Prayer of Intercession for All Those on Death Row Today
 
And tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and forever and ever. Because whether the death penalty is imposed on someone depends more on their race, and the state where they were tried, than on the crime that they were convicted of. Lord, You know that this has troubled me greatly, that I’ve long been writing what I have to admit are probably futile clemency letters. Nevertheless, they are composed of hope. Hope for the families of the inmate despite the numbing reality of a scheduled execution date. And most desperately, hope for the convicted who have been, we must admit, Lord, forgotten. So I find a photo of each one, not the official prison portrait in a jumpsuit that shrouds their humanity, but a real-life-relaxed-and-smiling snapshot of what used to be. And I pray that when a governor reads my letter that photo becomes an admonition to consider humanity, and forgiveness, and merciful justice. I sincerely thank You for the moratoriums, stays, reprieves, reversals, and especially for the 18 states that have abolished the death penalty. Still, there have been 15 executions this year, and I have six more letters on my desk. We must also live with the uncertainty of executions that are on hold in so many states. It could still happen. It could still happen. I know that You are on my side here, Lord, so I humbly ask that You grant me and all the others who will not accept the existence of death row, anywhere, the grace to change the hardened hearts and minds. Amen.

“ . . .spared the suffering of the damned, but denied the beatific vision of God.”
 
--Cathechism of the Catholic Church, “Purgatory”
 
 
The injury occurred during a basketball game on the yard. I went up for a rebound and came down off balance on the side of my foot, driving my ankle to the ground until there was an audible pop. Down I went, holding my quivering leg and inventing new ways to say the same profanity.
 
When a guard later wheeled me into the prison ER I expected to be told my ankle was broken since it seemed to list to the left without any effort on my part. They might put a cast on it, but that’s all. Reasonable medical care isn’t something you expect in a place where they prefer a “natural” death over treatment, and a bare minimum of treatment is considered adequate in prison, but passes for negligence in the free world. It was Saturday and with no x-ray technicians available the doctor made some calls then told me I would be going to an outside hospital. He gave me a pain pill (crushed and mixed with water to avoid abuse), put my ankle in a temporary splint and left me to wait.
 
A couple of guards muttered incredulous comments about the cost of an ambulance while I stared at the splint, trying to keep my face neutral. Rattling in my head like a pair of carelessly tossed dice were two words—outside hospital—the one: outside. Through the haze of Oxycodone I focused on the waves of pain instead of what “outside” meant, but this failed as a long forgotten beacon lanced through it all. Outside. Outside. Outside.
 
I had not been beyond the wall in seventeen years, existing in the same two hundred yards of dust and cement my entire adult life. Prison is so ingrained in my thoughts it is simply an extension of head space – impossible to step out of except in death. Even dreams are tainted with fragments of this waking nightmare. It takes more time to brush and floss my teeth than walk to the chow hall, rec yard or canteen. I’ve become so accustomed to the lack of space and movement an empty 7’x9’ cell feels voluminous. Many of the people around me are so familiar, what they say or do can be counted upon like a drip from a leaky faucet. This microcosm of life is so removed from the outside that newspapers, magazines and TV provide figments of the imagination too distant to touch or smell or feel to be true. Even on the yard a craggy wall surrounds our dirt lot and cracked concrete basketball court, hiding freedom from hungry eyes and erasing memories of a different world that existed before . . . this. Now arrow slit windows blur a landscape in miniature – buildingstreesbirdsroadstrain—as untouchable as the earth from the moon.
 
It is difficult to picture something you’ve forgotten, then once you’ve been reintroduced, it’s impossible to understand how you forgot.
 
Not until we passed the checkpoint in front of the prison did it strike me we were beyond the wall. As the last recognizable barrier of my concrete world dwindled there was no doubt in my mind I remained incarcerated. Hands cuffed, chained at the waist, I sat on a motorized gurney with one leg shackled to the other over the temporary splint. To my left sat a transport officer with hands gripping the neck of her bullet-proof vest. Two more followed in a pursuit vehicle. I noted these things, along with all of the storage compartments in the back of the ambulance, as enthralled with them as the pavement unfolding behind us.
 
