Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row (16 page)

There’s not much to do in jail, so one day I thought I’d call home and check in. My mother had known about my plan, and she had even given me a little money, saying that if I needed anything I should call. She was at the courthouse when Jerry Driver argued before a judge that he should be allowed to keep me in jail until my court date instead of allowing me to go home, as any first-time offender would have been permitted to do. I called my mother to see if perhaps she knew more than I did. I was in for quite a shock—it had been a dramatic week for everyone. My father was back.

It seems that my mother finally came to her senses and gave Jack the boot. It wasn’t like she had much choice, either, because my sister had made accusations against him concerning molestation. Social Services sent a representative, and they informed my mother that Jack was not to be in the house under any circumstances. Records show an investigation was conducted but I’m not aware anything conclusive was ever found or decided on where that was concerned.

After Jack was gone—and by gone, I mean that he moved to another trailer on the next street over—my sister started calling people, searching for my father. I never asked her why and she never explained. Joe was in Arkansas visiting his family, and he and my mother were talking about getting back together. I was stunned. It felt like the whole world had been turned upside down overnight while I was sitting in a cage. Under other circumstances I would have been ecstatic, but right then there were other things on my mind. I’d given Deanna my word that I would find her, but time was slipping through my hands. I was beginning to feel that I would never again know what life was like beyond those walls. After being locked in a cage for weeks, the thought of ever getting out became one of those things that are too good to be true.

My mother and father came to see me the next day. There was no way to touch, and we had to talk to each other through two-inch-thick bulletproof glass. My father hardly recognized me. When he and my mother walked through the door I heard him ask her, “Is that him?” We were allowed to talk for fifteen minutes, they on one side of the glass and me on the other. That’s not much time to get reacquainted, but my father promised that he would be part of my life from then on. The guard then came and told them it was time to leave.

I look back now and find myself filled with a tremendous amount of anger at how unjust it all was. The punishment for a first-time breaking and entering charge and an accusation of sexual misconduct didn’t fit the crime by any stretch of the imagination. All I did was walk into an abandoned trailer. This made no sense.

At my court date a couple of days later Jerry Driver recommended to the court that I be put in a mental institution, which he told my parents and me was the alternative to holding me in jail for nine months until going to trial. At the time, it didn’t seem logical but it did seem like the lesser of two evils. I was given my clothes and told to get dressed. If you’ve never had to wear jail clothes, then you can’t comprehend what it’s like to finally be able to put your own clothes back on. It takes a while to get used to. The jail clothes are designed to strip you of any identity and reduce you to a number. You don’t even feel like a human being when you’re wearing them. You have no dignity.

The four of us traveled in Driver’s car, and it was a long ride. It took several hours to get from Jonesboro to Little Rock, where Charter Hospital of Maumelle was located. He restrained himself from asking more insane Satanist-related questions in front of my parents, but I could tell it almost caused him physical pain to do so. Every time I looked up I saw his beady rat’s eyes staring intently at me in the rearview mirror. For some unknown reason he had visited my mother while I waited in jail, and asked her if he could see my room. She let him in and left him back there alone. He told her that he was “confiscating” a few things, even though that was blatantly illegal. He took the Goya-like sketches from the walls and a new journal I had started. (It was in a funeral registry book, morbidly enough.) He also took my skull collection.

It sounds kind of odd to have a skull collection, but I’ll explain. There’s a hard-packed dirt path behind Lakeshore that the local youth would wander on. It doesn’t go anywhere specific, just sort of meanders around a small lake and a few fields. I often found odd pieces of the skeletons of possums, raccoons, squirrels, birds, and even the occasional dog or cat that had died out there. I began collecting them because my teenage mind thought they looked cool. I’m not the only one, and I’ve never denied having questionable taste when it comes to interior decorating. The oddest thing Jason and I ever found was a beer bottle with two tiny skulls inside. The problem was that they were slightly too large to get out of the bottle. We spent hours trying to figure out how they got in the bottle in the first place.

