Ghost of the Innocent Man

by Benjamin Rachlin

  Before long, Willie found the Sinequan helping—it lowered a sort of dampener over him, so peaks of his anguish no longer broke the surface. Where previously live flames had engulfed him, now he only simmered. But still he couldn’t sleep past one or two in the morning, so the psychiatrist increased his dosage. His cold worsened, though, and he went on sleeping fitfully. Finally nurses relented and prescribed more cough syrup. This didn’t help, either. Since he’d been ill for longer than two months, nurses tested him for anything serious: bronchitis, tuberculosis, pneumonitis. All negative. Then nurses x-rayed his chest, for signs the blood test might have missed. This was negative, too.

  Mozella as a child had suffered from rheumatic fever, and had never fully recovered from the damage this had done to her heart. Eventually she’d also developed chronic bronchitis. Bearing nine children had not helped either condition. She’d come to Lawndale from Jasper County, Georgia, and, once her first husband left, had taken on work as a maid in white folks’ homes, in addition to the sharecropping, while concealing her poverty from her children as best she could; when one of them needed shoes, it wasn’t that Mozella didn’t have the money, only that she didn’t have it right now, the implication being it was merely a difficult week. For her girls she could afford only two slips each, to wear under dresses, and for her boys only a few changes of clothes, which was why Willie’s rooting in the clay was such an amusement to his brothers. At the end of a long day in the fields she found a chicken or potatoes and stretched it for supper; then she cleaned and folded and dusted, not only in her own tiny cottage but for white families down the way. This meant she often was gone, so it was mainly Gladys who raised Willie, though she was only five years older than him. A bright student, Gladys realized early that her own future wasn’t in cotton, couldn’t stand the labor or see how a sharecropping family would ever get ahead. A half sister, Roberta, from Mozella’s first marriage, lived up in Pittsburgh, where the schools were said to be better. Mozella made arrangements for Gladys to go there.

  Willie was nine years old by then, and every so often he sent Gladys trinkets in the mail, scrawling notes and stuffing tiny gifts into the envelope—a plastic ring, a dollar wallet he’d made himself. On a visit home she noticed for the first time the separate drinking fountains for white and black folks, which she’d never registered as a child. When she mentioned this to her mother, Mozella nodded sadly. “I never said it, because I didn’t want you to grow up with it. But there’s a separation between blacks and whites.” Suddenly Gladys recalled a mystery that had tugged at her as a child: whenever Mozella fell ill and phoned a doctor, he had always taken so long to come. Gladys had never understood it; no matter how early Mozella called, she always seemed to be last in line. Now at once Gladys saw why. His other patients had been white; the doctor had gone to them first. Mozella simply had never mentioned it, so Gladys had never asked.

  When Gladys finished high school she enrolled at Hunter College, in New York, the first—and, it would turn out, the only—member of her immediate family to attend a university. To cover tuition she found work at a cleaner’s, making thirty-five dollars a week, and when this proved too little she took a job at a bank. After graduating she joined the U.S. Public Health Service, as a nurse; for the next several years she was stationed throughout New England, “a fly in buttermilk,” she joked to friends. Then she was transferred to Brooke Army Medical Center, in San Antonio. She was still living there in 1987 when her niece Shirley called, to tell her Woot was in trouble.

  When Willie was through at Douglas High he landed a factory job up in Hickory, molding steel and rubber, and for extra income he added a second job at a textile factory. Then he was drafted into the army, stationed mostly at Fort Bragg, over in Fayetteville. After two years of bouncing around stateside he was slated for Vietnam. Then his brother Bobby Lewis was killed.

  The circumstances of this weren’t clear. Bobby Lewis had volunteered for the air force after graduating from high school in ’66, two years behind Willie. He’d been on a base in Thailand, on R and R, so Willie knew he hadn’t been killed in action, but the military provided no specifics. Drowning, their paperwork read. Willie traveled home for the funeral carrying in his pocket the orders commanding him to Vietnam. But in Lawndale he learned Mozella had listed him on some form as her only unmarried son, now that Bobby Lewis was gone, which by army formula put Willie in line to care for her. As long as he stayed in the reserves, they agreed to discharge him, rather than send him overseas.

