The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas

by Anand Giridharadas

  Stroman knew, however, that he couldn’t openly admit to this fear. “Because he was so overwhelmed by the love and the fact that all these people cared for him, he was not going to be the party pooper and say, ‘Guys, just leave me alone,’ ” Ziv said.

  It reminded Ziv of something he had learned in making a different documentary. He was filming an indigenous community in South America when a man gestured to a sloth nearby and said, “This animal doesn’t know when to die.” Ziv didn’t see his meaning. The villager explained that with certain animals, you wallop them once and they die: simple for them, simple for you. That sloth, though, dies only if you hack its throat. “That’s the reason why we don’t eat its heart, because then we will not know how to die, too,” the villager told him. That seized Ziv. “It took me three days of contemplation—how profound this thing was. I think Mark felt it was time to die.”

  BACK IN AUSTIN, at the Travis County Courthouse downtown, the hearing came to order shortly after 5 p.m. It was past business hours, so the building was mostly deserted. A dozen or so people sat behind the lawyers’ tables in the viewing space on humble blue seats.

  Rais had arrived in the city that Monday, two days prior, without even a toothbrush or shaving cream. He had figured he would make his case and go home. Now, at last, after a whole lot of kicking around, his argument had a hearing. As the proceedings began, however, Judge Joseph Hart said he would hear the matter only if the state agreed to delay the execution until after his decision. The execution window was to open in less than an hour. The government lawyers refused. The two sides bickered about why the governor wouldn’t delay the killing even for a few hours. At 5:50 p.m., ten minutes before the deadline, a reporter in the courtroom heard Rais wonder aloud if Stroman was already fastened to the gurney. Eight minutes later, with the lawyers now in closed chambers with the judge, the reporter noted Rais swaying back and forth in his seat, his hand slowly crushing a white plastic cup. Two minutes later, at the precise execution hour, Rais muttered, “This is how easily lives are torn apart. Just like this cup.”

  Around 6:40 p.m., Judge Hart emerged from his chambers. “All rise. Court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Hart presiding,” the bailiff declared.

  “This is D-1-GN-112192,” Judge Hart began. He looked over to Rais: “You’ll have to help me with the pronunciation.” Rais softly obliged.

  “Bhuiyan vs. Rick Perry,” the judge said.

  The judge said there would now be a brief hearing on whether he in fact had jurisdiction in the case. The arguments from earlier that morning were rehearsed, and again the judge disappeared into his office. He returned a little after 7 p.m., offering good news for Rais’s side and a solution to the impasse. The state had paused the execution and agreed to keep it on hold during the hearing, with one condition: the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals could immediately and in parallel consider if Hart’s court had jurisdiction to hear this case. It was a shrewd compromise for the state: its attorneys showed respect for legitimacy by participating in the hearing; and, in now requiring two judges rather than one to stop the execution, they were no worse off than before the deal.

  Around this time, Wahid got the news that the federal appeals court had turned Rais down on another of their tracks. Wahid messaged his colleagues to submit an appeal, already drafted, to the Supreme Court in Washington. Justice Antonin Scalia would receive their plea and decide on its merits. All this while, Stroman’s own direct, and more customary, appeals had been bouncing around some of the same courts, but none was getting anywhere.

  The hearing was operating under an unusual protocol. “The normal local rule is not to have cell phones on,” the judge explained, looking over to the state attorney. “You may have your cell phone on because you may get a call that I need to know about.”

  That call, if it came, would be from the Court of Criminal Appeals, which was now simultaneously reviewing this court’s jurisdiction.

  This hearing was Rais’s first and only chance to make his case for Stroman before a judge. First Khurrum Wahid, representing him, framed the issue in terms of timing rather than outcome. Although Rais had battled to save Mark Stroman from the death sentence, the request was more narrowly described now. “The bottom line,” Wahid said, “is that, under Texas law, Mr. Bhuiyan, as a victim, has rights. And if those rights are not enforceable, then there really are no rights. And we simply need the time to allow him to enforce those rights and execute what he wants, which is victim-offender mediation dialogue.” He said Rais had spoken to other targets of violent crime who had undergone mediation and “found closure to the hole that was created when they became victims.”

