Bakeer wanted Tiequon to live, he cared for him, and considered him “a victim of the environment, system, whatever.” For Bakeer, Tiequon “never really had a chance, didn’t really make a decision. It was the environment at that time that decided for the kids.”
Tiequon’s great-grandmother, Annie Ellsworth, eighty-five at trial, mentioned that it was Tiequon’s twentieth birthday as she testified.
Ellsworth said that since “Ti” was born, she had raised him. She put Ti in the Boy Scouts, and his brother Demontray in the Cub Scouts. She bought all three children bicycles and clothes and gave them an allowance. When Ti was fourteen, he left for her daughter’s house, after Ellsworth had disciplined him for failing to pick his little brother up from school. Ellsworth said she laid down laws of the house, and that Ti may have found her too strict. After serving his time at CYA, the authorities told Ellsworth that Ti wanted to come and live with her. She had a detached room for him where he could stay in the rear of the house.
Since Ti had been in custody on this case, Ellsworth said he had called her daily. In one call he told her, “Grandma, regardless of what happen, I want you to know I never hurt nobody in my life.” He also told her that if he had stayed home with her and listened to her he wouldn’t have been in the predicament he was in now.
She concluded her testimony, “Oh, my God, I want him to live. Because he is so young. He is so young. And I know he isn’t guilty.” Audrey Martin, Tiequon’s grandmother, wanted him to live “[b]ecause that’s my grandson and I love him.”
Demontray Cox, seventeen at trial, testified that when he was twelve or thirteen, he and Tiequon ran away from their mother’s house because she was drunk and abusive, hitting Tiequon and throwing a vase at him. The three kids then lived with their great-grandmother, but Tiequon again ran away, because she was “too strict on us, keeping us in the backyard and stuff.” Demontray described her as “pretty tight,” but felt she “wanted what was best for us kids.”
While growing up, Demontray saw Tiequon’s father, James Cox, a few times. When asked if James Cox was his father, Demontray responded, “I don’t know, really.”
Demontray wanted Tiequon to live, because “He’s my brother and I love him,” “I don’t believe he did it,” and “He’s too young to die.”
Tiequon’s fifteen-year-old sister, Edrina, testified that the kids were taken from their mother, but well cared for by their great-grandmother. She said Tiequon had been a nice brother and she wanted him to live.
When Edrina began to cry on the stand, Tiequon spoke out from the counsel table, “Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Be strong.”
30
LET HIM DIE ON THE ROCKS
IN A CAPITAL case the prosecution and defense get two arguments each. Norris went first, followed by Cook and his co-counsel, Joanne Rotstein.
When speaking of our family, Norris stressed how our mother endured the challenges of raising eleven children to adulthood, only to be “rewarded for her good work by being blown apart by Mr. Cox.” He continued: “I think that is much more telling than what Mr. Cox may ever suffer.”
Norris further dismissed the idea that the gangs and environment made Cox do it. Regarding the arguments that “all the kids are into it,” and “there but for the grace of God go I,” the district attorney responded that all the other kids “didn’t walk in and take the life of four innocent people . . . it’s Mr. Cox. Whether it is the gang; whether it is him, it is all part of that evil intent you have to have in order to do something like this.
“Imagine for one minute being there . . . on that hot August morning . . . and you picked up the body of Ebora, of Dietra, of Damon and Damani . . . and you saw the blood on your hands, and you knew that across the way is the man that killed all four of those people, Mr. Cox, I don’t think there is any hard question what the proper penalty is, and that is death for Mr. Cox.”
Joanne Rotstein argued:
The question in the penalty phase is whether or not Tiequon Cox is to be executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin.
The law didn’t require that you actually make a factual determination on a verdict form as to who the actual shooter was.
Now in the guilt phase it was clear that Tiequon Cox was involved in the murders. You had his palm print on the footlocker. You knew he was in the house. The crime itself was not contested by the defense.
