My Generation (34 page)

I
n October 1983, four days before he was scheduled to be executed in the electric chair at the Florida state prison at Starke, something took place that enraged Shabaka Sundiata Waglini more than any single event during his nearly ten years on death row. They came into his cell and measured him for his burial suit. The bloodlessly finicky, mechanical tailoring procedure upset him violently.

I recently met him, and he said, call me Shabaka. Shabaka—thirty-four years old when he faced death, born Joseph Green Brown in Charleston, South Carolina—had been convicted for the 1973 murder, along with the robbery and rape, of a Tampa white woman. “Shabaka,” a name he took before going to prison, means “uncompromising” in Swahili.

Shortly after the suit was measured, Shabaka was asked to order his last meal—he could have virtually anything he wanted—but he rejected the offer as gratuitously insulting.

One shrinks from thinking how a man prepares himself to face this form of extinction. While little can be said in favor of any type of execution, death by electric current is truly primitive, a method that has not really been improved—if improvements are imaginable—since a convicted murderer received the inaugural 2,000 volts at New York's Auburn prison in 1890. It is a broiling process at intensely high temperature. The doctors who ascertain
death must wait six or seven minutes for the body to cool down so they can touch it. Pigs and cattle go more expeditiously into that good night. Shabaka thought about the manner of his dying more than once.

He had good reason to believe that because he was black he had been dealt cards from a stacked deck.

As it happened, a juror at his trial had sent an affidavit to Shabaka's minister, the Rev. Joe Ingle of the Nashville-based Southern Coalition of Jails and Prisons, asserting that a jury member had advocated the chair for Shabaka, a former Black Panther, because “that nigger's been nothing but trouble since he came down here, and he'll be trouble until we get him off the streets.”

One's mouth goes dry at such an utterance, especially in light of the recent United States Supreme Court decision that racial prejudice, as a decisive factor in the administration of the death penalty, is theoretical and therefore of no importance.

In truth, racial discrimination, far from being of no importance, has an omnipresence that the remarks of that Florida juror utterly confirm. After trials like Shabaka's, how can the Court's ruling appear anything but a cruel and monumental deceit?

In the United States, blacks and Hispanics suffer the death penalty in grave disproportion. They also tend, like Shabaka, to be poor, and therefore they receive legal counsel that more often than not is slipshod and deficient. Shabaka possessed a couple of sorry impediments when he went into his trial: He was black and penniless. These conditions represent one of several arguments amid a constellation of many arguments against the death penalty.

But what would be the case in favor of killing Shabaka? (A previous armed robbery hardly gained him sympathy.) There is no doubt that the crime of which he had been convicted was terrible. Those who felt no qualms about placing him in the electric chair, including many of clear and subtle intelligence, might have wished to justify his execution on one or the other, or both, of two grounds. There really aren't any more. The most obvious of these is deterrence: By putting Shabaka and all other brutal killers to death, we think we dissuade the like-minded from committing similar crimes.

But it never has been proved that the death penalty prevents murder.
Indeed, there is convincing evidence—displayed among other damning exhibits in Amnesty International's recent report on the death penalty in America—that executions frequently cause an increase in violent crimes.

In some countries—Canada, for example—the murder rate has fallen after abolition of the death penalty. Sincere foes of that penalty rarely are sentimentalists. There are those who would have opposed Shabaka's execution for any reason—feeling it was cruel and barbaric, or merely because it violated the sanctity of life. The resolve of many pragmatic opponents would be undermined were there hard proof that the death penalty prevents murders—but proof does not exist.

The crime that sealed Shabaka's fate was one that would bring out retributive fury in most people. Simple vengeance would have been the other rationale for seeking his death. The impulse toward vengeance is understandably relentless; many people, not necessarily bloodthirsty, would without shame declare a wish to have Shabaka killed just as a way to get even. And why shouldn't we acknowledge this? For, paradoxically, it is in the realm of vengeance that the feelings of many death penalty supporters and some opponents converge, though they do not coincide.

