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MY HOUSE

Personal accounts of life on Texas’ Death Row
By

The following extracts from the forthcoming book, Death Row, are not intended as an argument for or against capital punishment. Rather, they offer a unique account of the realities of life on Texas’ Death Row given by the Row’s current inmates. Despite the increase in “prison literature” in recent years, little has been written about the men and women who are doing the hardest of hard time: the death sentence. In preparation for their book, authors Jackson and Christian spent countless hours with 26 of the state’s 105 Death Row inmates, who described their lives at the Texas Department of Corrections’ Ellis Unit near Huntsville. The prisoners’ statements and photographs will appear anonymously in the book, as they do in these pages; understandably, the inmates felt publication of their names might jeopardize pending appeals in their court cases. The result is as unvarnished a version of prison life as has ever been published. The inmates speak freely on every aspect of their lives, from their “houses, ” or individual cells, to their families and the death penalty. (Extracts from Death Row, by Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian, to be published by Beacon Press in June. )



ADJUSTING

They took me in that gate at Diagnostic and wished me luck. The sheriff had done me real dirty, but he still wished me luck. He didn’t care, I wasn’t from his county, he didn’t know my family or nothing, 1 was from out of state, a little 24-year-old guy.

They took me in there and took the handcuffs and belt off. I stood there in tennis shoes, a Levi jacket, Levi shirt and Levi pants. It was really a jacket, but I was using it as a shirt. I didn’t know what I could keep. 1 only had money with me. I didn’t have no watch, no rings, nothing that if it was taken from me I would really miss. I let everything else go back with my family.

They had me strip. I was expecting that. They never done it to me in the county jail, but they said strip and there was men all over the place, inmates and guards and everything. I stripped.

Then they go through the search routine. Then they took me over and cut all my hair off. I didn’t mind that. They were trying to egg me on to find out if I was a troublemaker or not. Then they sent me into the shower, which was right there where the haircut was taken, still completely naked and everybody all over the place, but all of them were wearing clothes. I soaked down real good and I came out and they sprayed me with something like DDT or some bug spray in case 1 had anything on me, some parasite or amoeba or pet spider I was trying to smuggle in. They tried to kill everything. Hair, arms, everyplace.

They had me put on some overalls and took me upstairs where I was fingerprinted and photographed. I did everything they told me to do – they were in uniforms and I was the inmate. I had already set my mind to that: I wasn’t going to cause no trouble. Never have been one to cause trouble.

So they found out who I was and they cussed me a little bit. It was because I was supposed to have killed that officer. I told them, “I didn’t do it. ” I still say I didn’t do it, and I will always. “You’re saying this because you don’t know, ” I said. “You weren’t there. I was there and even I don’t know what happened. I can’t tell you exactly what happened, so I don’t hold it against you. You say what you think. You might change your mind later on. “

They shackled me and handcuffed me with a chain around my waist and then loaded me in a white van. I thought I was going to be in the Diagnostic Center. I had been told by my lawyer that I was going to be in the Diagnostic Center for a bunch of physical tests. He lied to me. He said, “You’ll be there for a bunch of tests and then you will be taken someplace else. ” 1 didn’t know where. He said I’d have those tests and I would be able to go to the movies, the gym, to be in population. He lied to me all the way down the line.

He had two other men on Death Row. He knew. He had been here to see them, he had been told by them what happens when you come in, but he lied to me. And he lied to my parents all the way down the line.

1 tried to get him fired afterwards, but the judge would not dismiss him and put another lawyer on my appeal.

I was loaded on that van and I was already shook and upset about what had happened to me the day before. It was happening so fast. They had already processed me through, fingerprinted me again, loaded me in that van. I said, “Where are you taking me? I thought I was going to be here. “

They said, “Oh, no. You’re going to Ellis.”

I had never heard of Ellis before. Not from this small, county jail, not from being from Texas. I knew nothing.

So we drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and they finally got me out here. And they brought me in that back gate and I was looking around and you know what I realized? It clicked, I’d seen it before.

I worked for a while as a projectionist and I’ve run many a movie and 1 watched movies. 1 recognized this as from a movie, The Getaway. This is the same visiting room. It clicked on me: “I recognize this.”

They brought me in that back gate and I was met by a captain. Captain Brosher. He’s a pretty good captain. I’ve talked to him. Matter of fact, he came down once about some life insurance my mother had on me before this happened. If I don’t keep it, I’ll lose it, and even if I get out of here, who’s going to give me life insurance again? So we have to keep it. I had to sign some papers on it and they sent it to be certified and I said to him, “Isn’t this funny? Here I am on Death Row getting life insurance. ” He kind of snickered.

The captain brought me in here with two other guards. They knew what I was charged with and they had the papers and knew I was coming. They brought me through the gate, through the washroom, and brought me down in those overalls. They said, “Keep walking, keep going. “

I said, “1 don’t even know where I’m going. “

They said, “Turn right, turn left. ” They were trying to provoke me to see if I was bad. It’s a system they go through to see how easily provoked the person is, if the person is a hothead. They can’t really handle that kind of person with kid gloves, though they have to try and not actually be physical with them. It was the inmate that was physical with me later. They want to find out if you will explode or take a swing at them, they want to know how dangerous you are.

I knew this, so I had to play along. I’m not easily provoked anyway.

They brought me to Death Row and turned me over to the guard that was inside. The captain stayed, a guard stayed and there was three inmates. They said, “Strip.”Checked me again for anything on me. “Take your overalls off. In the shower. ” 1 went into the shower and they said, “Wash good. “

One of them opened the door when I was showering. I just about went through the wall. A big old black opened the door and looked at me and he says, “Wash your head and all your parts real good ’cause you got that stuff on you and if you don’t, it’s going to burn you. ” He was decent to me, at least about that, because I didn’t know. I was scrubbing as best 1 could.

