Soon after Jacque left me I received a card from a ‘lay chaplain’ who worked in a hospital. She explained in a note folded neatly into the card that her name was Maria (this isn’t her real name, as she has asked to be kept anonymous) and she was a grandmother who had recently read Sister Helen Prejean’s book titled Dead Man Walking, about her encounters with men on Death Row. Now, she said, she wanted to get involved in Death Row issues because this book had made her realise how wrong the death sentence was.
When I received that card I responded by saying that I was glad for the offer but I was not interested in being her pen pal. She then wrote to me a second time saying her hospital was quite near to the prison and that she would come by and see me if I did not write back. The way she put it, she was going to come to the prison anyway and sort out why I did not understand her. To her it was so plain: she had read this book and now she wanted to get involved in capital punishment issues, whether I liked it or not. She added that she and her friend Sister Grace had decided that, as my name was near the end of the alphabet, I was a good person to start with as I probably was overlooked.
I was in no mood to bear the brunt of some do-gooder’s efforts to hold hands with the guilty right before they are executed. I had just lost all reason to believe I had any chance of using DNA testing to prove my innocence, and the one person whose help I had relied on more than anyone else’s had just left me. I tossed the letter into the corner of my cell along with the piles of everything else that lay scattered on the floor and laughed at this foolish woman. Who the hell was she to think I was so desperate to see someone from the outside world that I would just open up to her merely because she had been enlightened by some book?
I had been hiding in my bed for days following that ugly day when Jacque had said farewell. I was using sleep as a way of hiding from the horrible reality that I could be stuck here in prison for the rest of my life. My attitude was sour and I was not talking to anyone. I had even let my guard down against those around me who could harm me. One person in particular that I ran foul of was a guard named Daniel Daily, aka ‘Double D’. There are some men who should never be allowed to become prison guards. Among them are former police officers who have been fired from the force for alcoholism or other abuses. He was one of those. As a former police officer, he had arrested men who then became prisoners, and he perceived us as predators on society and dealt with us accordingly. He was a man who brought hatred in to work with him every day like it was his lunch pail.
He was always calling me his ‘favourite rapist-murderer’ whom he held in such ‘esteem’ compared to all the others that he ‘had love for’, as he put it. When he fed me or gave me my mail or did any of the endless little things that have to be done for a man in solitary confinement, he constantly reminded me that I was a toy for his amusement.
On one particular day I was feeling so bitter about Jacque that I ‘barked’ at him, as they say. When he commanded me to move my boxes of legal work out on to the walkway, I snapped back at him as I reached down for them at my own good pace.
For my nasty few words, he slammed the cell door on to my left hand, which I had been too slow to get out of the way. He broke seven bones. Weirdly, though, I was quite happy to feel physical pain so bad that it stole away all the emotional agony I was feeling. I used to beat my head against the wall of my cell for much the same reason. So, for all the anger I felt towards that man for his cruel and cowardly act, I was glad for what he had done.
I joined right in on my own misery as I really did not care. I went into a rage. I tore my belongings to shreds, daring him to go get the extraction team. Seeing as how it was him who had caused me the physical damage that would generate the paperwork that could lead to an investigation, ‘Double D’ walked quietly off the unit, closing the outer door behind him so that none of the administration team could hear my ranting.
As soon as I lost the rest of my anger and strength, I sat down and filled in a grievance form in which I formally charged ‘Double D’ with assault. I knew what I was doing: there would be an investigation and from then on I was doomed. No one wants to be the ‘rat’ who tells on the very people who are feeding you and caring for you even as they lock you in your cell. But I couldn’t care less. I asked to be transferred to Greene County prison, supposedly the new ‘scariest place’ for Pennsylvania to lock up its miscreants. I knew that at the time I was asking to go there, its entire Death Row population was on a hunger strike in protest at abuse by guards.
So what? I would make sure that this man ‘Double D’ understood there was one person who was prepared to stand up to him. When he saw a copy of my grievance form, he was not happy. But I was not foolish. I also sent copies to my lawyer and to the Commissioner of Corrections.
I was brought before an investigative panel, which decided to grant me my wish and ship me to Greene County prison. I would be sent there right after the coming new year of 1998, they decided, as soon as a Death Row prisoner from that prison was found who could be transferred to Pittsburgh in exchange for me. I had won my small battle against this tyrant, but still I sat in my cell sulking, with nothing to provoke me out of my bleakness. I just went slowly back into self-induced hibernation, sleeping and ‘zoning out’ in front of the television. I even craved drugs for the first time in so long – although, in that respect, I was glad I was on Death Row, as that actually protected me from what I would have surely done to myself with drugs or booze had I been in the prison’s general population.