  So he went back to work at the textile factory, and at the manufacturing plant, operating a hydraulic press that punched holes into bed rails. For a second too long during one afternoon shift he was distracted; in that second his hand strayed, there was a disorienting shock of pain, and when he looked again the knuckle had vanished from his middle finger, along with the tip from his pointer.

  After two years in Hickory he left for Pittsburgh, where he’d heard steelworkers had unionized and there were opportunities. His half sister Roberta still lived there, and he slept on her couch. A union job required certain paperwork: his birth certificate, his high-school diploma, his DD214 from the army proving he’d been honorably discharged. The second and third of these were no problem. But on his birth certificate he saw his own name was wrong: he was listed as Willie James Vinson. His diploma and DD214 both named Willie James Grimes. The unions couldn’t accept conflicting forms. They denied Willie a job.

  When his father died, it turned out, still a month before Willie was born, Mozella had been worse off than Willie was ever told. She had barely recovered from the death of Cliff Grimes Sr., who had fallen from the roof. The loss of Willie’s father—her third husband, Edgar Brooks—by another random tragedy proved nearly too much for her to bear. She’d expected her grief might literally be the end of her, and if that happened, Willie would be orphaned; both his parents would be gone, and no one would share his last name. Really that name ought to have been Brooks, after his father, but Edgar had died in that car wreck, and Mozella couldn’t make him a Grimes, either, because Cliff had died, too. So on his birth certificate she chose the name of her first husband, Samuel Vinson. Samuel had divorced her more than a decade earlier. She had no illusions that, if she did die, he would suddenly appear to care for infant Willie. But the first five of her children, Willie’s half siblings, all shared the name Vinson, and four of them were older and married; if Mozella was gone, a sibling could pass Willie off as his or her own child. He would avoid being an orphan.

  But Mozella had survived, and no one had ever told Willie about his birth certificate. He had passed through school and jobs and the army all with a misconception of his own last name. He’d known he wasn’t a Brooks, since he’d never known his father, but he’d assumed he was a Grimes, the same as Gladys and Cliff Jr. He’d been a Vinson the whole time.

  When the unions turned him away, after six months in Pittsburgh, he returned to another textile plant in Hickory, loading barrels of cotton onto the sharp pin of a drawing machine, which spun the cotton into yarn. One shift he bent to retrieve a roll of thread and lost track of where he was; the machine’s pin stuck him in the chest. The scar it left would last his lifetime. He added another job, moving furniture, then walked to the nearest Social Security office and changed his last name to Grimes.

  Mozella by now was traveling seasonally between Lawndale and New York, a schedule she’d begun as soon as Willie finished high school. Half the year she lived up north with Gladys, then left before winter, as her bronchitis worsened in the cold. Back in Lawndale, she normally rotated a week or two with each son, but now she asked Willie if he would mind her staying with him permanently. He didn’t. But the extended arrangement let him notice how badly her health had declined, and because he worked two jobs he worried he was gone too often, meaning Mozella spent most days alone. As long as she’d been healthy and self-sufficient, she had liked this privacy, but now he saw she was neither. Willie was dating a woman named Towana, and it
occurred to him that, if they married, Towana could move in and help care for his mother. He proposed, and they married.

  A year later Mozella died.

  After that, a curious thing happened: Willie fell in love with his wife. He’d always cared for Towana, but he’d also been so preoccupied with his mother that he’d never regarded Towana without her. He saw now that he had married for the wrong reason—but, fortunately, had married the right person. The problem was his two jobs. Now that Mozella was gone, Towana had long days and evenings home by herself, and she began to date other men. Willie was crestfallen. But he also remembered that Towana had sacrificed for him when his mother had been ill. He told her, reluctantly, that she could leave if she wanted; he would give her the money she needed. It was what she wanted, Towana told him, and took off for DC.