  As Wahid spoke, he couldn’t help but look past Judge Hart to the wall clock behind him. He felt each minute’s passage acutely. To litigate an execution an hour and a half after it was meant to occur was to walk on strange, unfamiliar terrain. In the middle of his argument, the state attorney’s phone rang. He picked up, but the other court had no news as yet. “I apologize, Judge. No updates at the moment,” the state attorney said.

  Wahid quickly sketched the facts of Rais’s life—his coming to America, his being shot, his surgeries, his professional reinvention. He explained that it had not occurred to Rais until very recently to seek mediation, and could not have occurred to him given all he confronted. If Judge Hart didn’t block the execution tonight and allow for mediation with Stroman, Rais would “never have that opportunity to be fulfilled”—an experience, Wahid added, that some participants had compared to “starting life over again.” On the other hand, if the judge blocked the execution, all it would mean for the state was postponement of the inevitable: “The harm to the defendant is they would have to re-set up for this particular execution. And all things being equal, that happens pretty often for other reasons in the State of Texas.”

  Wahid addressed head-on the inherent strangeness of his plea: “I think what confuses everyone in this whole event is that he is the victim of that defendant, and that’s why it’s so unusual. No one has seen this before. Why would the victim want to save this person’s life? Well, look at it another way. The victim wants to save his own life. That’s what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to go through a process where he can come out and hit the reset button.”

  Now the state attorney rose to argue that Rais had in fact received multiple communications from the government, right after the shooting and then after the trial, giving him a chance to request mediation with his attacker. Rais had never answered, the state attorney said.

  It was time for testimony. “You may call your first witness,” Judge Hart told Wahid.

  Rais walked up to the stand, swore the oath, and spelled his name for the court reporter. Under questioning by Wahid, he began by denying that he had received any invitation to mediation with Stroman. Even if he had, he would have been unable to process it: “I don’t remember at this moment any of these documents, because after I was shot I was going through a tremendous amount of depression and a tremendous amount of trauma, and I don’t know what was going through that time in my mind.”

  Rais’s voice was low and melancholy, without any of his usual energy. But it wasn’t until Wahid asked him to retell some of the story of his recovery that he gave in and cried as he spoke: “Well, this crime put me into a situation—I never would have imagined that I would be going through this thing in my life in U.S.A. I was going through one after one disaster mentally, psychologically, physically, where I got my life back, but I was in a situation that I didn’t know where the money was coming from for the surgery. I had no money in my pocket. Many a times I called the doctor’s office to get some sample medicine.”

  His voice was shaking and cracking into sobs. He spoke now of Abida, trading in his usual term “fiancée” for “wife,” as she had been technically and on paper but in no other sense: “My wife was under tremendous amount of parental pressure back home, because her parents didn’t want her to be with me, and they were pushing her to
marry somebody else, and she was keep calling me and putting on me lots and lots of pressure that I had to go back, but I couldn’t go back because of my eye surgery. The doctors didn’t want me to go, because they thought that I would have lost my eye forever. It was tremendous amount of pressure that my dad had a stroke and he survived, because of my shooting incident, and I could not go and see my parents. I mean, I have no clue how I survived that couple of years after I was shot. And the pain I was in”—now his crying grew fierce—“was unbearable. The way Mark Stroman completely destroyed my life. And I could not think straight and think clearly, that I had to go through all this kind of situation in my life in one of the best countries in the world.”

  He again denied that the state had apprised him of his rights as a victim, or even about the execution date, which he said he had learned from Rick Halperin. Rais had become calmer, but he broke down again when Wahid asked what he imagined getting out of meeting Stroman a second time.

