Read A Saint on Death Row Online
Authors: Thomas Cahill
A Saint on Death Row (10 page)
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
For my money the poem misses greatness because in the last stanza the poet loses his nerve. Yes, he makes us laugh, but he also wants us to despair as he despairs—to agree with him that our condition is so hopeless that the obliteration of the human race would be preferable to the continued reproduction of new human beings—that this would be the best outcome we could “hope” for, which would actually entail the death of any kind of real hope. This is true cynicism, which I'm sure you have had to endure a great deal of.
I prefer the solution of a poet like the nineteenth-century priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is sensitive to the terrible tragedies that human beings inflict on one another, so sympathetic that his pain on behalf of others is sometimes the realest, most physical element in his poems. He has a poem called “Brothers” in which he sits watching a school play. Next to him is a boy whose younger brother is acting in the play and Hopkins feels all the older brother's anxiety on behalf of his younger sibling, his hope for his brother. He doesn't bother to tell us whether the younger boy performed well or not. His only point is the older brother's sympathetic suffering. The poem ends:
Ah Nature, framed in fault,
There's comfort then, there's salt;
Nature, bad, base, and blind,
Dearly thou canst be kind;
There dearly then, dearly
I'll cry thou canst be kind.
It's almost an answer to Larkin, even though it was written a century earlier. Hopkins doesn't deny how horrible human beings can be to one another; in fact, he acknowledges it (“bad, base, and blind”). But he points out another phenomenon, the reality of human sympathy, which in the end is the only thing that can redeem us from Larkin's (or anyone else's) despair.
To be hopeful is to be courageous. You certainly can't be hopeful without courage because each day is fraught with examples of what Larkin is talking about. To be hopeful is to steel ourselves against all the obvious and easy reasons to despair and, instead, to
choose
to hope.
I hope none of this sounds like I'm lecturing you. I'm just trying to give you some idea of who I think you are and why I have such admiration for you. The easy thing (always, everywhere) is to despair, to give up; the hard thing, the thing that takes interior, invisible strength, is to hope. In this business, I'm sure you could teach me much more than I could teach you….
As I say to my own children (who are at such a distance, one in California, the other in the Czech Republic, both about your age): a big hug.
Love,
Tom
In a letter of mid-April to Marco Gnavi, the Sant'Egidio priest, Dominique, despite the misgivings that he kept mostly to himself, continued to express high hopes for a positive outcome to his case: “Tomorrow some reporter from South Africa is coming over to see me. Who knows just what all this will grow into? My hope is that the attention will continue to increase until enough is generated that I will have a platform to save my life.” But Texas was deaf to any music but its own; and Sheila Murphy's legal advocacy had begun too late to have any but a marginal effect on Dominique's chances.
Dominique's legal team had filed a second habeas corpus petition, this one in federal court, but in February 2002, the U.S. District Court dismissed it and denied a certificate of appealability. In October 2003, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Dominique's request to appeal the U.S. District Court's denial of the federal habeas petition. In February 2004, Dominique petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for the second time for a writ of certiorari, which, if granted, would initiate a Supreme Court review of the lower court's decision in Dominique's case. That June, however, at a hearing in the Harris County Courthouse, Dominique was given his death date—October 26—even though the Supreme Court had yet to rule. (Sheila and many others suspected that Harris County officials were determined to execute him prior to election day 2004, because the Harris County district attorney, Chuck Rosenthal, was running for reelection against a quasi-anti-death-penalty black candidate and the insiders didn't want Rosenthal's run clouded by this unresolved case.)
This was the one time that Sheila was able to touch Dominique because his guards allowed her to meet with him briefly at the courthouse after he was given his date. She put her arm around him with the easy familiarity she would display toward one of her own adult children. But when the Supreme Court denied Dominique's petition on October 4, 2004, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, Dominique's fate was sealed.
A tremendous amount of work had gone into these petitions on the part of Sheila and other lawyers she had managed to attract to Dominique's cause. And like the good mother she is, Sheila was not giving up. She sent out pleas to all the members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, she got others to do likewise, she sent a plea to Governor Rick Perry and got others to do so as well. (Among the many letter writers were a number of distinguished American jurists, Archbishop Tutu, and Joseph Fiorenza, the Roman Catholic bishop, soon to be archbishop, of Galveston-Houston.) She helped organize a press conference, featuring the Lastrapes brothers, who issued a public plea that Dominique's life be spared. In the end, it was all for naught.
Though one member of the Board of Pardons and Paroles actually voted to commute Dominique's sentence, it was hardly enough; and it is doubtful that his fellow members even took the time to examine the wealth of materials that Sheila sent them, which included a video of Bernatte Lastrapes begging for Dominique's life. “All of us,” said Bernatte, “have forgiven Dominique for what happened and want to
give him another chance at life. Everyone deserves another chance.” Countering this impressive plea, state prosecutors informed the board members that Dominique had killed two white men, something entirely fictional. Sheila could not persuade Dominique's principal attorneys to contradict this fiction or to request that the board members visit Dominique, something only lawyers licensed in Texas were in a position to do.
It was well known that Perry, who had succeeded George W. Bush as governor, meant to end his tenure with more executions to his name than the amazing number racked up by his predecessor. He has more or less succeeded: whereas Bush presided over 152 executions in six years, Perry will have presided over at least 186 by the end of 2008, though he still lags somewhat behind Bush's numbers on a per-year basis.
