A Christmas card from Death Row

[I received a Christmas card from my friend who's on Texas' Death Row in Livingston, Texas.  On the opposite side of this card, he wrote the words below.  He is a remarkable person.  He is teaching me some amazing things.]

Dear Larry,
I thank you for your card.  I wasn't feeling this holiday, so to speak, some weeks ago--and it is hard to describe this present feeling as I often feel this way that can be closely described as feeling, or experiencing gratitude.  Even all the things that seem "so wrong" as you called the present situation/my case.  They seem to have some purpose to me and I try to think that this is all just the experience of life and we are living it and that is all there is to it.  There is some sense in me that gives the impression that, in some deeper place, it is neither right or wrong--anything that is taking place in my life.  It just is and I am here to experience it and make some stands at certain stages where I say that his matters and that matters and then work toward making something out of this madness.  And out of the love that is there.  And out of the confusion and the contradictions that exist in me as much as outside me.  We live and we breathe something worthy into this world and we move on.  I am okay w/this; tho that doesn't mean I am read to go! :)  So, yes, let's see what we can do.  Let me know if you made contact w/Wolf.

I thank you for everything and I hope you all had a good time this season.

Sincerely,

Obie

Baby girl

[For over a year now, I've been corresponding with a young man who lives on Texas' Death Row in a prison in Livingston, Texas.  He has been locked up for well over a decade.  His appeals, almost exhausted.  He is a changed, radically changed man. 

Writing provides part of his coping strategy to manage the "lock down" conditions in which he lives (in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day).  Recently, he sent me the following essay about a visit he enjoyed with his daughter.]

Sitting across from my little girl, looking into her eyes, was a gift and a curse. 1- years- old, understanding the world, formulating her own opinions on life. She was as beautiful as the first day I saw her. I knew from the look in her eyes that it was time to break the news to her.

Looking at each other through 3-inch thick glass, attempting to drown out the numerous sounds that invade our time, our connection was strong, stronger than it’s ever been. It’s a gift to watch my daughter grow into a woman. To watch the youth in her; to watch the innocence; the love she has for me even though I haven’t physically been in her life daily, it was a gift to watch all of this inside a visitation room, locked in a cage. I haven’t touched my daughter in 11 years. Not knowing if I’ll ever touch her again because I’m waiting to be executed by the State of Texas is a curse. It’s a curse not only to me, but also to the numerous men and women that suffer the same circumstance, that hail from lower-class neighborhoods; under privileged communities, not only in Texas but across America.

Families are broken by America’s inhumane injustice system.

Looking in her eyes, I asked her, “Do you understand where Daddy’s at?”

In her innocent bubbly voice, she replied, “Yeah you’re in prison.”

“Do you know what for?”

“You killed somebody.”

“Do you understand how much time I have?”

This was where the hard part came in.

Again looking at me and replying in her jubilant voice, “Yeah Daddy, you’re in here for life!”

“Okay baby girl, listen to me. Have you ever heard of the death penalty or death row?” After shaking her head no, I continued, “The death penalty is the sentence handed down to certain people when they’re convicted of killing someone, like I was. You understand that?” She shook her head yes, but I could see from the look in her eyes that the joy was fading. “Death row is a place in prison where they live until they are murdered by the state. You still with me?” She shook her head yes but her stare was more intense.

“Baby girl, I don’t have a life sentence. I have a death sentence. I have the death penalty. I want you to understand that if we lose this fight in the courts I can be murdered by the state.”

I felt myself choking up, but I was trying my best to hold it in and be strong for my little girl. I wasn’t able to continue. My daughter broke down crying, placing the phone on the table, and falling into her mother’s arms. This was the first time I’ve seen my daughter cry since she was a baby.

I was broken.

The levees holding back the flood broke at that moment. As a father this was the hardest thing to deal with, your daughter crying right in front of you and not being able to comfort her.

Breaking this news was the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do in my life. I always told myself that I would never lie to my kids, so I knew that I had to find the right time to break this devastating news. Too early and she wouldn’t understand the gravity of the situation, too late and she would learn from someone else and that was the last thing I wanted.

After doing my best to calm her down and explain to her that we were not going to give up our quest of being together again, she stopped crying and her fight came back into her eyes. She had so much of her Daddy in her.

This situation highlights the way the criminal justice system break families apart without conscience.

Many men and women are incarcerated with long prison sentences, or in my case, the death penalty when they were young and immature. Mistakes were made, crimes were committed, and sentences were handed out. Most importantly, children were left behind, breaking families apart.

After years of incarceration, the same men and women mature. They are not the same individuals that committed the crime they were convicted of, but due to the way the system is set up, the maturity they’ve attained can’t be used to help curb the continuous cycle of children being caught up in the criminal justice system.

Broken families are a huge problem within our communities. This recent interaction I had with my daughter emphasized what a relationship between a parent and their child means to both for their growth.

Something needs to be done about this and needs to be done soon for the sake of the families and the sake of our communities.

Think about this.

