A February 2018 News & Observer editorial described an alarming increase in jail deaths as “supervision failures”, then recommended these solutions:

1. Improve staff training
2. Hire more guards
3. Investigate the cause of these inmate deaths

 
“Supervision failures” imply lapses in judgement on the job, poor management of underlings, or a department’s collective incompetence led to dysfunction and inefficiency. Not a sixteen year old girl hanging herself with a bed sheet in a jail cell. Not an ill man dying of pneumonia in a jail cell because he was denied medical attention. At best, the solutions suggested by the editorial oversimplify the problems inherent in mass incarceration; at worst it obfuscates a culture of abuse and neglect, then suggests funding the problem instead of addressing the cause.
                Yes, train and properly staff every jail and prison; investigate every lapse in supervision, and not just the incidents resulting in death but each medical emergency and attempted suicide; call on the general assembly to appropriate and invest more funds in the safety and security of the state prison system. These are necessary responses to the increased number of suicides and “supervision failures” in North Carolina jails and prisons.
                The NC Republican legislature can also vote to give judges greater discretion in sentencing and eliminate mandatory minimum sentences allowing courts the ability to divert more offenders to mental health facilities and drug treatment centers. Legislators could also hold prosecutors accountable for over-incarcerating addicts for simple things like paraphernalia and public intoxication charges. The general assembly could even release the remaining 3 of 12 million dollars allocated for the NCDPS mental health department in 2014. These changes would directly impact jail and prison populations across the state, and remove some of the burden put on overworked, underpaid staff.
                Does being charged with a crime mean one deserves less adequate medical care and consideration as a human being? Focusing on a jail’s bureaucracy and staffing policies underscores a fundamental flaw in how incarcerated citizens are perceived. Rather than be recognized as complex beings with more needs than the average person, prisoners are devalued beneath the shade of incarceral policies. Instead of acknowledging how deinstitutionalizing the mental health system has wrought catastrophic damage on the penal system – there are calls for more guards. The N&O editorial, in its reasoning, fails to mention how the courts criminalize mental illness because draconian drug laws show no mercy to addicts, and city ordinances and the VA further alienate homeless veterans. Not even a token word about drug courts, involuntary commitments from the jail to mental health facilities, intake screening, or other viable alternatives to jail.
                Overrelying on incarceration as a panacea to crime exposes every weakness in the criminal justice system. More suicides occur in jail because more addicts and mentally ill people are incarcerated, not treated. Jailors are not orderlies or mental health professionals and expecting them to fill such roles is disastrous policy. Jails are not asylums. Before lasting changes can be made to the safety and security of NC’s jails and prisons their occupants must be treated humanely, and with the recognition by staff they are not things in a warehouse. Maybe then the general assembly and NC Prison Reform Commission can address every failure in the criminal justice system, not just those that support their tough-on-crime rhetoric.

We were hurt when chaplain Chestnut left the prison to pursue other opportunities in the free world; but, also, to save his marriage. Months before Chestnut left, he let slip that his wife was angry he spent more time on death row than he did at home. We were grateful. Chaplain Chestnut provided counsel before and after the executions of our friends. He grieved with us and some guards hated him for it. Chestnut treated us fairly, maybe even favorably, going out of his way to lessen the harshness of our confinement by valuing our humanity as much as any of his parishioners in the free world. He treated us like equals.
    The chaplains who replaced Chestnut were policy wonks, sticklers for following the rules and making the guards feel more comfortable than the “inmates”. Their use of the word “inmate” was like that of the N-word on a plantation--intended to segregate, isolate and belittle.
    Chestnut left in 2004 and none of us thought to connect his departure to any unwritten rule regarding death row. Prison is full of unwritten and unspoken rules that guide interaction between prisoners, but the idea of an unspoken or unwritten rule controlling interaction between staff and prisoners was the stuff of conspiracy theorists. Or so I thought.
    The written policy of no fraternizing between guard and prisoner poisons the purpose of a chaplain, but with regular guards it is easy to understand. The problem is that human beings are social creatures and no matter how much you indoctrinate or denigrate a person, humanity wins out. Guards are not emotionless robots any more than death row prisoners are solely the crimes for which we are convicted and sentenced.
    Over the years some guards have gone out of their way to be kind, patient, and compassionate toward us. They show leniency without violating any policies and are not blinded by the idea of their job; humanity guides how they respond to us. In prison, where humanity is intentionally devalued as a form of punishment, where empathy is withheld lest it be construed as sympathy for enemies of the State, being treated as a guard’s equal is as rare as potable water in the Sahara.
    When we are devalued it negatively impacts our sense of self-worth and influences how we respond to orders. It is hard to see our keepers as anything more than a uniform enforcing a set of rules; it’s actually easier for us to devalue them in return. Humanity does not depart if an external force fails to recognize or validate it; it’s intrinsic to personhood. Except, the unwritten rule works to deny this claim, forging an identity defined as “condemned”, and pushing out any who cannot abide it.
    Before my friend Earl was executed in ‘05 a guard who befriended him quit: she couldn’t stand the thought that her continued employment on death row signaled participation in his execution. Months later another guard quite because his live-and-let-live attitude was unacceptable to a unit manager who would rather see us pick up rocks than go unpunished for the slightest transgression. Many have asked for transfers to other units because accepting the unwritten rule means squelching your natural inclination to show compassion. Other guards have been put on notice by management for taking sides against the abuses of their co-workers. Two unit managers and assistant unit managers were transferred because they were too willing to challenge nonsensical or poorly made administrative decisions regarding death row.
    The unwritten rule on death row requires disinterest, allegiance to policy, and a frequent changing of the guards to reduce the development of familiarity. The rule holds that working for the State does not mean you leave your humanity at the door, it means you must forget about ours. Flouting the idea that we are “less than” is unacceptable.
    From 2013 to the end of 2017 Dr. Kuhns directed psychological programs for the mental health department at Central Prison. A man of conviction and compassion, Kuhns established a number of therapeutic programs on death row. Creative writing, yoga, drama group, chess therapy, Toastmasters and more -- these groups changed the way we prisoners saw our value as human beings and promoted emotional maturity. Dr. Kuhns enlisted the aid of like-minded volunteers from the free world, people who recognized our potential for growth. The problem, and ultimately end of Dr. Kuhn’s employment at CP, is that he ignored the unwritten rule on death row. We are not meant to be rehabilitated or treated as if there is worth in our potential. Since Dr. Kuhns was forced out of the prison the programs he established on death row have been eliminated along with the volunteers. There is no psychologist in the prison who even looks in the direction of death row despite a legislative mandate requiring their presence on the unit.
    Early January of 2018 a sergeant retired after twenty-five years of dedicated service to the prison. I remember meeting him for the first time in 1997, when I came to CP as a 19 year old safekeeper facing a capital murder trial. Because of his proximity to us, many knew this man better than their own families. We all knew he participated on death watch squads--groups of guards assigned to watch condemned prisoners in the final 72 hours before execution.
    I asked him about this before he left. He said, “Some guys ask for me to be there. At least then they can die with somebody close by who knew them, despite everything.”
    After his retirement this sergeant returned to death row in street clothes, his wife and son at his side as he pointed out death row prisoners he knew for decades. Then he left with a wave; it was the goodbye for someone who was as much a part of our lives as we are of his, regardless of the rules.