At about the same time I received that Christmas card from ‘Maria’, I received another one, from my mother. It was very cute and sweet, but even she could not manage her usual, falsely upbeat message along the lines of ‘Next year we will all be together for the holidays.’ It was clearly too hard for her to fake it following the devastating news of the contamination of the DNA evidence. So, instead she wrote that she was relieved that Jacque was right there in Pittsburgh to support me. Ouch.
Telling my mother that my marriage was over was going to have to wait until later, I told myself. Maybe in the spring, it would be best to tell them.
In jail, you sort of try to ‘time it’ when to share bad news. Not during the holidays. You don’t want to ruin those special times for people on the outside. Families mark each holiday as a reinforcement of hope and pray for your return. Meanwhile, inside prison, you just pray it will pass as quickly as possible so that you can tell your family some new terrible piece of news they will have to cope with.
Peering over the top of my mother’s card as I sat reading it in bed, I saw again the card from the hospital worker and picked it up off the floor. Then I went over to my coffee-stained desk, moved my papers out of the way and got out pen and paper in order to write a short note to this Maria woman. I began:
Hello Maria,
My wife of ten years recently left me and since she was the only person who bothered to come and see me regularly, my social calendar just got a huge opening.
I hope you do come by soon so that we can find something interesting to talk about, like the dying patients you watch over, or we can have a lovely chat about Death Row prisoners who play-act the last moments of killing their victims to entertain us all whenever the power goes out . . .
I knew that most of what I wrote to Maria was self-directed taunts that hurt me even to see them written on paper. I was also hoping to scare her off with my facetiousness. I preferred to address such a hurtful letter to a stranger than write a truthful one to my mother.
I regarded it as the lesser of two hurts. I was not unaware, though, that this innocuous person did not deserve my anger or sarcasm. Nonetheless there was a smirk on my face as I dropped the letter into the slot in my door so that it could be picked up by the guard. I noted with a bit of an upturned chin how mailing that letter made me feel better. Like a crab in a bucket full of other crabs, I reached out and pinched anything in sight.
It was two days before Christmas and I had no expectation of ever hearing back from Maria when I got an unexpected visit from the Catholic priest who worked in the prison. I had never even spoken to him before, as I was not a Catholic; in fact, I had had no contact with representatives of any of the organised religions within Pittsburgh prison. However, I recognised him from when he had come on to the unit previously to perform services for those who requested them.
Today he stopped by my door just long enough to say, ‘I received a phone call from your spiritual adviser.’ Then he held up a piece of paper and read out: ‘Mrs Maria. She said she’ll be here to see you at 2 p.m. tomorrow, “if you have time”. Also, she asked me to ask you if you want me to perform a service for you.’
‘Yes, I have time,’ I replied. ‘And no, I don’t need anything from you, thank you.’
Then, before leaving my door, the priest said: ‘Do you acknowledge Maria as your spiritual adviser and should I note her down as such?’
I told the priest, ‘Yes, please go on and do just that for me.’
He seemed a bit unsure how to take this comment, but he let it go.
I did not bother to tell him that I had never met this woman before in my life and that, as far as I knew, she could be some crazy person who was just saying she was a ‘lay chaplain’, or whatever it was she did.
I kind of liked the idea that the whole thing was already a running joke. And I would find out shortly what an actual visit from this person would be like. According to the rules, as my adviser she was officially allowed to attend my execution! I thought it sort of cute how she had already achieved the role she wanted, just like her new favourite author, Sister Helen. All that was needed now was some overblown orchestral music playing in the background as they strapped me to a gurney ready for execution – and her imagined scenario would be complete.
When I was brought into the visiting room the next afternoon, I saw a woman sitting alone opposite an unoccupied prisoner’s stool. I was once again in the aquarium-like booth, but today there were no other prisoners occupying it. As I passed through the small metal door on the prisoner’s side of the booth I immediately felt as if I were on display, with twenty sets of eyes looking at me. I walked over in front of the woman and picked up the phone. She looked up at me curiously as I encouraged her to do the same. She was a middle-aged woman wearing a white blouse under a brown suit. Her shoulder-length hair was reddish brown and she wore no make-up. She looked professional. As soon as she lifted the phone to her ear, I said, ‘So, you got any “adviser-like” things to say to me?’
The woman looked me right in the face and said, ‘I am here to see Richard So-and-so. You are not him.’ To which she added the obvious, ‘I think you may have thought I was someone else.’
I checked her eyes to see if this was a put-on, as for a second there I thought this might be Maria responding to my stupid joke. It soon dawned on me, though, that I really had walked up to a complete stranger and come out with this tired-ass line. Now I had to move. I gathered up the scattered remains of my dignity and slid over two stools to the stool furthest away from her.
