Martha was convicted of three drug-related charges in 1989. She is currently serving a twenty-years-to-life sentence. She was sixty years old at the time of sentencing. Prior to the drug sale that led to her conviction, Martha had ended her foray into selling cocaine because of the harm it caused to others, including her daughter. After getting out of the business, a former friend and buyer asked Martha to help him purchase cocaine. After refusing several times, Martha contacted a seller for the friend, who was an informant. After a joint trial, Martha’s co-defendant, the alleged supplier, was acquitted. Despite persistent health problems, Martha has participated in numerous educational and self-improvement programs in prison. Her clemency appeals have been denied twice. She perseveres and looks forward to being released and spending her remaining days with her children and grandchildren.
Martha
I WAS BORN in a little town called Lumpkin, Georgia; it’s near Savannah. I grew up with my mother, father, and two older sisters. My sisters and I were born a year apart. My older sisters were born in 1927 and 1928, and I was born in 1929. My parents and sisters are deceased now. One of my sisters died in 1993, while I’ve been incarcerated. She was sixty-eight years old when she died.
We left Georgia and moved across the river to Eufaula, Alabama, when I was a baby. That’s where I grew up. We used to walk the truss to cross the bridge between Georgia and Alabama. Our town in Alabama was in a dry county. People had to go to Georgia to get alcoholic beverages.
My father tried sharecropping. It was kind of hard. If you wanted to sharecrop, you would make an agreement with one of the White fellas who had a lot of land. They would furnish you with everything for the year, such as your food, money, seeds, and fertilizer. At the end of the year, the owner got half of whatever you grew and you would pay back the money they loaned to you. But we never cleared anything. The White folks took it all.
I also worked hard in the field. I started in the field when I was eight years old. When we finished working our crops, I would do day work for about twenty-five cents a day. I have always given a person an honest day’s work; I don’t care how hard the work was.
All we got were hand-me-down clothes from White people. I used to go to school with bare feet in the wintertime. I got tired of that situation and ran away when I was fourteen years old. A traveling show came to town in 1943 and my father gave us a little change to see it. They were looking for a dishwasher, so I decided this was my chance. I worked with them for a while. At the time, shoes were rationed, and sugar also was rationed. Since I was a minor, the boss got my sugar stamps; I didn’t need sugar because they were taking care of me. They bought me clothes and shoes and things, so I was in pretty good shape.
At fourteen, I was a pretty developed young lady. There were two White guys in the show who did an act in blackface. They started to fondle me and I ran away from the show. We traveled all over the South. When we got to Selma, Alabama, I wandered home with them and I never went back to the show. Another show came to town, a Black show, and I joined them. I was a dancer in that show and I stayed with them until I was about sixteen.
On one of my nights off, I met a guy when I decided to go to the movies. He was sitting behind me. We got into a conversation and he asked me to go home with him. At first I said “no” many times before he persuaded me to go. He didn’t have any bus fare, so we walked about ten miles from town to his house. There was one bus the next day and I missed it. We did not get married, but we stayed together for eight years. Our relationship was good for two years, and then he really dogged me for the other six years. He used to beat me and finally I got tired of it and I left him. When I would leave, he would find me and beat me until I went back. When my oldest daughter was two years old, he beat her with a wire coat hanger. She was hollering and crying. I just couldn’t take that and I knew that if I stayed with him, I would kill him. I packed my stuff while he was at work and just walked away. He visited but I never went back to him. We were living in the country at the time, and I left to go to the city, to Birmingham.
He found out where I was living in Birmingham. At one point, I had gotten hurt and was in the hospital, and he begged me to go back with him. His mother had my baby. When I got out of the hospital and went to see the baby, he tried to beat me to make me stay with him. They finally arrested him. After they arrested him, I got my baby and went to live in the city. I had a good little job there.
I met another guy in Birmingham. Since I was working, the mother of my baby’s father—I called her Momma—took care of the baby. My new friend and I went to visit the baby one day. He wasn’t working at the time, so my baby’s grandfather asked him if he wanted a job. My friend said yes and he went to work in the coal mines. We got married and moved about 200 miles away to live in his family’s house.
My husband’s family also were sharecroppers, but we lived pretty well out there. Then I started having babies. We stayed together for five years. He had become very jealous and he didn’t want me out of his sight. We had left his mother’s house and returned to my hometown of Eufaula. He was working and then he started messing around with other women. That’s when I decided to come North. We were living in the projects and the lady in the rental office asked if I knew any girls who wanted to work in New York City. Her brother worked in an employment office in New York. I told her I was interested and she bought a ticket for me. I told my husband that I was going for two years to give him time to make up his mind whether he wanted me or that other girl.
