The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts (17 page)

CHAPTER 15

Place of No Return

Our time here is so short.

—OFFICER EFRAIN CERVANTES

I
flew to Houston from the East Coast, where I was visiting family. I rented a car when I landed and drove through the soupy August heat. It ought to have taken me thirty minutes to make it from the airport to my hotel, though with bad directions and worse traffic the drive took two hours.

Fresh cookies and lemonade were cheerfully arranged on a table in the lobby. I'm going to death row, I thought, as I took a bite of a cookie. A bartender poured a tall, cold beer in the hotel bar, which I carried up to my room. There, a king-size bed was made up, expansive and white like a clean canvas. Scented soap and lotion sat next to the bathroom sink, and a flat-screen TV was on the wall.

I'm going to death row tomorrow.

I slipped into bed, intending to fall asleep early. Instead I stayed up watching a movie I can't recall.

In the morning, I drove an hour north to the prison, a blocky series of featureless structures, ringed with shimmering layers of barbed wire, set off from a country road.

I'd come with the basic provisions that blogs and friends recommended: a Ziploc bag containing two rolls of quarters, driver's license, and keys. I'd dressed conservatively and brought an extra sweatshirt for the air-conditioned room.

An officer popped the hood and trunk of the car and checked for contraband. At a small security building, another officer stripped the paper wrapping from the rolls of quarters while I walked through the metal detector. I was given a long chain with a yellow tile marked 11, and I put it around my neck. I walked through the back door, away from the first barbed-wire fence and toward the prison. Back outside, the sky was cloudy, the sun pushing through the gaps of gray. The path between the buildings was lined with flowers, zinnias, a woman later told me. Bright and healthy, and growing happily in the sunlight. I wanted to take a picture of them, but I had only my eyes. I looked at things carefully and tried to remember.

Inside the prison, a drawing of the singer Selena adorned the wall, along with portraits of horses with the names Wimpy and Leo. Two thick metal security doors closed heavily, leading to a room that recalled a high school cafeteria. Tables and a line of booths were in the middle of the room, where the inmates were carted in and placed in individual cells. Large windows framed the trees and sky outside, though the inmates couldn't see these from their vantage point. The effect was of a peninsula of prison cells the size of phone booths, jutting out into an otherwise unremarkable cafeteria.
I received the number of a booth where John would be brought, sat down at the chair in front of it, and waited.

Next to me, a middle-aged white man with glasses and a trim beard, dressed in khakis and loafers, sat in front of the Plexiglas, explaining the work of comedian Larry David to a prisoner. First he talked about a
Seinfeld
episode—that one where George is worried he's slighted a waitress. Then he explained the plot of
Curb Your Enthusiasm
. His description approximated to “Larry David always says exactly what you'd be thinking in that situation, but would never say out loud.” I marveled that this constituted death-row conversation. It also released me from the nervous certainty that talking to John would be bleak and awkward. This man was explaining one of the most frivolous shows on television to an inmate, and the story didn't seem to have much of a purpose other than as shared conversation.

Then, the prisoner brought a furry arm up to the glass, along with a note written on a piece of paper the size of a cocktail napkin. Among the scribbled phrases I made out “Where Does the Money Go?” The man in the glasses murmured in response. He seemed uncomfortable.

To my right, a middle-aged woman, African-American, petite, with long hair and high heels, vigorously affirmed what the inmate to whom she was speaking said. Yes, he had been placed in jail based on shoddy detective work. Yes, his associates were the real perpetrators. Yes, there would be justice. Or at least that's the impression she presented from the visitor's side of the glass. She spoke in legal jargon—perjured testimony and affidavits. Based on the small sliver I saw of the man—a wildly gesturing arm—he seemed young and strong.

Down the row, a young couple with similar short blond haircuts and ambiguous European accents had come to visit an inmate. They were joyous, laughing with a man who appeared to be a treasured friend.

The vending machine was an important aspect of the visiting ritual: it offered a chance to pretend at normalcy—sharing a meal and conversation with a brother, a father, a friend, the way you might in the outside world. The options—sandwiches, slices of pie—were more like items you'd find at a picnic than typical vending-machine fare, and visitors asked prisoners their preferences, paying and then having the items delivered by a guard to the booths.

