The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (14 page)

Where he grew up, the family was a weakening institution. It struggled to teach young men like Mark the homespun virtues that still hung in cross-stitch on the walls. Imperfect as it was, it was the state, alone among the players in Stroman’s life, that kept vigil over his growth. It chronicled him consistently through every little stunt or fight or crime that led to paperwork. The state came to know him through this paper: the angles of his fingerprints’ turns, the loopy curls of his penmanship, the cadences of his writing, his strengths and weaknesses in school, the locations of his birthmarks (right
forearm, right thigh, and right shoulder blade), the inching-up of his height and the swings of his weight (5'1"and 124 pounds in November 1981, at age twelve; 5'6" and 153 pounds in January 1983; 6' and 155 pounds in June 1985), the streets where he’d lived (Latham Drive, Kidwell Circle, Old Seagoville Road, East 15th Street, Clearfield Road). In this long witnessing, the state was the closest thing Stroman had to a father figure, with all the Oedipal ramifications. Stroman would come to loathe the government that tracked him so closely. And yet, for all the data it racked up on Stroman, there was so little connecting of dots—so little seeing.

The state knew, for instance, that he got mostly Cs in third grade at Weatherford Elementary in Plano but earned more Bs in the fourth. The next year, it knew that he could add and subtract whole numbers and solve word problems with those operations but struggled to multiply and divide; that he aced graphs but struggled with fractions. It knew that in the realm of reading he couldn’t identify the main idea of things, couldn’t recall facts and details, couldn’t tell you the sequence of events in a story he’d heard, couldn’t tell facts from nonfacts, couldn’t draw conclusions—but that he could, against all the odds, write fluently. He spelled and punctuated and capitalized and structured sentences with a flair that seemed to reveal a fiery intelligence that his life situation was working to contain. He couldn’t do the things that involved listening—taking voices in. His fifth-grade teacher gave him “needs improvement” ratings on obedience to school rules, respect for authority and for others, and self-discipline. But he could express himself.

The state also knew that one evening the following year, with Mark in the sixth grade, a young boy named Chad was riding his bike to a 7-Eleven in Plano. He came upon a pair of boys who struck him as mean-looking. He turned around and sped off the other way. The mean-looking boys started trailing him. Stroman was one of them, wearing a red windbreaker and jeans, holding nunchakus—two sixteen-inch-long chrome-colored pipes linked by a chain. Mark
asked the terrified boy for his money. The boy replied that he had only a few cents. Mark’s associate rapped the boy on his face with a closed fist, leaving a scratch, and then the two of them fled. Mark was caught and eventually sentenced to probation for the attack. He was ordered to avoid “injurious or vicious habits,” to remain within the county limits, to submit to home visits by an officer, and to avoid places that sold alcohol.

What the state didn’t know about was the unseen occurrences in Stroman’s home life that fueled the things it could see. Thus the jury would get limited insight into why, for example, Stroman suddenly failed sixth grade and was made to repeat it: Ds in English, music, science and health, and social studies; Fs in math and reading; and, for a saving grace, an A in physical education.

During his second shot at sixth grade, in the spring of 1983, Stroman was riding around Plano on his bike, dressed in all red, white, and blue, when he came upon a silver Chevy pickup truck parked on the street. He came close enough to notice the keys lying in the truck bed. He decided to trade in his bike for this better ride. He opened the unlocked door, hoisted himself into the front seat, pushed the truck into neutral, and rolled backward down the inclined street. He was seasoned enough at thirteen years old to know that you don’t rev up the engine of the truck you want to steal right in front of the guy who might shoot you if he heard.

Then Mark turned it on and took off. He drove over to the TTO Game Room, where he picked up a friend named Matthew Kirby, and went roaming around with him. After a half hour or so of cruising, Mark saw a police car and panicked. He hooked a sharp left down what turned out to be an alley and ran into a wooden fence, bringing down a perfectly good ten-foot stretch of it. He ran off northbound on foot; Matt Kirby grabbed his bike from the truck bed and vanished east. When the police caught Mark a short while later, he said he had run away from home a couple of days before taking the truck. He’d stayed in some vacant houses on Lakeshore Drive in Plano,
and, according to the police reports, left his little thirteen-year-old crime signatures—a broken window here, Coke cans lazily adrift in the swimming pool there.

Some days after his arrest, a pair of psychologists named Sylvia Gearing and Dan Cox, of the Plano Child Guidance Clinic, evaluated Stroman. They ran a variety of tests—vocabulary, inkblot, thematic apperception, house-tree-person, Bender-Gestalt, and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory—and found that, while the thirteen-year-old was wild beyond measure and severely tormented, he was intellectually above average, far from insanity or being unable to control his own actions. The resulting report became part of the trial record, the better to help jurors decide Stroman’s degree of responsibility for his deeds:

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

During the family interview with Mark and his parents, they reported that Mark has been in repeated trouble with the law for the last few years. Specifically, they stated that Mark’s difficulties began when he was approximately nine years old. Past problems with this youngster have included stealing parts of bicycles, “car-hopping”, [redacted], aggravated robbery, runaway, and disruptive behavior in the school. The Bakers asserted that they have tried numerous strategies to help their son but none have been successful. In December, the Plano school reportedly refused to let Mark attend classes and the Bakers placed him in a Christian Academy. However, three weeks prior to this psychological evaluation, he was refused admission by this particular school.

In discussing the family situation in general, the Bakers noted that they have had marked difficulties with Mark’s older sisters, ages 19 and 16 years respectively. The oldest sibling presently is married and the second daughter lives with her grandmother. The Bakers admitted their confusion and concern about how to handle their son and stated that they “don’t know what to do with him.”