Any harsh sentence imposed for a particularly brutal crime contains an element of retaliation, satisfying a need on the part of the victim's ghost, the close survivors, and perhaps even society.

At the time of Shabaka's trial, there were quite a few onlookers who, though they rejected the death penalty, admitted they wanted to see Shabaka suffer a very hard time. But they also rejected a vengeance that extended to the electric chair, with its irremediable finality.

By the time Shabaka's date with the executioner neared in 1983, he had made as good use of his time as a man can under the circumstances. He worked on his case, wrote letters, and, like many inmates, became a devoted reader. He greatly fancied modern American novels and developed a love for classical music. As he sweated it out, there were scores of convicts throughout America's prison system who were doing time for crimes that were almost identical to the one for which Shabaka had been condemned.

Those who were truly dangerous among these criminals would, or
should, never be released. Others, after serving long terms—an average of twenty years or more—would be released on parole, and scarcely a soul among them would be returned to prison for a subsequent crime.

Why hadn't Shabaka been permitted to join this favored majority? Why had he and a small fraction of other felons been singled out to die while vastly larger numbers of criminals paying penance for misdeeds virtually the same as his were allowed to work out their destinies?

The absence of answers—which emphasizes the blind inequity of the death penalty—is another major reason why its use is immoral and unacceptable. But in Shabaka's case, the questions were really academic—because he was innocent.

The legalized killing of innocent people is the final indictment of capital punishment. For years, Shabaka had insisted on his innocence of the rape, robbery, and murder. All along, he had admitted to a robbery—but this at a time and place different from those of the murder.

Only fifteen hours before Shabaka's appointment with death, a three-judge panel of the federal circuit court of appeals in Atlanta stayed the execution on grounds that the case merited further examination. Shabaka returned to his cell and began to petition for a new trial.

In the years that followed, ugly details came to light: During the first trial, the prosecutor had concealed Federal Bureau of Investigation evidence showing that the fatal bullet could not have been fired from Shabaka's gun. Shabaka based his new claim on this fact and on his assertion that the prosecutor had allowed a crucial witness to lie, while also misleading the jury in his closing argument.

Last year, the circuit court ordered a new trial. Before it could begin, the original witness admitted he had lied. Florida, sensing it had no case, abandoned its prosecution, and early last March Shabaka left jail a free man, his only possessions being the clothes on his back and his legal papers. Between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-seven, he had spent the rich marrow of his youth on death row.

The Shabaka story illuminates the most sordid defects of capital punishment. His blackness and poverty helped doom him. He was ruthlessly cheated; it was never his privilege to be granted—even for a phantom crime—the incarceration that it meted out to others and that carries the possibility of redemption.

He would have died not a criminal but a victim whose innocence would have been as surely entombed as his body in its burial suit.

Today, Shabaka makes his home in Florida. There “decompressing,” as he puts it, from his years in a cell, he reads and listens to tapes of classical symphonies. May he live in peace.

[
New York Times
, op-ed, May 10, 1987.]

L
ike millions of others, I watched transfixed in late April 1996 as the acquisitive delirium that swept through Sotheby's turned the humblest knickknack of Camelot into a fetish for which people would pony up a fortune. A bundle of old magazines, including
Modern Screen
and
Ladies' Home Journal
, went for $12,650. A photograph of an Aaron Shikler portrait of Jackie—not the portrait itself, mind you, a photo—was sold for $41,400. (Sotheby's had valued the picture at $50 to $75.) A Swiss “Golf-Sport” stroke counter, worth $50 to $100 by Sotheby's estimate, fetched an insane $28,750. But surely among the most grandiose trophies, in terms of its bloated price, was John Kennedy's walnut cigar humidor, which Milton Berle had given the president in 1961 after having attached a plaque reading “To J.F.K. Good Health—Good Smoking, Milton Berle 1/20/61.” The comedian had paid $600 to $800 for it in that year. Thirty-five years later, poor Berle tried to buy the humidor back at Sotheby's but dropped out of the bidding at $185,000.