Then they said, “Come out. ” I put on a pair of shorts, men’s regular boxer shorts, and they took me upstairs to three-row.

I could see men and they were watching me to see what I looked like. When I first came here there was only a little bit over 30 Death Row men. They have grown since I’ve been here. I’m almost considered an old-timer now.

They put me in that cell. I walked in part of the way and turned around by my toilet and was looking and an inmate walked in and looked at me and said, “Now we’re not going to tolerate no screwing up. “

I says, “Yes, sir. “

He didn’t know how to react to that. So he reared back with his right hand. I just said, “Well, here it comes. ” I stood there and 1 was waiting for something to the stomach also, but it was just a slap in the face. It did irritate me and it was stinging. But I had to freeze my face so I wouldn’t squint an evil, mean look at him. My eyes were almost watering.

I wanted to, you know. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, but more damned if you do. They were all standing outside that door looking at me.

It was two inmates running Death Row then. They were running it. They said what came, what went, what went on. That’s how it was when I first came here. Cecil and Guinea.

Okay. I didn’t do nothing. 1 just stood there.

Cecil was hated so bad he could not live in population. He had to stay on Death Row or sleep where he could be locked away and nobody could get to him to throw hot water or something on him. He was that hated. He had that bad a reputation. A snitch and all this. He was a notorious backstabber.

It’s still bad here, but back then they had blackjacks, they had sticks. They beat up one man and scalded another with hot water. They took food away from others. They had their special pets. Someone who would order them a bunch of commissary to make sure they got extra food off the tray, they’d put on TV what that person wanted to watch. That’s the way it was. It’s not that way now.



There was a pretty bloody killer in Texas with the same name as me on Death Row. But that’s been 15 years ago. Anyway, they put ail them chains, leg irons, belly chain, handcuffs on. They brought me over here to the back door. They wouldn’t even let me help them take the chains off, like from around my middle, they wouldn’t let me take it out of the belt loops. They made me stand still.

They had a boss get a shotgun out of the gun tower before they even opened the van. He gets a shotgun out and there’s a warden and another boss and another boss. You’ve seen these Dodge vans that they drive around here. There’s about that much chain between my ankles – how am I going to step down out? And I ain’t wearing shoes. I had to jump and make sure I didn’t take two steps. I was scared. Why did they need that shotgun? They could have beat me up. I couldn’t fight back.

I jumped down out of there and they took all of this stuff off of me. Handcuffed me and brought me in. First thing the warden says is, “You ever been in prison before, boy?”

I said, “No.”

“That’s no, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

And he said, “You’re on the Ellis Unit now, boy!” Goddamn, I got in a heap of trouble. I couldn’t keep from laughing. I’ve been in trouble ever since. He sounded so much like Kenny Price: “You’re in a heap of trouble. You’re on the Ellis Unit now, boy!”

The first day I come out to recreation, I was scared. Didn’t know what to expect. Didn’t know anybody on Death Row except one guy and he was a cop before he come to Death Row. I was going to play like I didn’t even know him.

Come out to recreate and everybody’s just like me: they’re scared of the new guy ’cause they don’t know what he’s going to be.

Pretty soon, I was just one of them. And then I went back to my cell and thought of it: I’m one of them, and what are they?



The biggest fear is when you walk onto this place. I’ve seen one man walk out there and he stood right there and he broke down and cried. I’ve seen more come in here and live three days and start praying. I’ve seen them come in here and cuss the day they was born because of fear. I’ve seen grown men come in here and get down and pray like kids. And cry.



It’s the type of fright you can’t understand because here you take a person, he’s been told he’s going to have to die, and it’s entirely different from the person who’s been on the street and he gets hit by a car, because he didn’t know that was going to happen. Here, you are told in advance you’re going to die.

And every night you lay awake. You think about it. You say, “Wow, will it really happen?” And you say, “What will I do? How will I react when the time comes? Will I go crazy? Just how will I react?”

I’ve tried to comprehend this, but it would take more than the human mind to comprehend it, because 1 can’t. It’s scary to be told you’re going to die and you don’t know when and you don’t know how.

I let the pressure build up on me so strong – I’ve always considered myself a strong person, but I let it build up so strong on me that I tried to end my life. 1 cut my wrists. I was discovered about 20 minutes later and I was put downstairs in 2 cell, where they kept an eye on me.

And as ridiculous as it may sound, instead of trying to help me, I was placed on what they call restriction. They took my privilege to go downstairs to a little room with a few other inmates and talk and smoke cigarettes. They took that privilege and said that I had to be locked down. Locked down means that I can’t leave this cell unless it’s for a shower, and the shower is about 10 feet to the right here. So I don’t never leave this cell. I’m locked down 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

When you come down here, they take your pride and your dignity, but then once they get you down here they take everything. And that’s physically and that’s mentally. They break you down and they break you where you don’t know anything.

And that’s the way they like it.



I’ve been here two and a half years. I came here in 1976.

They brought me in and put me up there and read me my rights and told me what to do and what not to do and what I should expect and what i shouldn’t expect. In other words, they put the fear of the Lord into me. But they weren’t going to tell us what we could do and what we couldn’t do that they liked or disliked.

We were totally in the dark, so the man next to you had to kind of become your brother no matter what color he was, to help you to understand what was going on around here – when you were going to recreate, when you were going to eat, when you were going to shower, when you could buy your commissary and get things you need. You didn’t even know when the mail went out or how it came in, or what you could seal or what you could open, what you could keep in here and what you couldn’t keep.