Christopher A. Young

999508

Texas Death Row

From Texas Death Row

 [Previously, I've shared here about my friend, Obie Weathers who has lived on Texas' "Death Row" since he was 19-years-old.  He is 33.  His personal transformation comes through in everything he writes.  The following is from his most recent correspondence.  I pray we abolish "Death Row" in Texas.]

 

Dear Larry,

It’s one of those sort of days here I experience from time to time where I feel my soul being slammed repeatedly against the prison walls, similar to the way a ship moored to a crag with too much slack would be in a strong stormy gale, threatened to be smashed under.

Today, I discovered prison walls are not made of concrete alone. Prison walls I found, in the intimate relationship between the pulsating warmth of life and this cool lifelessness, are constructed of fear. Prison walls: the physical manifestation of the fears of the prisoners and the prison administrators.

I’ve always imagined fear as being a hot, trembling, and excitable thing, so it’s curious that it would reveal itself in this cold, calm, and indifferent state. But perhaps it’s just the way of the frenzy of fears.  In the prison setting, anxieties crystalize into compressed and fired clay.

Interestingly, the Creator formed us –prisoner and prison administration alike – out of clay, but with the creative spirit He breathed into us, we’ve learned only to shape and bake bricks in the ovens of our minds.

Cooled and stacked high, they become a fortress – one in which the prisoner views as impenetrable and the prison administrator as to be defended. Each play their roles obsessively – despite the irrationality: the prisoner resigns to a life limited by the walls, where even the considerations of the tearing them down has been utterly banished by thoughts of what the administration would do; the administration out of fear of breaking  with custom and seen as soft on the prisoners in the distorted and perverse light of the colleagues, also along with the prisoner, maintains the walls. The result?

Nothing.

Except that a lot of dreams die in prison. I’ve met men here who, when sent to death row, arrived with the aspiration for self-betterment intact, and I have watched over the span of years as the prison, which appeared only poised ready and all too willing, to take every opportunity to grind them down –beyond the bones of their souls – along the grated edges of these walls, leaving all prior aspirations, a pile of dust.

I’ve also witnessed prison administrators enthusiastically enter the criminal justice field and witnessed the zeal for their professed calling so overwhelmed by the prison culture of degradation and the devaluation of prisoners’ lives that soon, their once robust sense of humanity is whittled to an emaciated specter of spite aimed at any prisoner they encounter. Unwittingly, they begin defending the walls, becoming just as much a prisoner to the prison as any prisoner here.

These walls are false, I know. And being so, I strive daily to not allow them to solidify, to become real, because prison can be more than a place of punishment. These walls can be a haven for healing, reconciliation, a place where prisoners and the administrators can work together to facilitate the healing and personal reconstruction process necessary for a truly civil and deeply humane society.

Some days, like today, it seems that despite all efforts on my part to bridge the gap between prisoner and prison administrator with peace and an open willingness to encourage positive change for everyone I encounter here – the administrators can but muster no more than flinging me against these walls – over and over… by ordering me, for instance, during lunch time today while serving a meal to me here in the cell:

“Obie, do you want to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, I don’t want to do this, but it’s policy. If you want to eat, you have to kneel with your back to us and cross your hands behind your back.”

“Kneel?!”

“Yes, on your knees. It’s policy, and I’m just doing my job.”

Well, I will go sit and meditate now: tomorrow can only be better.

-Obie

When laughter haunts

My friend, Obie Weathers, lives on Texas Death Row.  We've been exchanging letters for about a year now.  Texas sent him to Death Row at the age of 20.  He's 34 today.  Most of his days have been served in "administrative lockdown," which means he spends 23 hours a day in a cell by himself, as do his fellow inmates.  Recently, I visited him in Livingston, Texas, home of Texas Death Row.  What follows is his latest letter to me.  It moves me to read his letters because after 14 years Obie is a different man than when he arrived a teenager.  Make what you will of this man's words.  I find that it's impossible not to love him. 

_________________________________________________

 

One afternoon while practicing a mindfulness exercise whereby one allows their ears to rove, consciously making notes of each object the ears touch without becoming fixated on any object in particular, my mind became entangled in the jangling laughter of a fellow prisoner.

 

This laughter snagged me.  Something about it. . .amid the cacophony of the afternoon in this place of solitary existence where one's only mate is the silent death sentence and the e solitaires in their solitary cells stand at the cell's doors daily, all day, fervently and unconsciously (I surmise) attempting to ward off their mate's shadow like witch doctors, shamans, raising an incantation composed of jive talk, tall tale-tellings, bet calling, cat calling, the mad rants of mad men and recaps of late night's ball games; and the mind-numbingness with their crash slamming of metal gates into their metal frames, doors and cell doors opening and closing, slamming, crashing, screaming for more:  "Roll 44!  Roll 44!"

 

Something about this laughter made me aware of the shadow looming over me.  I've heard this  laughter before, countless times, and have thought deeply on the way it seems at once maniacal, bursting defensively from a deep place where it remains wrapped protectively around some last inner  jewel and always ready to spring uncontrollably, obsessively and deceptively cool though full of pain. 