At any rate, Jerry Driver took my personal possessions as “evidence.” Evidence of what, he didn’t say. I wouldn’t know this for quite a while, as it would be some time before I ever saw Lakeshore again. For now, I was on my way to the funny farm.

By the time we arrived, all the other patients had been put to bed. It was about ten o’clock at night and the place was silent. My mother and father had been completely convinced by Driver’s authoritative tone, that this was Driver’s right and they had no choice in the matter. They sat in a small office giving my personal information to the woman in charge of filing paperwork on new patients. The process took about thirty minutes, and Jerry Driver sat silently listening to everything. I was exceedingly nervous, never having been in such an environment before. The only thing I had to base my expectations on was the jail I had just left, so I was expecting the worst. To me, as to my parents, Driver’s authority was not to be questioned; I believed he was a legitimate cop. None of us understood that we could protest or contest his decisions. We were simply operating out of fear of the consequences—and in the meantime, without knowing it, our rights were never explained to us and were taken from us without our knowledge.

A nurse came to escort me through two large doors, back into the heart of the building. My mother was still answering questions as I left—was I allergic to anything, my birthday, family history of illness. Nothing about my mental state or behavior. Beyond those doors, it wasn’t nearly as nice as the lobby we had just left behind, but it was also no chamber of horrors. The furniture appeared to be made of plastic, so if anyone vomited or pissed themselves, there would be no stain. It possessed the added bonus of only needing to be hosed off after the occasional fecal smearing.

I was told to sit at a small table, where I was introduced to a tall, thin black guy named Ron. He looked through my suitcase, wrote down everything I had, then showed me to a room. There were two beds, a desk, a chair, and a small wardrobe. I was alone; there was no one in the other bed. I’d been through so much stress and trauma during the past few weeks that I immediately fell into a deep sleep, which lasted until morning.

The days there began with a nurse making wake-up calls at six a.m. She’d turn on the lights and go from room to room telling everyone to prepare for breakfast. Everyone would get up, take a shower, get dressed, and perform whatever morning rituals the insane carry out in privacy. We’d then march down to the dayroom, sit on the puke-proof couches, and stare at each other until seven o’clock.

On my first morning there were only three other patients. The first patient I saw was a blond-haired girl who was sitting with her back to me and singing a Guns N’ Roses song. I looked at the back of her head for a while, until I became curious about what she looked like. When I could no longer take the curiosity I walked around in front of her. She looked up at me with ice-blue eyes that seemed either half asleep or fully hypnotized, and she smiled. By her gaze alone you could tell that something just wasn’t right with this picture. She seemed happy, and rightfully so, as she was being discharged later in the day. Her name was Michelle, and she told me she was there for attempting suicide by swallowing thumbtacks and hair barrettes.

Soon a second patient entered. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and flip-flops and could have easily passed for Michelle’s twin brother. I never knew what he was there for, and he was discharged in less than three days. The third patient was a young black guy who seemed to be the most normal of the trio. He went home the next day.

If I had any fear of being left alone, it would soon be laid to rest. Patients began to come in on a daily basis, and soon the entire place was full. I had to share my room with an interesting young sociopath who was sent there after being discovered at his new hobby—masturbating into a syringe and injecting it into dogs. The entire ward was a parade of bizarre characters.

We lined up every morning and strolled down to the kitchen for a tasty breakfast of biscuits and gravy, orange juice, blueberry muffins, hash browns, scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, and Frosted Flakes. The insane do not count carbs. The food was delicious, and I enjoyed every meal. Conversation around the table was never dull and covered such topics as who had stolen whose underwear, and whether or not Quasimodo had ever been a sumo wrestler.

Once breakfast was over we walked single file (in theory) back down to our wing and had the first of four group therapy sessions for the day. At this session you had to set a daily goal for yourself, such as “My goal for the day is to learn the rules,” or “My goal for the day is to deal with my anger in a more constructive manner than I did yesterday.” This task made everyone irritable, because it’s hard to come up with a new goal every single day, and you couldn’t use the same one twice. Your last group session would be right before bed, during which you had to say whether you had achieved your goal, and if not, then why not.

