No one who knew Jason Baldwin would have described him as confrontational. His demeanor, especially around adults, and particularly those in authority, tended towards polite compliance. Throughout his trial, he’d not spoken on his own behalf. He’d even struggled to control his facial expressions because Burnett had warned at the start of the trial that anyone making emotional outbursts would be removed from court. Yet here he now stood, challenging the entirety of the legal proceeding against him. He had not rehearsed his words. He’d not known the question would be asked, much less how he would respond. He kept his voice emotionless. In the courtroom, his voice sounded remarkably steady. But to himself, it sounded small and pathetic, like the squeak of a trapped animal.
“Pardon?” the judge asked, leaning forward. Jason repeated what he thought was obvious. “Because I’m innocent,” he said.
Burnett banged his gavel. The jury had concluded otherwise, he said. And that was that—which it was, because Burnett knew what Jason did not: that legally, once the jury reached its decision, any talk of innocence had become pointless. With the guilty verdict, “innocent” had died as “a legal reason.”
With numbing abruptness, the trial was over. Jason left the courtroom quietly. No one heard the scream that was arising inside him: “Can no one see the truth?”59
Jason never confronted Ford about why he had not called any alibi witnesses. He’d never thought to question whether Ford had been banking on those “deals” Fogleman had offered. He never asked why his mother and brothers were kept out of the courtroom—and thus away from him—if they were not going to be called to testify. What he understood was this: that “why?” was a futile question and that no answers mattered. “I never confronted anybody about anything,” he said. “All I knew was I was completely beat down.”
Jason’s attorneys patted him on the back, offering a mixture of hope and half-hearted comfort. “Ford was like, ‘Well, I’ll have you out in a year on appeal,’” Jason recalled. “And Wadley was like, ‘You get in there and get in with some church-going guys and you’ll be all right.’ I could tell that they probably didn’t think I was going to survive. They were definitely concerned, but they were, like, there wasn’t anything they could do about it.”
What Jason’s attorneys failed to realize, there in the post-trial chill, was that something far scarier than prison loomed in their young client’s mind. He was alive, yes; but, as deputies strapped him into a bulletproof vest, he felt something vital inside himself dying. If truth didn’t matter—and farce could so easily prevail—what was the meaning of justice? Hobbling from the courthouse in shackles, it wasn’t the loud, cursing crowd that tormented him. Now, the agony that bound him was this: in a world where a trial such as this was called just, what—Law? Country? God?—what was left to believe in?
Chapter THREE
DIAGNOSTIC
March 21, 1994 - May 20, 1994
On that Saturday, March 19, 1994, when Judge Burnett sentenced Jason to life in prison, the teenager’s seventeenth birthday was still more than three weeks away. The winter sun had set when deputies drove him from the courthouse back to the county jail. There, he was not returned to his former cell but led to a new one in the part of the juvenile section reserved for females, which was no longer occupied. He learned it was the cell in which Damien had been held throughout the trial. As soon as Damien was sentenced to death, deputies drove him straight to the unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction that housed the state’s death row. Jason was told he’d be taken to a different prison on Monday.
Years later Jason recalled: “I was holding up okay when I came in, until Ms. Sue, Ms. Pat and Ms. Joyce all gave me hugs and told me how sorry they were and cried. And then, I cried too. I cried it all out, and I made up my mind then to never cry again. We all prayed for things to come out good, that my family would hold up, and that, no matter what, for God to bring the truth to light that I am innocent and that the real killer(s) should be brought to justice, and that Damien, Jessie, and myself be set free. They also prayed that God would protect me while I had to stay in prison.”60 The reality of Jason’s new life was beginning to dawn on him. He realized, “The people who wanted to change the verdict had no power to do so, and the people who had that power refused.”
Prison trustees who worked at the jail were assigned to watch Jason in his cell around the clock. Officials feared he might try to kill himself. This was more than grim isolation. It was grim isolation under constant observation. On Sunday, Cureton asked one of the prison trustees to speak to Jason about the life he faced in prison.