We were totally in the dark. I have to keep saying that because it was just like coming into a whole new world. What we might have known out there in the free world and what was happening to us before we were even arrested, before we were charged with something, it’s a totally different atmosphere here where murdering and killing goes on all the time, or plotting or even drugs and things that you wouldn’t want to expect or look for in jail or prison.



Paul hasn’t been here that long. He has cussed officials and he’s gotten onto them about some things. I’d call him over and I’d say, “Paul, you’ve got to go at this from a different angle because you’re just being hard-nosed at them. “

At one time, they cut off his showers completely because he was being so hard-nosed about something. He cussed somebody out. I said, “Paul, you’re just hurting yourself. They can say you can’t shower and by the time you get them to reverse that, you’ve been sitting there stinking for a long time. “

He did. He sat there for over a week before they’d let him shower. They can do those things to you. And by the time they say, “Well, we didn’t realize we were doing that, ” they’ve already messed him around. They can play mind games. I called Paul over and 1 said, “Paul, 1 hate to lecture you, but you got to see what’s going on around here. They’re too big. You’re like one ant trying to stop a railroad train speeding down the track. “



They want you to wear your hair something like a marine would wear in boot camp, you know. I don’t understand it. The white guys, they really do their hair bad. They skim it up the back of the neck, just a little on top in the front. It looks terrible. What puzzles me about that is how they love one guy with long hair and hate the next one ’cause he wear the same long hair. They go to church on Sundays and they worship this picture of Jesus and they portray him with the beard and the long hair coming halfway down the back. They love this image. But they hate somebody else like that. They usually tell you, “Well, he’s the son of God. ” Well, ain’t we all?



One man found a big old beetle in his greens one day. He sent the whole tray back and they brought him another one. Some would eat it or they’d eat around that beetle. Some people like it. They really do like the way they’re living now. They don’t have to work. They’re being fed. They’re being clothed. They watch TV. They get their mail. Their family is sending them money. So they are happy. It is hard to believe, but there are men like that. They are living better now than they did in the free world. And some of them are completely turned off to sex and they don’t care, it doesn’t faze them at all.



Instead of cutting little tray holes in the bars, where you can slide the tray through, they’ll slide the trays on the floor. It’s like you’re feeding a dog. You set his food on the floor. Those doors on the bottom are extremely filthy. Sometimes they might have rolls or something piled up on the tray and when you slide the tray, the rolls fall off. They get stuck under the door. You tell the floor boys, the ones that serve us, “Man, the rolls fell on the floor. I need some rolls.”

“Catch me later, man, I’m busy right now. ” Or “I ain’t got no time. Tell the boss.”

Some guys sit back and accept it and other guys complain about it. They rattle the bars and stuff like that. Kick up sand. 1 do it. I don’t never just sit back and take it.



I’ve changed so much as far as physical appearance. I’ve lost so much weight in my face. My face, it looks unreal. I look in the mirror and I see a face that’s not mine. I say, “Where did that come from? Is that mine?” And it is mine, but 1 don’t recognize it. I don’t recognize it because of the changes it’s went through.



Death Row. You ain’t gonna find no ease on Death Row whatsoever.

A man can walk by my cell any time of the night and 1 can hear him when he comes and 1 can hear him when he goes by. I never miss it.

You might have noticed my pillow at the far end of the bunk there. 1 got a reason for it. Because I don’t trust no one on these walkways. And all the old hands that’s here, you’ve probably seen them sleeping at the other end. too. ’Cause they’ve heard men scream out at night, they’ve heard ’em ” Ahhhh. ” Hear ’em gagging and choking for breath.

Every bit of that is fear, man, it works on you every way.



My main worry is that I’m going to come out of here and be the kind of people that I’ve met in the county jail, the kind of people who steal their mama’s TV set, sell it for a jug of wine. I don’t want to be that kind of person. But that’s the kind of person that this place breeds. That’s my biggest fear of being in the penitentiary. This Death Row thing or some man threatening to kill me, that don’t scare me, ’cause that’s all happened before. But being the kind of person that would hurt my family, that scares me.



It might sound weird to you, coming from a dude who’s setting on Death Row. But actually, believe it or not I am actually into nonviolence. Believe it or not. It’s really hard to accept.

1 have told some people that. “Oh, really?” Yeah.

See, I’m on Death Row. I have a murder-robbery case, shot a dude in a robbery. Well, okay. Any time you kill anybody, it doesn’t sound good, and it most definitely doesn’t sound nonviolent.

Matter of fact, it sounds downright stupid.

FAMILY AFFAIRS

I hate Sunday. I hate Sunday so bad. I hate it because you can’t get no letter. The most important thing to anybody down on Death Row is the letters. It’s a rarity to some folks. When I don’t get some mail, I immediately get upset. I really get upset. I withdraw into my Bible. I say, “You done a job on me, Lord. Here I am, I’m trying, and you done me like this. ” Then when I get a letter, it will make it all better. It’ll come just in time, every time, on time, all the time, just when I need it. I never have a whole bunch of it. But I always have exactly as much as I’m going to need.



1 came here in November of last year. What was wearing me and hurt my heart was my mom. I thought all kinds of bad things about her – that she would have a nervous breakdown or maybe she’d just give up.

She stayed away for about three weeks before she came down here to see me. When she came, she had bags under her eyes. She was looking bad and it just killed my heart. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to take it.

I told her, 1 said, “Streak, you’re going to have to get a hold of yourself because you’re really in bad shape. Don’t you see how I’m doing here? I’m smiling. These people ain’t going to do nothing. They ain’t killed nobody in a long time.”

She was worried, real worried, and that was my worry: how she was taking it all.

Since then, I had other things hit me. My oldest daughter got pregnant and she ain’t married. She’s only 16. And my son got throwed out of school.

