Infinite Hope
Page 13
My fourteen-year-old son Terrell was next to testify. He’d been afflicted with sickle-cell anemia since the age of two. I used to sleep next to him in the hospital room when he needed a blood transfusion. As I watched him walk toward the stand, I remembered how scared I was for him when he was young, how we weren’t sure whether he’d make it. He offered simple testimony.
“My dad is always there for me. I need him, especially when I’m sick.” My son was begging a group of strangers to spare my life. I would have done anything to protect him from that moment, from the pain it clearly caused him. And here he was, trying in vain to protect me. I couldn’t keep myself from sobbing, but the tears came without the faintest hint of relief. They were tears that had built up in my heart over two years of grief. I’d kept them in, knowing I needed to be strong for my lawyers and for my family, but now the tears poured out in public and all could see my despair. My son was pleading for the jury to see me not as a criminal but as a man, as a father.
His was the last testimony. The jury took his words and those of all the others back to the same room where they had decided that I was guilty of capital murder. Their time behind that closed door was shorter than it had been before. They took just more than an hour to make their decision. They returned to the courtroom with the same pomp and circumstance that they’d invited during the first phase of the trial. The jury foreman again handed the judge a piece of paper. The judge knew that whatever the note said would stir emotions in the court. His directions didn’t present much cause for optimism.
“After I read this verdict, I don’t want any unruly behavior. Respect this court.”
I’m not even sure I heard him talking. I certainly didn’t fixate on his words as I had in the past. The scene was blurry. I rose to my feet on his command.
“The State of Texas now sentences Anthony Charles Graves to death by lethal injection.”
I felt the heat of a hundred eyes on me. If they wondered how I would react, I couldn’t. I stood there, still. It wasn’t as much shock as it was emotional exhaustion. I was like a man who’d run a marathon only to get some life-altering bad news at the twenty-six-mile marker. I might have wanted to react. I just couldn’t.
Sebesta took the chance to rub a little more salt in the gaping wound. “Judge, I don’t think the defendant understood what’s been said.”
It was insulting. I knew exactly what had happened. I’m not sure what they were all expecting. Was I to scream at Sebesta that I was innocent, like I’d done a hundred times before? Did they want me to cry and grovel, demonstrating some guilt and remorse that wasn’t there? The judge told us to approach the bench.
“Mr. Graves, the State of Texas has found you guilty of capital murder, and has sentenced you to death. Do you understand?”
I shrugged my shoulders in a sign of my resignation. For the first time, the fight had gone out of me.
Deep sighs and weeping from my corner cut through the court’s uncomfortable silence. I turned to find my mother. I found her on the front row of the room’s benches, sitting with my son. I was numb. If the human spirit comprises a thousand tiny points of light, flickering and burning for the good moments, the tentacles of a relentless monster had reached deep into my soul to extinguish them all. I was drained empty. An officer came to take me away. I shot a look to my mom. I mustered only a weak smile. I needed her to know that I was all right. I needed her to hold the hope that I’d momentarily lost. I felt like an athlete walking through the tunnel after a crushing defeat, not knowing if he could get the energy up for another game.
“It’s not over yet,” my brother said. “Keep your head up.”
My family reminded me that it was only halftime.
I couldn’t respond. I acknowledged them and kept walking, back to a different type of locker room.
“THE JUDGE”
He sentenced me to die,
As though he would live forever.
He looked me in the eye,
I thought I saw the devil.
He asked if I had anything to say,
As though he would listen to me.
“Yes, your honor, I didn’t do this!”
“Not now, Son, there’s no need.”
He said, “Take him away.
Put him in his cell,
Until we put that needle in his arm,
And send him to hell.”
“Good luck, Son,
And may God have mercy on your soul.
In case you didn’t do it,
You’ll get out when you are old.”
“Hold your head up,
Son,” I heard my mother say.
Just keep saying your prayers,
Because God is the way.
“Bye Daddy,” my son said.
“I love you, Daddy.”
Tears came to my eyes,
I lowered my head.
Stay strong and hold on,
The rest of my family cried,
You’re going to be free
Because the state has lied.
I haven’t seen his Honor
Since he sentenced me to death.
I wonder if he’s still living,
Or has he taken his last breath?
—Anthony Graves
from Texas Death Row, 2004
I wrote that poem ten years after my sentencing. It took me a long time to process that difficult day. After a decade, I finally put my view of the day into words, as a way to better understand what had happened to me. Nothing happens quickly in the system, even after a death sentence. I didn’t immediately go to death row. Rather, officers took me back to the jail where I’d spent the last few weeks. One thing was different: they kept me away from other inmates. I worried about my family. How did they take it? Was my mom still standing? A fellow inmate approached the door of my single cell.