​

In previous posts I have published essays and poems, updates on projects I’ve worked on, and commented on current affairs. Because I am simultaneously working on college correspondence courses and writing for various publications and purposes, maintaining a current blog has been difficult. This is largely due to the fact my posts are not very blog-like. I aim to change that, writing more frequently about the things I do and see in prison;  a closer look at my daily grind, as well as that of others. My goal has always been quality over quantity because some writers give prolificacy a bad name. I will do better than merely increase the number of posts by pretending I am writing a letter to you, dear readers. Let us hope it works.
                For the past month I’ve been deeply involved in completing the Davis-Putter Scholarship application. It has been a fun, yet involved, experience I never imagined possible on death row. Who does that? Apply for competitive grants when most people expect less than nothing from you? The same could be said of completing an AA degree while on death row. Or trying to change hearts and minds.
                What I discovered in earning my degree and pursuing a Bachelor of Specialized Studies degree program is that the “where” of one’s life does not matter nearly as much as “how” or “why”. The Davis-Putter scholarship is an opportunity to prove my social activism, both in advocacy for higher education in prison and penal reform in general. This grant would fund as many as six correspondence courses through my alma mater, Ohio University, but it would also be a validation of higher education in prison. Always a good idea. There is no guarantee I’ll win, of course, but I remain hopeful. The results will be determined by the end of July.
                The most involved element in the application is my personal statement, which is kind of like a resume, only with more narrative about the groups and activities I’ve written about on this blog. Putting my experiences on the row over the last five years into a coherent story was interesting. I seldom stop to think about the work I’ve completed because it distracts from the work that has yet to be done. The personal statement for the scholarship forced me to reflect on my work product and what I saw gave me courage. I’m doing the right things in the best way I can, bringing attention to the humanity on death row and challenging the narrative told about people in prison. Rather than allowing my cell and sentence to be a coffin, it is the “why” of my advocacy, and “how” it gets done is something for which I thank God.

Life without parole (LWOP) is no different from a death sentence that ends with the lethal injection. Whether one dies of natural causes in a prison infirmary or on a gurney in front of witnesses – both forms of punishment are life in prison with death as the only possibility of release. At their core is the belief a prisoner is not worthy of freedom, that redemption is improbable and irrelevant to the overall purpose of the sentence: vengeance.
 
Yet, the public believes LOWP is a mercy compared to an execution, as if decades on death row or decades in the regular prison population are much different. Neither changes the fact you will never again be a part of society. Tough-on-crime platforms tout “a life for a life” as the best brand of justice, drawing from Talmudic laws of the Old Testament as if this is how modern criminal justice efforts should shape America. That kind of mentality, paired with mandatory minimums and a lack of judicial discretion, is a large part of why there are 2.3 million people incarcerated in the U.S., the highest rate of imprisonment, per capita, in the world. Though there has been a slow shift with the realization this cannot continue, the system’s policies regarding LWOP remain stagnant.
 
Death penalty opponents are counting on the end of executions as LWOP become the cheaper, more efficient, morally acceptable punishment. It prevents extensive appeals, is more “humane” and spares innocents from being put to death. As of early 2017, 31 states maintained a death penalty, but barely a third use it with any regularity as a dwindling supply of lethal chemicals and waning public support make carrying out executions a difficult prospect. In a system that has never functioned equitably or justly, defense attorneys are more able to sway juries away from the death penalty at trial because there is more information about its many problems. As capital punishment declines, these benefits are pushed to the fore and LWOP becomes the silent execution, as cruel and unusual as it predecessor (1). Between 2008 and 2013, as death sentences reached an all-time low, LWOP sentences jumped by 18.3%, raising the total to approximately 49, 081 (2).
 
