The following is an excerpt from a poem written for his mother, a gift woven in words.
When I was but a little girl I made myself a promise, To rear my children with dignity, Teach them to be honest.
But first, I had to grow, Endure lots of pain, Survive the throes of ghetto woes Time and time again.
Things would not come easy, At times I felt like crying, Determined to gift-wrap the world Or willing to die trying.
Winter boots and Easter suits And summers filled with glee. Never mind if I was suffocating, As long as my kids could breathe.
So, I toiled by day and learned by night Lunched on rice and bread. Wore my children’s hand-me-downs Just to get ahead.
I cooked and cleaned and in between Encouraged my children to strive. I scraped and clawed but through it all, My eyes stayed on the prize.
Destiny for me was simply Duty without break. If asked to do it all over again, I would not hesitate.
See, all I ever wanted Was the life I never had Served to my babies In the absence of their dads.
I wanted to show them through persistence They could have it all, What matters most is how we rise, Not so much how we fall.
My kids are now grown with kids of their own, Some of those kids with child. Some day when my story is told, I hope I’ve made them proud.
All we have to offer the world, The legacy we leave behind. I pray all mothers love their children As much as I love mine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Terry Robinson often writes under the pen name ‘Chanton’ and is a co-author of Crimson Letters, Voices From Death Row. The above is only an excerpt from a poem he wrote for his mother who has been his biggest supporter. Terry continues to work on his memoirs, as well as a book of fiction. He has always maintained his innocence, and hopes to one day prove that and walk free. Mr. Robinson can be contacted at: Terry Robinson #0349019 Central Prison 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
A fax cover sheet addressed to Assistant District Attorney Lyn McClellan and dated September 24, 1999, along with an HPD officer’s handwritten caller ID records were seen for the first time by Charles Mamou in 2020, over twenty years after the Houston Police Department and District Attorney’s office had access to them. The cover sheet and phone records were not shared with Mamou at trial, and could have assisted in the investigation as well as discredited the testimony of two of the prosecution’s key witnesses. In a case without physical evidence, those witnesses were critical. The jury that found Charles Mamou guilty and sentenced him to death never saw the documents, and they were only recently obtained by Mamou’s advocates.
Charles Mamou was sentenced to die in 1999, not long after this fax is dated, for the kidnapping and murder of Mary Carmouche. Mamou has always maintained his innocence and describes fleeing a drug deal gone wrong in a car that didn’t belong to him – Carmouche was in the backseat – and returning to an apartment complex in Houston, Texas, where he was staying. Mamou lived in Louisiana and was in Texas, in most part, for a drug deal. According to Mamou, he last saw Carmouche alive and in the parking lot of the apartment complex, along with several other individuals, two of whom would end up being key witnesses for the prosecution, claiming they were at home in bed, and never saw Mamou after the drug deal – also claiming they did not make or receive phone calls that night.
The phone records – one of two pieces of actual evidence in the case – were never shared with Mamou or the jury. The other piece of evidence that Mamou and the jury never heard about was a rape kit that was collected, which included the collection of ‘trace evidence’ and ‘hairs’. In a case with no fingerprints at the scene of the body, no footprints, no witnesses, no weapon – a rape kit and phone records are the next best thing. The prosecution knew about both. The jury and Mamou knew about neither. Not only did the prosecution know about the rape kit – they also told the jury Mamou sexually assaulted the victim.
The HPD investigator’s notes include identifying notations next to the phone numbers. The victim was last seen alive on the evening of December 6, 1998, early morning of December 7, 1998. The key witness, Howard Scott, lived at the apartment complex Mamou said he drove the car to. These are Scott’s caller ID records from that night, as written by an HPD investigator that went to Scott’s apartment on December 8, 1998.
11:19 p.m., Oretha Gray; 11:25 p.m., Sun Suites; 11:46 p.m., Emily Griggs; 11:48 p.m., Meri Eubanks; 12:14 a.m., payphone; 12:19 a.m., M.E. Brinson – Shawn’s mother; 1:54 a.m., Meri Eubanks; 2:37 a.m., wireless [WRITER’S NOTE: the phone number listed at 2:37 is identified in HPD’s file as belonging to another key witness, Samuel Johnson]; 3:12 a.m., M.E. Brinson – Shawn calls for Howard; 3:43 a.m., call notes.