“Hey, Graves?” he said. “Man, what, uh, happened in there?” I didn’t know whether the news had trickled back into the jail or whether he could tell from my body language. Maybe he just knew what I knew when they took me to court that morning, that the outcome was all but certain.
“They gave me the death penalty,” I admitted for the first time. He had no response. What do you say to a man who’s just been given the death penalty?
He just shook his head and let out a sigh. His body language said to me that he really felt for what I was going through, but didn’t know me well enough to know how to offer any comfort. I was grappling with the reality of my sentencing, but I didn’t want to wallow in self-pity. I had a family back home to worry about. I called my mom to bridge the emotional distance.
“Hey, Momma, you make it back home?” I’m not sure why I asked the question. Clearly she was home. I had called her home line and she picked it up. I guess I didn’t know what to say. On the off-chance someone’s published a self-help book for mother-son conversations, I doubt it includes a chapter on what to say after you receive a death sentence.
“Son! It’s good to hear from you.”
“How are you doing, Mom?”
“Don’t you worry about me. How are you doing?” I guess I took too long to answer because she started again.
“I want you to know this crap is not over,” she said. “Those bastards will burn in hell for what they’ve done to you!” Mom wanted to talk about the case. She told me that one of the case’s alternate jurors—a person who sat with the jury during the trial but didn’t get a final vote—approached her afterward to say that the state hadn’t proved the case. Robert Carter’s brother had stopped by, too, to tell my mom that he didn’t know why his brother had lied, because Robert had told him that he would tell the truth. I wasn’t convinced that any of that mattered, and besides, I wasn’t in the mood for optimism. After you’re sentenced to death, there’s nothing less important than what might have been said but wasn’t. It’s the silent voices that hurt the most. I shifted gears quickly.
“Yeah, well, how are my boys, Momma?”
“They’
re fine, Anthony. Don’t worry about that. We’ll take care of them until you make it home. Just keep your head up and God will work things out.”
Others wanted to talk too. Mom handed the phone to my cousin Felicia only after giving her instructions not to upset me. The sound of Felicia’s voice broke my heart. It was an instant reminder that I could not be home to enjoy life with my family. I told her the same thing I told my mom—to please look out for my boys—and then I shrieked and began sobbing.
“Why would they do this to me? Why me?” I asked Felicia.
“Please don’t cry, Anthony,” she said, her own tears muddling her words. I heard my mom yell out to Felicia not to cry. Felicia responded that I had started crying first. It was just like one of the old family fights we had when we were kids. That thought hammered home all that I was missing.
Condemned prisoners in Texas are not treated like normal inmates. On the day after my sentencing, officers transported me back to Caldwell, where I stayed for two days. There were no phone calls. On the day the state moved me to death row, all of the phones in the inmates’ cells were cut off. I wasn’t sure why. The state claimed it was a security risk, but it seemed to me this was just another way they tried to keep a man down.
I had been transported from facility to facility so many times that I knew the drill. Officers would come to the door of my cell and bark some instructions. I’d be chained in various ways, and I’d move slowly with either the aggressive or passive help of an officer, depending, it seemed, on how those officers were feeling about their marriages or careers that morning. This time was a little different though. Three officers came to my door. In addition to handcuffs, they chained my legs with shackles. I tried to take some control over the situation, mentally at least. If this was going to be my life, I would find some way to live it, even if I couldn’t shake the chains. The officers were physically transporting me to a new reality, and I knew my mind-set needed to strengthen and transform yet again, in order to survive the long appeals process. I had too much to live for.
But as a death row inmate, I really didn’t know what to expect. How does one anticipate the arrival of doom?
Up until then, there was always something in front of me, procedurally, anyway, to distract me from the heaviness of my situation. Not anymore.
When I reached the death row facility, everything was still so surreal to me that I had no reaction or emotions upon arriving. I didn’t want to be overwhelmed by it all, so I just observed it all with detachment, in a kind of Zen state for me, the kind that I imagine when I hear about meditation, although I don’t actively practice it. I knew I was going to either be exonerated or murdered. That stark reality renewed focus and my resolve. I began to see self-pity as a form of defeat and I rejected it outright. Living on my own terms could in some small way serve as an act of defiance. I had a choice on how I’d define myself, even if the system had pegged me a murderer. I remember thinking that I am my sisters’ and brothers’ brother, my sons’ father, my mother’s son. I was a sports lover, a flirt, a laugher. I knew that my life was about to change, but my identity could not. The world would know the truth about me: that my name is Anthony Graves, and that I shall remain so until I take my last breath on this earth.
PART THREE
SURVIVING DEATH ROW
PRISON LIFE, by Anthony Graves
Sitting in this 6 = 9 cell
Living under conditions
Worse than hell—
Locked away from society,
Simply because a man lied on me.