But I look through on the other side and there’s still sunshine on the other side. It just can’t be bad. 1 keep getting richer and richer.



My dad, he don’t come over here and see me. He sent $1000 to them state-appointed lawyers and told them to help me where I needed it. He’s never wrote me a letter since I’ve been here. I have never seen him in eight and a half years.

The last words that my dad said to me was, “You are the sorriest excuse of a man that I have ever seen and I should have pulled your head off when your mammy had you.”

I said, “Dad, I sure hate you think that.”

I turned and walked out. I had just gotten out of jail from a six-month term for a DWI. That’s the last words my dad ever told me personally. I called him up while I was in Wyoming and I had been doing dope and I was sick. I had a wreck. I called him up for $50. I really didn’t want the $50, I just wanted him to tell me hello and I love you, I need you, or something. And I said, “Dad, could you send me $50?”

He said, “Son, it wouldn’t hurt me a bit to send you that money. I’ve got loads of it. But it wouldn’t do you a damn bit of good. “And he hung up.

I’ve had him go as high as three weeks at a time when I worked for him and seen him every day and he never told me hello. The people that were working out there with me – I was just working as a common laborer too – they found out one day that he was my dad and they said, “I don’t believe it. 1 couldn’t never believe he was your daddy. I wouldn’t even thought the man knowed you the way he acted. He’s really your daddy?”

1 said, “He sure is. “

1 feel sorry because I know how his heart’s hurting now.

You know, I hated that man for years. I hated him and 1 hated him enough that I even planned to kill him if I had time to do it. I really did. 1 had it in my mind. I said, “1 wish I could. ” I wished I could just kill him.

He whipped me – the last time he whipped me, I was 17 years old and I told him, “I hope you don’t never do that no more. ” ’Cause I wasn’t going to take no more of it. I had my mind made up.



The only families that stick with a person is trusty, dedicated Christian people. I mean people that are Christians. The rest of them will drift.

I’ve got a sister 1 haven’t heard from in four years. That’s right. To today, I’m still trying to run her down. 1 know where she’s at, and people saw her, but she won’t write to me. She done washed her hands.

The day my mother died, that’s the day she left. My mother died in November of’74, right after I got here. These people wouldn’t let me go to her funeral – that’s something you don’t do.



There’s always the stigma. The person on the outside, unless it was a relationship that was very intimate, a long-time relationship – the casual relationship, there’s going to be a doubt there. They’re not going to know in their own mind and they won’t be able to identify with you in the same way that they were. There will always be the doubt: Is he or is he not a murderer?

There are a lot of families that accept it. But you have to look at it from the family’s viewpoint. They can either accept it or they can reject it. If they reject it, they lose a family member.



The death penalty don’t scare me because I don’t think they’re going to kill me. And if they did, I think I would go to a better place than this. I’m not worried about myself.

But when my mother comes down here and I see her, 1 know she wants to cry ’cause she’s scared to death of this place. My dad, he’s scared. Boy, that’s the only part that makes Death Row hard on me.

Of course, I get depressed. My girlfriend got married and moved to Wisconsin and I didn’t even know. I had to get it from the grapevine. I get depressed about things like that. My sister’s having a kid, getting married and all that.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, 1 always know there’s going to be a tomorrow when I’m out there. Even if they make me do 15 years down here, I think there’ll be a tomorrow out there somewhere.

But the way I’ve been acting, when I get depressed I write home. It shows in my letters and 1 hurt a lot of feelings and I bring them down to being as depressed as me. And that’s gonna make it hard for them to stand close by me through all of this, especially now that they don’t know how long it’s going to be.

Every year, my mother and my sisters write me better letters. I mean letters like they miss me. I think I get better in their eyes or in their memories every year that I’m down here. I write my sisters poems for their birthday presents. I don’t guess their boyfriends ever done it. They sure do go hog wild with the thank you’s and all.

Lots of people live on fantasies, live on memories. I just keep looking for tomorrow. Every Wednesday the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals releases their decision for the week. That’s what my mother waits for. Every Wednesday. So every Friday or Saturday I get a letter, “Well, they didn’t say nothing this week. Maybe next week. ” She’s trying to build my hopes up, and then I know she’s just about had all she can take, waiting, ’cause everybody said they were going to rule within two months, three months at most.



The thing that bothers me most is my family. They’re the ones that’s really hurt by me being here. I’ve been through two trials. It really tears them up. It hurts them. I can handle it better than they can. They’re beginning to be able to cope with it a little better, but they don’t understand the legal process. When you say, “death penalty, ” they think it’s coming. This hurts me more than having the death penalty, to know that my family is suffering.

We’re all from Houston, so it’s kind of close by, and it’s unbelievable how great they have been. After all the hurt that I’ve caused them. It kind of renews your faith.

I don’t get a lot of visits because most of my family works. It’s hard for them to take off. That doesn’t bother me ’cause I know they’d be here if they could. Usually, during the holidays they come. But they keep me with the mails. The last seven days in a row, I’ve had mail every day. It’s kind of unusual to get mail every day.

I have a guy lives next door, last night he said, “How come you’re getting so much? Give me some of it. “



I’m used to eating when I get ready. I have little kids, two kids that I’d do anything in the world for. I miss them more than I miss anything. They just turned 3 and 4 in October. What is it now, April?

I wouldn’t want them to know where I’m at. Have them say, “Where’s dad?” and their mama say, “He on Death Row. “

It’s something I’m not used to even though I’ve been here before. I don’t like the bars. I would just like to hold my kids. My real mother’s dead, but my stepmother, I’d like to hold her. It’s something that I guess comes natural, you know. But we can’t do that, so I don’t see any reason for them to come down here. It’s not going to hurt me and I feel that it would hurt them.