 

This laughter is common here: this is the laugher of the hopeless; of the one resigned to fate, but, who still tries to fan from their presence the consuming shadow with laughter.

 

This day when I heard the laugher coming from a guy I know well and care for, I felt a deep pain, an empathy.  I felt that Perry's laughter was my own, that  his experience mine, so I began to explore my thoughts and feelings with in the space of poetic verse.  And what follows isn't a poem about a single guy on Texas Death Row waiting to die, it is s poem about all the people on Death Row waiting.

 

A Poem without a Happy Ending

 

I

 

(Two condemned prisoners talking)

 

"He's expecting a date, did you know?"

 

"Yeah, man; I heard."

 

 

II

 

Lost in laughter

so sad

Mad from despair

Stare into his eyes

He's not there

Hulled-out

I hear his echo

Retreating to the distance

History

His story is no more than the rest of ours

Elementary dreams

Junior High minds

Stunted by high school highs

We enter behind bars

Boys

Becoming men bereft of experience to become men

So than, what are we

But the problems we started with

Because we can't get past them

Like these bars

Can't see the stars because of them

So the nite is our life

Blind men

We say we see

But these tears are too thick

Keloids crisscross neuro-pathways

Stopping synapse traffic

So some of us steer our heads into those concrete walls

Prefrontal cortex still ain't sped up to the contex

Stuck in a vortex

And swimming with the current.

 



Texas Death Row

We sat divided by thick glass.

We talked through the glass by telephone.

I just wanted to shake his hand, but I couldn't even touch him. 

A man, 33-years-old, on Texas death row for 14 years. 

We've been corresponding for over a year. 

I'm on his "guest list."

On June 2, 2015, I visited him. 

It will take me awhile to tell you about him.

Be patient with me.

The author

Read the following excerpt lifted from a letter I received not long ago. 

After you've read it, I'll reveal who wrote it.

The day is all about reading and writing for me here.  That's the things that change in my day:  what I'm doing with my time. Otherwise, the system offers nothing but a routine subsistence of nothingness that grinds one's soul down also to nothingness.  It is beneficial thus to find some reliance also to nothingness.  It is beneficial thus to find some reliance on your mind, your spirit--the Lord--and discover some meaning and purpose for your life.  And there invest your energies, and in so doing you don't spend energy--you cultivate it and it will sustain you when even all that is left is death.  I don't fear death (so much!) but the "death" I do GREATLY fear is a life devoid of purpose, meaning and intention:  I fear waking up and having nowhere to go, to strive toward--no dreams.  I think this is something I have discovered here to generate on my own:  my meaning, my dreams. . .because here these things aren't given.  Peace. . . .

This thoughtful letter came from the hand of a 33-year-old young man who makes his home on death row in a Texas prison.  He has done so for the last 14 years. 

He has become my friend.

"broken things that we. . . just need to scrap!"

Prisons aren't working in this nation. 

I observe the results of the work of the penitentiary system every day here in inner city Dallas.  Young men by the thousands (and disproportionately black) find themselves caught up in the criminal justice system to no good end in most cases. 

Prisons don't seem to reform.  They certainly don't educate or equip or transfer saleable skills, at least not the legal variety. 

In general, prisons need to be completely re-thought, redesigned and re-imagined.

I'm thinking of prisons today because I received in the mail just now another letter from a new friend I've been writing. 

He is in prison in Texas. 

Incarcerated at age 19, he's been locked up for 13 years.

He spends his days in a one-man cell. . .

. . .on death row.

The circumstances of his crime don't seem to indicate the death penalty, but that is not the point here.

In his letter my friend spoke of another inmate and then he went on to talk about his life inside.  I'll let you read a part of it here:

"I've a good friend--brother, actually--here who I'll speak with you more of him later.  He's one of the few people since being here whom I've bonded to in a genuine way.  He's a rare character and I'm lucky to have him part of my life--as I sometimes think that it's been our friendship that's saved me at times from going insane.  It's so amazing that we are placed in these cages w/the notion that we have nothing to offer the world and we are virtually these broken things that we as a society just need to scrap!"

The death penalty has always seemed abhorrent.  My new friendship personalizes it for me.  We should abolish the imposition of capital punishment in this state and nation as soon as possible.  My friend deserves better. 

I love what The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church has to say on the death penalty:

We believe the death penalty denies the power of Christ to redeem, restore and transform all human beings. . . .  When governments implement the death penalty (capital punishment), then the life of the convicted person is devalued and all possibility of change in that person's life ends. . . . we oppose the death penalty (capital punishment) and urge its elimination from all criminal codes (Section 164 G, page 137).

Reactions?

Death penalty should go. . .

Here is an interesting clip from a speech by Bob Ray Sanders delivered at this year's meeting of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP).  

We really should abolish capital punishment in Texas.

Way too costly--119 counties have never executed anyone, largely due to expense involved..

Way too risky--too many ways to arrive at unjust or erroneous verdicts.

Way to inhumane--how can I tolerate something that I could not personally do?.