With enviable confidence in his own righteousness and that of his state (and startling contempt for the judgment of others), Perry, through a spokesman, has recently responded to the appeal of the European Union that Texas enact a moratorium on the death penalty: “230 years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. Texans long ago decided that the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens. While we respect our friends in Europe, welcome their investment in our state and appreciate their interest in our laws, Texans are doing just fine governing Texas.” No country may join the European Union if it countenances the
death penalty, and more and more countries beyond Europe have been abandoning the practice. The United States consistently ranks fourth among countries still employing the practice, outranked in the number of executions only by China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, those bastions of antimonarchical freedom.
The proximity of the execution date began to weigh on Dominique with such force that he was no longer able to collect his thoughts or maintain his usual cool, any more than Jesus could while contemplating his approaching death in the garden of Gethsemane. As Dominique wrote to Archbishop Tutu in early September:
I am doing as well as one probably could expect, thanks largely to the overwhelming abundance of love and support heaped upon me in massive amounts these past few weeks. Strong-willed and thick-skinned as I may be, things have been a lot harder on me than I imagined. Because aside from having to face an execution date myself, I am having to endure it with some close and dear friends.
On August the 26th, I lost one of them. His name was James Vernon Allridge III. I had known him for the past 8 years. He was a model prisoner. A positive influence. And one of the few perfect examples found here of what it means—meant—to be rehabilitated. Sadly, none of that was allowed to matter, despite all that he'd done, accomplished and achieved.
It had been a while since someone that I was close to was
executed. So his execution crushed me a little bit. For the past 2½ weeks my concentration hasn't been the same. It's been extremely difficult for me to find my focus and undertake even some of the smallest things.
I have been trying to write this letter to you for the last week and a half. Usually at times like this (when I am going through a lot) I find a way to excel. But after losing James and facing the upcoming execution date (October 5th) of the best friend life could ever give me—a person I've known since I was fourteen—who in coming here not only grew up with me but helped to change the entire dynamics of Texas Death Row, named Edward Green III [no relative], my nerves have been stripped raw and, contrary to my outward appearance, I am walking the line of breaking down and mentally, physically, and spiritually crumbling.
Dominique was dealing with a syndrome that has often been noted by sympathetic observers: each fresh execution engenders traumatic distress in the remaining inhabitants of Death Row.
As the steps toward his own execution moved inexorably forward, Sheila Murphy kept up her drumbeat of interventions. I was not in Texas but in Europe, on a long planned trip to visit my son in Prague, after which I was to do some necessary research in Italy, Germany, France, and England for a book on the Middle Ages that I was writing. I remained in regular contact with Sheila's Chicago office and with Sheila's wonderful assistant, Kathryn Gough. I knew of Sheila's hopes
for a last-minute reprieve, and I was more aware than I wished to be of their unlikelihood. In Prague I decided that I must send Dominique a letter. But what kind of letter do you write to someone about to die?
Dearest Dominique,
I'm so sorry to be traveling this week so far from you, but it could not be helped. I have no crystal ball and have no better idea of what will happen next than anyone else. But I am full of pain on your behalf. If all goes well (or at least as well as we could possibly hope), I will greatly look forward to seeing you after I return from Europe. If all goes as badly as possible … I will look forward to seeing you when we all meet merrily in heaven. What is important about a life is not its length but its intensity and direction. Yours is full of intensity, and your direction is so admirable that few could equal you, certainly not I.
Here is a prayer from the Book of Wisdom, which was written in Greek by an unknown writer who lived in North Africa in the century before Jesus. It is usually translated a little stiffly, so I have made my own translation. I hope it may be a help to you, whatever the outcome may be.
The souls of the just are in the hands of God,
And the torments wrought by evildoers
Can never touch them again.
It is true that they appeared to die—
But only in the eyes of people who cannot see
And who imagined that their passing away was a defeat,
That their leaving us was an annihilation.
No, they are at peace.
If, as it seemed to us, they suffered punishment,
their hope was rich with immortality;
slight was their correction, great will their blessings be.
God was putting them to the test,
And has proved them worthy to be with him;
He has tested them like gold in a crucible,
And accepted them as a perfect holocaust.
In the hour of judgment they will shine in glory,
And will sweep over the world like sparks through stubble.
They will judge nations, rule over peoples,
And the Lord will be their king forever.
Those who trust in him will come to understand the truth,
Those who are faithful will live with him in love.
Only grace and mercy await them—
All those whom God, in his compassion, has called to
himself.
Thank you for your gracious friendship, Dominique. I think of you often, pray for you always, and will never forget you.
Much love,
Tom
Sheila Murphy was able to read this to Dominique on the day before his execution. He asked her to read it through a
second time; and then he took it with him to his cell for a third reading, so I believe I did manage—typing in my son's studio in faraway Prague—to find the right words, however cold the comfort such a belief confers.
Dominique's last day was filled with drama. Almost at the last moment, Sheila and Andy Lofthouse were able to locate Jessica Tanksley, who happened to be visiting her family in Houston. Still startlingly beautiful (as Andy in particular could not help but notice), Jessica was now a self-possessed, much traveled, multilingual young woman soon to be awarded her medical degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Though she and Dominique had been out of touch for years, she came immediately to the prison, still unmarried, still (as was patently obvious to all) in love with Dominique. By then, Dominique's mother, Stephanie, was there as well. Dominique had asked Sheila to leave Stephanie out of the loop so that she could not disrupt things and draw all attention to herself, as he was sure she would attempt to do. But Sheila decided to disregard Dominique's wishes in this one matter, “because,” she said later, “if there's one moment tomorrow that he wishes his mother were here, then I've blown it.”