The single worst part, I think, would be just being away from the family. Not being able to watch the kids grow up. That’s something that I believe every man and woman would like to share, that his children is growing up. That’s something special. 1 mean the little things, like the baby’s first step, his first day in school or something like that.

Sure, the old lady writes, she tells me, “Robert did this today. ” Well, that’s great, but I really can’t truly appreciate it because I’m not there able to see it. And it makes a difference.

I sit back sometimes and say, “Six years from now, if I’m still here, my oldest child will be graduating from high school, and I won’t be able to be there. “

It’s probably all a mental thing, but you have this feeling that all your children, they’re growing away from you. In the process of growing up, they’re growing away from you. I mean, they know you exist, but when you’re not there, they can’t feel the influence a father would have over a child. The little everyday things that they might ask you. You’re not there for that, so they have to turn somewhere else and ask this question. And that really hurts you.



I didn’t give a damn. I didn’t think I was good or bad, I didn’t have nothing in my mind about that. Then 1 got to thinking about it down here. Well, I’ve done this and that’s bad, and I’ve done that and that’s good. The bad outweighs the good. There ain’t no hope. I died over here, I done give it up.

If my daughter hadn’t a wrote me that letter and told me, “Daddy, we all love you and we need you, ” I wouldn’t be here now. I know I wouldn’t. I would have hung it up. I’d a made somebody kill me. I wouldn’t have done it myself. I’d a made somebody.

I’d have jumped on him and I’d a forced him to do it. If I hadn’t got that letter. It said, “Daddy, I love you and I miss you and we know you’re gonna get out. “

Hell, I’m on Death Row. They done told me I’m gonna die. But you know what? They just give me hope. 1 said, “I can’t leave them. I can’t. ” And I couldn’t. I didn’t have no chance anyway, it was stupid for me to think there was, but that’s the only thing it was. Hope.

A SAMPLE DAY FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1979

At 4:05 a.m., Hayter is in front of my cell, collecting sheets. I didn’t have to get up, the general procedure being to put your bedclothes in the bars before turning in on Thursday night. Linen is picked up every Friday morning.

I get up to enjoy the rejuvenating quiet and stillness. I give Hayter my glass for hot water, dress and wash up, put my linen out, then make a glass of coffee. After sitting and sipping for a moment, I reach for a pen and paper. It’s time to work, write, read, before population wakes up. Then banging of doors, water running and yelling starts: at about 4: 45. By then I’ll be ready, willing and able to endure another day.

The radios of the cells behind and around me blast on – one rock, one country, one Spanish with static! My meditation is shattered. It’s 5: 50. I do some Kinhin (walking meditation) and some serious thinking: Who’ll understand this? Will this end… Pots and pans and metal pitchers begin clanging downstairs. The chow wagon is here: 6: 25 a. m. Coffee comes first, a one-armed floor-boy carrying three pitchers! I ask about the milk. “No milk this moan’n. ” The spoons come, are placed in the bars. Then the trays: oatmeal with sugar, pork gravy, three pancakes, syrup, two rolls and butter: virtually the same meal as four and a half years ago. I pass on it and munch several peanut butter cookies. Those who do take a tray toss them out quickly. A floor-boy comes for them, using a wet towel pushed with a dust broom to “clean” the floor. The spoons are picked up.

For a while it is quiet, the radios tuned somewhat, everybody back in bed. Then doors began to slam open. Shower time: 6: 55.

Group four recreates first, so they shower first on three-row. I live on three-row too, but am in the third recreation group. We don’t recreate today, or Saturday or Sunday, so we shower whenever they get to us. No hurry. We recreate Monday at 1: 30p. m., hopefully. A long wait before going out of here again. The thought depresses. I grab a book, later a pen and paper.

Not quite finished showering – 14 of them showered. Group four goes out to recreate at 8: 45, late. Sixteen men in their group, 13 in my group. Only three men left on three-row now: two are asleep. I sit alone.

The sheets come at 9: 30. So do two guards to shake down group four cells while they’re recreating.

I’m immersed from time to time in my actions. Surfacing a moment ago, 1 realized there’s a tremendous lag outside of actions. From breakfast till now, I’ve been for the most part absorbed. Still there’s nothing to do, still I’m nowhere, still it’s not chow time – action time! I wonder, if from 7 a. m. to 10: 40 a. m. is eternity, what is a life sentence?

No one seems to know, no one seems to care.

Turn the television down! (I’m yelling!) Inevitably, they’re on: 10: 45. And they won’t gooff before 1:30 Saturday morning. I have at least 14 hours of it.

They’re arch-enemies: should be in the dayroom like they are on every other wing except here and 21, not a mere 10 feet from one’s bed, blasting, whether or not one cares for it. And I don’t care for them other than for news, sports and documentaries. Certainly not for a morning of game shows and an afternoon of soap operas.

Nonetheless, we have TV and lunch, the chow wagon arriving at 11 a. m. The tea comes first, then the spoons. When they come, I note the trays: chili and rice, beans and sauerkraut, cake, roll and cornbread. Again I pass.

Few others do, however. The recreation group is back in, everyone’s up, shucking and jiving. Trays, pots and pans are being thrown around: the radios and TV’s blast!

It’s a storm that gradually subsides. By 11:40 it’s past.

A few words with a neighbor, then I read in A Manual of Zen Training by Jiyu Ken-nett. I realize I’m on the wrong road and level spiritually, make true contrition, do zazen, change shoes and begin running, shadow boxing, kicking… huffing and puffing. It’s almost time to shower so I must exercise. I get enough to perspire and burn away the….

Everything is bright as I march to the shower. It’s 12: 15. Returning, I rest till 1: 30 p. m.