So many. So many trees and leaves, tall trunks towering over paved roads with cars glittering in the sun. So much space expanding and filling the square windows before me. Engines hummed, a car honked and I jumped, laughing at the sound. The officer looked at me and I stared ahead wide-eyed, then at her as the full significance of this trip became something I couldn’t keep to myself. “I haven’t been out of that prison in seventeen years.” She looked at me—in disbelief, incomprehension, curiosity—then resumed talking to the EMT.
 
Street signs punctuated roads into neighborhoods both welcoming and alien and so vivid my eyes watered. Colors vibrated. Even rundown houses with rusted oil tanks and peeling paint, overgrown weeds and shuttered windows, were perfect. My eyes jumped to cars I didn’t recognized and a few I remembered from TV ads. They were real! Futuristic and fantastic and me grinning like an idiot. Gloriously green leaves sprouted in lush clusters on branches shifting, swaying, waving and living out moments of creation as happily as they could.
 
We pulled into the hospital emergency entrance where I was taken to a bed, x-rayed, told nothing was broken and hustled into a tiny waiting room away from the ER. I had received some curious glances from hospital staff, but most of it was reserved for the three pistol-toting officers in their vests. They paced and got in the way and gave people serious looks to ward off conversation. As a result eyes seemed to skip over me so I sat there, bemused and unable to shift without grimacing in pain or the cuffs sliding up  my skinny arms.
 
Finally, three nurses arrived with more temporary cast materials, to be exchanged for a walking boot once I met with an orthopedist. There wasn’t enough space in the room for six people so two officers stepped out while the nurses got to work. A friendly conversation between the female transport officer and a nurse began as they joked about what my foot would smell like in six weeks and what a pain-in-the-ass showering would be, with periodic instructions for me to breath when they moved my leg.
 
The banter died when the male nurse asked what my red jumpsuit meant and an officer standing by the door said, “Death row”.
 
Despite the chains and guards I had adapted to the otherness of the hospital and my thoughts were entirely in “the moment”. This is how I became conscious of the major difference between the “inside” and “outside”. Silence. The preternatural quiet was the emptying of thought into space rather than echoing from the walls of my confinement. “The moment” in prison is hatred, bitterness, regret and emotional pain. It never goes away and being at peace with it means you’ve grown accustomed to its oppressive weight on your back. People who like to say you can be free in mind but not in body while incarcerated have never experienced the substantial concentration of a life sentence. There is no real freedom—just the ability to do mental gymnastics to convince yourself everything will be okay when in your heart of hearts you know there is nothing natural or okay or freeing about confinement, and it is not necessarily a lesser evil than death. This weight is always present inside. Always nagging in the corner of the mind. Always reminding you of the utter wrongness of confinement.
 
Maybe it was the air and vibrant colors that hypnotized me into a false sense of wellbeing, but at the mention of death row the noise came roaring back and I sank into the hospital bed beneath its pressure.
 
The nurse holding my leg yelped as if pinched. At the same time the RN in charge blurted, “What?” and snapped her attention to the guard who volunteered the information. Nobody moved or said anything until the silence embarrassed even the transport officers, then she said “Wow, that’s incredibly sad.” The male nurse looked like he wanted to hide his face had his hands not been full.
 
A familiar sense of shame and isolation echoed through the years since the trial and I found myself wanting to leave the hospital, escape their scrutiny and return . . .then I stopped the thought as soon as it occurred. What did she mean? Was it “sad” because they were wasting resources on a condemned man, or “sad” because their profession is about preserving life and administering to those in need? Maybe she was commenting on her realization a normal human being in need of care sat before her, rather than the sensationalized deceptive image of a monster unfit for life or liberty? This last seemed the most plausible. My physical presence reminded her there are real people on death row—living, thinking, feeling people who will be put to death because the law says “die”.
 
In the disquiet that followed the RN in charge gave instructions on wrapping my ankle then left without another word. After patting my knee with a small smile, the other female nurse followed, leaving the molding of the cast to the male nurse. He was apologetic. “It will hurt. Push foot against my chest.” I moved, breathing hard because the pain was intense. “You know,” he said “No one ever put foot on me. Ever. You first.” He looked at me, his Russian accent making me think of him as some mobster trying to escape an ugly past. More than anything I appreciated his attempt to put me at ease.
 