I came to New York and got a job. It was a good job, too. I worked for a family on the West Side; he was a Broadway producer. They had two girls and a boy, and they were wonderful children. My boss sent for my husband to come up from Alabama. We were going to live in the apartment upstairs and we were going to send for our other two children, who were still with his mother. My husband messed up, though. He kept calling his girlfriend in Alabama. When my boss and his family returned after being away for the weekend, they got the phone bill and fired me on Monday.
When they fired me, I didn’t have anything. I told a policeman that I didn’t have any money or a place to go. They sent me to the Bowery. I was pregnant. When I got to the Bowery, the man there was so nice. He told me that I shouldn’t stay there in my condition. He gave me six dollars and told me where I could find a little cheap motel room that night. Later, the welfare office sent me to my oldest sister in Newark, New Jersey. I stayed with her until I had the baby. After the baby was born, my sister and I didn’t get along too well.
I met a guy while I was living in New Jersey, and we hit it off really well. My mother was in the hospital in upstate New York and I wanted to see her. I stayed there for a couple of months and picked beans and other vegetables. I told my mother about my children and promised to bring them to see her. In 1963, I went to see my mother again and stayed for the season. In 1966, my boyfriend and I moved to King’s Ferry, in upstate New York and did migrant work there.
My daughter got pregnant in 1969, and we moved to Syracuse so that we could get health care at the clinic, and we stayed. Around 1980, my daughter was going with a guy and they started taking cocaine. My two older daughters started taking it, too. I couldn’t believe it. That hurt me so bad. They were really strung out and I didn’t know what to do.
I got involved around the time that my son bought me a car when he was home on furlough from the Army. I gave the car to my grandson. Something happened to the car and my grandson needed money to fix it. I had a little money in the bank and loaned him the money to fix it. Then a guy came along the street selling a TV. My grandson wanted the TV, too, so I loaned him the money to get the television. Then there was no money to fix the car. My daughter told me that if she had twenty dollars, she could make enough money to get the car fixed. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I had twenty dollars, so I gave it to her. We were riding in my station wagon and she bought this cocaine. In less than twenty minutes, she had about $200.
I didn’t know that she had been selling cocaine before this. I thought, gee, if they make that kind of money, maybe I had better try this. I was broke, and it occurred to me to get some money out of the bank and get some cocaine. I took a few hundred dollars out of the bank and told my daughter to get some of the stuff she was selling. I told her to buy seventy-five dollars worth, and she doubled the money. That’s why I’m in prison.
All my life, I had been using hand-me-down clothes. Even when I was raising my kids, we went to the rescue mission and bought hand-me-down clothes and used furniture. I really saw a chance to get something I never had. It was really fast money and my goal was to sell it and get what I wanted and then quit. That’s what I thought.
I was fifty-eight years old when I started selling cocaine. I didn’t even sell cocaine for a whole year; it was more like nine months. Within that time, I had everything that I needed or wanted in my house. I had nice clothes and a few dollars in a safe deposit box. In October 1988, one of my ex-customers came to my house and wanted cocaine. I told him that I was not in the business anymore. He said, “But you know people … I need some bad.” He wanted an ounce. I called some guys to see if they were still in business. They were still selling and the customer came to my house and picked up the ounce of cocaine.
A week later, he called me and wanted eight ounces. I said that I would have to call to see if the guys dealt with that amount. My customer was a White boy and he called me “Momma.” He said, “Momma, please try.” Sure enough, the guys didn’t have a problem with it. The customer was with a friend, who really was an undercover state police officer.
The customers came to my house. We were drinking beer, waiting for the guy to bring the stuff. When he came to the house, I took the stuff and told him to wait in my kitchen for his money. The rest of us went into the bedroom. The snitch said, “Hurry up, I’m getting nervous.” I said, “Me, too.” All of a sudden, I heard somebody say, “Freeze!” When they said freeze, the officer flipped me over on my back like I was a piece of paper, put an elbow or knee in my back and said, “Don’t move.” I was handcuffed behind my back, which hurt because I have arthritis in my joints.
A female officer asked for my ID and I told her it was in the pants on the chair. When she checked the pants pocket, she found my wallet, seven $100 bills, and half an ounce of cocaine that I was holding for my daughter. The police searched my house. My sister came up from New Jersey and cleaned my house before I got out of jail. She told me what they did to the house. They took all my clothes off the hangers and threw them on the floor. They took the garbage out of my garbage can. They poured flour and rice around. The one thing they didn’t do was beat me up.