It’s a long day. I read and write. Pillow cases come at 3. Meditate until 3: 45. Chow comes again. They have water it seems. The spoons come. The trays: cornbread, corn, beans and potatoes, a meat gravy…. I pass and eat a few cookies. I’m tired of them now, however.

Did some reading and writing until 5: 30. Listened to NBC evening news and the Houston channel 2 news. Read until 7: 15. I discover it’s relatively quiet. I make a cup of coffee and quiet sit, realizing one must show gratitude for the opportunity to have this human body and hear and practice dharma.

7: 55, mail comes. 1 get two letters, one from Oral Roberts. He wants a $25 donation! The other from a sister at Goree. She’s ill. But aren’t all prisoners, if only in spirit?

9: 05, another cup of coffee. I’ve been trying to read, tempted to lie down, anxious to do something, read more, write, anything – to pass the time.

I listen to the radio, the ball game. At 11: 05 the Astros have won! I’m exhausted from pulling them through. It’s bedtime now.



SURVIVING

They gossip here worse than old ladies. Way worse than them. The men, they start messing, messing, messing. They become unreal. I noticed in the free world how men gossip a lot. But over here, it’s worser because that’s all they got to do is down each other talking, start messing, everything.



Fighting in a penitentiary doesn’t go by the Marquis of Queensberry rules. You have to assume that when you get in a fight in the penitentiary, it’s gonna be the best man walks away and the man that’s not quite good enough is gonna be laying there. It’s just understood. It’s not usually done in the sense of camaraderie. It’s not something that’s done as a pastime, in a ring with a pair of 12-ounce pillow cushions on your hands. If you get mad enough to fight, you’re usually mad enough to hurt somebody.

I haven’t gotten that mad. There may be some – I’m sure there are some – that are more antagonistic towards people than I am and in general would attempt to bully. I don’t attempt to bully. I’d rather be left strictly alone. I don’t try to prove my superiority. I’d just as soon you not try to test me because if you do try to test me, then I’ll try to prove it.

The way you usually get somebody here is you heat up some water boiling hot and when he comes by your cell, you scald him. Or take a mayonnaise jar and throw it through the bars and let it cut people up. I got cut over there yesterday when someone threw a glass through the bars at the floor boy. That glass, hitting the bar, it’s got a lot of momentum and it will cut you bad.

You won’t believe how freaky things is. Like a rock. If I could get me a rock in here, why I could sell it for three or four packs. Just a regular old rock. Really. Ain’t nobody got a rock in here. Don’t you know I could sell that rock!

Or a different kind of plastic cup. You can buy good plastic cups in the commissary for 25 cents. I’ve seen them pay $3, $4, even $5 for a plastic cup that wasn’t worth 25 cents because it was a different color or a different kind than they had in here. And the fool would say, “Look at my new cup. ” He’d bring it out there in the dayroom, he’d drink his coffee in it, and why, it ain’t no better than no other cup. But he got it in his mind that it is because it’s different and ain’t nobody else here got one like it.

You revert down from being intelligent to the childish ways.



The calmest, the most easiest going people that I’ve ever seen in any penitentiary is the murderers.

Everybody that I mingle with now, other than the floor boys, is killers, or convicted for killing. They don’t let us associate with nobody that’s in population.

The murderers are more calmer, don’t bother nobody, they’re carefree people. Whereas your drug addicts, your sex offenders or your robbers – those people are crazy, really bad crazy.

For a lot of the murderers, it’s a first-time deal. He comes in here and this guy catches him doing it and then he kills him. Or you’re liable to get mad at your daughter and then just jump up and slap the heart out of her and then say, “Hey, I wished I didn’t do that. ” Or you pull that trigger.

If you pull that trigger, you don’t bring nothing back. It’s gone. The anger is what it is.

I would be a whole lot more afraider fooling with robbers and armed robbers and drug abusers and stuff like that than I would a murderer. I love to stay with a murderer because I know where I stand. I know how much he will and how much he won’t take.



In the free world, if someone insults you or bothers you, you can just walk away. In here, these things build and build because usually the fools are doing the abusing, and when you try to just get away from them they take this as a sign of weakness and bother you even more. Then, when you have to do something to them, you are a vicious criminal.

Take this little black that killed the big one here the other day. He weighs about 115 pounds and the dead one weighs 175 or 185 pounds. It is my understanding that the big one had threatened to kill the little one (I heard this). What was the little one to do? Wait and see if he tried? Hell, everyone here is convicted of capital murder, so a threat cannot be taken lightly. I personally feel that the little black did exactly what he had to do. I don’t think he intended to kill the guy, he just got lucky (or unlucky, depending o your viewpoint).

The point is that in prison you cannot let things slide in some situations as you could in the free world. Also, some (hell, quite a few) of these men have a very strong ’macho’ attitude, which is really silly, but it is there and they are quick to take offense to things that really are unimportant. I used to be the same way, but I have grown out of it. I know what I am capable of, I know I am a man, so I don’t have to go around proving it to every fool that bothers me. Only if he keeps on bothering me is he endangering himself. I will always walk away that first time, and if possible, even the second, but I won’t be pushed too far. 1 don’t want trouble, so I go out of my way to avoid it. I don’t even play dominoes with aggressive individuals because I have seen their attitudes lead to nasty words and fights over a silly game. Fight over a game? How silly can grown men get?

One guy told me he didn’t like the way I joked. He came up to me and said, “I don’t like the way you joke. 1 don’t like the way you talk. I don’t like the way you look.”

I said, “Are you willing to change it for me?”

He says, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, I’ve always been a little dissatisfied with the way my face is arranged. Want to help me with it? I love pain. I’m a masochist. ” He didn’t know whether to laugh, get mad or hit me.