Mamou could have used this information in his defense, and investigators may have had an opportunity to pursue the location of the wireless phone call made at 2:37 a.m. from a cell phone used by Samuel Johnson, a witness who testified he was home in bed and didn’t talk to anyone that night. Johnson’s contradicting statement and testimony are sufficient reason to pursue the origin and purpose of the 2:37 a.m. phone call for anyone trying to find answers in a murder investigation.
Charles Mamou did not live in Houston. All of the key witnesses did, and Samuel Johnson also worked for Orkin at the time, testifying that his area was in the southwest area of Houston. Although it was often reported that the victim was found near some abandoned houses, she was actually found in what detectives described as a hard to find location in a suburban neighborhood in the southwest area of Houston in the backyard of a house that was for sale – not some abandoned houses.
When the HPD investigator went to Howard Scott’s apartment on Tuesday, December 8, 1998, the investigator was actually hoping to arrest Mamou. They knew he was there that morning from Howard Scott’s wife, and they knew Mamou had been involved in the drug deal that Mary Carmouche had last been seen at. Investigators didn’t find Mamou, but they wrote down Scott’s caller ID records and transported Scott to HPD that day to make a written statement. Not only is that documented in HPD’s case file, Detective Novak also testified regarding Howard Scott’s written statement that day.
That original statement from Howard Scott is nowhere to be found. It is not in the HPD case file, and according to the District Attorney’s office, they don’t have it either. I was told by HPD, that ‘everything doesn’t always makes it into the file’. The following day, police brought Scott and his wife back to HPD and took written statements again on Wednesday, December 9, 1998. Both of Robin Scott’s statements are available, but Howard Scott’s original statement is missing.
I tried to speak to Scott in 2019, but he refused to talk to me. He has spoken to other people over the years, and his statements are inconsistent throughout. The most recent of which, in 2019, includes a physical description of Carmouche from that night, and seeing Samuel Johnson, Charles Mamou and Mary Carmouche all at the apartment complex at the same time – a complete reversal from his testimony, in which he claimed he was home in bed and did not see Samuel Johnson or Charles Mamou after the drug deal, and his phone did not ring. Howard Scott described seeing Samuel Johnson, Charles Mamou, Mary Carmouche, and Kenneth Duplechan all alive and at the apartment complex parking lot after the drug deal.
The jury never heard that. The prosecutor who, according to the the fax cover sheet, was sent Scott’s caller ID records on September 24, 1999, listened to his witness testify two weeks later on October 7, 1999, about going to bed between 11 and midnight, and about how the phone was ringing prior to that, as he sat with ‘Shawn’ and Ken. Scott told the jury there were ‘no more phone calls’ after he went to bed. Neither the jury nor Mamou are ever told ‘Shawn’, the man Scott said he was talking to in his apartment before he went to bed between 11 and 12, called Scott’s apartment at 12:19 a.m., and again at 3:12 a.m., and that Scott’s phone didn’t stop ringing until 3:43 a.m. Although Howard Scott has consistantly contradicted himself for twenty years, and his first statement is missing, he was a key witness in the case against Mamou.
Samuel Johnson, the driver in the drug deal gone wrong, who fled the alley without Mamou, testified he went straight home to bed and spoke to no one, never seeing Mamou or Carmouche again, not seeing or speaking to anyone that night. According to the HPD investigator’s notes, Samuel Johnson called Howard Scott’s apartment at 2:37 a.m., from a wireless phone. At that time in history, landlines were frequently used for phone calls made from a person’s residence, and wireless calls were more likely to be made when away from home. Mamou never had an opportunity to point out to the jury that Johnson’s phone made a call to Howard Scott’s apartment nor was he able to investigate the location of the call’s origin. The prosecution did not share the available information with the jury.
