A Saint on Death Row

by Thomas Cahill

  Besides football pools and legal strategy, Dominique often endeavored to raise the spirits of his fellow inmates by an inventive variety of ploys. One of these was the creation of a sprawling manuscript, composed of contributions by prisoners. Given the immense obstacles to communication among the inmates, each living in solitary confinement, this manuscript, which now sits on my desk, typed by Dominique on the prison's barely functioning typewriter, is a considerable achievement.

  In his foreword, Dominique stresses how conscious the contributors are that they must clear away “the racial prejudice that once divided us;” and the races of the contributors bear this out. One chapter of contributions is by Son Tran, a writer of Vietnamese origin, condemned to death at seventeen. His poetry is full of the dreamy mind games he plays to keep himself sane:

  In the dark

  I dance to a tune

  from a distant memory

  to ease the boredom

  of confinement

  to escape the walls

  of self-destruction

  to enjoy a moment

  of reprieve.

  Will you dance with me?

  Another contributor is Tony Medina, of partly Mexican, partly European origin, who claims to be completely innocent of the crime of which he was convicted. With Dominique's help, however, he was able to get the attorney who had represented him disbarred (a first in a Texas capital case) and to force the court to grant him the right to a fresh appeal (another first).

  A third contributor, Howard Guidry, an African American, writes with considerable pathos of the psychological effects of incarceration: “I try not to fall into routine. The bleakness of this place and the rigor of the rules and regulations produce a monotonous theme that many of the men here unconsciously fall into. I am always changing, rearranging the sparse furniture in my cage, working out sporadically, changing my sleeping hours. I alternate reading and writing depending on my mood. Typically I'll play a few games of chess at the end of most days. And I draw when my spirit moves me…. Here social interaction is strictly prohibited. I have not watched a television or played a game of dominoes in five years. We are isolated to one-man cages twenty-four hours each day…. The isolation experienced on Polunsky Unit today is of grave consequence to the human psyche. I have witnessed men literally lose their minds here.”

  At one point Guidry escaped, getting as far as the roof of the prison, and he considers this brief flight his most important accomplishment while in prison, because he was “climbing the roof of the prison, watching the stars and moon without looking at them through fence, glass or razor wire.” His description of what it is like for a prisoner to be told he has a visitor is heartrending:

  On occasion they let me out of my cage. An hour for recreation, some minutes to shower, a walk to disciplinary or some other institutional office. But it's rare that I fall out to visitation. [The walk to] the visitation room is the longest walk men experience on Death Row. That is, until the last walk. To me walking to visitation is like smoking indonesia. It starts in moments like this, while I'm writing: “Guidry you have a visit. Get ready,” says a picket control guard over the intercom. I put my pen down and take a deep breath; and then I'm high for the next six or seven hours. The escort guards have to take me out of the building that houses Death Row and into the open air in order to get me there. The outside walkway is lined on both sides with a hurricane fence and covered by a steel roof. I always try to count the steps from my cage to the visitation cage, but I always lose count the moment I step “outside.” My senses are extraordinary for having been deprived. The subtle breeze against my skin, the scent of grassroots and freshly turned compost, the hypnotic vapor-blue sky, the earth's vibrations—nothing escapes me. The rhythm of my own feet against the concrete is the soundtrack to whatever fantasy I conjure up in a moment. The guards don't understand my silence. Silence is often a prelude to violence amongst a certain breed of men in prison. But my silence in these pseudo-serene walks is the silence of a child in awe.

  It would be hard to overestimate how much comfort this manuscript gave to Dominique's fellow prisoners: they had created a book! Not only that, the dramatic increase in social cohesiveness—in a sense of belonging to a community of common experiences and common resolve—served as a powerful bane against the isolation of the cage. There are no mental health services offered to Death Row inmates. For whatever healing is done they themselves must be the healers. But as with all acts of generosity the giver gets at least as much as he gives. In Andy Lofthouse's words, Dominique “was very much a big brother to a lot of [inmates], and I think that stemmed from his innate desire to just belong and have a family and have people who cared about him.”

  Dominique's own contribution to the manuscript is characteristic. Like the desert fathers, like the ancient Greek philosophers who carved the words “Know thyself” on the façade of their most sacred temple, he has similar advice to offer from the treasure trove of his own experience. He asks himself the question “If you were given the opportunity to say something to someone that would make a lasting impression on their life what would it be?” “The best answer to some of life's most difficult questions,” he replies, “can always be found if you just stop and take a look in the mirror.”

  He describes the process by which he came to this self-knowledge:

  One of the first things I learned in coming to Death Row was how to be myself. Simple as that may sound that was far from an easy task because before I came to Death Row I was many different things to many different people. As a result I went through a monumental identity crisis. I didn't know if I wanted to be a Muslim or a Christian religiously. I didn't know if I wanted to be a revolutionary or a gangster with my friends. I didn't know if I wanted to be a mack or a man when it came to women. I didn't know if I wanted to be a responsible leader or an easily influenced follower in regard to my life. I didn't know, after being condemned, if I should prove to the jury that sentenced me to die that I was not a monster…. I never had anyone in my life to teach me how to be me. That was something I had to take the time to discover on my own, and it was one hell of an experience.