The police claimed they found a little packet of cocaine under my sofa, on my coffee table, the eight ounces that I sold to the undercover cop, and the stuff that was in my pocket. They got me for conspiracy. They gave me eight-and-a-half to twenty-five years for conspiracy, and twenty-to-life for possession in the first degree. I got twenty-to-life for sales in the first degree and one year for possession of drug paraphernalia. They also indicted me for one ounce from the first time they came to my house; I got three-years-to-life for that charge. The charges ran concurrently, so it was like having one twenty-to-life sentence.
They offered me a plea bargain. My lawyer wanted to meet with me on Saturday to discuss it. He told me that they offered me six-to-life. Then he told me that I didn’t want the plea because he could beat that. He called me in jail to tell me that I didn’t have to appear to accept the plea because he would appear to accept it for me. My attorney didn’t tell me how much time I would get if I lost the trial. He just said, “I can beat that.” I had $12,000 in a safe deposit box. The police knew I had it in the safe deposit box and I was scared they would take it. I asked my attorney to get it. My attorney’s partner brought a note for me to sign to get the money from the safe deposit box, but I never got the money from them.
When I won the appeal for a new trial, I was offered another plea of ten-to-life. My attorney told me to take it. I wondered why he wanted me to take ten-to-life, but wouldn’t let me take six-to-life. I thought that maybe I had a chance this time, so I refused the plea and went to trial again. I was convicted and got the same twenty years again.
It’s difficult to explain how I reacted to the sentence. I’m a very tough person. The way I was raised, if something bad happens and you can’t change it, put it in God’s hands. So that’s what I always do. When they told me “twenty-to-life,” it didn’t even hit me. After I got to prison, I thought about it a lot. I miss my kids. I miss my grandkids. I have five children, twenty-one grandchildren and twenty-two great-grandchildren. We’ve always been a close-knit family. We were happy. We played volleyball. We went swimming together. All of them like to fish and I would take them fishing. We liked cooking out. Now, a lot of the older ones come to visit. Some of the other ones don’t come to visit, though. I don’t know why they don’t come. Sometimes, the older grandchildren will come by themselves for Christmas. But they really don’t visit me like they should. I guess money is tight.
I was sentenced in 1989, so I’ve been here for over ten years. The thing that sticks out in my mind is that I can understand that I did wrong for selling the cocaine, but I think they gave me a harsh sentence. Since I’ve been in prison, I’ve met people who are here for murder and they got eight-and-a-half to twenty-five years. People would tell me that my case was like first-degree murder. But there are people serving time for first-degree murder down here who got seven-and-a-half to twenty years, or eight-and-a-third to twenty-five years, so why did I get twenty-to-life? I did not have any prior drug convictions before this.
It’s really hard for me in the institution. You have to be a very strong person to be in here; you have to keep your sanity and stay out of trouble. Like I said, I am strong. When I first came here, my son and my youngest daughter sent me money. My husband would send me money, too, even though we were not together. I was in pretty good shape and I could go to the commissary regularly. Most people here can’t do that. If others can get something from me, I’m the sweetest thing on earth, but if I say no, I’m this old bitch. This is how it works in here. That makes it hard. There’s something going on every day. There’s an argument about anything you can think to argue about.
In 1993, I fell in the shower and hurt my back. I wasn’t going to do anything about it at first. Whenever I went to the hospital, they said nothing was wrong and it was just arthritis. I fell on the weekend, so I couldn’t get it X-rayed because no one is here to X-ray on the weekend. On Monday, they X-rayed it. I was going to school at the time. I had stopped school in the third grade because we had to work on the farm. I was bent over in pain from my fall. They made me go to school. Another day after the fall, I fell and hurt my knee again while I was on my way to school. All of a sudden, about three inmates picked me up and brought me to the hospital. My knee was skinned up. The nurse cleaned me up and told me I could go on to school because nothing was wrong with me. There were no X-rays or anything. I went to school.
A couple of days later, it was pouring raining. I was sixty-seven years old and the teacher called me to come to school, and said if I didn’t come to school they would write me up. I told her that I was not going because my side was killing me and I would be dripping wet by the time I got there. I would get to sit up in the classroom for two hours, dripping wet. It was October or November and I thought I could catch pneumonia like that. I didn’t go, and that was my first misbehavior since I’ve been here.
I finally got to the place where I didn’t want to go to school anymore. My sister had died while I was taking classes and I stayed out of school for a couple of days. I was told to go to class or get a misbehavior report. I’d just had a death in my family; why would they do that to me?
People out there should understand not to ever come in here. My goal was to buy things, but then I lost it all. I think about it quite often, all the stuff I had. I had nice clothes and now everything is gone. When I leave here, I will have only what I have on my back. In here, all we have is hope. I tell a lot of girls in here that if you lose hope, you don’t have anything. I talk to Him—God—every day. He’s making me strong enough to bear whatever happens.