We didn’t put on any evidence and we didn’t argue. At the penalty phase now we’re asking you to make a determination, make a factual determination as to who the shooter was, who pulled the trigger in that house.
As Rotstein argued that Cox was not the shooter, my sister Joan was overcome with emotion: “Goddamn it, he was the shooter. Goddamn it. I don’t know why you’re saying what you’re saying. You know he did it.”
Rotstein continued that the description by Neal and Ivan of the man with the rifle as having dark skin was consistent with CW and not with the light-skinned Cox.
And we know [CW] gets back first, because Ida and Lisa also see him return to the van first.
But why does he leave first?
Because he panicked. He’s in a struggle with someone that’s still alive [Neal], and he panics, because perhaps he’s afraid that someone saw his identification, his face, what he was wearing.
Well, when does Cox leave his print on the footlocker?
After the man in control of this entire operation, after the man that orchestrates this entire incident leaves, Cox goes into the bedroom; leans down on the footlocker, and leaves his palm print.
He picks up the rifle that’s knocked aside during the struggle.
Now, there is certainly evidence of CW’s domination of the entire incident. CW not only dominated and controlled this escapade over to the Alexander house, but he dominated Ida.
Rotstein concluded by arguing that punishment and the protection of society would be accomplished through life without the possibility of parole, which would ensure that Cox would never get out of prison.
Cook likewise argued that CW was the shooter, based upon the descriptions, then focused on Cox’s upbringing and the influence of gangs. He concluded by focusing on the weight of the decision facing the jury:
It is like you are going back there, like you are in a monastery by yourself, and you have to make this decision in your own heart.
Who gave you the power of life or death?
Think of how you got on this case. You are obviously . . . all on the jury registration list, so you are picked for a certain time and you are drawn by lot to come into this courtroom.
And then, after going through a long process you are the twelve people chosen.
Does this qualify you to decide who’s going to live or die? Does this make you God . . . God’s instrument in here taking a life?
If you are judged you are going to be judged as an individual.
You are not going to have the other eleven jurors with you and say, “Well why did you give this kid death when he probably wasn’t the shooter, and he wasn’t the shooter; when he really didn’t have a chance anyway.”
We are talking about an eighteen-year-old kid here. Can you be one hundred percent sure if you say death, and Tiequon takes that long walk to the gas chamber, and is choked on this gas, that you did the right thing?
Let’s just assume Tiequon was standing at the edge of a cliff, and Judge Boren said to one of the jurors, it can be anyone of you twelve, or all of you individually . . . now if you want him to die, you go over and push him off the cliff, and let him fall two hundred feet and die on the rocks down there.
* * *
On February 18, 1986, the jury, after two days of deliberation, recommended that Tiequon Cox be sentenced to death.
Members of my family and our friends in court sobbed, “Thank you, Jesus.”
Cox remained impassive as the verdict was read. When he left the courtroom, he kicked over a chair in anger.
Members of my family bowed in relief, and Geraldine, Damani’s
mother, collapsed. I carried her from the courtroom.
None of us had any doubt. The defense simply tried to exploit any ambiguity in the split-second descriptions given by my traumatized, just-awakened brother and nephew, neither of whom saw the shooter’s face in the dim morning light.
Further, the sequence of events recounted by Neal contradicts the defense claims. Neal said he wrestled with the shooter, causing the gun to drop to the floor. The shooter then picked up the rifle and hit him in the head with it. The only reasonable explanation: the same person who fired the rifle, picked up the rifle, hit Neal in the head with the rifle, and fled the house carrying the rifle. That person was Tiequon Cox.
Further still, it wasn’t CW who said, “I just blew the bitch’s head off.”
For Judge Boren, the wrong-shooter defense entered his “binder of red herrings,” theories based upon mistaken eyewitness identifications that just didn’t add up.
For Sterling Norris it was “a very justified verdict.” “Cox has to be one of the most vicious criminals I’ve handled.”
