After my mom, the first person I told about the letter was Maria, in January 2003. I had not seen her for many weeks as she had been on holiday, but by the time she came to see me I had not done much thinking about anything. That troubled her. She looked right at me and said, ‘What about your family? Do they know?’
When I told her about my mother’s fifteen-minute pre-Christmas visit, Maria looked heartbroken. I guess she imagined my mother driving home to Philadelphia trying to come to terms with the knowledge that her son was to be put to death at his own request.
We both sat quietly for a while as I retreated into that place inside of me I go when the sorrow gets to be too much. Years of suffering had given me this wonderful ability to leave it all for a while and shut down. It’s the place I found that night after the riot when I saw those black, ant-like creatures drag lifeless, blood-covered bodies through a river of human waste. I found it the night I heard the man in the cell above mine hang himself on the last day of his fifteen-year sentence, rather than go home and kill his tormenting father. I found it when I had to block out memories of being forced to beat a man senseless in an exercise cage by the guards for their own personal wager. And I found it again now thinking of my mother.
Staring at me for a long time, Maria asked, ‘Why have you stopped?’
I didn’t know what she was talking about, so she continued patiently, ‘The day we first met you were so full of woes and your hand was bandaged. Yet you were still able to face the future.’ She looked me deeply in the eyes, searching for the person who had once been inside them, then whispered softly, ‘Now you seem to have stopped being him. Nick, are you in there?’
I knew exactly what she meant, but I was just sort of done in by my own desire to end this misery. Although I did not realise it, I was mindlessly sleepwalking through it all, and I did not want anyone to point that out to me.
Maria continued, ‘Don’t you see, Nick? You have to live as if you have only seven days to live your life. If you had that knowledge, don’t you think you’d owe it to yourself to live each one of them to the fullest?’
She smiled encouragingly. ‘Now that you have control over the number of days you have left in prison, why are you squandering them?’
By then I was looking at my hands, cuffed in front of me and tethered to the thick leather belt secured around my waist. I tugged so forcefully on the belt that it cut into my lower back. I liked the physical pain it caused me, as emotionally I felt nothing. I didn’t want her to see that I really did not comprehend her words, because I didn’t want to and I didn’t care. All I wanted was someone who cared for me to comfort me through my final misery.
Then she said, ‘What if your lawyers convince a judge that you are incompetent? So many people have already hurt you over mental issues. Remember how the Federal Defenders Office made you submit to psychiatric examinations before they would pay thousands of dollars for DNA tests back in 1997? Nick, can you handle this type of loss to your dignity again?’
Before I could get angry, she continued hurriedly, ‘If you don’t go through with this, aren’t you setting yourself up for the worst misery of all?’
That was it. I decided to ignore her. I couldn’t face telling her all the reasons why I would rather die on my own terms. I was taking the coward’s way out and I knew it.
I knocked hard on the glass window of the visitors’ door to signify that I wanted to be returned to my unit. In the ten minutes it took the guards to come and get me I stood staring out of the window away from Maria, who quietly gathered up her belongings. I could not bear to see what I was doing to her. But I was done with having to justify myself to others.
I tried not to listen as she said a soft, love-filled prayer for me asking God to forgive me. I did not even acknowledge her as she left. Inside, her words burned me, but when the guards arrived to take me back to my cell, I showed no emotion at all. I was done with Maria and all her efforts to make me into a ‘better person’.
I was done with everything, especially now that I would have to travel this last part of my journey on my own. I had already told the one person I had been prepared to fight for, my mother. How I ended my life was my own damn business. If Maria couldn’t understand that then I had no need for her. I had her name removed from my file as my spiritual adviser and mailed her a curt ‘thank you’ card, asking her not to come back again.
Waiting to see what effect my letter would have on the person I had asked to schedule my own death gave me an odd sense of both fear and boldness. But as I sat there in my cell full of excitement and trepidation, Judge Giles did what judges in the courts do often enough: he ignored me and did exactly what he wanted instead. He ordered for all remaining DNA evidence to be tested, regardless of what state it was in, to finally find out the truth.
I was bitterly disappointed that I was being put on yet another DNA Express ride. And I was not at all hopeful about the outcome of this, the sixth attempt at DNA testing in fourteen years on the same tired evidence. I had reconciled myself to the idea of dying and I was angered that I was being denied that right by having to wait for yet more DNA test results.
At 3.30 a.m. on Friday 24 January 2003, I was brought out of my cell to be transferred to Graterford prison, just outside of Philadelphia, to be held there for a federal court hearing scheduled for 20 February. The journey from Greene County to Graterford takes twelve to fourteen hours by prison bus, which is gruelling even if you are in the best physical health. We therefore stopped off en route at Smithfield prison, built on the land adjoining Huntingdon prison, which acts as the central transfer unit for the weekly shuffling of prisoners among Pennsylvania’s thirty or so prisons.
About twelve guards work there, processing all the transit prisoners in a unit made up of a large communal area surrounded by a series of glass-fronted cells into which inmates are sorted according to status and destination. There is a colour code system: white cards on the cell door for general population prisoners; yellow for juveniles; red for disciplinary inmates; and blue for Death Row men.
We arrived at about 11 a.m. and, once I had been strip searched and given a lunch bag containing a sandwich, fruit and a carton of milk, I was placed in one of the small rooms set aside for Death Row men. Relieved to have my chains and leg irons off, I settled down on my metal bench, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible to all the passing men who would see the blue Death Row card taped to my door.