The winner was Marvin Shanken, publisher of the magazine
Cigar Aficionado
, who spent $574,500 on an object the auctioneers had appraised at $2,000 to $2,500. Even at such a flabbergasting price the humidor should prove to play an important mascot role in the fortunes of Shanken's magazine, which is already wildly successful, featuring (aside from cigars and cigar-puffing celebrities) articles on polo and golf, swank hotels, antique
cars, and many other requirements for a truly tony lifestyle in the 1990s. After all, John F. Kennedy was no stranger to the nobby life, and what could be more appropriate as a relic for a cigar magazine than the vault in which reposed the Havanas of our last genuine cigar-smoking president?

I never laid eyes on the fabled humidor, but on the occasions I encountered Kennedy I sensed he must have owned one, protecting his precious supply, for he approached cigars with the relish and delight of—well, an aficionado. Indeed, if I allow my memory to be given a Proustian prod, and recollect Kennedy at the loose and relaxed moments when our lives briefly intersected, I can almost smell the smoke of the Havanas for which he'd developed such an impetuous, Kennedyesque weakness.

After the clunky Eisenhower years it was wonderful to have this dashing young guy in the spotlight, and soon there was nothing unusual in seeing the president posed, without apology or self-consciousness, holding a cigar. I had become friendly with two members of the Kennedy staff, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Richard Goodwin, both of whom were so passionate about cigars that smoking appeared to me to be almost a White House subculture. They would lecture me about cigars whenever I saw them in Washington. Havanas were, of course, the sine qua non, and, as an ignorant cigarette smoker still clinging miserably to an unwanted addiction, I found myself fascinated but a little puzzled by all the cigar talk, by the effusive praise for a Montecristo of a certain length and vintage, by the descriptions of wrappers and their shades, by the subtle distinctions made between the flavors of a Ramon Allones and a Punch. Stubbornly, I kept up my odious allegiance to cigarettes, but in my secret heart I envied these men for their devotion to another incarnation of tobacco, one that had been transubstantiated from mere weed into an object plainly capable of evoking rapture.

In late April of 1962 I was one of a small group of writers invited to what turned out to be possibly the most memorable social event of the Kennedy presidency. This was a state dinner in honor of Nobel Prize winners. Schlesinger and Goodwin were responsible for my being included—at the time, Kennedy didn't know me, as they say, from Adam—and it was a giddy pleasure for my wife, Rose, and me to head off to the White House on a balmy spring evening in the company of my friend James Baldwin, who was on the verge of becoming the most celebrated black writer in America. I recall that it was the only time I ever shaved twice on the same day.

Before dinner the booze flowed abundantly and the atmosphere crackled with excitement as J.F.K. and his beautiful lady joined the assembly and presided over the receiving line. Jack and Jackie actually shimmered. You would have had to be abnormal, perhaps psychotic, to be immune to their dumbfounding appeal. Even Republicans were gaga. They were truly the golden couple, and I am not trying to play down my own sense of wonder when I note that a number of the guests, male and female, appeared so affected by the glamour that their eyes took on a goofy, catatonic glaze.

Although I remained in control of myself, I got prematurely plastered; this did not damage my critical faculties when it came to judging the dinner. I'd spent a considerable amount of time in Paris and had become something of a food and wine snob. Later, in my notebook, I ungratefully recorded that while the Puligny-Montrachet 1959, served with the first course, was “more than adequate,” I found the Mouton-Rothschild 1955, accompanying the filet de boeuf Wellington, “lacking in maturity.” The dessert, something called a bombe Caribienne, I deemed “much too sweet, a real bomb.”