  Within weeks he regretted letting her go. He quit the textile mill and furniture shop and followed her to DC, where the two reconciled. For nearly three months he kept afloat on temporary jobs. Then a week came when he could find no work. For the short term he drove back down to Lawndale, where promptly his car was stolen. Then he got a phone call from DC, where another job had opened up. Without his car, though, Willie couldn’t make it north again, and he couldn’t afford to buy a replacement. It was the end of his relationship with Towana.

  Instead he headed back up to Hickory, where the work was.

  At Harnett Correctional a letter arrived for him from Brenda, his girlfriend in Hickory, saying that she was moving to a new apartment, would forward her new address and phone number to him in prison as soon as she arrived. But weeks passed and he didn’t hear anything. He’d hoped they could write more frequently again. If she forgot to forward her new address, he knew, he would have a hard time locating her from inside the Harnett walls. Just as likely, Brenda had already sent her letter, but the postal service had lost it or, more maddeningly, Harnett had refused or neglected to deliver it: he knew guards intercepted inmates’ mail, to screen for drugs or pornography, and sometimes a letter disappeared this way even if it contained neither.

  To distract himself from worrying, he asked again to be assigned to a laundry job. Again the psychiatrist increased his antidepressant, Sinequan. Then his cold medication ran out. The next day he checked himself into the nurses’ station. “Stated he felt like he needed to be by himself for a while,” a nurse entered in his chart. “Feels like everyone is messing with him and can’t sleep. Inmate remains in OR and will be referred to psychologist.” The psychologist referred him back to the psychiatrist, who suspected Willie’s cold medications, along with the Sinequan, had combined to disrupt his system, and guessed Willie would do better in a different housing arrangement. He recommended Willie be allowed to stay a few nights in a quieter annex, rather than in the open dorms, “so that he might get some rest away from the stress of the general population.” Again he increased Willie’s dose of Sinequan.

  Two months had passed since Phillip Griffin’s promise to read Willie’s case and report back, but Willie hadn’t heard anything, so in spring he wrote again: Had Griffin ever received his files from de Torres? “I understand you have many cases that your firm is presently investigating, however I do ask that you please understand my position.” Would Griffin please let him know whether he’d received anything? “I pray there will be meritable issues found that can provide relief in my case.”

  Griffin confirmed he had received Willie’s file, though he hadn’t had time to read it. He pledged to be in touch once he had.

  Another two months passed, however, making a year and a half since his failed appeal, and still Willie didn’t hear anything. He met another inmate who doubled as a jailhouse lawyer and agreed to write to Phillip Griffin on Willie’s behalf. “Inmate Grimes has ask me to find out what I can and see if there is anything that I can do to help in the process,” he offered. So he had read Willie’s file three times. “Each time that I do so I become more amazed. I will not sit at this typewriter and tell you how much of a miscarriage of justice I see when I read these papers, nor will I say that this man is innocent. But I will say that he has not had a fair much less impartial trial. As an inmate I see this on a daily basis, but not quit in this manner.” He himself wasn’t an attorney, the inmate admitted, but he had earned a master’s degree from Chapel Hill, “and I am far from stupid. This guy does not belong here.” He wanted to file an appeal on Willie’s behalf to the state supreme court, but felt uncertain which of the legal problems he’d discovered in Willie’s paperwork was weightiest, and didn’t want Griffin to think he was so presumptuous that he would tell a professional lawyer how to do his job. “All he wants me to do is help if there is some way that I can. I told Willie that I would do what I could.”

  None of which struck Griffin as a good idea. Allowing a fellow inmate to file anything could be “very detrimental,” Griffin replied, harming Willie’s chances at both of the two appellate procedures available to him—the motion for appropriate relief, for which he could apply to the state, and habeas corpus, for which he could apply federally. “If a petition does not raise an issue, it can be foreclosed from future litigation,” Griffin warned. “Therefore an inexpertly drawn petition can ruin a good issue.” Griffin himself intended to visit Newton, the town where Willie had been tried, and meet with Ed de Torres. Once he had done this he would let Willie know what he determined to be the wisest course of action. “In the meantime, please do not allow any non-attorney to file any papers on your behalf. I appreciate your patience while I investigate your case.”