Life without parole is a conceit held by those who dislike the idea of executing anyone for any reason, yet believe it is okay to warehouse and forget those same prisoners. For others it is their last best hope for rendering an ultimate punishment that forever incapacitates killers. Both groups would rather wash their hands of an ignore the deeper societal problems rooted in crime – racism, poverty and mental illness – maintaining that there are some prisoners who deserve no mercy. At best this is a slippery slope that ignores evidence in favor of emotion. Crime is neither simplistic nor can it be addressed with one-size-fits-all mandatory sentences. In accepting heavy-handed justice that ignores important elements of crime and punishment one supports institutionalized racism, classism, mass incarceration and a prison industrial complex that feeds on human beings.
 
Prison is not supposed to be a pit into which all of society’s ills are dumped and buried. It should not be a place intended to inflict suffering, but a blueprint for a new beginning bred from the American ideal of a second chance. Like capital punishment, LWOP smothers such ideals. Prosecutors use it as a bargaining tool in potential death penalty cases with great effect, scaring defendants into plea deals that eliminate further appeals. Defense attorneys settle on LWOP as the best chance their client has of avoiding execution, even though the “lesser” of the justice system’s most punitive sentences is the difference between suffering 50 years as an exception to the 13th Amendment, or for 50 minutes as an exception to the 8th.
 
A Lack of Legal Aid
 
LWOP obscures the more insidious issues of prosecutorial, judicial, jury and police misconduct, as well as ineffective counsel. Beyond a cursory direct appeal, there is no indigent defense attorney assigned to noncapital cases. Without the in-depth case analyses made by appellate defenders as they are in capital cases, many appealable issues are never discovered or developed, including innocence (3).
 
The U.S. Supreme Court’s reinstatement of the death penalty in Gregg v. Georgia (1976) (4), significantly increased the cost of capital punishment by requiring a bifurcated trial, legal counsel at every stage of the appellate process, and greater judicial scrutiny. This does not mean an equal amount of resources are spent in defense of the capital suspect, only that death penalty legislation, litigation, prosecution, incarceration, and maybe execution, are very costly. It is the most expensive and ineffective brand of justice in America. If the death penalty as a product was subject to consumer protection laws, “it would be recognized as a lemon” suggests David McCord. “So few of those sentenced to the death penalty actually end up being executed.” (5)
 
The lack of legal aid in noncapital appeals makes it easy to see why a lower percentage of sentences and convictions are overturned than in capital cases. Where capital appeals seem to go on until the prisoner is put to death, the “legal window” for those serving LWOP is much more limited and time sensitive. Despite the relative “safety” of being alive and in prison for the rest of your life, once that window closes all legal claims die. Between 1973 and 2013, of the 8466 prisoners who were sentenced to death, 42% (3619) had their sentence or conviction reversed. In North Carolina, since 1977, there have been 8 exonerations and 71% of all death sentences were reversed on appeal (6). How much appealable information would have been developed in these capital cases without the aid of a legal team and the “immediate” threat of execution? How many people will die in prison because that same legal scrutiny is not provided in noncapital LWOP cases?
 
Time and Punishment
 
One reason a death sentence is cruel and unusual is that it creates an effect known as “death row syndrome”. The length of time, close confinement and threat of death cause extreme mental distress, depression, psychosis, and delusions. It is a form of punishment so torturous it “violates the basic guarantees of fundamental human rights.” (7)
 
In Soering v. United Kingdom (1989) “the European Court of Human Rights . . . denied extradition of a prisoner from the U.K. to the U.S. because of the likelihood that he man sought would suffer the “death row phenomenon” in the prolonged uncertain wait for his execution, which would violate the European Convention of Human Rights.” (8)
 
In a more recent case, Federal District Court Judge Cormac Carney held that California’s inability to carry out executions “has rendered the state’s death penalty unconstitutional”, referring to the punishment as “life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.” (9) If the threat of death while in an isolated setting for decades at a time—regardless of whether the execution is carried out – creates debilitating psychosis and is said to be inhumane, how much worse is the oppressive nature of LWOP?
 
Time in prison is punishing, and should be to an extent, but when that sentence is not balanced by at least a small chance to engage in and demonstrate rehabilitation it is as cruel and unusual as a death sentence. LWOP is already where hope for legal aid dies, but so too is any real incentive to improve. Educational programs, work release and vocational training are barred to prisoners who have no release dates. No parole board will revisit these cases and gubernatorial clemency is unlikely. Nationwide, governors “have denied virtually all clemency requests over the last three decades.” (10)
 
There is not much help for the prisoner serving LWOP because many of the nonprofits who strive to end the death penalty fully support LWOP as an alternative. For first-degree murder, LWOP has become a forgone conclusion. Even among those who have parole-eligible life sentences for violent and non-violent offenses, parole boards are unwilling to grant parole even when it has been earned through rehabilitative efforts (11). As of 2012, the total number of prisoners serving life and LWOP was 159,520 (12).
 
Mandatory LWOP, prosecutors, jurors and the public never see defendants for who they might be after 25 or 30 years of incarceration. Instead, THE CRIME becomes this monolithic entity that overshadows and devalues the humanity of the prisoner. No longer the same person who may have committed THE CRIME, the life is cast off and forgotten. Whoever they used to be or struggled to become is lost in an existence identified by a number in a prison file with a description of THE CRIME. There are no incentives or any hope of freedom beyond death. It’s a small wonder the suicide rate among lifers isn’t much higher.
 