‘Ken’ who Howard Scott mentioned was sitting in his living room in his testimony, has since been interviewed, although there is nothing in HPD’s file to indicate that anyone involved in trying to find Carmouche’s killer ever interviewed him during HPD’s ‘investigation’. In 2019 Kenneth Duplechan told an investigator he saw Charles Mamou, Howard Scott, Samuel Johnson and Shawn Eaglin in the apartment complex parking lot that night – along with the blue Lexus Mamou fled the drug deal in. That statement contradicts everything the jury was told. Kenneth Duplechan also stated he stayed in the parking lot talking to Howard Scott and Charles Mamou after Samuel Johnson drove away. The jury never heard any of that, but the phone records reveal one name coming up twice on Scott’s phone that night – Meri Eubanks. Meri Eubanks does appear to know Kenneth Duplechan, but Eubanks and Duplechan will not respond to inquiries from me. Although the HPD investigator is the individual who wrote down the name Meri Eubanks in his notes as a caller to Scott’s apartment, there are no records of anyone at HPD interviewing Eubanks in their efforts to locate Carmouche’s killer.
There were other phone calls made to the apartment that night that could have been investigated, but according to police files were not, and Mamou was not aware of them at the time, so he was unable to pursue them himself.
The prosecution also knew about actual physical evidence that was collected as part of a rape kit. They did not share what they learned with the jury or Mamou. That information has been kept from Mamou for over twenty years.
On July 8, 1999, two months before Mamou’s trial, an investigator for the District Attorney, Al Rodriguez, contacted HPD and asked them to process a rape kit.
On July 12, 1999, the results were back, indicating that no semen was detected, trace evidence and hairs existed and had been collected.
During the trial, the medical examiner testified at length about the procedures during an autopsy as well as reviewing the autopsy report itself. At no point throughout the entire trial, or in the twenty years since, was Charles Mamou or the jury told a rape kit existed. Quite the opposite. The rape kis was so well not documented, that in 2007 a private investigator looking for more evidence had to report back to Mamou that he could not find more evidence obtained by the medical examiner.
Last year, on October 30, 2019, after I had gone to HPD and the District Attorney’s office requesting the results of the rape kit and being told they don’t keep that kind of information, I contacted the Harris County Medical examiner looking for the information. It was confirmed for me at that time that the rape kit had been collected at the time of the autopsy in spite of the medical examiner neglecting to include that information in his autopsy report and testimony.
On November 19, 2019, I was able to obtain the results to the actual rape kit, noting no semen found and trace evidence collected.
The information wasn’t just kept from Mamou and the jury, the prosecutor also told the jury that a sexual assault took place, but failed to share with the jury or the defense that no semen was found .
A lot of things were told to the jury to steer them in the direction of a guilty verdict. The day after Carmouche went missing, Mamou was with his cousin when he picked up some sunglasses that he had dropped during his stay in Houston. Without surrounding information, the sunglasses became tied to the victim in the courtroom and later in news reports. It was never pointed out for the jury that the glasses were found approximately five miles from the body.
There were a lot of things not pointed out for the jury. Mamou never saw the original video statement of his cousin, Terrence Dodson, who told jurors that Mamou confessed to him. In 2019, I sent Mamou a transcript of the original statement. Although Dodson testified Mamou confessed to him over days, partially in person and partially over the phone, HPD investigators had recorded Dodson originally telling them Mamou called him from Louisiana ‘before day’ on Tuesday, December 8, 1998, and told him everything. Investigators knew, while they were listening to Dodson’s statement, Mamou had not left Houston until Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. on a bus. The interview took place on Wednesday, December 9, 1998.
Dodson’s testimony not only differed from his statement, but Mamou never saw Dodson again after the morning of Monday, December 7, 1998. He could not have confessed to him in person as he testified, nor could he have confessed in one phone call from Louisiana before day on December 8, 1998, as he said in his original statement because Mamou did not leave Houston on a bus headed to Louisiana until Tuesday afternoon at 1:30.
The jury also never saw a letter Terrence Dodson wrote to Mamou a month after Carmouche was murdered, stating he was glad Mamou didn’t tell him anything.