Reviewing these notes so many years later, I cringe at my churlishness (including the condescending remark that the meal was “doubtless better than anything Ike and Mamie served up”), especially in view of the thrilling verve and happy spirits of the entire evening. Because of the placement of the tables I was seated at right angles to the president, and I was only several feet away when he rose from his own table and uttered his famous bon mot about the occasion representing the greatest gathering of minds at the White House since “Thomas Jefferson dined here alone.” The Nobelists roared their appreciation at this elegant bouquet, and I sensed the words passing into immortality.

The White House was anything but smoke-free, and the scullions among us lit up our cigarettes. I noticed with my usual sulkiness and envy that many gentlemen at the tables around the room had begun to smoke cigars; among them was Kennedy, who was engaged in conversation with a stunning golden-haired young woman and plainly relishing her at least as much as his Churchill. Following coffee, we moved into the East Room for a concert of chamber music. After this, just as the party was breaking up and we were about to be converted into pumpkins, I was astonished to learn from an army captain in full dress that Rose and I were invited upstairs for something “more intimate” with President and Mrs. Kennedy. Although I had an instant's impish fantasy about what “more intimate” implied—this was, after
all, the dawn of the Swinging Sixties—I was in fact rather relieved to discover that the small room into which we were ushered was filled with cigar smokers and their lady companions.

The president hadn't arrived yet, but Jackie was there, as were Goodwin and Schlesinger and Bobby Kennedy and Pierre Salinger, together with their wives, and all the men were focusing on their Havanas with such obvious pleasure that one might have thought the entire Nobel dinner had been arranged to produce this fragrant climax. Only in fine Paris restaurants, where—unlike in America—cigar smoking was encouraged, had I inhaled such a delicious aroma. I had by this time taken aboard too many of the various beverages the White House had provided, including the dessert champagne (Piper-Heidsieck 1955), and sank down unwittingly into the president's famous rocking chair.

Rocking away, I talked with Lionel Trilling, the renowned critic; he and his wife, Diana, were the only other literary people invited upstairs. He was also the only other cigarette smoker, as far as I could tell—indeed, a real chain-smoker, with a haggard, oxygen-deprived look—and we made book chat and indulged in our forlorn habit while the others convivially enjoyed their great cigars. It was not until Schlesinger discreetly asked me to let the president sit down in the rocker, for the sake of his dysfunctional back, that I realized that J.F.K. had been standing in the room for some time, too polite to shoo me out of his chair. When I leapt up, mortified, and Kennedy apologetically took my place, I noticed that he was still fondling his Churchill. The leader of the Free World wreathed in smoke, gently rocking: this was the relaxed and contented image I took away with me when, well after midnight, we wobbled our way homeward from one hell of a party.

In the months that intervened before I saw Kennedy again, I waged a demonic struggle with my cigarette habit. Thanks to my two White House gurus, I was also gingerly experimenting with cigars. The embargo against Cuba, instituted officially by Kennedy himself, was now in force; Havanas had become nearly unavailable overnight, and so I found myself buying the next-best cigars, which were then being made in the Canary Islands. These cigars were actually very good, and many of them were outstanding.

But I was still hesitant to commit myself. Although I was fully aware that I was undermining my health with an addiction that had held me captive since the age of fifteen, I was unable to make the transition to cigars without
going through convulsions of moral doubt. Actually, I was a victim of the conventional wisdom. This was because in America, an essentially puritanical society that is as absolutist in its views about health as it is about many other issues, there was little distinction to be made between cigarettes and cigars.

After all, in a country which some years later, in its panic over the cholesterol in eggs, would virtually banish this agelessly invaluable food from the national diet rather than merely caution moderation, it was entirely natural that the relatively harmless pleasure of moderate cigar smoking should suffer the same opprobrium as the lethal addiction to cigarettes. If I stopped cigarettes, there were a lot of old nannies of both sexes eager to tell me: cigars are just as bad!