As I covered my left eye in shame, half turning from view, I cringed and shrivelled up inside. I looked through my laced fingers to see how many possible witnesses there had been to my brilliant moment.
Now I noticed a woman seated to my right who looked up from the book she was reading. She got up and came over to the chair in front of me. She looked to be in her mid-fifties, with long hair. She smiled at me as she picked up the phone on her side of the glass and began to speak. I figured that this time I’d better wait and see who I was talking to before I made another stupid blunder. The woman introduced herself as Maria and apologised for not already being in the visitors’ booth before I arrived. She said that she had found this fascinating book over on a shelf. All the visitors’ rules were laid out in it, including the one that any prisoner ‘caught having sex’ with a visitor would lose all visiting privileges. I nodded, like it was obvious that people have sex in the visiting room and don’t care who’s there with them or what the penalty is. She seemed to think it was weird that they actually had to write down a rule expressly forbidding it.
Then she explained that she had become so caught up in reading the rule book that she had simply sat down in the chair she was standing next to without thinking. I was so relieved she had not seen what I had just done to Richard So-and-so’s visitor that I missed her eager attempt to get me to smile.
Before she could go any further, I interrupted her by saying how the prison chaplain had come by to tell me that he was putting her name down as my spiritual adviser, so I hoped she was at least as well qualified as a ‘spiritual adviser’ as she was in her hospital job – if she really had that job.
She calmly asked me what I meant by that last bit, but I replied that I had been caught off-guard by the priest asking me about my spiritual adviser, especially as I’d never met her. I said I found this whole notion of appointing someone as your spiritual coach in order to help you become closer to God before meeting your death was all very simple-minded. Wouldn’t it be funny if she turned out to be a nutcase who just pretended to work in a hospital!
At that Maria just laughed and, despite myself, I liked her right away. She was obviously a genuine person who had been struck hard by what she had learned from that book about the treatment of prisoners on Death Row. It had never really occurred to her that she couldn’t do what she had set out to do: find someone on Death Row, go to see them, then appeal to them to find the best in themselves before leaving this world.
I liked how every effort I made to be difficult, indeed my conforming to her over-simplified view of what Death Row prisoners were like, only made her smile even more. At one point, I said, ‘How the hell can you work all day in a hospital surrounded by dying people and not be emotionally drained by all that pain and suffering?’
At which she looked me right in the eye and said, ‘How the hell can you live with the ones who put some of those people who are dying in my care and not be filled with anger over what they did?’
Good point. I was going to leave the matter at that, but then Maria seemed to withdraw into herself. I waited until whatever thoughts she was wrangling with let her alone before asking, ‘You OK over there, or do you need a moment?’
A lot of thought was obviously going into what she was winding herself up to say next – either ‘Goodbye’ or something really serious. I could see she was someone who went softly through life, making few demands on others. So now I wiped any hint of a smile off my face and waited for her to compose herself.
Eventually Maria folded her hands on her lap and looked at me as if searching for the best approach. Then she continued quietly, ‘I have only one thing, really . . . they bring to our hospital inmates from this prison that have been stabbed or hurt. You have to promise me that you will not hurt anyone while we are friends, as I cannot bear to think of someone coming into my hospital unit that you have hurt.’
As she spoke she had been looking at the bandages on my hand from where ‘Double D’ had broken it. I had no clue what she already knew about me from either the priest or whoever else she had talked to, but I was not there to tell her my business. In truth, I was stung a bit by her words, as I had not expected someone to come here and confront me, however gently, about my bitterness. I had barely talked to anyone in the past month, so I was not about to start making promises to this woman I’d only just met.
I said simply, ‘I wish you were my “friend”, as you put it, as friends are few and far between for me these days.’ We both smiled and she let the comment pass. She was like a parent waiting patiently for a child to come up with the answer to a difficult question. I didn’t duck her question, though; I simply waited a few moments before saying, ‘I don’t know what I am capable of at this point, honey. Maybe you should wait and see if you really want to be my friend first.’
Was this a serious battle of wills or just a temporary blip in the progress of a possible friendship? She did not seem too put off by my reply as she sat there in silence. Then I realised that she was trying to force me to make a choice – and I was not in the mood to be polite.
‘What?! ’ I shouted into the phone, looking at her hard through the glass. I also made an up-and-down motion with my shoulders, demanding she say now whatever she wanted to say. She did nothing. She just sat there looking up at me – I had stood up by now – her eyes locked on mine. I was getting really annoyed, but I repeated in a softer voice: ‘What?’
She started again. ‘I just feel it would be such a waste of time if I came here to help you and then you hurt someone else.’