Life without parole is death and must be abolished with capital punishment. A life sentence with parole eligibility after 25 years is certainly harsh, but it gives the offender something to hope for and work toward. In those cases where it is not, parole boards have consistently denied release without the help of public sentiment, political pressure or mandatory sentencing. Release must be a possibility for the person society wants the offender to be, one who can return to the community and contribute in a valuable and redeeming way. This is especially imperative for the nearly 3300 prisoners serving LWOP for nonviolent drug offenses (13), and the nearly 2300 offenders sentenced to LWOP as juveniles (14). Even though the U.S. Supreme Court abolished mandatory LWOP for offenders who were juveniles at the time of the crime, many states are resistant to their potential for release.
 
There is a seemingly legitimate fear associated with convicted killers receiving parole eligibility on a life sentence. However, even without rehabilitative programs the very nature of confinement, while punitive, induces change. Maybe because of this, parole-eligible lifers who found release after 15-20 years, have the lowest recidivism rate of any reentering citizen.
 
At the request of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition, the Massachusetts Parole Board undertook a study of 151 second degree murder lifers who were released under supervision from 2000-2006. Of these parolees 116 (72%) were not reincarcerated. Their average age was 48. Of the 45 who recidivated, it was for technical parole violations such as failing a drug test or minor felony offenses (15).
 
The proliferation of LWOP began in 1984 in response to the politics of crime and “War on Drugs” rather than any interest in deterrence or evidence from recidivism rates. In the early 1960s nearly all prisoners were eligible for parole and punishment was built on the idea mandatory sentences served no valid purpose. The life sentence was developed as an “indeterminate sentence”, a term of incarceration “based on the premise that in the face of good conduct and evidence of rehabilitative efforts while incarcerated (counseling, drug programming, education and work skills), offenders can and should be released from prison.” (16)
 
Restorative Justice
There has long been evidence that lengthy prison sentences, like the death penalty, are not associated with less crime and enhanced safety. Quite the opposite. Public outrage over sensationalized crimes and politics drive the use of excessively punitive prison terms. They also cut funding to rehabilitative programs and education in prison, restrict the flexibility of parole boards, change laws to limit clemency requests, and scare away any electable public official who might even consider helping prisoners serving LWOP. In a heavy-handed inexpert attempt to hold offenders accountable for their crimes the public and politics prevent the criminal justice system from working as anything other than a hole in the ground. Lost in the retributive push to punish is the reason for that accountability: the victims.
 
Survivors of violent crimes and their families would likely prefer to forget the offender and move on. In their estimation, suffering in prison is a small price to pay since they too suffer the pain, anger and heartache of loss. While the court recognizes this in allowing for victim impact statements during sentencing, this does not go far enough. The offender needs to recognize that loss, and an effective way of doing this without trading a life for a life is through restorative justice.
 
Authentic restorative justice seeks to repair relationships within the community and hold offenders accountable by helping them to understand the loss of the victim. It helps to define rehabilitation for the offender, making it proximate to those he or she has caused harm. In the Vera Institute of Justice report, Accounting for Justice, Danielle Sared discusses the powerful results of restorative justice programs at work in other western nations and within the fringes of the U.S. criminal justice system:
 
“By bringing people who commit harm face-to-face with those affected by their actions and giving survivors a central voice in the process, these programs give those who are responsible a chance to acknowledge the impact of their actions and make things as right as possible. As such they do what prisons typically fail to do: they hold people accountable in a meaningful way.” (17)
 
Though not all victims’ families or violent crime survivors will be interested in restorative justice, this is the kind of accountability people who commit crimes need. While suffering is an integral aspect of criminal justice for the offender, who should do so with the “difficulty of that reckoning and even the fear and pain it may cause,” he or she also deserves an opportunity to repair the damage for which they are responsible.
 
LWOP does not provide such an opportunity, no is our adversarial legal system designed for such a thing. Prison does not hold offenders accountable—it merely punishes to the extreme extent of the law. Incarceration has become a bludgeon incapable of attending to the needs of victims and their families, or those of offenders. “LWOP”, suggests Danielle Sared, “denies the chance for those offenders to face those whose lives are drastically changed as a result of their decision, to take responsibility for that decision and “do the extraordinarily hard work of answering that pain and becoming someone who will never commit that harm again.” (18)
 
Alternatives to LWOP
 
There are viable alternatives to life without parole that worked well prior to 1984 and the inception of mandatory sentencing. Indeterminate sentences of 25 years to life would grant access to a parole board or judicial review, but not necessarily parole. The life would have to convince a body of trained professionals, or a judge in court, at a public hearing that release is warranted and the community can benefit from his or her return. It is at such a hearing a risk assessment of the offender would be conducted, taking into consideration his or her age, progress in restorative justice programming, and likelihood of success in society. Most of Europe, Britain, China and even Pakistan allow for similar reviews of life sentences; it’s time for the U.S.  to return to a sentencing policy that works toward reducing mass incarceration and is more humane than the death or LWOP sentences.
 
If the public is to be engaged in this process it should be in a conversation on sensible reforms forwarded by penal experts. Equal and equitable justice that restores balance to crime in society—not just retribution and incapacitation. The criminal justice system can function better than it has in decades and the current national conversation suggests most people agree on this point. However, if there is to be lasting change in the justice system, like the people it imprisons, there must be an opportunity for everyone to do so.
 