In 2019 it was noted in the HPD case files linked to Mamou’s case that biological evidence was signed out. I inquired at HPD, the Property Room, the Homicide Department, and the District Attorney’s office regarding why the evidence was signed out.
At the HPD Records Department, I was told they didn’t know the answer, and I should contact the Property Room, the District Attorney’s office, and the Medical Examiner.
At the District Attorney’s office, I was told the case was currently ‘closed’. There would be no current requests for evidence from them because no one was working it, and the files themselves were in storage – the case was inactive.
At the HPD Property Room, which was where the biological evidence was signed out from – I was told there is protocol in place, and in order to find out why the biological evidence was signed out, I would need to go to Homicide and speak with the investigator on the case.
At Homicide, I was told it was a ‘cold case’ and there was no active investigator on the case, I would need to talk to the person in charge of cold cases.
The cold case investigator wasn’t in and never returned my phone call.
I later received a phone call from D. Wilker in Homicide. I was told ‘only the Property Division could answer my questions’. Of note – the Property Division is where I had originally gone and was told that due to ‘protocol’, I would need to go to Homicide.
During that phone conversation, I was also told Ms. Wilker would reach out to the Property Division to see if she could get an answer for me, but she couldn’t make any promises. In addition, she informed me ‘we are mandated to test every piece of evidence’, suggesting that the evidence was taken out for testing. Ms. Wilker also suggested an investigator could have requested the material be checked out, but as I had already been told – there was no investigator on the case at that time. I was told she would get back in touch with me after she reached out to the Property Division.
After a couple weeks and no contact from Ms. Wilker – I called her. Ms. Wilker told me the rape kit results I was looking for at that time, which I later found without her assistance, were ‘irrelevant’. I was told the defense had every piece of evidence they needed to have. The ‘window of opportunity’ for finding out anything was closed. And, finally, yes, the evidence had been checked out in 2019 and had been in the possession of Mary K. Childs-Henry, but it was now back where it belonged. It had been checked out for ‘cataloging purposes’.
I then asked Ms. Wilker if she considered the matter closed, and she told me she did.
After that phone call I wrote a letter to Internal Affairs and the Chief of Police, as ‘cataloging’ two pieces of twenty year old biological evidence didn’t seem logical, and I had just been told the rape kit results that were never shared with Mamou were ‘irrelevant’, which also seemed illogical considering evidence was collected .
The Houston Police Department responded, telling me no one had done anything wrong. “In your letter, you inquired about procedures for removing evidence regarding Mr. Mamou’s case. The District Attorney is the only person that can authorize any type of evidence to be released for any reason. There are procedures in place for care, custody and control of evidence that is stored in the Property Room. You may reach the Harris County District Attorney’s Office at ….”
As of this date, it remains unclear why the biological evidence was signed out in 2019.
Charles Mamou has spent over two decades on death row and is awaiting an execution date. In a case without evidence shared with the jury, the prosecution painted a picture. In the painting, the jury was told Mamou sexually assaulted the victim and murdered individuals in previous unsolved murder cases. They were shown autopsy photos of another murder victim, from another crime, and heard the impact statements from the victim’s family in that crime.
One might argue with HPD that evidence is relevant. It’s relevant to victims and their families, and it is relevant to defendants. Charles Mamou’s little sister recently described the last Christmas Eve she shared with her brother over twenty years ago. She and her family spent the day at her Uncle White’s house in Lafayette. Their uncle had a house big enough for everybody, and his gumbo took all day and night to cook, but was worth the wait.
When the family got home that night, they could barely get through the living room because Mamou and his friends had been busy picking up gifts while everyone was gone. The kids weren’t allowed to open anything until morning, but their mom did allow them to set off the fireworks Mamou had brought home. There were so many, Mamou’s sister remembers the sky turning pink, and she remembers seeing two of Mamou’s children that night and the step kids he treated like his own.