At this I put the phone down on the counter. I wanted to say to her: ‘How dare you come here and hurt me like this, lady?’ or ‘Who do you think you are with all your quiet self-assuredness and telling me what the hell I should do?’ I was so filled by a thousand brutal things I wanted to say to hurt her. But my cheeks were also burning with the salt from my tears as I let them roll down my face. All I could see was this blurred image of a woman as I thought about how hard I had tried to be what she wanted me to be long before I met her. And here she was wanting to turn me into something I had already become well before she ever read her damn book. All I had to say to her was ‘Goodbye’.
Then, as all those words came blurting to my lips, I saw it. I saw that I really had become those things. I had felt the love of another and I had used it to grow up as a man. I had lived and loved openly as I had tried to let go of my anger, even as I was being cheated out of hope. I started to cry again, this time with tears of recognition. I really had tried to be good for my mom and dad. I had tried for Jacque. I had tried for the men whom I had helped get through this hell and who had become my friends. I already had every reason to hold my head up again as a man. I had nothing to prove to myself and, I realised, you can never really prove yourself to the world. Yes, as far as she was concerned, I was a man who had raped and killed and she was here to find what good there was left inside him. But I had already found it – though it had taken my encounter with her for me to realise that I had done so.
I wiped the tears away and smiled back at her. Then I said, ‘I swear to you that if you come back to see me and become my friend, no matter what I have to do, I will never hurt another human being while I am in here.’
Now it was her turn to cry. She said she wanted to go to the ladies’ room, but now that we had both gotten over ‘this tough part’ we could ‘start over’ once she came back.
Yet again, she was so straightforward in what she said and how she said it. No clutter of thoughts conflicted her – ‘just say it and then do it’ was her attitude. And suddenly I felt OK with this. I just needed to get myself back together before she came back from the ladies’ room.
When Maria returned, we awkwardly started to talk again on the phones. Since she first wrote to me, she said, she had looked out for topics we might discuss. Then she brought out of her pocket a plastic coin purse in which she had placed a neatly folded piece of paper. On the paper was a list. She skimmed through it and began: ‘Do you believe in God?’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
She seemed unsure whether to challenge me on this, so she hesitated briefly before asking me the next question. ‘Do you have a hobby?’
I told her I had just begun teaching myself the art of making transfers on to handkerchiefs.
‘Oh good,’ she said. ‘Sister Grace will like that.’
I began to wonder what hold the mysterious Sister Grace had over this woman. She then agreed that, in exchange for her getting me art supplies, I would give her one of my handkerchiefs. She also said that she would be happy to share books with me, but I told her that I was giving reading a break these days, as I wanted my eyes to take it easy for a while.
Next question. ‘When I come here again, do you want me to think of funny stories to share with you, or should we stick to serious subjects?’
Funny stories appealed to me. ‘I can tell you all sorts of funny things that happen in this place, so let’s make it a two-way traffic and keep us in a light mood!’
Straight-faced, she sat there for a second before responding, ‘Oh good, then you and I can just talk normally about everyday life when I come back to visit.’ Then, as we realised how far from everyday both our lives were, we burst out laughing.
She wrote down ‘Funny stories (ha, ha)’ on her bit of paper and I smiled as she did so, imagining her recalling amusing things to tell me when she came back. For, yes, I hoped that she would come back. I wanted to tell someone outside that life in prison was not always so horrible. I needed someone whose own job was so ugly that they could laugh with me and not at me. I just hoped that this person would show me some care now when I really needed it. For just that alone, I’d have danced around like a circus creature.
I went back to my cell and looked at the photos of family and friends I had stuck up on the wall. I knew which year I had taped which one where. I knew the exact time sequence of all the family gatherings I had not been able to attend. I noticed the gap when someone was missing from a photo. I had memorised every image from having sat and looked at them thousands of times and I just knew in my heart that each was a small lie. None of these photographic images was a close likeness of how that person looked right now. Even the previous six months would have changed them.
It was time now not to live for all those pictures on my wall. Instead, I would start living for the here and now, through which maybe I would find peace of mind. I had no more fight left inside me to chase the DNA testing.
I’d even allowed my lawyers to file mental health claims for my death sentence to be overturned on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Before that, I’d never once asked for life imprisonment instead of a death sentence; yet I’d done it all for the sake of getting the money for the DNA tests which hadn’t been allowed anyway after the tubes were damaged in transit. I had been through the humiliation of being made to surrender my principles and ask for mercy for something I had not done in order to get testing that had not happened.
Now I wanted to find out what was inside of me that was not tied to others. I wanted to discover what was waiting for me in death. It amused me that I was going on such a huge journey with such a shaky-looking navigator as my ‘spiritual adviser’, but I was even worse off in my own company, alone in my cell.