Everyone says: stay positive
But it’s a struggle everyday
These conditions discourage me,
The shit won’t go away.
I’m not always in the best of moods
Especially when I see the bars,
I’d rather be lying on the beach,
Looking at the moon and the stars.
Convicted for a crime I didn’t commit
Is a feeling I can’t explain,
It’s the kind of thing
That drives a man insane.
You’re a strong man
Is what I often hear;
But man, I don’t think people
Really understand my fear.
Sitting in the cell 23 hours a day,
Staring at the things that’s making my body decay.
I just shake my head, when I sit here and think
How the hell did I end up here;
This place stinks.
Somebody! Anybody!
Get me out of this place!
I’m not an animal,
I’m part of the human race! . . .
Well, I guess I’ll lie down and try to sleep,
Because I really haven’t gotten any in a week.
Don’t forget to tell your friends
About prison life This place isn’t for men,
Children or your wife.
So, I’ll pray that you never get to see this place;
It’s not a pretty sight,
It doesn’t have a face—it’s prison life.
EARLY NOVEMBER 1994:
ENTERING THE LION’S DEN
I ARRIVED AT DEATH ROW on November 1, 1994, the same year director Frank Darabont turned Stephen King’s novella Rita Hayworth and Shaw-shank Redemption into the now-classic movie about a wrongfully convicted banker and his wise black friend. A green stone tower at the entrance to the Ellis Unit prison looked a little like the structures that rose from the Maine dirt in that film. A white female guard stood atop the tower. A pistol holstered to her hip, she also held a rifle in her right hand. She looked to be in her fifties, and her Southern drawl told me she’d been plucked from a roster of job applicants who lived somewhere nearby.
“You’re in the wrong place!” she hollered down from the tower to the officer that brought me to the gates. “You’ve got to run him over to the diagnostic unit. They’ll process him there.”
Processing took a few minutes. Agents of the state asked my name. They took down some information and scribbled a few indecipherable words onto paper. I did a lot of waiting. A few minutes later, we returned to the green tower with the female overseer. The officer who brought me there placed his gun and some paperwork into a plastic bucket attached to a rope. The woman in the tower pulled up the officer’s supplies like a banker sucking a drive-through deposit through the magic transport tubes.
I closed my eyes to block the shining sun. The gate opened and three officers placed their hands on me. They let me walk at my own pace toward death row. I tried to take in the scene. It wasn’t much to behold. Death row is intimidating. It’s designed as a testament to the ultimate power of the state to kill and control its citizens. I knew what had happened at my trial, but I still wasn’t quite sure how I ended up there.
Coming to death row is like stepping back in time a few hundred years. When slave traders transported men and women from Africa across the Middle Passage, they’d drop those slaves off in cities like Charleston. Four in ten African slaves passed through Charleston, where they were sold publicly, in the streets, until the city banned the practice in 1856. Thereafter, slave inspection and buying moved to the local slave mart. The slaves were stripped and weighed, their distinctive qualities noted for potential buyers. A light-skinned female slave would go for $50,000 or more in today’s dollars. A slave with a skill like carpentry would also command a high price. The caretakers of death row learned from that legacy. I stepped inside a pen. I was strip-searched in case I’d managed to pick up a gun or knife on the ride over from my previous jail. I had become used to the strip searches. It was just a routine of humiliation that had run its course. If a man can stand there and watch me move my private parts around for him, then that’s what I would do. My mind-set was to follow all the rules and keep it simple. Next, an officer handed me prison clothes, which consisted of a white jumper and a white pair of cloth slippers for my feet. I finally got a haircut. A shower would follow. Once sufficien
tly clean, I was ready for the short ride to Ellis One Unit. Named for a former Texas prison administrator, it housed the state’s death row.
Like most Americans, I hadn’t given much thought to death row before my arrest. The writer and anti–death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean famously said that support for the death penalty is a mile wide but only an inch thick. She meant that the death penalty’s many supporters rarely investigate the basis of their own beliefs. As I walked into Ellis One Unit, I didn’t know what to think. People typically focus on the death part of a death sentence. What they don’t tell you is that life on death row is a torture all its own. I had no idea that I’d be living in a six-by-nine-foot cage, or that I’d do my business in a steel toilet in plain view of male and female officers alike.
If the officers didn’t enjoy making me take my clothes on and off, they surely acted like they did. It was a routine that quickly grew old. In a back room, officers helped me lose the clothes I’d worn for just a few minutes during the intake process. I got a new outfit. The shirt featured large stencil lettering on the back that read DR. Once I was freshly dressed, officers handcuffed me and led me down the long road to perdition. The prison buzzed with energy. At that time, death row wasn’t set off in some distant facility. It was just another wing of a functional penitentiary. Inmates came and went. Some stood around. The officers that led me quickly seized control of these inmates.