Restoring Justice to Sentencing
 

1. As the new “death penalty”, LWOP should be treated with comprehensive legal scrutiny at every stage of the appellate process, with indigent defendants appointed appropriate defenders.
2. The decision to pursue LWOP should be at the discretion of a prosecutor and not a mandatory sentence.
3. As a capital sentence, LWOP should only apply to a jury finding of first degree murder, with a sentencing phase at trial that allows for a mitigated sentence.
4. Nonviolent offenders, juveniles, the mentally ill and intellectually disabled, and first-time offenders should be barred, retroactively, from receiving LWOP.
5. De-facto life sentences – created with consecutive numbered sentences – should be replaced with parole-eligible life sentences or concurrent sentences.
6. Every state should be required to have a parole commission and public hearings.
7. Expand the use of judicial discretion in sentencing and end mandatory sentences.
8. Allow for judicial or gubernatorial review of LWOP after 25 years, with the review to meet standards similar to a parole hearing.
9. Make restorative justice programs a mandatory element of rehabilitation and consideration for parole or judicial/gubernatorial review of a life sentence.
10. Restore Pell grants to prisoners and make educational post-secondary degree programs available to those serving parole-eligible life sentences.
11. Work toward reducing and ultimately abolishing LWOP.

 
 
NOTES

1. C.S. Steiker and J.M Steiker, Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press (2016), p. 290
2. Hood and Hoyle, Death Penalty, p. 481; as cited in Courting Death, p. 297
3. Courting Death, p. 294
4. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976)
5. D. McCord, Afterward: If Capital Punishment Were Subject to Consumer Protection Laws, Judicature 89 (2005): p. 305; cited in Courting Death, p. 150
6. F.R. Baumgartner, et al., A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty, UNC Chapel Hill, Oxford University Press(2016), p. 174, 176
7. J. Kaplan, Administering Capital Punishment, University of Florida Law Review 36 (1984): p. 183; cited in Courting Death, p. 150
8. Soering v.United Kingdom, 161 Eur.Ct. H.R., 44-45 (1989); cited in Courting Death, p. 348
9. Jonesv. Chappell, 31 F. Supp. 3d 1050 (C.D. Cal. 2014)
10. A. Nellis, Tinkering with Life: A Look at the Inappropriateness of Life Without Parole as an Alternative to the Death Penalty; University of Miami Law Review, Vol 67 (2013) p. 451
11. W. Lomax and S. Kumar, Still Blocking the Exit, ACLU, Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative: www.aclu-md.org (2013)
12. G. Haas and L. Fillion, Life Without Parole: A Reconsideration, 2ed. Criminal Justice Policy Coalition Norfolk Lifers Group; www.cipc.org/Life-Without-Parole-A-Reconsideration.pdf (2016) p.37
13. ACLU, A Living Death: Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses; (2013) ACLU Foundation; www.aclu.org
14. M. Cramer, “Two Life Inmates Plead for Parole”, The Boston Globe, Oct. 27, 2014 at AI; cited in Life Without Parole: A Reconsideration, p. 43
15. Life Without Parole: A Reconsideration, 2ed (2016)p. 15
16. A. Nellis, Life Goes On: The Historic Rise in Life Sentences in America; The Sentencing Project, Washington, DC (2013), www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc
17. D. Sared, Accounting for Violence: How to Increase Safety and Break Our Failed Reliance on Mass Incarceration, Vera Institute of Justice (2017), www.vera.org/accounting-for-violence, p. 18
18. Accounting for Violence, p. 18
    

It may help to know I grew up in a small town in Maine where, even though the population was predominantly white, there were no obvious acts of discrimination against minorities. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali and George Washington Carver were historical rock stars alongside a host of others who have done a lot to progress the ideals of the United States of America.
                There were no discussions about racial profiling, illegal immigrants or how crack cocaine seemed to target the black youth of American cities. We did not talk about what it meant as a black citizen to be pulled over by the police, nor was there ever mention of cops killing unarmed black citizens on a regular basis for no better reasons than “He might have had a gun,” or “I told her not to run.”
                My siblings and I lived on a dead end street in a middle class neighborhood between the high school and junior high the five of us attended. We had enough food and clothes and our parents did their level best to provide for the family. Most of the time we were thankful and aware there are many people much less fortunate than us. Things may have been different growing up in a small town in the 80s and 90s, but not to the point any of us were blind or deaf to such things as racism, inequality and bigotry. They continue to exist in 2017.
                We were educated by the Catholic Church, our morality coming from Christ’s teachings of forgiveness, love and inclusivity. Lessons that are as obvious as any list of rules in a kindergarten classroom. Granted, people fail and sin; it is the nature of humanity. And I am the last person on earth who would consider judging another person’s behavior, but racism is beyond my understanding at times.
                It was with great difficulty I learned to navigate racism in prison, both that which has been directed at me and in reading and hearing about it in increasing amounts over the last five years. Part of it is naiveté. I did not experience much before getting locked up for murder at the age of 19. Even before that, the time I spent in the Maine Youth Center and two rehabs between the ages of 16 and 19 was not around minorities, discrimination and the problems they face. I only knew my life was one bad choice after another with some bad luck and mental illness thrown in for good measure. White entitlement never crossed my mind as a confused sixteen year old boy in solitary confinement.
                I was recently asked to write about the word “nigger” and what it means to me, a writing prompt meant to stimulate conversation when race is all that seems to be on the news now that Donald Trump is president and “white nationalism” is the buzz word for 21st century racism in America. Since the United States was founded on the backs of black slaves, in the wake of a native American genocide, with the help of displaced peoples from all over Europe—white nationalism or racial superiority of any kind is ridiculous. Laughable.
                For me the N word deserves an inward eye roll. It’s not a word I use because my parents and public school taught me there are some words and the ideas they convey, that don’t belong in the English language. Just because they exist is not an excuse to use them. This was reinforced when my sister used the N word in hearing of our mother, whose best friend in high school was black. It took a long time before my sister got the taste of Ivory soap out of her mouth or forgot the stinging slap that went with it. There are some things you just don’t say.
                I understood then and now what the N word means and all of its history, but it wasn’t until coming to death row. I felt the full oppressive weight of what it means to be called nigger by a white person.
                Over the last twenty years I’ve spent in prison I have been stripped of my identity as a free citizen of the United States, denigrated and called an animal. As soon as I was confined no longer did people consider me like them. I became “inmate”. My name got minimized by a prison number and 0580028 is now more important to my identification than the name my mother gave me. I am counted four times a day and stored in a warehouse full of similar things who have fewer rights than anyone in the free world.
                Racism is a difficult subject rooted in slavery, but so too is the dehumanization of incarceration. Where outright slavery was abolished and a little progress has been made in the last 150 years, the Thirteenth Amendment’s exception to slavery “Neither slavery of involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party has been duly convicted . . “ does not protect everyone or abolish the mindset inherent in racial superiority.
                Get convicted of a crime and regardless of your race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or political affiliation you will lose the chance to be treated equitably in America. Instead, you will become a number. Property of the state. If you want to see me suffer under the oppressive weight of a word – call me inmate.

