8.

Curtis McCarty—A Friend Off Death Row

In 1982, a young woman named Pamela Willis, a drug user and the daughter of a local police officer, was killed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her naked body was found showing signs that she had been sexually assaulted, stabbed, and strangled. In 1985, Curtis McCarthy, a twenty-two-year-old man who had been interviewed and released shortly after the crime, was arrested for the murder. On the basis of testimony that his hair matched hair found at the crime scene, McCarthy, who had known Willis, was convicted and sentenced to death.

In the year 2000, attorneys for McCarthy, following the discovery that a police chemist had falsified forensics results in other cases, pressed for McCarthy’s case to be reopened. After seven years of effort—including comparisons of his DNA with DNA obtained from sperm and flesh found on the victim’s body—McCarthy was exonerated. In order to link him to the crime police officials had given false testimony. On May 11, 2007, he was freed, after twenty-two years in prison, nineteen of them on death row. He was the 201st convict to be proven innocent through DNA testing, and the fifteenth who had been sentenced to death.

I sat with McCarthy in 2008—he was forty-four—and asked him about his experiences.

He spoke slowly and combed his beard while talking.

Can you describe a normal day on death row?

The prison imposed no routine so we made our own routine. We would eat breakfast, have coffee, and read or study until lunch. And then in the afternoons we would exercise, try to stay healthy. In the evenings, we’d watch television or play cards or read more. There really wasn’t anything else to do, you know. Write letters to our families.

Can you describe the cell to someone who has never seen it?

Death row was at a facility called the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlister, Oklahoma. The “Big Mac.” When I first got there in 1986, we were in a classic old sand block kind of building with lots of steel bars and no hallways, but then they decided to build the H Unit: concrete and solid steel doors. They built it underground and that’s where I was housed from 1991 until I was freed.

H Unit is one of the new super-max prisons they are building across America, where they completely isolate the inmates from each other and from the staff so that you cannot have human contact.

The cells were very small: Eight steps that way and eight steps this way, because out of boredom we walked—eight steps one way, eight steps back. There was no natural light. There was no proper ventilation.

It was a terrible place to be. They would bring breakfast about 7 am, lunch around noon, dinner at 4 or 5 pm. That was about the only routine we had with the staff, the only thing that occurred in our lives that was regular. Many men used that as their clock: breakfast came, so it was time to get up, to read and exercise or whatever.

Why is it underground?

They told the public, through the media, that it had to be underground because the death row inmates were dangerous and the guards were fearful. But that wasn’t true. It seemed they designed the building to be as cruel as possible, as inhumane as possible. And when it was built, they threw a party. They let their politicians, their supporters, their founders come there and spend the night and they had live music and food and they celebrated that monstrosity. We had very little property—books, pencils, and paper—but still the public and the politicians thought we were being treated too well.

What is life like without ever seeing natural light? How did you know when it was night and when it was day?

What they called the exercise yard was actually inside the building: a very tiny space where they would put four or five men at a time just to stand there and talk to each other. They cut a hole in the roof so light would come in. You could look outside your door—there was a large window in the door—and you could see out to the yard, So there was light coming down, you could see that, but there was no light coming into the cells. So we could see if the sun was up or down, but you couldn’t see the sky or the moon or the sun.

Was there more noise, or silence?

Death row at night was quiet. During the day most of the staff was there. So many men were awake then, awake and dissatisfied with the way they were being treated.

They would turn their TVs up loud just to aggravate the staff, beat on their toilets just to make noise, just to let the staff know that they were there and they were dissatisfied. But when the administration left in the evening, it would get quiet, so my cell mate and me, we usually stayed up at night most of the time.

You were sentenced to death. You had nothing to do with the murder. How did that make you feel?

When they charged me with murder, I wasn’t afraid. I still believed the things that my government told me when I went to school, that my family told me: that we have an excellent judicial system, that it is honest, and that our Constitution protects us from wrongdoing. How could they punish someone for something they didn’t do? I found out the hard way that that’s not true: that our system is corrupt, that it’s mostly governed by politics, by revenge, that issues of guilt or rehabilitation don’t matter. I found out that Politicians are very sensitive to public opinion, to what the newspapers say and to the general call to be tough on crime. And I found out that they can break the law to get good stories about themselves published in the newspapers.