“He told me what to expect and how I should not trust anyone there, no matter how friendly they acted towards me,” Jason said. “He informed me that prison is a violent place, full of hateful people, and that I, especially being as young and small as I was, would always have to be on guard. ‘Great,’ I thought. He then told me that I would be okay, and he gave me ten dollars out of his own pocket to carry with me.”
Next, guards took Jason to the jail library, where his mother and brothers were waiting. They would be allowed thirty minutes for what jailers call a “contact visit.” For the first time in more than nine months, he was not separated from his family by glass. “My mom gave me a big hug. I had wanted to hug her for so long, and now that I could it was bittersweet because it wasn’t the hug that we had been planning for all year. I was supposed to be hugging her after they found me not guilty and we were heading back home. Now, instead of this being a hug of victory and happiness, it was one of sadness. We did not want to let one another go. I knew it was tearing her up inside to have to let me go on to prison, where we both knew that I did not belong.”
Jason had endured two hundred eighty-nine days in jail, a bewildering trial, and the shock of being found guilty. He had just been warned of what lay in store for him in prison. And now he saw his little family being crushed from all sides by trauma. Jason knew his mom was close to breaking. “I told her I’d be all right,” he said. “I told her what Paul had said—that they were going to appeal it and I’d be home soon—and that I still had good confidence in Paul. My brothers were trying to be strong, but my mom . . . it was like part of her was gone, like she wasn’t even there. There’s no way to explain it. She was saying things that didn’t make sense.” Here—with his mom, Matt, now fourteen, and Terry, nine—he was the man of the family, and he was headed to life in prison. Engulfed by pain, he tried humor. Before his arrest, he’d stood almost eye-level with his mom, but now he realized he’d grown about ten inches taller. “Whoa,” he laughed. “You got short!” He play-punched each of his brothers and told them to be strong. “No tears,” he said, “and that goes for you too, Mom.”
Seeing them with so little support, Jason felt he could not let his mother and brothers know how badly his own faith had been shaken. “So I smiled and told them that I would be okay and not to worry about me. I did my best to show them that I wasn’t afraid, that no matter what, we must stick together as a family, to not lose hope and to have faith in God and what is right. That we must never lose sight of these things, no matter how hard it got and no matter what people might say, because they do not know what they are talking about anyway. Our love would get us through this, and God would work out a miracle for us.”
The half-hour expired and Jason was torn from his family again. He had no idea when he would see them next. As guards led Jason away, he realized that, while he’d been in jail, his family had endured something worse. At school, Matt and Terry were called Satanists. The family’s yard was set on fire. Bricks were thrown through the trailer’s windows. His mom lost her job. “In a sense,” Jason said, “I had been protected from the horror of it all, being locked away in a cell with no one telling me really what was going on and being said. It was the toughest on my mom and brothers, who had to live out there where all the lies and rumors were being told and spread, lies and rumors they knew were untrue.” He understood that, whatever fate awaited him in
prison, his family faced grim prospects as well.
On Monday morning, guards cuffed and shackled Jason for the three-hour ride from the jail in Jonesboro, in Arkansas’s northeast corner, to the Arkansas Department of Correction’s Diagnostic Unit in Pine Bluff, about one hundred and fifty miles south. He carried with him his Bible and thirty-five dollars: the ten dollars from the trustee, twenty dollars that Cureton had given him, and five that his mother slipped into his hand as their visit ended. He climbed into a van with six other prisoners.
“I got a seat next to the window, and I watched as the country went by. I looked at cars and their occupants, remembering when we used to go on trips, my mom, brothers and I, and how we would drive way out into the country, in Mississippi, to my Aunt Janette’s house, and how it would be a long trip, and I would watch the country pass by through the window just the same, except during those trips I was eager for the arrival. This one I wasn’t. I was thinking that it would be okay if the destination never arrived, that we could just keep on driving forever and ever, or maybe the officer driving would take me home and say, ‘Sorry, Mr. Baldwin. We found out it was a mistake for you to be with us all along. Here, go on home.’ And I would get out, the cuffs and shackles would be taken off of me, and I would praise God and run into the house and give my mom and brothers that big hug that we had planned and everything would be okay again.”
