Almost Home (21 page)

I’d always been raised to believe the cops were the good guys, and that dirty cops were few and far between. So why was no one stepping up to expose this for the bullshit it was? Why were they all going along with something so fraudulent?

The answer: to save their asses. It seems quite a few of the cops there were already being investigated by the FBI for various forms of wrongdoing, and the last thing they needed was the entire world watching them as they bumbled around ineptly, pretending to conduct an investigation. They needed to put an end to this case quickly. As one of the cops told Jason—“You’re just white trash. We could kill you and dump the body in the Mississippi, no one would care.” We were throw-aways, sub-humans. Feed us into the meat grinder, and the problem goes away.

It’s not like we were ever going to amount to anything anyway.

After I read the script/confession, I was taken back into the courtroom. The judge was rambling again, and I was on the verge of collapse. Suddenly everyone sprang to life as an overweight man with bad skin jumped from his seat and tried to run down the aisle. He was screaming something incoherently as the cops tackled him and I was hustled from the room. I later found out that he was the
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father of one of the murdered children. I couldn’t really blame him. I have a ten-year-old son of my own, and I think I may have done the same if I thought I was looking at the man who had harmed him. He just needed someone to blame, to take his grief out on. He wasn’t interested in facts or evidence.

Once back into the dark and dingy part of the building they began putting chains on me. Around my waist, my hands, my feet, and anywhere else they could think to attach them. I saw Jason a few feet ahead of me, and they were doing the same to him. He was also wearing one of the old, ragged uniforms. In front of him was Jesse Misskelley. He was wearing chains, but he had on his own clothes. Perhaps this was another small way of punishing Jason and I for not doing as they wanted.

They rushed Jesse through a door, and outside I saw sunlight and heard the roar of a crowd. It sounded like a referee had made a really bad call at the Super-bowl. Next they carried Jason and me out at the same time. There was a circle of cops around me, all trying to drag me. I had to run to keep up with them, but there were chains on my legs and I had no shoes. They dragged me across the concrete, ripping off two of my toenails and a fair amount of skin. The crowd went into a frenzy at the sight of us. It looked like the entire city turned out to see us, and they were all screaming, yelling, and throwing things. They wanted to crucify us right then and there. I imagine this is the closest thing a modern man can come to knowing what it was like in the Roman Coliseum.

I was tossed into the back of a car and told to stay down. There were two cops in the front seat, both fat and wearing the standard 70’s porn mustaches. They could have passed for brothers. The one behind the wheel quickly started driving at a high rate of speed. I was curled into the fetal position on the back seat, vomiting and dry heaving. One cop looked back at me, cursing and swearing. In disgust, he spit, “That’s just fucking great.” No one said another word to me for the rest of the trip, and I had no idea where I was going.

When we finally came to a stop sometime later in the afternoon it was at a small white building with several cop cars around it. A few old, crusty looking men were using a water hose to half-heartedly spray at the cop cars. As I was being escorted inside, I heard the cops tell them to wash out the back seat where I had gotten sick.

Once inside the chains were removed and I was told to strip. I stood naked while one cop sprayed my entire body with some sort of anti-lice spray. Four or five other cops looked on while conversing nonchalantly. This was nothing new to them. Soon enough I myself began to view such events as nothing out of the ordinary. After my flea dip I was given a pair of white pants and a white shirt to
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put on. One of the old, crusty car-washers from out front handed me a towel, a blanket, and a mat like preschoolers sleep on. The induction ceremony being complete, I was pushed into a cell that would be my home for most of the next year.

XXVIV

The area I was confined to had four concrete slabs that served as beds. There was a small metal table bolted down to the floor, a shower stall, and a television suspended high in one corner that could only pick up two channels. For the first week or so there was only one other person in the cell with me. His name was Chad, and he was there on a capital murder charge. He’d shot someone with a sawed off shotgun while burglarizing their house. Chad was a white guy with a terrible case of acne and unwashed curly hair. His back had already started to curve into a hump, like an old man, even though he was only sixteen.