  It sounds almost as if he is grateful for the opportunity that prison has afforded him. But, steely realist that he is, he also has no illusion about the ambiguity of the gift he has been given:

  My attorneys have filed a Writ of Certiorari on my behalf, which now sits before the United States Supreme Court. I have reached the final stage of my appeal and unfortunately don't expect to see next year.

  Hope is indeed a loaded gun.

  ∗ For simplicity's sake, I have omitted from this narrative some of the figures who for a time assisted Dominique legally, as well as others who offered moral support. In still other cases, I have mentioned such figures without elaborating much on their roles.

  5

  By this stage in his life, Dominique was even finding ways to have an impact on lives outside the prison. When Andy Loft-house's oldest and best friend, a young journalist named Timothy Krahl, was killed in a snowboarding accident in Montana, where he had attended college, Andy, by his own account, “pretty much withdrew from everything for a while” and stopped visiting Dominique. Dominique, who would never go snowboarding, never attend college, never see Montana, could have been expected to view the accident as something with little relevance to him, even as an incident in a life he could only envy from afar. Rather, as Andy relates, “he sent me this card that said, ‘I face death every day but it's nothing compared to losing someone who helps you appreciate life. Yet despite all the pain and suffering, you have something most people never will: wonderful, magical, and who knows how mischievous, memories. Those are the things that keep us alive in each other's hearts and can never die. Stay strong, my friend. Dominique Green.’” Andy was comforted and a little amazed by Dominique's words.

  And Dominique succeeded in bringing the world into the prison. Not only did he now have international organizations working on behalf of himse
lf and other inmates, he fiddled with an old radio till it brought in the sounds of major television stations, television itself being forbidden. By sharing this guerrilla technology with others, he was able to increase the inmates’ understanding of the wider world. Nonetheless, as he admitted to Andy, “Mine gets more channels than anybody else's.” Why, asked Andy, don't you just listen to the radio? “Man,” replied Dominique, “with all the hillbilly shit they got around here? I can't listen to that!” There were limits to even Dominique's multicultural tolerance.

  I have a letter from one of Dominique's fellow inmates, Ivan Cantu, a Mexican American confined for a while in the cell next to Dominique, that relates more exactly Dominique's effect on other prisoners. “His life,” writes Ivan, “was like an open book and he never tried to hide anything. He just called it as he saw it, and this is why I think we got along so well. He shared stories of his good friend Sheila Murphy, his brother Hollingsworth, and his faith. One thing about Dominique is that he was respected by all who knew him. In prison, inmates tend to lean towards certain groups but not Stump, he did his own thing while always making sure people were cared for.”

  In Ivan's description we meet the achieved Dominique, Dominique the mature adult, Dominique the man he had always wanted to become. “I hope you don't mind,” continues Ivan, “that I call him Stump, but really that's the name I knew him by. Actually it was Stumpa, but most called him Stump for short. He was always so kind, and if he couldn't actually help an inmate himself, he'd contact a friend or someone he knew who could help. Most of the time he kept his good deeds to himself, but one time another inmate needed a Hot Pot, and since Stump couldn't purchase it from his account”—an account to which outsiders may make donations for small purchases is maintained for each prisoner—“he asked a friend [on the outside] to assist with getting the inmate one. Obviously, Stump didn't have to do this, but he hated to see anyone suffer or do without. That's just the kind of person he was: he made sure people had what they needed or the right information to fight their case.”

  Glued to his radio during broadcasts of 60 Minutes, Face the Nation, or his usual favorite, Meet the Press with Tim Russert, Dominique encouraged others to listen, too. For fellow prisoners, he served as a model of engagement with the world: “One thing I'll always remember is that he had a way with words, and he always tried to better himself—writing professors, studying law books, writing articles, studying vocabulary, even just spending time in prayer,” writes Ivan. “He was truly a shining light to everyone he met. Inmates would actually forfeit their daily shower to recreate in his dayroom, so they could pick his brain.”∗

  Ivan leaves us with this indelible picture of Dominique: “Even when his world was crashing, he always remained cool. And really, I don't think he was trying to be cool. He was just at peace.” And like the peaceful Jesus of the gospels, Dominique was on the verge of an experience of transfiguration that would help carry him to his end.

  “The most unlikely person, the most improbable situation— these are all ‘transfigurable—they can be turned into their glorious opposites.” These are the words of Desmond Tutu, archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his many years of sublimely courageous work in the struggle against the apartheid of his then white-ruled homeland. A few months after I first went to Livingston, Tutu was about to visit Dominique, a visit that would be surrounded by as much hubbub and media attention as Dominique could ever have hoped for.

  “The Arch,” as Tutu is called by many of his many friends, was coming to the United States on a speaking tour in March 2004. I had been his publisher at Doubleday during the previous decade, and over the course of that time he and I had become friends. I was also a friend of his literary agent, Lynn Franklin, a woman of considerable sympathy for others. She shared with me the details of the schedule for Tutu's speaking tour. He had one day off during his tour, March 24. Even more serendipitous, on March 23 he would speak in Oklahoma City; on March 25 he was due in Dallas. So—at least theoretically—it would be possible for him to fly from Oklahoma City to Houston on March 24, meet with Dominique, and then fly on to his appointment in Dallas.