* * *
I got Tiequon Cox. We shared a past: southern kin, South Central kids, filled with both talent and rage.
I felt sympathy for the boy. He was traumatized by his mother. He barely knew his father. I pitied his little brother and sister who looked up to him, his great-grandmother who tried to raise him.
Our lives crossed. I wish I had acted. But others tried and got rejected.
His great-grandmother provided a stable home with resources. She enrolled him in Boy Scouts and sports programs. She expected responsibility, that he walk his kid brother home from school. She restricted him when he let her down. Her leash was tight. If that explained crime, every southern son would live behind bars.
Likewise, the caring teacher who saw potential and provided guidance and opportunities was cast aside.
The environment was bad. I knew it well. But no one made him join the gang. No one forced on him the role of assassin. The majority of the neighborhood shuns the gangs. He embraced the gang and shunned other options.
And what about sympathy for the children of August 31, never allowed to awaken? How about Ivan and Neal, traumatized for life? What about Gerald Penney, James Love, Preston Taylor, Rosalyn Lebby and her little boy?
He chooses his victims, picks easy targets. The fights are never fair, the odds never even. He proves himself by preying on the defenseless while he is heavily armed.
Tiequon Cox is no Horace Burns. Here there is no Tiequon v. Fee. This one is united. It’s simple. He just doesn’t care. If it stands in his way, down it goes. Never open up—Rolling Sixties till the end.
I pity the child. But the man destroyed my family. I have sympathy. I carry guilt. But it’s tough to kindle mercy for one who shows others none.
* * *
On April 30, 1986, Judge Boren sentenced Tiequon Aundray Cox to death, finding the jury’s decision justified given the overwhelming evidence.
Judge Boren said that Cox “would kill again without provocation” if given the opportunity, and called Cox “one of the most dangerous killers” he had ever encountered. While motive was not spelled out during the trial, Boren stated that Cox committed the “cold-blooded” murders “in all likelihood for some kind of financial gain.”
It is the order of this court that you shall suffer the death penalty and that said penalty be inflicted within the walls of San Quentin State Prison in California in the manner prescribed by law and at a time to be fixed by this court in the warrant of execution on all counts.
You are remanded to the care, custody and control of the Sheriff of Los Angeles County to be by him delivered to the Warden of the State Penitentiary at San Quentin, California within ten days from the date thereof.
* * *
I had numerous contacts within the San Quentin correctional staff. Over the coming years they would keep me informed of Cox’s activities in prison.
During the Cox trial, Norris only hinted at the motive. Following the case he said that in the upcoming Williams trial, he would show that the killers received $60,000 for the contract killing of an entire family. But Norris declined to say why or by whom the murders were ordered.
31
THE GRAY GOOSE TO THE AC
ON MAY 7, 1986, Tiequon Cox is transported from Los Angeles County Jail to San Quentin State Prison.
He is handcuffed, shackled, and chained to the floor of the “Gray Goose,” a California Department of Corrections (CDC) bus. After driving up Highway 101 from Southern California, the bus turns onto Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and approaches the prison.
San Quentin Point is a promontory in Marin County. The weather is typical of Northern California: breezy, about sixty-five degrees.
The Gray Goose enters San Quentin at the West Gate. San Francisco Bay is on the right-hand side. Windsurfers dart across the choppy surf. A flock of pelicans glide low over the water. A ferry heads into Larkspur Landing, northbound from the city.
San Quentin is the oldest prison in the state, opened in 1852, just two years after California entered the union. The first inmates were housed on barges moored off the point. They were criminals from San Francisco’s Barbary Coast days. Turned into a land-based facility in the 1860s, at the time it stood as California’s largest public works project.
To this day, San Quentin retains its nineteenth-century character, more the Victorian-era fortification than a modern institution. The front entry resembles a castle, the gate slams shut with a medieval clang, and the original hospital façade within, which reads “1885,” seems a relic from an Old West ghost town.