Sitting there quietly by myself I saw over the window ledge two guards enter from outside, one of whom I recognised from my days in Huntingdon. They were escorting a group of what I assumed were Huntingdon transfer inmates. The guard in question was a boisterous man with a penchant for jokes and known universally as ‘Scaggi’, as no one could pronounce his Lithuanian name properly.
I ducked down. The last thing I wanted was for this man to spot me and start his ‘act’ using me as its centrepiece. But then, inevitably, I saw his head with its greased-back hair peek through my window. I waited. I cringed. I knew what was coming. ‘NICKY!’ he shouted. ‘Well, son of a bitch, if it’s not my old pal Nicky!’
By then, the communal area was his stage and everyone else was his audience. Scaggi was the type of guard who went to work to have ‘fun’. He would give a prisoner a complete strip search or ‘dressing out’ for a supposed family visit and then walk away laughing saying it was just a joke. He delighted in playing mind games with whichever inmate he picked on as the unfortunate target of his ‘humour’.
So when he spotted me I just tried to look at him as impassively as I could. With his small forehead and thick dark hair, Scaggi looked as if he’d slept permanently on his face as a baby, as his eyebrows were so low. His eyes, set deep into his face, finished off the Neanderthal look – which suited him particularly well as his favourite routine was his ‘caveman’ act.
Ignoring protocol, Scaggi got the key to my cell, opened the door and told me to get up. I stood there silently as he made these melodramatic circling motions with his right hand, indicating for me to turn around so he could cuff me behind my back. Then, having brought me out into the communal area, he began walking around me and yelling in a circus ringmaster-like voice: ‘Throw out your brown socks!’ And again, using his hands as a megaphone, in a mock-official-sounding voice, ‘Throw out your brown socks!’
Sensing that his partner was about to embark on a show which needed some help in translation, Scaggi’s fellow Huntingdon officer joined in by asking, ‘Who is this gentleman that we’ve got here, Scaggi?’ Hilarious. I was in no mood for this. But Scaggi knew full well that I was not in a position even to raise my voice. He may have been a joker, but he was also quite capable of using his caveman skills to beat your head in with his club.
‘This is my old friend NICKY!’ he repeated. ‘Him and me go way back, don’t we, bitch?’
I looked at a spot on the wall above his ear. No need to bleed over name-calling, I thought to myself.
Jabbing at me with a make-believe rifle, he continued: ‘Back in the “old days”, my friend here was a real fun guy!’ Then, pointing the imaginary gun between my eyes, ‘Nicky, tell everyone how you used to trick the juveniles and other scared-assed inmates into throwing their socks out of their cell windows, bitch!’
By now Scaggi was half circling me again, jabbing the imaginary gun at my temple. I knew what he was referring to but I continued to play dumb. He went on to tell all within earshot how before Smithfield was built, temporary transfer inmates were placed in the empty cells above Death Row at Huntingdon. I would wait for the guards to go to lunch, then call out from the silence to these terrified inmates – who had heard all sorts of horror stories about the place – using an official-sounding voice like Scaggi’s, ‘Throw out your brown socks!’ They were not allowed to leave, I claimed, until they had thrown their institutional brown socks out of their cells.
Now, with some pride and a whole lot of mockery in his voice, Scaggi proceeded to tell everyone how I actually persuaded a gullible few to throw their socks out of their cell windows. When I’d done my part Scaggi would go down the walkway yelling at these stupid inmates for being tricked so easily and telling them that any man not wearing brown socks would not be allowed back on the bus. Next I sent out the block worker with a broom to act like he was going to sweep up the socks along with the rest of the debris on the floor. Then I’d get these same sockless inmates to barter for them back from the worker with goodies from their bag lunches.
It was true that years ago I had come up with this lame way of scaring these transit prisoners who thought they’d landed in hell for an hour, but I was not proud of it and I was not at all happy to be put on public trial for it – especially by this idiot.
Then Scaggi upped the stakes. While still ‘holding me at bay’ with his imaginary rifle, he demanded that I explain to everyone why I was going to court. He said venomously, ‘Tell them what just happened with your request to be executed, bitch!’
By now I was getting especially annoyed with his calling me a bitch and he could see that he was getting to me. I replied as robotically as I could, ‘They found DNA that’s not mine on items left at the scene of the crime.’
‘That’s RIGHT!’ Scaggi yelled. ‘This friggin’ idiot asked the state to execute him and it turns out they got DNA from some O.J. Simpson-like gloves found in the victim’s car.’ Then, as he pushed me back into my cell, he said, ‘I swear to God, when I read that newspaper article about this shit, Nicky, I felt a little bad for how I once did you wrong!’
Now, turning back to his audience, he paused for a dramatic moment before laughing, ‘Nah, I’m just bullshitting! They could kill a hundred wrong ones, just as long as it ain’t none of my folks!’
Everyone laughed as he went on to tell his listeners how I had once escaped from Death Row and how I’d then spent twelve years locked up on his block in Huntingdon. The way Scaggi told it you could have sworn he was almost proud to know me. All I could do was sit there patiently as he left me in the cell still cuffed, hoping I would raise a fuss, as he recounted the ‘highlights’ of my prison career. Been there and done it all before.