyone down with that!”
Unidentified inmates replied, “Yeah, we are down!”
Cox then threatened the officer: “You have been jumping on too many kooks. You are going to run into a real motherfucker soon . . . blood will spill around here.”
* * *
When a death row prisoner violates prison policy, correctional officers have only one recourse: the AC. With the dungeon shuttered it is the last stop short of death.
In the Adjustment Center the inmate is granted fewer privileges. It therefore provides what little leverage guards hold over the condemned.
In the AC prisoners are allowed only two to three hours of yard time, three days a week. This is compared to the four to five hours afforded the mainline condemned population. Also, the yards are smaller, individual, and isolated, other than one limited AC “group yard.”
On the East Block yards, inmates can work out on exercise equipment and play handball and basketball. Thus an incentive for condemned inmates to “program” is the continued opportunity to socialize, politick, and exercise communally.
Phone, visits, and other privileges are also restricted in the AC.
* * *
Shortly after noon on July 18, 2000, Cox, Roscoe Tuilaepa, and Noel Jackson huddle in group Yard Three, “the Crip Yard,” in the AC.
Paul “Roscoe” Tuilaepa, a Samoan Crip from Southern California, regarded as one of the strongest and most dangerous men on death row, was convicted in 1986 of multiple murder in a Long Beach nightclub. After committing robbery, on the way out the door, Tuilaepa blasted three victims with a shotgun. Tuilaepa later earned a lifetime stay in the Adjustment Center when he “got loose,” viciously beating several guards, kicking one into a coma. In this one incident Tuilaepa “retired” three correctional officers. Due to inmates like Tuilaepa, who maxed out on the bench press at 590 pounds, weights were removed from California prisons in the 1990s.
Also present with Cox and Tuilaepa was Noel “No No” Jackson, a Rolling Sixty convicted of a contract killing in 1984. Michael Niles, a basketball star at the California State University, Fullerton, who played for a year with the Phoenix Suns, hired Jackson to kill his wife, because she “messed with him when he was playing basketball” and sent his brother to prison. On December 13, 1984, Jackson murdered Sonja Niles outside her home in Riverside County. Niles promised to pay Jackson $5,000 for the hit. He planned to get the money from his wife’s $100,000 life insurance policy. At trial Jackson and Niles each pointed the finger of guilt at the other, claiming he had fired the fatal shotgun blast to the victim’s head. Niles’s jury rejected the death sentence, giving him life without parole. Jackson was sentenced to death.
Cox, Tuilaepa, and Jackson cut a hole in the group yard’s chain- link fence, using haircutting shears. Tuilaepa was the first through the hole. Cox, Jackson, and two others followed, making it completely off the yard and reaching a walkway used by correctional staff to escort handcuffed inmates to and from the AC.
A guard carrying a portable alarm sounded a red alert. Sixty guards from throughout the prison responded.
A second guard grabbed a 37mm gun that fired wooden blocks. He aimed it at the inmates from a nearby building. A lieutenant ran to the back of the unit, while another stood with his stun gun “at the ready.” The prison was ordered locked down, trapping the inmates inside the walkway away from most staff. To the guards’ surprise, the inmates then charged.
As Tuilaepa closed in on a guard, a volley of wooden bullets struck him in the left shoulder blade, knocking him facedown to the ground. The discharge from the gun produced a huge booming sound, leaving a thick haze of blue-gray smoke. Cox and Jackson stumbled over the fallen Tuilaepa. All five inmates were then ordered back through the hole in the fence line and told to crawl on their stomachs to the back of Yard Three, “where they could be secured and observed in a controlled area.”
Cox, identified as the leader of the takeover attempt, refused to submit, yelling and swearing at Correctional Officer Vernell Crittendon. Crittendon ordered Cox to get down on the ground, warning him that the rifles were not going to fire wooden blocks. Facing the muzzles of a dozen trained rifles, Cox finally complied.
Shaken by the event, one officer stated, “This type of thing shouldn’t be happening. The inmates came very, very close to holding one of us hostage. They’re condemned men. They have zero to lose.”
The incident was erroneously reported as an attempted escape. It was in fact a concerted effort to take over the Adjustment Center. Located well within the prison complex, and surrounded by layers of barriers, the AC stands nowhere near an exterior wall. The three inmates sought not to escape from, but to break into, the AC.
Tuilaepa revealed their intentions after the failed attempt: “We just wanted to kill every guard we could get our hands on.”
To Officer Crittendon, the intent was “to create a scene of bloody chaos and mayhem.” The motivation: expression of rage. The desire: to spill as much hated correctional blood as possible.
To Crittendon, Cox was the face of the operation.
When asked what Cox hoped to gain, Crittendon said Cox would have walked from the Adjustment Center covered in blood. Shot and killed he would have been martyred. Wounded he would have been lionized. In either case he would have shown the world, “This is what Rolling Sixties are.” He sought to become “a superhero.”
For all at San Quentin, the attempt came too close to the events of thirty years before.