The prison is famous for its mess hall murals, painted by a Mexican-American inmate, Alfredo Santos, in the 1950s. Done in sepia tones in the Depression-era public works style, they trace California’s history from its first settlers through World War II. Said to be made of shoe polish, and rumored to be haunted, the murals feature a woman’s eyes that follow you wherever you go, a B-52 bomber that shifts perspective, and a cable car that changes direction as you walk past.
Like its murals, the prison’s past residents provide a tour through California’s history. Housing Wild West bandits like Black Bart, Prohibition-era gangsters such as Machine Gun Kelly, and 1960s radicals George Jackson and Huey Newton, the prison is now home to the latest generation of gangbangers and serial killers. Notably its gas chamber has seen the deaths of the red-light bandit Caryl Chessman in 1960 and Barbara Graham in 1955. It has stood dormant for the past twenty years.
As the bus carrying Tiequon Cox comes to a stop at a fork in the road within the prison, a low structure, known as the “boneyard,” is on the left. This is where inmates are granted conjugal visits. After a short distance, the bus makes a right at the receiving warehouse.
It continues past the warehouse, then makes a left and arrives at the sally port at Five Wall. On the right is the exercise yard and baseball field. Dressed in blue CDC uniforms, inmates walk laps, do pull-ups, push-ups, stand around talking, politicking, scheming.
The bus drives along the field. It now passes by the “dungeon,” an isolation unit resembling an ancient torture chamber. Inside it is dank and pitch-black. Iron rings hang from the ceiling, once used to suspend prisoners by their upraised hands, a reminder of the strappado used in the Spanish Inquisition. The dungeon was last used for solitary confinement in the 1940s.
Passing the dungeon, the Gray Goose finally comes to rest in front of R&R (receiving and release). Inside R&R the restraints are removed. Cox is subjected to a full unclothed body search. He is directed to lift his arms, open his mouth, lift his testicles, then bend over and spread his buttocks while giving several deep coughs. This is to ensure that the inmate is not “kiestering” anything in his anus, such as a knife, a shank, a “bonecrusher.”
Cox is next placed in a cage and provided with his initial issuance, or “fishkit”: boxers, a T-shirt and flip-flops, blue denim pants, and a blue chambray shirt. He is photographed and fi
ngerprinted, then required to place a full handprint on the back of his sentencing document, which reads CONDEMNED.
He is checked to make sure there are no bruises or injuries and then given his medical clearance.
As a newly arrived condemned inmate, he is taken to the Adjustment Center, or AC, San Quentin’s highest-security facility, a level 4, or supermax, structure. Within the Adjustment Center he will be assessed and assigned either a grade A or B condemned status, which will determine his housing.
The staff in the Adjustment Center sends two particularly large correctional officers for Cox’s initial entrance. He is again placed in restraints, then walked across the lower yard, up the ramp, in front of the dungeon, and into the AC.
Upon arrival he is placed in a first-floor holding cell in the middle of the tier. The restraints are removed and he is again subjected to a full-body search. He is then dressed in boxers and a T-shirt.
A sergeant administers the initial interview. “You respect us, and we’ll respect you. Otherwise things can go sideways.” Correctional officers refer to this as the “come-to-Jesus conversation.”
Again, the prisoner is placed in restraints and taken to his initial cell, first floor, south side.
The condemned prisoner will remain in the AC for at least thirty days after the initial assessment. He is then addressed by the warden, a second “come to Jesus.” “We need you to ‘program,’ ” the warden says. This means to fall in line and follow prison procedures. “You need to follow all of the protocols and not cause problems.” The warden pauses to see that his words are sinking in, then concludes, “We have a no-warning-shot policy.”
After his initial stay in the AC, Cox is assigned an “A” grade, which means he will leave the Adjustment Center and join the mainline population.
He will be transferred to the Condemned Unit housed in East Block. At just over twenty years old, Cox is the youngest member of California’s death row population.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death Page 22