  He paused for long seconds. “I came to this country”—that phrase made him cry harder—“to fulfill my lifelong dream to have education”—he was almost wailing now—“and to experience the American dream. Before in my country, I had vision 20/10 back home. He took that thing from my life. He put me in a situation that I would never, ever be able to fly. I lost the vision in my right eye. And the trauma he caused, not only in my life—my parents’ life, my entire career life.”

  His voice became inaudible through the crying for a moment. “I want to see him,” Rais suddenly declared. “I want to talk to him personally. I want to connect to him in a human way. I want to see that he’s a human being like me. I want him to explain many things, many questions which I don’t know at this moment—to find out in course of time if I get a chance to talk to him. I would love him to explain why, what, how. When he shot me, he was standing, looking at me. What was going through his mind, before he pulled the trigger? Did he ever thought about his kids? That I am someone’s kid as well? When I was crying ‘Mom’ again and again, what was going through his mind?” Rais’s voice quivered here again.

  “I want to know all these things, to close this chapter and move on with my own life, for my own sake, for my mental peace,” he went on. “If Mark Stroman is gone, who is going to give me this answer? And as a victim I have the right to talk to him, to get from him all these answers—for my own sake, for my mental peace, so I can move on by closing this chapter and open a different chapter—and leave this one in peace.”

  Wahid had gambled their case on this moment, and his bet paid off. For the first time in a long time, things seemed to be turning their way. Maybe Rais’s luck had returned. The judge was clearly sympathetic, interested in Wahid’s argument, hanging on Rais’s every word. Rais could see it in the judge’s eyes. He even noticed the court reporter weeping.

  “Thank you,” Wahid said. “Nothing else.”

  IN HUNTSVILLE, ZIV and the others had taken a short car ride to the prison around 5 p.m. They were led to a cafeteria in its administrative building, where a guard and a Texas Ranger watched over them. They would remain there until all the appeals ended and it was time for the execution. Most of their possessions, including their phones, had been taken away, and so there was little to distract them. The cafeteria had vending machines, but the visitors had no money. Ziv and the others remained mostly silent. They knew only that cases were being heard, arguments being made, about Stroman’s fate in various forums—in state and federal courts, from Austin to New Orleans and all the way to Washington, D.C. But they had no idea which way things were blowing. “You just sit there like an idiot,” Ziv said.

  What they did know was that the execution was supposed to occur at 6 p.m., which meant their having to move again, to the death chamber, before that. When 6 p.m. came along and nothing happened, the silence broke. People started wondering what was going on. Ziv went to chat up a guard about how they would know, when they would know. The man was what Ziv called “guardy-looking”: genial, with a crew cut and the all-American appearance of a marine. He told Ziv that he was awaiting a call from something called “the office of the unit,” which would give instructions.

  As 6 p.m. ripened into 7, for once there was hope. Ziv’s guard friend now told him that it was unusual to have such a delay. If it went on much longer, given the extensive protocols involved, they would likely have to withdraw the death warrant: the whole business had to be complete before midnight on July 20, in order not to violate the law. Ziv and the others were thrilled. It could, Ziv figured, mean Mark’s going to the back of the line, having to get a fresh date. It would be a miracle. “The last time this happened, a couple years ago, the guy was not executed,” the guard told Ziv.

  It wasn’t everything, but it was something. Rais would at last get his occasion to meet Stroman. Ziv, whatever his reservations about Rais, now marveled that the man’s desperate move might have worked. The consensus in the cafeteria shifted its weight toward optimism. Maybe, even probably, it wouldn’t happen tonight.

  BACK IN AUSTIN, the judge offered the state attorney a chance to cross-examine Rais.

  “Mr. Bhuiyan,” the state attorney began, “I know you’ve been through a lot, and I really hate to put you through anything more, but I was just wondering if you ever received any compensation from the state victims’ compensation fund for your injuries?”

  Rais explained that he had, thanks to his doctor’s office applying on his behalf.

  “Thank you. That’s all the questions I have,” the state attorney said.

  Wahid now requested a chance to ask something further from Rais. It had occurred to him that the support Rais had corralled from the families of the other two victims might be important to the judge. Rais claimed that both families were “absolutely” supportive of his campaign.