Tell me about your case. What happened? Why were you sentenced to death?

I had a good life when I was a child, and I was enthusiastic about education. But despite that, when I became a teenager, I started taking drugs and I lost sight of all the things that are important to all of us: family and community and spirituality.

By the time I was sixteen, I was no longer in school. I didn’t see my family the way I should have, at holidays and birthdays. I began to commit crimes and to go to jail, and I never seemed to learn my lesson. I just kept doing it. My parents didn’t know what to do. And it seemed that my community didn’t care; they just let me go my way.

When I was twenty years old I met a young woman named Pam Willis. Pam was the daughter of a police officer in Oklahoma City. She too had dropped out of school because of drugs and didn’t pursue her education. She wasn’t a bad person either, but she made poor choices that had terrible consequences for her, just like I did. I didn’t know her well—she was only an acquaintance.

In December of 1982, she was found raped and murdered in her home. Because she was the daughter of a police officer, there was an intense investigation to find the man who had raped and killed her. There was also the embarrassment, because it was an issue of drugs.

So any man who had any kind of acquaintance with her was asked to come to the police station for questioning, and I was one of those young men. So I went to the police, voluntarily, I told them who I was and how I knew her.

They took my statement, they collected physical evidence from me: hair, blood, saliva, fingerprints, palm prints. They took my photos; they gave me a polygraph exam. When they were finished, they told me I was free to go home; they had no more questions for me. They had everything they needed from me plus the evidence gathered at the scene of the crime, which did not correspond. This was why they let me go. I didn’t hear from them again for almost three years.

The Federal Police, the FBI, and the Innocence Project all say that I was eliminated from the list of suspects. But some three years later, they said they heard a rumor that I had told somebody that I knew who did it. And that wasn’t true. I had only repeated a rumor I heard myself that it must have been her drug connection who had killed her. I had no personal knowledge of the matter; I had just repeated what someone told me.

They resumed the investigation. They realized that I lived an immoral life. They knew that the public wouldn’t like me very much. And that that no one would care if I were to be designated as “the murderer.”

The second time, they didn’t invite me to the police station, they came and took me by force. They grabbed me and shoved me into the car. They lied to all of my friends. They told my friends that I had made statements against them, and that wasn’t true. They were trying to break me. While I was at the police station, they hit me, they abused me psychologically and physically. There was nothing I could tell them [to change their attitude to me].

Despite the person I was then, the life I lived of drugs and crime, my heart was still good. I knew what had happened to her was terrible and if I had had any information I would have told them. There was nothing I could say. I had no knowledge. But they didn’t care.

At the end of that day, the man who represented the government told me that he thought I was a liar and that if I didn’t tell him who killed Pam immediately, I would take that man’s place in court.

I didn’t have an answer, and he kept his word and charged me with first degree capital murder. And so I stood trial for a crime that I did not commit.

How did they prove your guilt in order to sentence you for first degree murder?

Because there was such a large amount of evidence collected from the crime scene, they had to hide that evidence, which is illegal. Joyce Gilchrist, the chief forensics examiner for the police department in Oklahoma City, took the stand and under oath told the jury that the semen and the hairs found on the victim belonged to me. I was poor. My family didn’t have the money to hire the experts I needed to come in and say, “There’s something wrong here.”

And the jury believed her. They didn’t ask, “Why didn’t you arrest him three years earlier? Why did you let him go free?” They let me go because it wasn’t me; and those twelve men and women who sat in judgment of me didn’t consider that.

They convicted me and because of my past misconduct they sentenced me to die.

They heard terrible things about me, some that were true, and some that weren’t true. They were told of my supposed involvement in another murder. That wasn’t true. I had no way to defend myself; I couldn’t invite good friends or community leaders or a priest—I didn’t have anybody like that who would come and speak in my name.

What happened inside you when you heard the sentence in the courtroom?

When they came back and they said, “Death,” I couldn’t believe that my government had betrayed me, but I was resigned to it, that maybe it was better. Even a life sentence is a death sentence, you go to prison and you never come home. Our government tells everyone else in the world that we have an excellent system, that you should use us as a model for your own system. So my heart was already broken; when they came back and said, “Death,” it was just a little bit more on top of my suffering.