  But Willie wasn’t patient. When precisely would Griffin be visiting Newton, and what did he expect to find there that wasn’t already included in Willie’s file? Four months had passed since Griffin had received his documentation, and Willie couldn’t see what Griffin had accomplished. From inside prison, he had watched other inmates’ appeals proceed to the state supreme court; he couldn’t understand why his own hadn’t. “I want you to know that I’m not trying to be hard, I’m only trying to do the right thing and I feel enough time has elasped now and something should already been done,” he insisted. “Though I’ve been very patient and enduring, Im looking foward to hearing from you within three weeks from todays date.”

  While he waited, he met again with the psychiatrist and asked for more Sinequan. Again his dosage was increased. His three-week deadline for Griffin passed in silence. After two more months, when he still hadn’t heard anything, he wrote to the court of appeals, the attorney general, and again to Ed de Torres, all to beg for help. The next day he wrote again to Phillip Griffin, and to a man named Marvin Sparrow, whose name he had found on Prisoner Legal Services letterhead, above Executive Director. He assumed this meant Sparrow was Griffin’s boss.

  Dear Gentlemen,

  This letter is to be read and answered by the both of you. I am very destrissed by the fact that since Mr. Griffin has taken over my case I have not been able to make any headway in getting out. I feel that it is past the time when some answers should be given. I am not a guilty man and there has to be something that you can do to prove this to the courts.

  Mr. Sparrow, I know that your office has been over worked and that most cases are back logged for months at the time. But after speaking with numerous inmates about the progress that your office has been able to make with their cases, I feel that I may very well be spending the rest of my natural life in prison. As harsh as that my sound, it is what I see from my end of things. Mr. Griffin has had plenty of time to prepare a defense on my behalf. He has had plenty of time to notify me of the progress that he has made.

  I would like for you gentlemen to understand the position that I am in. I am serving life plus nine years for something that I did not do. Just because your office has control of my case does not mean that it makes everything right. I want some action and some answers. It took the state of North Carolina much less time to put me into prison than it is takeing your office to process an appeal.

  I would like to know wh
at progress has been made. I have asked this same question before and have received little to no answers. So, now I am asking the director of North Carolina Prisoner’s Legal Services. If you are having problems, notify me and maybe I can help or maybe I can be more patient at the least.

  Respectfully,

  Willie James Grimes

  Again he waited.

  12

  Nobody Could Be Against This

  When it reconvened at Chris’s house after the New Year, the Actual Innocence Commission had grown by seven members, including the director of the North Carolina Victim Assistance Network, the secretary of the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, and attorneys or staff members from the governor’s office, the Wake County sheriff’s department, and the State Bureau of Investigation—each of whom promptly sat with fellow prosecutors or police officers. No one sat near the defense attorneys.

  Like a middle-school dance, Lake thought. “Fellas, this won’t work. We’ve got to mix this up.” He watched patiently as everyone rearranged chairs.

  Since their last meeting, each commissioner knew, the risks of their endeavor had grown politically—not due to events in North Carolina, as they might have predicted, but rather thanks to news up in Illinois. Since the death penalty had been reinstated there, twenty-five years earlier, in 1977, twelve inmates in Illinois had been executed. During the same period, thirteen other inmates, awaiting the same end, on the same death row, had been exonerated by new evidence. Finally this worsening ratio unnerved even the governor, a Republican who not only favored the death penalty but had been among those legislators who’d voted to reinstate it. His position hadn’t changed: he still supported the death penalty. But for the guilty. Not the innocent. He’d begun to doubt that courtrooms in his state were distinguishing one from the other. So on a chilly, blustery day up in Chicago, around the same time Chris Mumma was hauling boxes into her new basement office at Duke, he’d appointed a study group to examine what was happening. “I have grave concerns about our state’s shameful record of convicting innocent people,” he announced in a press release. Until he could be certain that everyone sentenced to lethal injection in Illinois was truly guilty, he was halting the practice entirely.