He walked off. I play with their minds so bad sometimes, you know. I can talk above them or I come down to their level and just cuss like one of them. I will get mad if provoked long enough. But I don’t stay mad.



There’s one guy who’s a drug addict. He beat an old man to death with a pool cue and raped the girl. When I first saw him, I knew I wasn’t going to like him too well, so to pick at him I said, “Oh, you’re the one that raped the old man and beat the girl to death with the pool cue.”

He says, “No, no, no.” He thought I actually had the story backwards. He got upset.



I’m watching that one. If he comes near me, I’m going to climb up them windows and set on the top and holler. He’s too big for me to mess with. If they get too big, I can always run. Can’t run very far on Death Row, but I can sure climb up them three stories of windows and holler. Holler down the row.



A lot of people are institutionalized. They feel comfortable. That is one thing I could never do. It’s nerve-racking up there. I like my freedom, I like to move around, and staying in that little cell up there….

I have a hard time. I stay up most of the night and read, and then I have a hard time sleeping during the day. I guess I sleep about three or four hours out of every 24 hours. But I never get tired.

I don’t do no exercise or anything and I always stay in shape. I don’t know why that is. It might be mind power or something like that. I never gain weight. I can eat all the food I want. A lot of people, they’ll just lay around and get listless. Let their bodies deteriorate. But that’s one thing that’s never happened to me. I never gel flabby or listless or anything like that. I always feel pretty good physically.



There’s a few I don’t like because of their actions. And there’s a few others that they could never put me around because I would jump on them. These are the ones that are down here for crimes to children. That’s my number-one pet peeve and I can’t stand it.

There’s a couple of weirdos in there. There’s a couple of them in there that have been busted for child offenses and they talk about it. It’s all they talk about. They’re on the bottom.

They say, “Boy, that’s what I want to do most in the world. ” I can’t stand them. They pretty well know that most of these people in here have kids. For their own safety, they’ll be quiet as far as yelling out, but if they’re around small groups, they’ll talk about it. They’ll see a child on TV and say, “Oh, look at that. “



Death Row inmates, everybody down there has got a capital murder case, everybody’s got the same sentence. We all have to live together. There’s no reason in the world we can’t all be friends. It should be that everybody is tight as they can be, but no. These people create anarchy down there. Sometimes we don’t see a ranking officer for a month or two months. Everywhere else they make their rounds every day. They go to every wing except Death Row.

And the medicine. They carry a little bitty pillbox down there. “Take aspirin and walk slow and you’ll make it. ” That’s Death Row. I live on Alka-Seltzer and Rolaids.



FILLING TIME

I had a spider. We call them wolf spiders. They’re kind of furry and they’ve got green eyes. It’s a little too early in the year for them to come out.

I caught one in my cell one day and then I put a cockroach in there and it was fun to watch. The patience they have. Funny thing about a spider, they look around and once they see they can’t get out of the jar – I put them in a fruit jar – they start building a place to sleep. I don’t know who they figure they was going to get their meal from, but they couldn’t get anything unless I fed it to them. And then I’d catch another spider and I’d put it in there and it was always interesting to watch them fight.

They’ll fight until one of them is dead, and then he’ll get eaten by the other one. Then I got hold of a big one, a big black spider with a white spot on his tail. It had a little fang, it’s a funny thing. Their fangs are sideways, a quarter-of-an-inch fang on each side. I called him Jaws because of that.

I’ve had as many as eight of them in a jar at one time, but not with this Jaws, because he didn’t let anything stay in the cell, in the jar with him. I say “him, ” but it was a female because I saw her lay eggs.

I’d put spiders in there and watch her battle them and cockroaches, flies, whatever. It was just something to pass time. When I left, I gave my spider to my neighbor and he finally wrote me last year and said he had died. But we kept it almost a year.

I let it out. I let it crawl in my hand.



When I came in, I had a watch. It was an Accutron. I’m one of these’sticklers for time. And it broke. I went crazy until I got another watch, and time means nothing in here, but it does.

Max in the next cell, he’s got a little digital watch over there. He’ll tell you the time to the second when you ask him, and he’ll even make a point of doing it. Sometimes it even gets irritating – simply because I don’t have a watch like his, I suppose.

Time really means nothing, but you are absolutely lost without a watch.



People don’t realize what it’s like here.

If they were just to go into their bathroom and just sit and be able to see a television but they couldn’t turn the knobs, they couldn’t control it. They have to sleep with their toilet, and they have to sleep with their sink and they have to just sit there day in and day out, not being able to say, “I want to go walking someplace for a little while, ” or “I want to do something else different. “

It’s continuously having the same walls, the same bars, the same papers, the same books. Nothing changes. Only the outside, the light. We have day and we have night, we have day and then we have night.

Only if they move a man into another cell will you see somebody new.

We harp, we hash, and we talk about all the same cases. Always looking for something that might give us a clue to what we can do to get off of Death Row, to get away from here.



All three times I’ve gone back to Dallas for execution dates, I’ve caught myself running my head 90 miles an hour. Talk about anything, everything, ridiculous things, just anything to carry on a conversation with anybody.

1 don’t usually talk much to people up and down the tier or anyone else because 1 don’t have the opportunity. Max and I talk, but after you’ve set and talked to a man so long, you know everything he thinks, or practically everything – if he’s being honest with you, you do. And pretty soon you burn out on him.

So I caught myself when I’d go back to jail around people and then get up in the tank that I’d just talk, talk, talk, talk. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t sleep for two days once when I went up there. I’d just keep talking.

I would sit while I was talking and think, “You don’t do this, what’s wrong?”Trying to turn it over in my head. I knew it was because I’d been away from people so long and it was a spontaneous thing.