For the first few years on death row, I raged. I became angrier every day. During the time that I awaited my trial, I had had time to sober up, to reflect, and to realize how terribly I had damaged my own life. And I learned from it. When I got to death row, I began to read. I tried to resume my education, to become informed and to try to start making wise decisions in my life. So I read and I talked to people and I observed. And I especially studied the law and the death penalty. And the more I read and the more I listened, the angrier I became. I saw the men around me, I saw the racial disparity, I saw that every man who was on death row—they were drug addicts, they were poor, they were all uneducated, men who were vulnerable, who society didn’t care about. They were disposable human beings. The government would say, “He’s a bad man, he did this”—and people would believe them.

I saw that the men on death row weren’t monsters, they were human beings. Many of them had mental disabilities. Others had damaged their minds almost beyond repair because of drug abuse and alcohol. There were men who hadn’t committed terrible crimes, who had committed homicide, but who didn’t deliberately kill someone. There were men who had good defenses for what they had done—self-defense—but because they were bad men, the government could say, “He’s lying.”

There were a number of men who had done terrible things, things that made even me angry for what they had done. Serial killers, who killed and killed and killed. Our government said that those men, especially, needed to die. And I learned that even the serial killers had value to society. One of the men, who was a serial killer—the FBI came and visited him regularly. They examined him. He agreed to cooperate and they got inside his head, trying to figure out who he was and why he had done what he did so that they could see those signs in other kids and set them on a different path.

In your opinion, how many death row inmates are innocent?

There were many men that I met that I think it is fair to say were innocent of murder. Politicians are so obsessed with their own headlines that they make up their own rules. The worst of those rules is called the Felony Murder Rule in Oklahoma, and other states they call it the Law of Accomplices. They can use that law to convict everybody involved in a crime of murder. The best example is the armed robbery where two men go to rob a store and one man stays in the car because he’s the get-away driver. The second man goes in the store to get the money from the storeowner and there is a struggle and the proprietor is killed. They will put both men on death row and they will tell the public they are both guilty of murder even though the other man was in the car. He should be punished, but we should remember that he didn’t kill anybody.

What was it like when one of your friends was going to be put to death?

The men on death row were my neighbors. Some were dangerous, some were crazy, so you had to have friendships to protect yourself. There was strength in numbers, so you had strong bonds of friendship and concern—love for each other. So I made many friends. They all died. All of them. Anytime one dies you keep dying for a long time.

Did you ever think of committing suicide?

At the beginning, no. As I said, when I first got to death row, I was angry, I was bitter. I had been betrayed by my government and I hated the men and women who committed those crimes against me. After a few years, I realized that I was acting just like those people, acting out of hatred and revenge. It was me now who didn’t recognize their humanity or their fallibility. I saw them, I guess, as objects, just like they did me. And it took me a while to mature, to grow up into a man and realize that I couldn’t live my life that way with hatred in my heart and always thinking of revenge. That it was unproductive and it was unhealthy. Not just for myself, but for everybody around me.

I realized that I couldn’t hate them, because hating them made me like them. Hating them kept me imprisoned—kept me from being free. And I stopped hating those people. And I began to mature, to become a man, to have some wisdom in my life. And it brought me peace.

After some years passed, I received relief from the appellate court—they said I should have a new trial because of misconduct—but I lost again. Years later, I got more relief and I lost again. I was sentenced to die three times for that crime. And each time I would lose a bit of hope. Each time they killed one of my friends, I would lose hope.

By the year 2000, it was as if I were already dead. There were many new men coming onto death row, and I tried not to make friends with those guys because I knew what was going to happen: I would hear about their children and see the photographs and hear the stories about them and their families growing up and birthdays and Christmas and their mothers. And then I would have to watch them die.

When I was arrested I had two children. I was not a good father. I was selfish and I was a drug addict and I didn’t honor my responsibilities to my children. What should have been a joy for their mother—in raising children—instead became a burden because they had no father. And by the time I gained that maturity to realize that they needed me in their lives, I was already incarcerated and there was nothing that I could do to help them. They were never told where I was. They were simply told that I was a bad person and I had run away. My family thought it was better that they thought of me that way than to think of me sitting on death row.