Chad seemed a bit slow in the thinking department, if you catch my drift. He claimed he had been there for years, and was quite excited that he now had company. He couldn’t answer a single one of my questions: he didn’t know where we were, or how far from West Memphis I was, or how to make a phone call, or anything else I could think to ask him. He’d just smile really big, throw his hands up in the air as if to say, “Who knows? Only the gods can say.” Then he would rock back and forth for awhile. Not so encouraging. My thinking was that perhaps my whereabouts were being kept secret from everyone, including Domini and my family. I was worried about how Domini was taking it. My family and I weren’t always on the greatest of terms, but when you’re drowning like I was, you’ll reach for anything. I was lost and alone and empty. Floating deep in outer space could have been no more frightening. I had done nothing to deserve this, and I was goddamned if these assholes were going to make me the sacrificial lamb.

I was still taking anti-depressants, which the guards gave to me every night. I had the ingenious idea of saving them up and taking them all at once. That was the only way I could see out at this point. This situation was only getting worse and worse. There was no Sherlock Holmes coming to solve the case and let me out. Besides, what did I really have to live for, anyway? The only thing I would regret was not being here for the baby. It would have been nice to stick around for that.

When I was in the hospital I had heard that 800 mg of this particular medi-cine was enough to put you into a coma you’d never come out of. I wanted to be certain I did it right, so I took 1200 mg. I swallowed the pills and sat down to 120

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write a quick note for Domini and my family. It was only a few lines scratched out quickly with a pencil. That being taken care of, I stretched out on my concrete slab and flipped through one of Chad’s magazines. He wasn’t much of a reader, but he loved those pictures. He wasn’t too fond of losing the only company he had, either. I hadn’t bothered to hide what I was doing from him, thinking there was no need.

The main sensation I had was of being so tired that it was physically painful. I wanted to sleep more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I closed my eyes and just let go. That’s when all hell broke loose. About ten guards came for me.

Chad had told them what I did, because he didn’t want to be left all alone again, especially with a dead body. I could hear them talking but couldn’t make my eyes open. Someone opened them for me, and shined a flashlight in them. Someone else poured a vile tasting liquid in my mouth and was telling me to swallow it. It was some sort of vomit-inducing syrup. They put me in the back of a car and drove about 150 miles an hour to get me into a hospital. By this point I was so confused that I kept asking myself if the drugs were taking effect yet, or if I was already dead. I tried to tell the cop behind the wheel that we would have been there by now if we’d all ridden on the back of a giant spider. Unfortunately, my mouth didn’t work the way I wanted it to.

I don’t remember much about the hospital that night. I woke up for a moment when someone put a tube up my nose and down my throat. Two cops were sitting before me, watching, while all the doctors and nurses were moving double-time.

Can’t let the star of the show die, can we? Strangely enough, all the doctors and nurses looked like therapists from the mental institution. I was awakened a couple of times during the night by someone shining a light in my eyes and asking if I remembered my name, but I slept through the entire stomach pumping procedure. When I finally woke up sometime the next day I found myself in the intensive care unit.

My lawyer first came to see me while I was in the hospital. He only stayed a few minutes, long enough to introduce himself and tell me my family knew where I was being held. He looked incredulous when I told him I was innocent.

I only saw him about three more times over the course of the next year, and never longer than thirty minutes. You would think that if a guy were going on trial, and could very well be sentenced to death, that his lawyers would spend a lot of time preparing him for court. Mine did not. I had never dealt with lawyers or court systems before, so I didn’t know what to expect. Perhaps this is how capital cases are handled. After all, this guy is a lawyer, so he must know what he’s
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doing, right? Surely they wouldn’t appoint me a lawyer who was ineffectual or uncaring. I had a lot to learn.