  The obstacles to such a plan were considerable: in order to keep him on schedule, I would need to arrange for private planes and chauffeured cars. And somehow I would have to get him to agree to go far out of his way to meet a man he'd never heard of, causing considerable disruption to his schedule. I would also need to secure the cooperation of his lecture agency, a brusquely efficient organization not especially known for its devotion to causes unconnected to their bottom line.

  But the most daunting objection to this emerging scheme lay in my knowledge of Desmond Tutu's delicate health: he had prostate cancer and had recently undergone treatments that left him less vigorous than usual; moreover, he had struggled his whole life against the effects on his body of diseases he had contracted in childhood, tuberculosis and polio. The polio, in particular, had left his right side weak, to such an extent that he had a soft handshake and, when tired, a pronounced limp. He would soon turn seventy-three. As if all this did not speak against my plan, there was the archbishop himself, a man who craves the oasis of silence, meditation, and prayer the way others crave human society. I knew he would be depending on the one day he had off to restore his spiritual equilibrium.

  Well, I reasoned, if anyone I know is a grown-up, capable of making his own decisions and saying no to what he knows is beyond his strength, it is Desmond Tutu. So I would send him an e-mail message, telling him of Dominique's situation and Dominique's love of his writings, particularly No Future Without Forgiveness, and of the effect of that book—through Dominique's instrumentality—on the inhabitants of Texas Death Row. It would then be up to the man himself to decide whether or not to attempt a visit.

  I sent my e-mail. Lynn Franklin kindly sent another, supporting mine. We each received an identical return e-mail from the Arch, which began: “I don't know why I ever allowed myself to get mixed up with people like you.” Reading that first sentence, I knew he would come.

  I will not bore you with the obstacles that had to be overcome to make the hoped-for visit a reality. Sheila Murphy and I pulled out all the stops and called in all our chits. One by one, obstacles fell away not least the recalcitrance of the lecture agency when my contact there realized that her cherished godmother and I were old friends. On the dismal gray morning of March 24, I found myself in a chauffeur-driven limo, approaching a tiny airstrip in the middle of the Texas woods, where a private plane, belonging to the wealthy friends of a New Hampshire lawyer, was soon to land, disgorging the Most Reverend Desmond M. Tutu in his battered old cap and undistinguished traveling costume.

  As we sped through those woods on our way to Livingston, the archbishop silently reciting his morning prayers and working his way through the long list of those he prays for daily, I was aware of our vulnerability. For weeks beforehand, the impending visit was news in all the Texas papers. Here we were—Desmond Tutu and his iconoclastic assistant Travis, the driver and I—traveling through this lonely forest, a second long black limo behind us, easy targets for assassination by any hothead, racist, or wacko who wished to take a shot at us. Though I had formally requested protection, I had been sent a message by the local police that they were simply too busy to provide any.

  Now that Tutu had landed, I had another request to make of him. After he visited Dominique, there was to be a press conference, to which he had already given his approval. It would be hosted by St. Luke's, the small Episcopal church in Livingston. The congregants, extremely excited that such a famous Anglican churchman was to grace them with his presence (the Episcopal Church being the U.S. province of the worldwide Anglican Communion), were planning an elaborate welcome. The ladies of the church, who had been cooking up a storm, would graciously provide lunch not only for the archbishop but for all the local, national, and international press. I had told the church representatives that, as we were in t
he midst of Lent, the archbishop would not be taking lunch but would be fasting. No matter, they were forging ahead with their culinary plans.

  The rector and the warden of the church would be there to greet the archbishop on his arrival and would press him to celebrate eucharist after the press conference. I had hoped, rather, that my friend would have some time to rest once the press conference was over. But I had been unable to dissuade the churchpeople from their resolve to invite him to preside at their eucharist before returning to the airstrip and the private plane that would be waiting for him. Knowing that they would ask him, I thought it best to warn him of their intention and thus give him time to compose his regrets. Of course, he replied, he would accept their invitation to preside at the eucharist. And that was that.

  We arrived at the prison without incident and were ushered into the office of the prison warden, where we were greeted with exaggerated courtesy by the prison's officials and the archbishop somehow managed to take an interest in each person he was introduced to. Then, at last, he and I were waiting while Dominique was brought in shackles from his cell to the visitors’ gallery. As I described in the Prologue, the visitor waits in a tiny cubicle facing a window of thick double glass. On his side is a telephone receiver. On the other side of the double glass is an answering receiver. Through these handsets, visitor and prisoner converse with each other. The prisoner's shackles binding his wrists behind his back are unlocked only after he is seated on his side of the glass, the door behind him has been bolted, and he has put his hands and wrists through a slot in the door, where a guard with a key is waiting. The shackles on his ankles are not removed. Everything seems done for maximum awkwardness and humiliation.∗