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.

When I was charged with capital murder they house me on Four-High, a cell block in the county jail reserved for juvenile and mentally ill inmates awaiting transport to the other institutions, check offs, trouble makers, and defendants who faced the death penalty. It seldom contained more than twenty inmates, though capacity was twenty-four, and for several months in 1998 there were only eight. The block seemed empty and sterile, but only just.
 
Less than a year into 23 hour a day solitary confinement my grip on reality deteriorated to the point where death seemed a better alternative than life. There was something about the idea of death and total isolation that eclipsed the future like a tsunami on the horizon. It blighted all hope that tomorrow would be a better day. Tomorrow only brought uncertainty, fear and despair.
 
I spoke with a few guys on the block every now and then, learning a little about them. Four of us faced the death penalty. J-Will, the only juvenile among us, was looking at life for murder. The kid was wild and angry, as if his inner animal ruled. He seemed unable or unwilling to chill out despite a bunch of meds, but I couldn’t blame him since we all suffered in some way. Most of us internalized what was being done to us, whereas he made his pain into a weapon, banging it on the door or commode or screaming in a rage.
 
Four-High might as well have been the jail’s mental ward. Richard, a pasty looking middle-aged man, awaited a plea bargain after having his death sentence and conviction overturned for prosecutorial misconduct. He thought, very seriously, there were listening devices in the air ducts and refused to talk above a whisper lest the jailors hear him. During his hour of rec he skittered around the dayroom speaking to a few people in a hoarse mutter, then he hurried through a shower and back into his cell. He rarely used the phone.
 
Choppy seemed normal, but could be as rambunctious and violent as J-Will. He faced 127 years for a string of robberies, assaults and shootings. Because he refused to cooperate with the D.A. and his co-defendant was testifying against him, Choppy took his aggression out on the jailors. The only time he wasn’t angry was when he teased Richard for his paranoia and effeminate ways. Choppy would go so far as singing, “Mary had a little lamb” or reciting “Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” whenever Richard came out for rec. Though Richard tried to laugh it off in his usual “aww shucks” manner it was obvious the teasing got to him—especially when everyone called him Mary.
 
At times the interplay between the two was entertaining, then reality closed the door on any amusement. Rod and Jimmy also faced the death penalty and both were loony in the way a lot of time in solitary confinement makes crazy people a lot crazier. Rod passed his time making animal noises, talking to himself or wrestling with his mattress. Jimmy sang, clapped and danced to imaginary music day and night. I don’t think he slept.
 
My issues were more self-destructive. One day I stopped eating, fed up with the bland, meager food. Self-hatred gnawed at my stomach and after a week it became this leaden weight that complimented my constant depression. I grieved for the victims, my wasted life and the loss of liberty. There were only the familiar cracks in the wall, a meaningless roadmap with one exit.
 
I wanted to die.
 
One evening after the midnight count, I stripped a sheet from my bank and tore it in half lengthwise. One end I tied to the bar over the window, the other I tied around my neck in a slipknot. Because the window was so high I rolled up my mattress and stood on it, took a deep breath and let it out, then kicked the mattress to the floor. As the full weight of my body jerked to the end of the sheet I swung once to the left and right. My bare feet flailed against the wall as I choked, then the sheet ripped, dropping me to the metal bunk. I lay there for a few minutes catching my break and massaging a burned throat, disappointed, but determined to kill myself.
 
The next day during rec I walked out of my cell and ignored Richard’s prattle, J-Will’s banging and Rod’s rooster impression. I climbed the stairs with my soap and towel in hand as if heading to the shower, but stood at the rail when I got to the top tier. From the top rail it was 25 feet to the concrete. I got on top of it and jumped.
 
Even in my emotionally wretched state a deep-seated need to survive forced my hands and feet out in front of me, turning a headlong dive into a half-assed roll. The fall didn’t knock me unconscious, but I felt as an insect might when it smacks into the windshield of a speeding car. It was incredibly painful, but more than that was the utter shame and defeat of another failure in a life full of them. There would be no easy escape.
 
My high-flying act was punished by the jailors. It wasn’t that I violated any rule against self-harm so much as caused a lot of paperwork with a trip to the hospital for x-rays and a cast. Upon my return I was stripped naked and shackled to a bunk in an empty cell. With the A/C on high the cell was frigid. Several hours later a folded paper gown slid beneath the door, it was to be my only covering for the next three weeks.
 