When Mark was interviewed individually he discussed his parent’s reported marital problems and stated that they had had frequent separations. Additionally, he talked about his inability to relate to his father in a satisfying manner and noted that his father didn’t know how to act around children. In general, this youngster does not appear to experience his parent’s home as a stable and pleasant environment. [Redacted]. He reported that his parents are planning to move to Balch Springs in the future. When asked how he thought he would behave in this new environment, Mark replied that he had “these feelings that I’ll get into trouble.”

CLINICAL OBSERVATIONS

Mark presented as a pleasant youngster who was quite shy during the family interview. However, during the individual interview, he was quite self-disclosing and gave information even when it was not elicited. While he talked, at length, about his individual and family problems, this youngster evidenced little insight into his behavior or his feelings. His testing behavior was appropriate and extremely courteous. He seemed to be concerned about impressing the examiner with his sincere efforts.

ANALYSIS OF TEST RESULTS

On the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Mark obtained an intelligence quotient of 106. This score falls within the average range, representing a percentile score of 71 and a mental age of 15.3. This data suggest that Mark’s inadequate school performance may be caused by motivational and emotional factors.

Personality testing indicates that Mark is an individual with poor self-esteem who experiences little ability to control either his own actions or rewards and punishments from his environment. One of this youngster’s central concerns is a wish to avoid any significant level of subjective distress. Thus, many of Mark’s actions appear to represent an acting-out of negative feelings so he can feel less internal discomfort. This impulsive style suggests a lack of ability to delay gratification and a low
tolerance for frustration of immediately experienced egocentric needs. As a result, he fails to aspire to ambitious goals which demand hard work and short-term sacrifice, instead preferring a more hedonistic “live for the moment” approach to life.

Mark generally views the world as a hostile and unpredictable place which demands constant scrutinization. He invests a great deal of energy constantly scanning his environment for clues of impending punishment, which he experiences as being largely arbitrary in nature. This tendency implies a lack of consistent parental rewards and punishments, which would shape socially desirable and conforming behaviors. Mark’s sense of what is wrong seems to be dictated largely by externally imposed punishment rather than by internalized social norms. He does not seem to view interpersonal relationships as a major source of need gratification, and may have little, if any, conception of what emotionally meaningful and consistent relationships are. In general, Mark seems to live from moment to moment, seeking immediate hedonistic gratification while dodging environmental punishment as best he can.

These were the years before scientists amply understood the physiological, neurological, and psychological toll of childhood stress. It would later become commonplace to think of a youth like Stroman’s as having been spent on something like a war footing, awaiting attacks that could strike at any time, from any direction. The war footing seemed capable of rewiring body and mind, resulting principally in inner torment for certain people and in lashing out for others. But the psychologists who looked at Stroman, for all the facts they uncovered, concluded that he needed no therapy or other individualized treatment. He was too unsophisticated, they found, to sit with a therapist and pick through his past. What he needed was the structure of the youth penal system:

Given his general lack of empathy and mistrust of others, his lack of internalized social norms and his emphasis on impulsive pursuit of immediate gratification, he does not appear to
be an appropriate candidate for psychotherapy. In view of the chronicity of his acting out behaviors and the parent’s lack of effective intervention with this youngster, placement outside the home is recommended. Such placement should provide him with a consistent stable environment with structured and clear limits placed to interact with stable and nurturing adult figures who would facilitate this youngster’s learning of more appropriate ways in which to meet his emotional needs.

On May 2, 1983, on the strength of that recommendation, Mark entered the care of the Texas Youth Commission. It was a sprawling juvenile penal system that would serve a total of 6,081 children that year, according to its annual report, through five institutions for delinquents, a program for emotionally disturbed youth, seven halfway houses, two camping programs, parole supervision, and more. Older jurors might have remembered the TYC for causing the State of Texas a great deal of heartburn in the 1970s and ’80s. A group of inmates, led by a plaintiff named Alicia Morales, had filed a class-action lawsuit against the TYC in 1971, alleging systemic mistreatment of juveniles. After surveys and interviews with hundreds of inmates, Judge William Wayne Justice issued a stern order in 1973, finding abuse, neglect, racial segregation, and much else in the TYC system and immediately forbidding many of its practices.

His “findings of fact” painted a dire picture of the youth penal world. Correctional officers regularly abused prisoners, “including slapping, punching, and kicking,” as well as “racking”—“requiring the inmate to stand against the wall with his hands in his pockets while he is struck a number of times by blows from the fists.” Officers had used tear gas, including in times of peace. Inmates were assigned “repetitive, make-work tasks, such as pulling up grass without bending their knees.” Some were told they could not speak so long as they were inside, and a fear of reprisal had chilled the reporting of physical abuse. Educational offerings were minimal for many prisoners, despite their grade-school age.

Mark Stroman entered the TYC system ten years after these findings and the judge’s ruling, well into a process of reform and monitoring that would continue for years. A month after Stroman’s commitment, Judge Justice wrote a follow-up order praising the commission’s progress in transforming itself. But he tempered his optimism “by the recognition that personnel will inevitably change, and that, just over a decade ago, many of the individuals who then comprised the officialdom of TYC, and at least one of the attorneys who represents them, unregenerately and callously endeavored to preserve and perpetuate debased, execrable institutions in which juveniles were tortured and terrorized.”

On May 12, 1983, ten days after Stroman’s commitment, his caseworker, Michael Harrison, reported that he had “adjusted well.” He was mixing with peers and was polite. His daily living skills and social skills received high marks from “houseparents.” Harrison wrote, “Mark can be a negative follower given the opportunity. To date, Mark has had seven restrictions, most of which have been for loudness and horseplaying, and has handled these restrictions well.”

Stroman now had a number in addition to a name: he was 0603582.