The same court that was putting me on trial was also paying my lawyer. Look at it this way—are you going to employ someone who makes you look stupid and rubs your face into your own mistakes? No. You’re going to pay the guy who knows his place and sticks with the program. These guys know they get paid the same amount whether they win or lose, so why try too hard? Later, during the trial, when I asked why they didn’t push a point or challenge a ruling, they answered, “We have to work with the judge on a daily basis and don’t want to piss him off.”

“Beyond a reasonable doubt” disappeared and “Innocent until proven guilty”

left the building. Once they go through all that trouble to get you, you’re going down unless you’ve got a couple million dollars on hand to hire some real gunslingers to come to your aid. I was a fool back then though, still wet behind the ears. I thought the point of the justice system was to see that justice be done.

That’s the way it always works on TV. While I was counting on divine intervention they were plotting my demise.

Once I was released from the hospital and taken back to the jail, I was put in a padded cell with no clothes. I’d heard of padded rooms all my life, and imagined them to be like a giant pillow. It’s nothing of the sort. Everything is coated in a thick, greasy substance similar to rubber. More like a bicycle tire filled with cement than a pillow. Since I had no clothes, it was pretty chilly. One of the guys passing by slid me some “National Enquirers” under the door. I read them during the day and covered up with them at night. There was nothing else to do in there. It was just an empty room.

There was a small opening in the door, and sometimes one of the other prisoners on the block sat by the door and talked for a while. Everyone on the block, with one exception, was a young black guy who had already been to prison at least once in the past. The only exception was an old man in his fifties. His hair was as white as his skin was black, and all the other guys abused and took advantage of him. He was given absolutely no respect. He came sat by my door and cried for half an hour at a time, like I could help him somehow. He was there for having two children with his own daughter. He was their father and grandfather at the same time. He tried to stay quiet and out of everyone’s way, but it didn’t always work.

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I spent a week in the padded cell, talking to people through the opening in the door and freezing. Contrary to what I had been led to believe by movies and T.V., none of them seemed like hardened criminals who would kill their mothers for a nickel. Some of them were pretty funny. Every night after lockdown someone called to the guy in the next cell, “Hey man, come here a minute, I need to show you something.” There would be laughter, then “Shut up, fool, I’m trying to sleep.” Several times a day someone beat on my door and asked, “You alright in there?” Their constant antics kept me from feeling quite so sad, at least until the lights went out. Once the lights went out and everyone was in bed, the despair came back full force. I cried myself to sleep many nights.

When I got out of the padded cell a week later, I was taken back to the cellblock with Chad. He was as pleased as could be, because counting myself he now had three roommates. While I was gone two more guys had come in. Both were black teenagers, one named James and one named Nikia (everyone called him Kilo). He turned out to be the second best friend I’ve ever had in my life. This guy was really smart, and extremely funny. We often said the same thing at the same time, or when I tried to explain something he would get excited and say,

“Yeah! That’s it exactly!” He slid across the cellblock floor on his knees doing a flawless Michael Jackson impersonation, and I laughed until my sides hurt.

We got a chessboard from somewhere, and I taught him the game. After playing several games a day for about a month, I could never beat him again. He kicked my ass at every game, unless we played “speed chess.” This was a variation game that I invented, and its purpose was to prevent you from thinking about your next move. Your opponent had until the count of five to move a piece, or you could legally start thumping him in the forehead. It was a very fast five count, which gave you slightly under two seconds to grab a piece and move it.

Chad’s family brought him some more games, so the four of us passed the time playing monopoly, checkers, chess, and dominoes. We all pooled our money, so that even the person with the smallest amount wouldn’t have to do without anything. If my family left me twenty dollars, I’d buy twenty dollars worth of candy and chips, which was considered to belong to all of us. Kilo, Chad, and James did the same. We never had a single fight, which is a very rare thing when you’ve got guys who are forced to be in each other’s faces twenty-four hours a day.