The most that I could do each night was to think about what I had done that day: The letters that I wrote or the books that I read. Was it a productive day? Did I do something good for myself or for my family? And it would help me sleep at night, so that I could have some pride in myself. But as the years passed, I didn’t even do that.

When you go to death row, they tell you to fill out your last will and testament. I never did, because in my heart I knew that someone would eventually see what had happened to me and know that it was wrong.

In January 2001 they killed my friend Billy, and I finally did it: I sat down and filled out my last will and testament. And I wrote goodbye letters to my mother and my father. And I had decided that I wasn’t going to let the state kill me, I wasn’t going to give them that satisfaction.

Do many people kill themselves on death row?

Some did it with drugs -— drug overdoses. Others just stopped their appeals and told the government: “Just kill me. I’m not going to argue about it anymore. I can’t live in these terrible conditions.”

Can you tell me what, and from which friends, you learned the most on death row?

I think I learned from them all. First I learned humility—that the world didn’t revolve around me, that we were all part of a larger community, and that my selfishness was no good—that I couldn’t live my life that way. I learned not to hate the staff. You know, we were often mistreated by the staff, but I didn’t hate them. I understood them as human beings. They were fallible, they were victims of a mistaken way of thinking and a bad system; they had their own problems that made them do things they shouldn’t have done, just like I did.

I still do things that I should not do. I’m forgetful, I’m late, I forget people’s names and I’m rude. I don’t mean to be, it happens. I’m fallible. Which was the better way to live my life? To be selfish or to be altruistic?

Did they reimburse you?

No, the government in Oklahoma still does not publicly acknowledge that they did anything wrong. Only one of the people who committed the crimes has been publicly identified—the Gilchrist lady, she lost her job. That’s all. The detectives who brought the false case to the district attorney’s office have not been identified. The man who told me to my face that he would file a false charge against me is now a judge in Oklahoma County. He sits on the bench and makes judgments in these kinds of matters. He is an immoral man; he shouldn’t have that position. One of the two homicide detectives—the one who beat me—is now the chief of police in Oklahoma City.

So who do I go to to say, “They’ve committed crimes and must be held accountable for what they did?”

In Oklahoma, we have a law for prisoners that says when you leave prison, every man—to at least make sure that he can get home to his family—gets $50 and a bus ticket. They wouldn’t even give me that. No apology, no nothing. I think in my maturity, in this little bit of wisdom that I have found for myself, I don’t need their acknowledgment. I can live my life without that.

They stole twenty years from your life. Are you angry? Do you hate anyone in particular?

I do not hate. Anyone. If I did I would still be a prisoner. And I would be like them, like the system. To give up hatred is the only way to be free, fully, forever.

What is your dream?

I dream always of justice and fairness. We have enough in the world now: we have enough knowledge; we have enough resources that we could be fair and generous to everybody. We have enough to share with the poor, with the unfortunate, with the disabled. They don’t have to live their life the way they do. We have enough to share with them.

I dream about “equal justice under the law.” Most of the people who end up in court are guilty; they did it. But you don’t have to crush them to teach them a lesson. You don’t have to lie to the court or lie to the jury. Treat them honestly. Show them compassion. Show them that revenge is no virtue.

Jesus was sentenced to die. That makes Jesus a brother of anyone on death row.

Yup. Sentenced to die by a corrupt and frightened government that mistreated him, that didn’t know how to treat Jesus with respect, to acknowledge his humanity, to sit down and talk to him as a man.

Would you give up the things you learned on death row in exchange for never having been there?

No. It was a horrible thing to have to live that way day after day after day for years and years—the betrayal and all of the death. But I think it brought me wisdom. Because of the way that I led my life, I would have gone to prison for something. I don’t mean to minimize what they did—what they did were crimes against humanity—and they didn’t do it only to me, they did it to others. They tortured me and tried to kill me and to use me for political purposes—so I didn’t learn anything from them. I learned from myself. I learned from my neighbors and my family and from the people who have shown me love and understanding. I wouldn’t trade those lessons and that wisdom for anything.