Instead, Jason brought his mind back to the fact that he was really being driven to prison—a truth that was confirmed when the van approached a big brick building surrounded by barbed wire: the prison system’s Diagnostic Unit. “My heart starts beating really hard now,” Jason said, “and my breathing speeds up. I see the guard towers. We pull up to one and the officer driving speaks to another officer up on the balcony, and he says he’s got seven from Craighead County, and yes, Jason Baldwin is one of them. At the sound of my name, my heart just stops. This is really happening. I am going to prison for murder. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion. The officer in the tower lowers a milk crate on a rope, and the officers up front drop their guns in the basket and it is hoisted away. Then the little bar in front of the van is raised up, and we enter the grounds of the prison.”61
“things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.”
~ Lily Tomlin
Jason felt the free world slipping away as he moved toward the building. “I am led out, the shackles biting into my ankles,” he said, “the chains dangling from my waist to my handcuffs. I hold onto my paper sack that contains a few letters from my mom and brothers, my Bible and the little bit of money that was given to me, and I walk through a gate. Into the building I go. I set foot into prison. It is dark, but my eyes get used to it.”
Adaptation, while essential to prison survival, does not assure it. Jason’s eyes adjusted quickly. Intuitively, he knew that the challenge ahead would be to discern where he could adapt—and to decide where he would not. “An officer comes and takes the cuffs and shackles and chains off. I am told to wait in line with the other guys to be processed. I wait, and eventually I reach an old man who takes inventory of all that I have. He takes my money and tells me it will be put onto my account. ‘My very first account,’ I think to myself— so different from what I had planned.”
“Then I am in a room standing in front of three people sitting in front of a table with a bunch of papers in front of them. It’s some type of hearing board. They are all sharply and nicely dressed. I am conscious of my orange jail jumpsuit. They tell me to get naked. I must not have heard them right. This time it is an order: ‘Get naked,’ they say. So I take off my clothes until I am in my underwear. ‘All of it,’ they say, so I take them off too and stand there in front of them and their hateful stares. One of them says, ‘You think you’re tough, don’t ya?’ I think to myself, ‘Yeah, I’ve got to be tough to survive all of this.’ I’ve got to be and my mantra is born: ‘I am tough.’ I say that out loud. And then one of them says to the others, “He won’t be tough for long,” and they all laugh. It is humiliating.
“Someone told me to hold out my arms. I couldn’t even see who was talking. I know there was one rude voice. He sounded like he probably hates everybody who comes through there. He told me my number—103335—and told me not to forget it. Then somebody came over and pretty much looked at everything, looking for tattoos, birthmarks, scars—that kind of thing.
“They asked me my name and my charge and how much time I’d been given. They asked me, ‘Did you do it?’ I had no way of knowing if this was part of their job or if they were just curious or what, but it was the same at the jail. Everybody always asked that—the inmates, the guards, everybody.
“Then, an old white man, an inmate, comes to me and tells me to hold out my hands, and he pours a foul-smelling liquid into them and tells me to put it everywhere I have hair. It is delousing shampoo, he says. Then he points me to a shower spigot in the corner and I am to shower there in front of all of them—the board’s hateful stares and now this old man’s hungry-looking one. I tell him not to look at me—and I stare directly into his eyes. He bows his head and turns around, and I learn then that I will survive.
“After I have showered, the old man gives me a clean towel and points to a bench where some clothes are neatly folded: a white prison jumpsuit, some boxers, and socks. I dry off and try to put the boxers on, and I can’t even get them over my hips they are so tight. The old man is looking at me again and smiling that dirty smile. I tell him he better get me some boxers that fit and do not play any games with me because I do not play. I was warned of people like him from the guy at the county jail—sexual predators. I tell him I am in here for murder. He asks did I really kill someone. He says that I do not look like a killer to him. I tell him that is what I am in here for so he better not mess with me. I wasn’t lying. It does not matter that I am innocent; I begin to see that now. It works, and he gets me some boxers that fit.62 I soon learn that I should stop being shy about getting naked in front of people because it is nothing for an officer to tell you to take off all of your clothes for a strip search.”