I’m a voracious reader. I read light fiction and I read textbooks, technical books, anything I can get a hold of I read. It frustrates me and it aggravates me and 1 feel contempt – even though it’s unfounded – for the men that will lay here and vegetate.

A lot of the men in this particular unit are functionally illiterate. Even though they can read and write, they can’t help themselves. They have no working knowledge of the English language. They can amuse themselves with simple texts, but if it were a life and death situation, they couldn’t help themselves. They could not file even a simple writ themselves.

You don’t have to be a lawyer to help yourself. You only have to be able to read and comprehend the written word. Everything in the Texas Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedures – all the laws are set down in books. If you can read and comprehend it, you can do things for yourself.



A lot of people, that’s all they live for is recreation. “Open the door, let me out of here. “

As far as I’m concerned, they can weld it shut, I don’t care. I live in my nest. I have my connections. I’m not celled in, I can get out of there. I just set my own schedule, little things I can do to control my life. If I want to go to that dayroom, I will go to the day-room. By them opening the door and say, “Hey, you can go now, ” and me not going, that’s one of the choices I can make. I’ll stay here. A little triumph. I have climbed Mount Everest, you know.

I can take a tray or not take a tray. I can shave or not shave. I can shower or not shower. It’s these little things.

Some guys think they’ve got to do it, or some say, “Because you say I have to do it, I’m not going to do it. “

About two and a half months ago, I decided I just didn’t feel like wasting my time going out in that dayroom. It is, to me, a waste unless we can go outside. I want sunshine, whatever that is.

I tried to buy it in the commissary. “We’re sorry, ” they said. “we’re fresh out of sunshine. “

So I drink orange juice, it’s the closest I can get.



All of it hard to me. It’s just all hard. Just being away from life is hard. Seeing all that goes on over here, you just try to cope with it. It’s just mostly a bunch of sick people run this place and they don’t care nothing about you or want to care nothing about you. They just figure you’re just a whole bunch of criminals and find you guilty of something you never really did. They just want to satisfy this society, I guess. That’s about the only thing I know.

I’ve been here about eight months now. Same thing go on every day. Just try to keep out of trouble most of ’em, you know. Mouth could get you in a lot of trouble.

Just try to live with life, the way it come.



FUTURES

I’m not scared of death. Feel like everybody gonna die sometime or another. I know that they’re gonna die. Livin’ in the world with a whole bunch of helter-skelter people, trippin’ out on takin’ people’s life anyway, you really wanna leave it anyway, in a manner of speaking. Since I’ve accepted the Lord Jesus Christ I look at things a whole lot much better.

I’m not scared of dying. I feel that dying, death come to everybody.

You look at it in a different way when you accept Christ as your Saviour. Then you think back on people, like when you go to court and stuff, see how they all be there looking at you. Specially when you’re bein’ tried on the death penalty. All wonderin’ if you’re really scared.

What will really be on your mind, what’s on my mind, how these people’s all helter-skeltered out, freaked out, more or less…

The only thing I really like to talk about is Christ. Talk about death. It don’t scare me or nothin’ because it’s like I say: Everything die. I know I’m gonna die and everybody else gonna die. The whole purpose of life probably is death.



When that guy Gilmore was killed, I was out in the population. The day he was killed, it seemed like my time stopped. I never knew I was going to be here then, but it seemed like my time just stopped.

I said, “If they want to just kill somebody, why don’t they just send them to Iran?”

I read the paper a lot. I like to collect articles out of it. I did it in the streets. There’s one I want to show you. President Carter, he’s way over in South Africa trying to get somebody clemency on a death case. They gonna execute a man and he’s getting him clemency way over there.

What about the people here?



There was very little reaction when Spenk-elink was killed. There wasn’t too much comment on it. I felt maybe there would be.

I think there will be if one ever dies in Texas, because that’s close to home. I sat here and thought to myself, “Boy, I want to be here when the first one goes. ” Because I want to see if some attitudes change.

Now, some of these people at times treat this thing like a big joke. I have heard them make the statement, “They’ll never kill us. No. ” After Spenkelink, I said, “Well, do you still believe it?”

They said, “Well, that’s Florida. “

Still walking around in a daydream. It hasn’t dawned on them yet that these people are serious about killing them.



I have no answers to the deterrence of crime. I can hear about it and I know what’s going on. I hear how people say they do things and how they would do other things or commit a crime or kill somebody. It upsets me. It makes me sick. But I have to just put on a cold, sterile-type face, you know, pretend it doesn’t bother me. Deep down it bothers me. I don’t want to hear about killing. I don’t like to hear about death. It’s something we’re all going to do, but I don’t think any man has the right to help another man along, or a child, or a woman. Life is too precious to anyone and everyone.

So when they killed Spenkelink, it’s kind of hard to put into words how I felt. I was shocked, depressed. It was just like a giant shadow had suddenly comeover all of Death Row, and it stayed there for acouple of days.

I just had to go through an execution date myself. I was getting myself prepared for it. I had done as much as I could up to less than a week before my date was to be carried out. I was within five days before I got my stay and four days before I was able to sign the papers.

The sergeant happened to come down here and said, “Oh, by the way, you got a stay. “

I said, “Well, thank you for telling me. “

I don’t know of a single lawyer that wrote his client when Spenkelink died, to reassure that man sitting on Death Row, in that cell, that everything possible was being done in his case.



I’ve had a death day set on me three different times. And each time, facing death wasn’t no problem. It was the up, the stay of execution, the kickback on it. That’s what really hurts you.

My last time, I got within three days of execution.

I was ready to go on. 11 didn’t bother me a bit. And turned around, come up with a stay of execution. That’s what hurt. Like to put me in a state of shock.

As far as that goes, a man just lives andsurvives on Death Row.

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