Well, they plainly are not, and indeed, unlike cigarettes, they possess an intrinsic good. At that time, in notes I made for a 1963 review (in
The New York Review of Books
) of
The Consumers Union Report on Smoking and the Public Interest
, which was a precursor to the original surgeon general's report on the hazards of tobacco, I wrote:

It is a grim irony that in our health-obsessed society an addiction as plainly ruinous as cigarette smoking should be condoned and promoted while the comparatively benign use of cigars should be condemned as if it were a plague. Cigars are a genuine pleasure; cigarettes are a pseudo pleasure, of the same kind experienced by laboratory rats. The stigma against cigars has as much to do with economics and social class as it has with misplaced moralizing. The nearly universal habit of cigarette smoking is the property of the vast middle class, while cigar smokers are confined to the upper and lower ends of the economic scale. (There are overlappings and intersections, of course, but this is the basic contour.)

Among middle-class cigarette smokers, cigars are regarded either as the overpriced indulgence of bankers, rich corporate board members, and movie moguls like Darryl Zanuck or, at the lower end, the cheap habit of White Owl chompers who inhabit low-class saloons and sleazy gyms. The comic-strip figure of the 1930s “Pete the Tramp” best illustrates this dichotomy: the little drifter always on the lookout for plutocrats' quality cigar butts, which he'd pluck from the gutter and impale on a toothpick.

Cigars have never found a comfortable middle ground of acceptance.
What compounds the irony is that White Owls and Dutch Masters do in fact offend the nostrils—certainly mine—and women, especially, with their canary-like sensitivity, are often justifiably upset by such effluvia. Women disturbed by cheap mass-produced cigars have innocently helped give all cigars a bum rap. What is so fascinating is that the same women, when exposed to the smoke of a prime Montecristo, will often emit genuine swooning sounds, thus demonstrating that cigars of high quality need not endure prejudice forever. Women someday will be smoking cigars. I predict, too, that at some point in the future, after society has become aware of the awful hazards of cigarettes, many of the middle class will begin gradually to embrace cigars—cigars of excellence which, coming from countries other than Cuba, will also become more and more affordable.

I'm pleased to find that my crystal ball, so often dismally clouded, was quite clear when I set down those last lines.

The following summer I quit smoking cigarettes for good, cold turkey. It was just a few weeks before Jack Kennedy invited Rose and me out for a ride on his cabin cruiser, the good ship
Patrick J
. He and Jackie crossed over from the Cape to Martha's Vineyard, where I had rented a house, and took us out on an overcast August day for a wallowing luncheon afloat. Aside from my friends John and Sue Marquand, who accompanied us, the only other passenger aboard was the late Stephen Smith, J.F.K.'s brother-in-law. A Coast Guard cutter hung around not far away for security reasons, but otherwise the seven of us had the rolling waves to ourselves. The sea was moderately rough, though alcohol soothed the mal de mer. The Bloody Marys, poured out by a rather jittery Filipino mess steward, overflowed their glasses; there was a lot of chitchat between the Marquands and Jack and Jackie, who had known each other for years, about mutual friends; variations on the twist, and other hip music of that year, blared from a record player; and the general pre-luncheon mood was frisky despite the gray weather.

The talk became a little bit more serious when we sat down to eat. At the table of the
Patrick J'
s open cockpit, no one paid much attention to the disastrous lunch. It was a mad joke of cold hot dogs in soggy buns, gooey
oeufs
en gelée
, spoons dropped by the nervous Filipino into everyone's laps, glasses of beer not merely iced but frozen solid. We got involved instead in the conversation, which ranged from Massachusetts politics and the racial situation heating up in the Deep South—the previous fall's violent events in Oxford, Mississippi, had plainly shaken J.F.K.—to the old chestnut about whether Alger Hiss was guilty (Kennedy thought he was) and the president's obvious pique over an article in
The American Scholar
by the critic Alfred Kazin questioning his intellectual credentials.
¹
I was both amused and impressed that Kazin should bug him so.