* * *
The date is August 21, 1971. George Jackson, Black Panther and founder of the Black Guerrilla Family, pulls a gun and begins taking hostages in the Adjustment Center. At gunpoint, Jackson seizes cell keys from a guard and begins unlocking doors and releasing inmates.
Three guards and two white inmates have their throats slashed by razor blades inserted in toothbrushes. Jackson flees the Adjustment Center and runs into the main courtyard within the prison. From thirteen towers, thirteen gunners put Jackson in their sights. He is killed with a shot to the neck.
For correctional staff, the courtyard where George Jackson died is a reminder of the darkest day in San Quentin history. On-site, a memorial stands to the guards killed in the line of duty.
> For black militants the courtyard is a shrine, the site of a martyr’s death.
* * *
Tiequon Cox’s takeover attempt of the Adjustment Center earned him an indefinite stay within its walls. It also led to changes within the AC: no more communal exercise yards, only individual pens or “dog walks,” where inmates walk laps alone, one hour per day.
Following the takeover attempt, Tiequon Cox was considered the most dangerous man on death row.
37
THE WILDERNESS
IT IS EARLY in the new millennium. I am sixty years old, and have hit my low point. My life is dark. I exist only in the wilderness.
I am directionless and unable to find any meaning in an absurd world. I have hit the kind of nihilistic despair I see so often in the lost youth of our inner-city streets.
I am single. My marriage ended in divorce due to neglect. I trust no one, my family least of all. I am no longer a star, just an outcast. God is probably out there somewhere, but not here for me. This is oblivion.
Nothing makes sense. For no particular reason I am always on the move, a nomad. I feel a victim of chance, no longer master, controlled by external events.
What I feared for a decade has now become reality. I find nothing to live for. At least after the crimes, as I hunted, I had a mission. At least during the trials there was a goal. Again, now what?
An ex-star without an income, my NFL money is almost gone. Like so many former athletes I chase new dreams, get-rich-quick schemes, overnight moneymakers sure to throw me back into the good life. Always they fall short, people wanting to use my name, or thinking I’m loaded, seek to enlist me into their new “can’t fail” enterprise.
For the past several months I crisscrossed the country by car. For a while I tried to dull the pain and kill the time by playing endless rounds of golf. There was even a period of time when a friend at a golf course let me sleep in the maintenance shed on the grounds. Now golf has become too expensive, and boring. Even on the course I couldn’t leave myself behind. The damn guilty mind followed me wherever I went, all the time chattering, blaming, refusing to let me live. Ever more I find myself spending nights in my car. I am turning into a real transient, golden boy gone to rot, Kermit Alexander—hobo.
Not a nomad in a romantic or freewheeling sense, for my mind is constrained. I operate in a narrow mental prison that confines my thoughts to guilt, suffering, and self-pity. Not a wandering free spirit—a shackled hobo.
As I trudge about the country, I catch the flu. Sleeping little and living the homeless lifestyle, the flu turns wicked, then into pneumonia. My head feels as heavy as an anvil. All I want to do is sleep.
I end up in Oklahoma. Another new opportunity. It feels just like the last new opportunities and the old new opportunities before that. Again, the venture involves a Thoroughbred horse racing syndicate. Why not? It never worked before. It’s bound to this time.
I treat myself to a motel room. Sick, coughing, unfocused, and clouded, I attend meetings. I don’t really understand the venture, other than that it sounds far too good to be true. Another bust. More time and money wasted. Debt looms.
Now I am really wallowing in it. And I know it. It’s pathetic, and I can’t stop it.
How have I come to this? I truly have nothing, and nothing helps. No diversions pick me up—can’t concentrate to read, TV is boring and depressing, no job to throw myself into. Booze just makes me tired, can’t even get a buzz on. No life, no family, no direction, no money, bad health, bad attitude. Bad.
I recently had a nice girlfriend, a great girlfriend, long term, steady, but I messed that up, sabotaged it really, wouldn’t ever let her get close, drove her off. Boy it could have been good, was good, and damned if I didn’t twist her mind and push her away. Just never could let down the guard and open the gate. In fact, the closer we got, the more I messed things up, caused a rift, must have done it on purpose, to punish myself, an irrational way of dealing with guilt, worthlessness. Finally, she said, “Enough.” Moved out, moved on.
I let my family down, failed to intervene, failed to show up, failed to protect. Failed. So why do I deserve a family? Why do I deserve to be happy?
Well, I’d succeeded, I’d stripped myself of everything meaningful, and made myself miserable. Well done. Everything I had ever wanted to be, I was not. Every way I had always wished to view myself, I could not. Guilt, like the flu, had developed into a kind of chronic mental pneumonia. This is what I’ve earned. This is what I deserve.
How did anyone ever shed guilt? And such layered guilt. I saw the half-finished coffee cup, the kettle, with the burned beans, young Tiequon on the football field. My sisters. My family. My first wife. My girlfriend. All ruined. I was cursed.