Days later a shrink stopped by the cell block. He didn’t care what my problems were and refused to answer me unless I prefaced a statement with “sir” or “Dr. LeStrange”. He was there to determine if I represented a threat to the safety and security of the jail, asking me repeatedly whether I still wanted to die. My answers were terse and noncommittal because I knew it didn’t matter what I told him, Dr. LeStrange was not there to help me, and would make certain I stayed naked.
 
During my hour of rec they shackled me to a table near the phone or handcuffed me in the shower while a guard watched me wash. If I refused to shower they threatened to use a fire hose, which wasn’t an idle threat because I saw it done to a Mexican kid the year before. I ate because the alternative was a feeding tube. They watched me day and night to be sure I hadn’t discovered some surreptitious way to commit suicide.
 
As miserable as the situation was, the shock and pain of the fall cleared my mind of any delusions regarding death, my confinement, or escaping fate. I would face what was to come. Choppy and Richard visited during their rec periods, teasing me about the paper gown and thumb-spike cast on my wrist. J-Will even dropped by, saying “Man, you’re crazy! I didn’t think you’d do it, then you go flying through the air and WHAM! You looked just like a frog. Except they land better.” I could only laugh.
 
It was an odd place to feel a sense of comradery, but it helped to know I was not alone. We were to be tried for our lives, removed from society as if we never mattered, despite our shared humanity. It hurts to think of being cast off like so much trash, but since my time on Four-High I’ve come to understand that I am not alone and this has helped me to remain strong through the toughest of times.

​In the recent News and Observer Op-Ed article, “Under the roof of mercy” a Catholic Mass on North Carolina’s death row was described as a gathering of 6-8 men who come together for thoughtful contemplation of the gospel. The writer goes on to relate a discussion where one prisoner says “The things I’ve done, the hell I’ve put [my mother] and other people through, and still, every day that woman prays for me without fail. Who am I to deserve anything like that?” Though the writer is well meaning, and the theme of the article is mercy and moving on from the past, it is also made to sound as if the man speaking about his mother is expressing responsibility for his death sentence.
 
I am one of those 6-8 men who have attended Catholic services on NC’s death row for 17 years – quite a bit longer than the writer of the above article. Though all of us are grateful for anyone willing to speak up for our humanity and desire for absolution, it should not come at the cost of individuality. I was at the service spoken of in “Under the roof of mercy” and my friend’s words were taken out of context.
 
Our discussion of Luke 7:11-17 was a reflection on what all of us – free and incarcerated alike—have put our mothers through at one time or another. Indeed, a murder conviction and death sentence is one of the worst things a mother could see her son go through, but my friend was not confessing his crime or even implying as much. Had there been such an admission as “Under the roof of mercy” seems to suggest, it would have been in the privacy and confidence of the blessed Sacrament of Confession – not as a topic for a public forum in the N&O.
 
I understand the writer’s good-natured intent even as the subtle tone douses the potential of fiery public indignation for daring to stand up for murderers on death row. It’s not the first time an Op-Ed writer has equivocated on their position when discussing us. A past volunteer at the prison wanted to write about the humanity she witnessed on death row. It was amazing to her that this group of human beings seemed genuinely remorseful, decent and significantly transformed from whom they used to be. Except, in order to write the Op-Ed article and show support for some of the people on death row, she felt the need to single out and lambast a new arrival for his crime. Intentional or not the writer quantified and qualified our humanity and desire for absolution.
 
Too often I have witnessed a tendency in people who advocate for humanity of prisoners to downplay or even denigrate in a surreptitious manner, the character of those they represent. As if we’re too needy to see the subtle fence straddling. The lack of complete sincerity, the inability to consider us as anything other than “less than” is apparent and a little insulting, but that’s the point, isn’t it? To ward off any potential backlash one might receive after sticking up for the human rights of society’s “bad guys”?
 
As a group our name becomes “inmate” or the more egalitarian “prisoner”. Occasionally we’re referred to as men or people, but for the most part we’re only identified by the crimes for which we’ve been convicted and sentenced to death. In this characterization our names are erased from the public conscience as easily as our presence in the free world. This dehumanization makes it so much easier when the time comes to open the curtain into a world where the only witnesses are those ready to see our execution and suffering. Our status as people – brothers, sons, fathers, uncles, cousins and grandfathers—has become a footnote in the history of criminal justice.
 
There is no doubt in my mind many of us on death row regret the crimes for which we’ve been convicted. You don’t spend decades in prison and not feel remorse for all of the wrongs you’ve done. What is being ignored, however, is the very gray area of crime and punishment in which not everyone on death row is guilty of murder and that a death sentence is a legal status, one where the appellate process works with glacial slowness. It does nothing for public perception. Ask the eight men who have had their death sentence and murder convictions overturned, and who were ultimately acquitted of the crimes so many people were certain they committed. Ask 71-74% of the people who were originally sentenced to death in NC and later removed from death row because their sentence and/or conviction was unjust and overturned by the appellate courts. If that is not enough to reconsider the readiness with which we are identified only as death row inmates who are “unworthy” of any other consideration maybe the public needs an absolution as much as we do. I’ll even write the Op-Ed.