Next came our weekly visit to the psychiatrist. We’d all sit on the couches and fidget while she called us in one at a time to talk. She had a small, dark, pleasant office filled with bookshelves. This was the doctor in charge of making your diagnosis and deciding what medication you needed. My diagnosis was depression. No shit. My life was hell and showed no signs of improvement, I had a stepfather who was a ten on the asshole scale, I’d spent two or three weeks in jail for reasons I still didn’t understand, I didn’t know where my lover was being held, and I was now locked in a building full of sociopaths, schizophrenics, and other assorted freaks. You bet your ass I was depressed. I’d be more inclined to believe I had a problem if I
wasn’t
depressed. At any rate, I was prescribed antidepressants, which I was given shortly after I got there.

Antidepressants were a horrid invention. The only thing I could tell they did was make me so tired I couldn’t think straight. I told one of the nurses that something was wrong because it hurt to open my eyes and I kept falling asleep every time I quit moving. I was told not to worry, this was natural and I’d get used to it. That’s not something you want to hear. Over time I did grow used to it, and in another month I wasn’t even able to tell I’d taken anything.

After talking to the doctor, we went to the gym for a bit of morning exercise. There was a stationary bike, a punching bag, a rowing machine, and a StairMaster. Everyone spent time on each one. There was also a foosball table and a basketball hoop we could use after lunch.

Every so often we would go to an arts-and-crafts room to work on individual projects. I made two ceramic unicorns that I took home with me when I left. I’ve no idea what eventually happened to them, but I was proud of them at the time.

For lunch it was back to the kitchen, then another group session, which was usually greeted with outraged cries of “This is bullshit!” I agreed wholeheartedly but kept my opinion silent. After suffering through this indignity, we were allowed to take a thirty-minute nap.

In the evening we went outside to a large fenced-in area to walk around and enjoy the air. We talked, looked out into the woods, or bounced tennis balls back and forth. Before bed we were allowed to choose a snack. There were granola bars, chocolate milk, peanut butter and crackers, or a cup of pudding. It wasn’t a bad place to be, as far as psych wards go.

We were rewarded for good behavior by being taken on field trips. Once, we were all loaded into a long white van with a giant handicap symbol on the side and taken to the circus. It was hard to tell if there were more clowns in the show or in the stands. Another time we were taken swimming, and I never even got in the pool. I stood under an umbrella, dressed head to toe in black, and waited to go back to the hospital. The last and most wretched trip was to a movie theater, where we watched Whoopi Goldberg in
Sister Act
.

Life went on, with my anxiety continuing to build. After I had been there for about three weeks, I was given a twenty-four-hour pass and my mother, father, and sister came to visit. A therapist met with them privately to describe how and what I’d been doing over the past few weeks, and to tell them that the hospital had deemed me well enough to be discharged. Before leaving us alone, she informed them that they could come to her with any questions they might have. This was the first real chance I’d had to talk to my father in many years. He hadn’t kept in touch with us during his absence, and we discussed both the future and the past.

He lived in Oregon and had been preparing to come back when my sister contacted him. He had been married several times since he left, and I had an eight-year-old half brother who lived with him. I was amazed to learn that he and my mother were planning to get married again, and as soon as I was out of the hospital we were all moving to Oregon. Ordinarily I would have been thrilled, as this was everything I could possibly have wanted—Jack was gone, my father was back, I was receiving a twenty-four-hour pass to spend the next day with my family, and we were moving up in the world. Now it was a nightmare. I would be leaving Deanna behind. I started to rock gently in my chair as I silently cried. I didn’t make a sound, but the tears came so fast and heavy that I couldn’t see the room. I was looking at the world from behind a waterfall. I was sad and desperate, but something in my guts turned to steel. I knew I would keep my word to her no matter what.