  Wahid asked Rais, “To your knowledge, and I can put them on as well, but if you know, just to expedite things, did they ever get any notice of any victim-offender dialogue?”

  “OK, hold on just a second,” the judge interrupted. A phone had rung in the court. It belonged to the state attorney.

  “This is it,” the state attorney said to the court. Then he was talking into the phone: “OK. All right, can you send me that document? OK. Great. Just e-mail it to me. All right. Thanks.”

  Rais stared at the state attorney as he spoke. “I could hear his voice was louder than ever before,” he said. “He sounded very happy and he kept telling, ‘OK, OK, great, great.’ So then I realized that he is getting some message which is going to help him to kill this guy today.”

  After hanging up, the state attorney addressed the judge: “The Court of Criminal Appeals has granted a writ of prohibition preventing this court from moving forward.”

  Silence fell on the courtroom. Rais looked around, confused. Hadi Jawad remembers the incredible stillness in the room in that moment, and the feeling of breath being punched out of you.

  The judge looked to Wahid. “Counsel, you understand that. Is there any question about that in your mind?”

  “No,” Wahid said.

  “OK. Based on that, then, I cannot proceed,” the judge said. “I am prohibited from proceeding by the Court of Criminal Appeals. And this hearing will be terminated at this time.” He looked over to Rais. “You may step down. Thank you.” Rais was sobbing in his hands.

  “Y’all be at ease,” the judge said. A moment later, he added, “You all are excused—except I’d like to …” And here he came down from the bench, walked over to Rais and shook his hand. The court reporter, the tears welling in her eyes, approached Rais and said how sorry she was.

  Rais’s mind raced. He pressed Wahid: There must be something we can do. What can we do? Anything? What if … Rais now thought of that Clint Eastwood movie True Crime, where the execution is interrupted after the lethal injection has begun. So there had to be a way to reach the governor, the parole board—someone, something. As Rais shuffled through these strategies, he was awash in tears. Whom we do k
now? What connections can we use?

  Wahid recalled Rais’s optimism even in that moment: “He kind of said, ‘OK, what’s next?’ because we kept having a ‘what’s next.’ And everybody was like, ‘What’s next?’ Even my own legal team were like ‘What’s next?’

  “There’s no next,” Wahid told them.

  A FEW MINUTES later, around 8 p.m., in that cafeteria in Huntsville, a shrill ring blared out of a wall-mounted phone. It was that “office of the unit” phone. The guard walked down the corridor to pick it up, and Ziv followed him, now that they were friends. The guard listened, then turned to Ziv and summed it all up: “We need to go.”

  The room broke out in tears and the spontaneous holding of hands. The group set out toward the execution chamber—across the street, past television crews with their bright lights and a crowd of people who had come to witness the evening’s events and/or protest against them.

  In that crowd was Rick Halperin, who had brought a few carloads of activists down from Dallas—including many who had signed up after Rais’s earliest presentations at the Amnesty and Texas Coalition chapter meetings. A prison spokesman had emerged a little before 6 p.m. and said there was some kind of delay. A delay was rare—any deviation from plan was rare—and optimism had rippled through the crowd, as it had through the cafeteria. What everyone was now waiting for, and dreading, was the sight of the prisoner’s guests emerging from their waiting area and walking into the killing chamber. When Halperin and the other activists saw Ziv and the other witnesses leaving the cafeteria for another building, they knew it was over, and many broke out in tears.

  Ziv walked into the main prison building, past the visitation area, through the courtyard, past the buildings full of cells. It was a walk not of seconds but minutes, enough to feel the gravity of the occasion. Then on the left Ziv saw it: a low-slung building “completely architecturally different,” devoted solely to ending lives. The sight of the building stirred in Ziv a distant memory; he couldn’t quite pinpoint it. It hit him: it was the gas chamber, as plain and nondescript as this building, that he had visited with his father at the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.