Beyond the penal lexicon, what does it mean to “serve life”? The writing in drama project on North Carolina’s death row resulted in the production of a 90 minute stage play demonstrating what it means to serve life in prison and how this journey begins in childhood. More than that, Serving Life collected stories written by men who society has discarded and sentenced to death. Stories that are emblematic of development interrupted. Whether it entailed absent or abusive parents, poor neighborhoods lacking positive role models, or mental illness and inadequate education, these and other factors create the school-to-prison pipeline. There were a number of needs that were never met.
                Psychologist Abraham Maslow posited a theory of development called the Hierarchy of Needs. He explained that whenever a person’s needs are denied regression toward poor behavior results. Once basic needs are met, progression in character and personality occur. Most people spend their lives trying to meet needs on every level of the hierarchy, with only the most successful reaching the pinnacle of self-actualization.
                7. Self-actualization: the realization of potential
                6. Aesthetic needs: order and beauty
                5. Cognitive needs: knowledge and understanding
                4. Self-esteem needs: achievement and gaining of recognition
                3. Belongingness and love needs: affiliation and acceptance
                2. Safety and security needs: long-term survival and stability
                1. Physiological needs: hunger, thirst, sex
 
                The incarcerated populace was especially inefficient at fulfilling their needs in the free world and, as much as many would hate to admit, require the structure and order of prison to satisfy the two most basic levels of the hierarchy—physiological, safety and security needs. Over time affiliation and acceptance occurs, and through programs achievement, knowledge and understanding are reached. Order is a natural byproduct of most institutional settings, but recognizing it as a necessary element of one’s balance as a human being is difficult.
                Death row’s production of Serving Life was the culmination of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs fulfilled. In writing and acting in this play each participant recognized the missing stages of their development, overcame and met whatever needs had caused their individual regression and progressed toward a realization of human potential.
                Maslow identified a number of traits characteristic of self-actualizing people:
 
--Clear, efficient perception of reality and comfortable relations with it.
--Spontaneity, simplicity and naturalness
--Problem centering—having something outside of themselves they “must” do as a mission.
--Detachment and the need for privacy
--Autonomy, independence of culture and environment
--Continued freshness of appreciation
--Mystical and peak experiences
--Feelings of kinship and identification with the human race
--Strong friendships, but limited in number
--Democratic character structure; balance between polarities in personality
--Ethical discrimination between good and evil
--Philosophical, unhostile sense of humor
 
                Our performance of Serving Life required a great deal of perseverance and team work to complete. Had this effort at problem centering—something outside of ourselves we “had” to do as a mission—failed, maximum human potential couldn’t have been reached. Also necessary was an appreciation for the opportunity to engage in this unheard of event on death row. Write a play and act in it? A few years ago the idea would’ve been comical.
                More than anything, being granted the chance to tell the story of development interrupted to approximately two hundred people in three viewings was a phenomenal experience incomparable to anything else. Serving Life fulfilled needs we didn’t know existed, but it also became the ultimate platform upon which the realization of our fullest potential became possible. If other prisoners were granted the same opportunity to meet every level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs it stands to reason that prison could become a place where human potential is maximized rather than squandered.

In ’98 after my second suicide attempt I found a battered book in the book crate, notable because it wasn’t romance or espionage. Thirsty for new material I grabbed the book and hurried back to my cell, unable to discern the content from the blurb on the back cover, but just as eager to escape. Tucking cold feet into the pant legs of my oversized white jumpsuit I began reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
                Up unto that point heroes were brightly colored comic book ideals or guys like Dirty Harry and Rambo—they didn’t exist in my world. Besides, who would want to save me? I’d been charged with capital murder. Heroes don’t save the bad guys, they vanquish them. I knew this even as my mind danced around the idea, wring its hands and wailing ‘How has this happened?’. Suicide was an easy choice balanced against that question.
                I was so confused and miserable the best I could hope for out of the heavy psych meds was just enough emptiness to read this book. It would be my last before they took me to the doctor in a few days to get the broken cast on my wrist replaced. When I tried to escape there was no doubt the deputy would open fire. Problem solved.
                Except I began reading this book . . .
                “The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.” (p. 67)
                I sat down and read and jotted down lines from the book as Frankl’s voice echoed in the emptiness. It was a clarion call to action. A challenge. You’re miserable? So what. Buck up and give meaning to the rest of your life. Fight because it’s hard. The circumstance will never get more difficult than the utter isolation of a cell and capital murder trial. I had nothing else.
                “When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.” (p. 78)
                Frankl survived multiple concentration camps where millions of Jews were immediately put to death for their religion. He administered to his fellow captives providing comfort, advice and reassurance there was purpose in their suffering. He lived in spite of the Nazis. In spite of the culling pogroms. Frankl survived by accepting fate and finding the nobility of purpose. He took the world’s biggest toilet bowl of excrement and found a way to remark upon the design of the wall paper rather than bemoan the smell. How could I do such a phenomenal thing?
                The deputies took me to a doctor’s office on the outer edge of town. Located in a strip mall, the driver parked the van in an empty lot and went inside while his partner stood with me. Even shackled hand and foot I could shuffle fast enough . . .The remaining deputy grew distracted with something in the van and I stood alone in the parking lot, smelling freedom from a nearby pastry shop. It turned my empty stomach, having not eaten anything in days. I took a few steps away from the van and saw a patch of woods behind the strip mall. Then I saw the deputy’s pistol jutting from the hip holster. Beckoning like the pastry shop. It would be over quickly.
                I paused a very long time. Long enough for the sunlight to shift behind some clouds. Then the moment was gone as the deputy swore and slammed the door. “Stupid paperwork’s back at the jail. Come on.” As he escorted me into the doctor’s office a phrase rolled around in the emptiness. IT stopped me from running or grabbing the gun. It took root and grew, and in that moment I knew Frankl had saved me.
                “Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives into conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.” (p. 131)