I pushed hard, moving an inch and breaking into a cold sweat. “It’s a good habit,” I said, “not letting people put their foot on you. They might think you’re a doormat.”
 
He smiled as the material hardened around my ankle, tapped it with a knuckle then eased it to the bed. “All done.” He went down the hall to get a wheelchair.
 
Thirty minutes later, exhausted and ready to leave, they wheeled me out of the hospital and into the warm air and light of a parking lot. It was on a slight rise so I could see above the trees. In the wavering heat leaves fluttered and branches stirred. A car revved its engine. Ankle a distant ache, my eyes jumped from trees to cars and buildings and people then locked on the vermillion brilliance of the setting sun. The light hurt to look upon, but I stared and struggled to inhale this achingly beautiful life on earth, holding onto the awe it inspired. For the briefest moment I remembered another life, where sunsets were normal and I didn’t drink from this world as if dying of thirst. Then it was gone, lost in the gathering shadows and sound of clinking chains.

I suppose . . . curbside executions have become such a common occurrence in America nobody wants to discuss executing prisoners. After all, the former were simply guilty of being black in the wrong place at the wrong time, whereas the latter were convicted of murder and sentenced to death by a jury.
 
I suppose . . . it’s easy to dismiss cries for justice amongst so many clamoring voices when you’re voiceless and it’s just us. After all, their problems are more immediate and there hasn’t been a North Carolina execution in a decade.
 
I suppose . . . the news has buried the 8 acquittals and 71% reversal rate from North Carolina’s death row in the last 17 years. After all, there are mass shooting and radical Islamic terrorists and civil wars and Arab springs and “immigrant-refugee” problems. Then there are trigger happy cops and rioting protestors and political approval ratings and the church of TMZ. Mustn’t forget that. Nor can we forget divided courts and voter ID laws and gerrymandered districts and HB2 and calls to “Make America Great Again” and “Stronger Together” and “Black Lives Matter”, but what about us?
 
You want social commentary?
 
I want people to wake up from the science fiction there are no Thought Police spoon-feeding us the minutes of their last meeting. It is not the evanescent “Media” or allknowingseeingpowerful THEY! It is all of us who get caught up in the amazement of a television dealing apathy-laced fantasy from a screen, blinding us from our desire to forget  . . .
 
. . . forget your willingness to look the other way as we were strapped to gurneys and injected with lethal chemicals as our mothers watched us die.
 
. . . forget the State’s willingness to smuggle drugs from countries on the terrorist watch list and when they get caught, call it an “illegal import”, just so they can continue executing people.
 
. . . forget that when these chemical cocktails fail, and it takes over an hour for the condemned to stop convulsing in agony, executions are more premeditated and deliberated than the average first degree murder conviction – in any state.
 
I understand.
 
Maybe it is easier to accept putting to death a human being who has been abandoned for decades if it is done under the cover of darkness and if he is only thought of as a murderer and not a man at all.
 
Maybe it is not cruel and unusual to punish a product of institutional classicism, racism, mental illness, addiction and ignorance; to ignore that “18” doesn’t mean sudden adult understanding or that the IQ scale has a significant margin of error.
 
Maybe it is okay to never hold prosecutors accountable for wrongful convictions lasting decades, or only punishing one because Nifong did what they all do—except the lacrosse players had money.
 
IT IS NOT OKAY!!!
 
It’s not okay to take a life for a life in some twisted misappropriation of the Old Testament.
 
It’s not better a few innocents get punished to make certain none of the guilty escape.
 
Retribution is not justice—it’s vengeance cloaked in mock righteousness for victims who want an end to their grief, who want their loved ones back--not more anguish and not more victims.
 
Take another look at those crime dramas we so glorify and idolize and forget . . .
 
. . . forget every person wrongfully sentenced to death is a victim of the State’s attempt at first degree murder.
 
. . . forget people like Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were victimized in prison for 31 years then kicked off death row and into the street without so much as an apology or help from the state reentering society.
 