As I lie there on that bed in that Oklahoma motel room, I simply fester. It is early evening and the sun has set. I cannot motivate myself to get up and turn on a light. Light? I deserve darkness. I don’t move.
I’d heard people say it before: “I was so depressed I just could not get out of bed.” I always thought, how weak, sure you can, just do it. Just get up. Easier said . . .
Wind whips the drapes. A passing truck’s lights flicker the room. The wind dies, the drapes hang still. The darkness returns.
This is my fate, to lie sick in a transient ball of self-pity in a roadside motel in the middle of the prairie. I deserve it all. The fever, the bronchial cough, the delirium, they suit me.
I drift off into a fitful fever-ridden sleep, tormented by voices snaking in and out of my head, weird words try to form, some memory of a condition I had seen in the paper, sick people unable to experience pleasure, autopilot automatons, unable to engage in healthy relationships, what was it, anaconda, anatomical, no that wasn’t it, the word won’t form, but keeps looping. Then biblical verses, words, phrases, taunts of wandering, wilderness, loss: “whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save his soul from death,” “He pours contempt on princes, and causes them to wander in the wilderness,” “my sheep wandered through all the mountains,” “and your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years,” “forsaken.” “Lost in the woods of error.”
Overheated under the covers, I squirm, plead through the waters of sleep for the silence of peace, for the voices to quell. Hot. It feels like dozens of people share the room, hide in its corners, shout from its shadows. They are with me, of me, mock me: Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers, Old Testament, Old School, the Old South. I’m back in the South, Jim Crow, white hoods, dumped in the swamp, disappeared in the bayou, “some wandered in the wilderness,” “some wandered in desert wastes.” Hot, I try again to surface. Drowning. My father, fighting in the South Seas. A cup of coffee, burned beans, a frying pan upon her chest, the flashing lights, the gurneys, the morgue. “Some wandered in a solitary way.” I drive. I drive. I drive. “So drive.” I wander. I drive in a tunnel, a tunnel rat, a tunnel of blood, an artery, from node to infected node, 126 West Fifty-Ninth, to the police station, the morgue, UCLA, LAX, Daphine’s, gray, hot, sun, cars. I cannot rest, I cannot sleep. I cannot wake. They won’t stop, they won’t shut up. “Some wandered in desolate wilderness.” Why didn’t he move her, why didn’t he show up, why didn’t he help that kid? Why didn’t he? Why didn’t he? Why didn’t he? More voices, more judgment, more Old Testament. “Not worthy,” “Faint and weary,” “Wretched.” “I need to go to the hospital.” A dark closet, a stab of light, he peers out. “There’s nothing worse than an empty house.” “Eternal rest grant unto them.” “I wasn’t responsible, Uncle Kermit. I wasn’t responsible.” “Stop it, Ivan!” I yell, flailing beneath wet, sweat-soaked sheets. “Stop it, Ivan.” “Fled into the wilderness,” “in captivity,” “dreary.” A helicopter, a ghetto bird, an M-1 carbine, a fever, a frenzy, the train off the tracks, never arrives, a broken dream, a dream out of reach, “Why would they mess Mom up?” Mess, mess, mess, “an uninhabited, and barren desert.” Mess, mess, mess. “Do you know who that is? Huh? Who that is? Huh? That’s
that kid that was always in trouble, now look what he’s done.” “A serpent in the wilderness.” “Some wandered in desert wastelands.” Forgotten by forty, a stray at sixty, the prairie, the plains, a nomad, a vagabond. “Lost in the woods of error.” The wind rattles the blinds, the wind beats against the motel, a truck rumbles past, shakes the room, lights, angles, sharp lines cut the walls and ceiling, then back to black. “Spent with hunger and thirst, as well as by the fatigues of the journey.” “I just blew the bitch’s head off.” “Lost,” “alone.” Blood on his hands, the blood will flow, a superhero. “Bitch’s head off.” “So drive. So drive.” “My sister can finally rest.” I try to wake, I try to sleep. I sleep by the graves. “Alone in the wilderness, fled into the wilderness.” “Better to reign in Hell,” “faint and weary,” “wretched.”
* * *
“Kermit,” a different voice says. It is familiar, but not in a good way. It is not the good, fun, reassuring Her. It is familiar. It is the scolding, disappointed, commanding Her. It is righteous and sure. Unlike the fever chorus, I know this one well.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. This is embarrassing.”
I am disoriented, medicated, and delusional. I cannot make out the source of the voice. But I know it well.
“This is really pathetic. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
I cannot move. I lie frozen on the motel bed. The feeling is claustrophobic. I’m underwater, struggling for the surface.
“Get back to who you are,” the voice demands: “Protect. Provide. Stop wallowing in your own self-pity.”
“Madee!” I cry out.
“If you don’t change your ways right now,” her voice continues, “you won’t last another year.”
“Madee!”
“You weren’t raised to quit. Die or get on with it.”
The Valley of the Shadow of Death Page 26