I'd been waiting for forty minutes when a blur of white clothing moved into my line of vision. John was escorted into the booth by a guard. John's smile was interrupted only for a moment as he put his hands behind him through the slot of the booth so the guard could remove John's handcuffs. When his hands were free, the smile returned.

John's smile was warm, beaming, and unnerving. I didn't want him to be so happy to see me; I worried at what it meant. But I smiled back reflexively. I tried to find a middle ground, between a smile and a serious look.

What is it like in here?
I asked, or some approximation of this question. John said he was allotted ten hours of outdoor time a week, split up into five two-hour blocks. He had slots in his cell, so he could speak with other inmates. He got rotated every six months to a new area of the prison, so if he made a friend or an enemy, he wouldn't be next to him permanently. The prison was often noisy, and he said he heard screaming. Despite the time ticking away, the
noise and constant light in his cell didn't give him much chance at sleep.

John's face was round, his hair thin, shorter than it had been during his last court appearance, and he wasn't wearing the thick-framed glasses that he wears in the courtroom. He was pale and looked unhealthy, like someone who'd spent too long on a sea voyage and lacked basic vitamins. At thirty-three, he'd lost the sharp features of his youth—the strung-out, wiry twenty-two-year-old with a shock of thick dark hair was long gone. He was padded with extra weight, complained of regular sinus infections, and carried eye drops with him. There was nothing remotely threatening in his manner. He was just a person, carrying around complications and contradictions, warmth, a desire to relate to another human being. He may have also been “manipulative” and “self-serving,” phrases I remembered from professional assessments. But we both had our purpose in the room, and if he was helping himself, he was helping me, too.

John's voice reminded me of others I'd heard in the Rio Grande Valley, a distinctive cadence to the rhythm of his speech; the best description I can muster is English spoken with the musicality and pacing of Mexican Spanish—a Texican accent. In his booth, he sat in one position for a time and then shifted, creating awkward contortions with his body to get comfortable and simultaneously hold the phone, on its short cord. What had changed since he went to jail, ten years ago?

iPads, iPhones, cell phones,
he said.

Yes,
I said.
Everyone has the Internet on their phone, and they're on it all the time.

We'd started on an easy topic. But his smile was bothering me so I moved on to the serious questions. We talked about the kids, the idea that they were possessed. He said he used to have a recurring dream that he was being attacked by demons. In it, he would cut off their heads. When this happened with his children, he said he believed they, too, were demons and acted on impulse. The dream seemed as if it had become reality. There was more to these discussions, but as I wasn't allowed to bring a recorder or anything to write with into the visiting room, much of our conversation is lost.

I asked John what he wanted from the vending machine. He didn't know. He'd been short on visitors.

I've always liked cheesecake,
he said.

There was no cheesecake. I remembered the death-row blog; the inmates rarely had meat or fruit in their diet. I returned with fruit, a sandwich, dessert, and a soda.

I asked him more about details from his letters. He remembered a dance he'd done with a group of other teenagers at a party, where they dressed up as the aliens and secret agents from
Men i
n Black
. I laughed, imagining this. I should have expected it, based on his writing, but I was amazed how friendly John was. Even in this dark and depressing place for an interview, the visit was a relief from the tedium of his cell. He finally had the chance to both physically and mentally escape for a few hours without a psychological examination, courtroom, or attorney involved.

John told me that his mother still believed he was innocent of the crime. His uncle Juan had told me that he thought there could be some other explanation for what happened, and John was taking the blame for someone else.

I'd wondered if John's learning disability would prevent us from having a complex conversation, but he spoke fluidly. It made John happy to think about his children, he said. I believed him. His face lit up whenever he spoke about them, and his expressions grew more animated, as he lovingly imitated the way Julissa talked, for example. These relationships were the most unblemished in his life. His children had loved him. They would never know what had become of him. John Stephan and Mary Jane were probably too young to understand what was happening when they died that night. Unlike with John's brothers and mother, whom he'd caused grave anguish, and with Angela, his relationship with his children was preserved.