. . . forget it was their appellate defenders who tried to get them to plead guilty and accept life in prison with full knowledge of their innocence.
 
. . . forget how much prosecutors hate the existence of the NC Actual Innocence Commission because every new exoneration is proof of corruption in a district attorney’s office, police department and the SBI.
 
. . . forget the Innocence Commission in a decade has exonerated over a dozen people, or that they helped establish a law compensating the wrongly convicted as crime victims. I would list their names, but you’d forget and then we’d just be another number.
 
We are MORE than a number in a concrete grave on State property.
                MORE than exceptions to the prohibition against slavery and cruel and unusual punishment
                MORE than monsters, murderers, bad guys and inmates.
                MORE than the worst thing we’ve ever done.
                MORE than the voiceless thousands imprisoned for decades then executed to punctuate that sentence!
 
I suppose . . you believe it’s easier to regain the public’s trust with tough-on-crime campaign ads about the integrity of the crime lab being repaired. After all, better that than explain it was the exoneration of Gregory Taylor that prompted the original SBI audit.
 
I suppose . . .you don’t think there’s a connection between ignoring State-sanctioned executions and those “justifiable homicides” of people who couldn’t get their hands up fast enough. After all, if nobody complains about the former, what makes you think protesting a slow genocide will work?
 
I suppose you assume justice will prevail.
 
Suppose you’re wrong?

Up until three months ago our telephone access on North Carolina’s death row was limited to one 10 minute phone call a year (collect only) and emergency situations where a family member was hospitalized – and that “favor” would be dependent upon the benevolence and availability of a chaplain. Even then the chaplain would first verify if it was an immediate family member and if he or she was really sick or injured or dead and in the hospital. The collect call was monitored and the emergency call degrading enough to be prohibitive. Both made using the phone awkward at best. Why call at all you might wonder? Because sometimes it’s really good to hear a person’s voice even if only briefly.
 
This all changed in June when the administration decided death row would have regular access to phones like regular population prisoners. On each of the 8 cell blocks a single metal phone was bolted to the wall looking much like the lonely oasis in the middle of a long dark highway with not a town or passerby for many miles.
 
It took some time to accustom myself to this retro technology. I called my mom first, struggling to talk and watch the block, and feeling guilty I was drawing her voice into this place. Before our annual phone calls were made in an office, now they were on the block where arguments over the latest TMZ news or a shouting match can break out at will. Getting comfortable with the idea of calling people grew easier, but this did not increase my desire to make phone calls and “chat”. First, I’m not really a chatty type, and second, phone calls cost money: either the person I’m calling collect, or the person who is kind enough to put money in my JPAY account to purchase minutes from the canteen.
 
What I have discovered with the phone is its utilitarian purpose. No longer do I need to worry about not hearing from my parents or friends. No longer do I need to sweat the mail waiting for a response from my academic advisor on some school-related problem. She is just a phone call away.
 
The potential of the phones didn’t really sink in for me, but others were ablaze with ideas for reaching out in ways never before conceived. Death row is such an isolated and misperceived concept the public has only crime drama narratives to understand who is here and what it’s like to live in this place. For those of us living in this hell, it’s incredibly frustrating to know an entirely different reality than the one played out in the media and not be able to contest the truth of those claims. The phones and LIFE LINES provide such an opportunity.
 
www.facebook.com/lifelinesjournal
www.twitter.com/_life_lines
www.soundcloud.com/lifelinesjournal
 
Life Lines is an audio journal for the 147 men and 3 women on North Carolina’s death row. Created by Duke University graduates Chris Agoranos and Lars Akerson, Life Lines is an automated app that records the spoken stories or poems of those on death row who want an opportunity to be heard without the varnish of a newspaper or court reporter. A chance to change the narrative and give voice to our humanity even as the State attempts to silence it forever.
 
Life Lines began as a project on Kickstarter and managed to raise its goal of $16,000 in under a month, with the money to go toward covering start-up costs and maintenance of an official website for a year. This will also help pay for the calls made to record our stories.
 
If Life Lines is a success there may even be a podcast in the future, but that depends on the public’s willingness to listen. There will be three new stories or poems selected from the pool and made available each week, with the official website slated to open in November 2016.