Entering prison is a form of death—removal from civil society— so it’s fitting that a prisoner’s initiation includes being stripped naked, cleaned, inspected, and finally clothed in white. Prisons themselves have much in common with cemeteries. With walls and gates and rows of cells like graves, they are places set apart from normal life. There, prisoners are supposed to shed their corrupted pasts, as in death. When they leave—if they do—they must be legally resurrected, to begin life anew. Such, anyway, is the theory.63
New inmates go to the Diagnostic Unit first so that prison officials can assess them physically, mentally and emotionally. The assessment is supposed to help officials determine how much of a problem a new inmate might be, what skills or handicaps he might have, and where he should be permanently housed. Jason remembered that his physical exam was minimal. A nurse told him to strip to his boxers, instructed him to touch his toes, and asked if he had any allergies. He was quickly classified as M-1, which meant he was in perfect health. No one asked about his vision. No one checked his eyes.
Guards escorted Jason to Five Barracks, where he was put into Cell 5. He would stay there, alone, for a month. On Tuesday, his first full day in the cell, Jason realized that he was not being treated like the inmates around him. Other men in the barracks shared cells and were allowed out for their meals, but food was brought to Jason, and he ate it alone in his cell. Other inmates got to go outside together for daily yard call, but, again, officials kept Jason separate. Once a day, a Catholic chaplain accompanied Jason to the prison’s basketball court for a solitary hour of recreation.
Jason understood that he was being protected. The staff and inmates at the Diagnostic Unit all knew about his case. They’d heard about the three Satan-worshipping teenagers who’d killed the three little boys. They knew of Michael Carson’s testimony that one of them—Jason Baldwin—had bragged about putting one of the boys’ t
esticles in his mouth. Jason knew he was seen as a monster. He knew there were dangerous people around him. And he knew that many of them would consider it a good deed to kill him.
On Wednesday, police escorted him to his first meeting with prison officials. This was where the warden and some of his staff gave new inmates their standard introduction. “It was like, ‘We’re not the ones that put you here. It’s our duty to keep you safe. We’re not going to have any problems out of you, are we?’ They told me what I should expect from them and what they expected of me. They let me know it didn’t matter to them whether I was guilty or not. I was in their care, and they weren’t going to treat me differently from anybody else. But that wasn’t true. They were already treating me differently.”
Twenty days after entering the Diagnostic Unit, Jason welcomed his seventeenth birthday on April 11, 1994. That was the day he learned that, six days earlier, Kurt Cobain had killed himself. It was also the day he received his first letter from the outside world. The letter came addressed simply: “To Jason Baldwin, somewhere in prison.” The writer was a teenage girl, younger even than Jason, who lived in Millington, Tennessee, near Memphis. Included with the girl’s letter was a separate one from her mother. The girl’s mother explained that she was allowing her daughter to write to Jason because they had both seen a news clip of him protesting his innocence—and they had believed him. The girl wrote that she believed Jason was “not in a position to be turning down a friend.’”64 “I got a laugh out of that,” he said. “It was probably one of my first laughs in a long time.”
Plus, it was good to have a friend. It would have been better to have a girlfriend. But teenage prospects of love, hugs, kisses, sex and dreams—none of that had any place in the life Jason saw ahead. He recalled that once, as a kindness, one of the guards had brought him a romance novel to read. (Perhaps surprisingly, romances are a popular genre in prisons.) Jason’s vision problem was myopia; he was nearsighted, which is why he’d always been able to read his books for school. But these books were a different matter. He told the guard, “I can’t read this stuff.’” Later, he explained: “A kid going through puberty? No. I didn’t need to be reading that.”
Dark Spell Page 8