At times my questions confused John, or he seemed hesitant to answer. He'd look at me sheepishly or sometimes smirk. Alternately, he would brag, making a point to talk about his talent at fixing computers or drawing cartoons, though usually with a self-deprecating dimension to the story. While he asked me few questions during the visit, the ones he did pose made me realize just how little he knew about me, even after years of correspondence.

Is this the first time you've been on an airplane?
he asked.

No,
I fly a lot because my family is on the East Coast.
I didn't tell him about my recent vacation, or virtually anything about myself. Some of his psychiatric evaluations had indicated he had narcissistic tendencies, and I wondered if his lack of questioning was related to mental illness, or if he was just attuned to my reluctance to talk about myself.

Due to the long journey, I'd requested a four-hour visit, double the normal allotment. While four hours seemed like an eternity
when I entered the prison, they moved quickly. Soon the guard walked up and told me it was time to leave. Neither John nor I had realized we were so close to the end of the visit, and as I said good-bye, John seemed to be in shock—the time was gone, and he wasn't prepared for it to end.

I walked out of the prison, each door and gate opening slowly until I finally reached the parking lot. The delicious feeling of freedom, like the purest rainwater, washed over me as I drove away. My life was in my hands. It was a great responsibility—to care for it, value it, and protect it. Not to waste it.

In those hours John came across as a childlike, charismatic, friendly man with a desire to convey his story. This image matched up with the persona in his letters. Of course, I didn't really know him, and the story he told of his life was contradictory and one-sided. Still, as much as I might question his motives or his truthfulness or the way mental illness might impact his behavior, the visit had achieved its purpose: he was no longer a collection of words on a page, he was a three-dimensional, talking, thinking, feeling person, and meeting him made something click. To see another human being and hear his life told to you in his words, with a desire to be known and understood, is to acknowledge that life, and so, too, the weight of his death. Personally sending John to that death became inconceivable.

As I left the prison, I took out my tape recorder and tried to remember everything—every impression, every phrase, every question. But in time those recollections faded, and even the recording I'd made became flimsy and disposable compared to the reality of sitting inside the prison, listening to John speak.

• • •

Capital punishment has morphed many times in the history of the United States. An earlier American incarnation—lynching—was often perpetrated by communities and individuals outside the realm of the law and was tacitly supported by the government, which failed to prosecute it. Though capital punishment was legal in some states even then, the mob lynching—without the time and due process of a trial—was more popular during its height.

Today, the death penalty is carefully administered and, compared to other political issues so inextricably tied to morality, causes a surprising minimum of drama. Many people have never deeply considered their position. The United States has no single standard. In some states the death penalty was abolished long ago. Others apply it in their own aberrant fashion; in Pennsylvania, almost two hundred inmates are on death row, but since 1990, when the method for death was switched to lethal injection, only three people have been executed, and no one has been executed since 1999. Most death-row inmates across the United States go through an extended, arduous appeals process, exhausting all avenues that might prevent their execution, and most of those sentenced are never put to death, with the exception of those in a few states, such as Texas.

Dr. David Garland, a professor of sociology and law at New York University, examined this paradox in his book
Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition
. Today, the nations that apply capital punishment are outliers, and so, too, are the US states that regularly carry out executions. Most of the developed world has abandoned the practice, considering it outdated and an
assault on human dignity. America's death penalty is peculiar for many reasons, but crucially because it derives from a well of emotion—fear, revenge, sadness—that it does not directly answer to in its contemporary application, when execution is delayed for a decade or more after the crime and conviction because of appeals. A crowd, crying for blood, no longer watches the event, as it once did at the guillotine in France or at hangings in England, or at some of the lynchings in the American South. Instead, the inmate is led into a hospital-like room and secured to a gurney before the lethal injection is administered. The inmates are treated, as Dr. Garland notes, much like patients in a hospice—with respect for their privacy and a minimum of pain. Of course, this is all its own brand of theater: an intentional death of a healthy person made to look more like the mercy killing of a sick dog or cat. The pretense of magnanimity at executions prevents the martyrdom or sympathy that might be generated by a more torturous slaughter.