Scene: Death Row – a Christmas tree, ornamented, tinseled, well-lit, complete with phony gifts beneath. It crowds one half of the hall as we shoulder on around en route from and to chow. Most guys walk on by – eyes ahead; but some press close to thump a tiny colored light bulb hard enough to darken it, pinch needles into zees, or brazenly slap the crap out of plastic dec- orations, as if to say, “I’m hurting you because you’re hurting me.” Still other men oohhh and aahhh, like little kids, eyeing mint-condition memories that are kept shelved except for special occasions. Never- theless, the Lord is my shepherd- I shall not want.
II.
The other day an officer stood there peering deep into its depth of plastic branches, then grabbed it roughly, angrily even, and shook-shook-shook the fuck out of it, rattling off a noisy mess of decorations. “Nope, Sarge, nothing!” he hollered up the hall, his voice rolling over scattered ornaments and turning a sharp corner to enter the office, from where a faint, unconcerned reply returned: “Okay.” The officer scanned the wreckage. Then looked at us and shrugged. He goosestepped back back to the office. We rebuilt our tree.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He is a talented writer, always keeping us on our toes. He is an occasional contributor to WITS, a co-author of Crimson Letters, an eye-opening book released in 2020, sharing the voices of those living on North Carolina’s Death Row, and his writing can be found on several other platforms. I’m happy to say, he is also the third place winner in WITS’ final writing contest of 2020.
Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at: George T. Wilkerson #0900281 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
For over three years I’ve been writing for Walk In Those Shoes, a sounding board for prisoners whose voices would otherwise be muffled behind prison walls, as well as a call to action for readers. In a world of social statuses, cultural practices and racial characteristics that serve to divide us, we remain connected through our human experiences. We’ve all lost a loved one. We’ve all dreamed. We’ve all had childhood crushes for that special someone that turned our words to mush. We’ve all done something we wish we could take back, and we all have something yet to attain. Our experiences link us in a way that voids our differences, the fabric of our worldly relationships woven in our stories.
It was after reading personal and thought-provoking essays by writers like John Green and Charles Mamou, that I recognized the importance of Walk In Those Shoes. Each piece was thoughtfully edited and kept true to its writer while providing a visual nexus that was soulful, stories not told with rhetoric but the realism of childhood abandonment, abuse and regrets. There were also tales of familial joys, kindness and compassion. I could hardly wait to join such an astonishing cast of writers whom I’d come to admire through their shared vulnerability.
On October 5, 2017, Walk In Those Shoes featured a piece titled I’m Still Breathing, an homage to Dr. Maya Angelou. In addition to the message, there was an image of a rusted manacle laid bare on granite siding. This visual selection was a symbol of empathy meant to resonate with my words. It was my first writing to be published on Walk In Those Shoes, my induction into a brotherhood of writers and one of my proudest moments.
Simply put, Walk In Those Shoes is a proverbial reminder that we are not without empathy. It is a platform for writers with broken pasts to make whole their productive future. I’m grateful for my fellow contributors for their courage to share their experiences. Our stories are not meant to suffer in silence, our stories are meant to heal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Terry Robinson often writes under the pen name ‘Chanton’, and his creative resume is rapidly growing. His is a co-author of Crimson Letters, Voices From Death Row, a book banned from prisons in North Carolina; he is an active board member of Walk In Those Shoes as well as one of several frequent contest judges; and he continues to work on his memoir, as well as a book of fiction. His writing abilities are amazingly far reaching, and we are fortunate to have his voice and input in the direction of WITS. Terry Robinson has always maintained his innocence, and after studying his case file and transcripts WITS also believes in that innocence. Mr. Robinson can be contacted at: Terry Robinson #0349019 Central Prison 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
I. My block housed only 18 to 24-year-olds. For my one hour of recreation on my first day there, weighted with full-restraints (hand- cuffs, ankle-shackles, waist-chains connect- ing them) I clank-paced the tier. Each cell door had an eight-inch square of window, some framing faces that peered at me. Marko, a feral-looking latino who had come from home to hole as a pretrial detainee, flagged me as I passed. He was breathless with excitement and blinking rapidly as he testified: “God speaks to me.” He’d tried but failed to pluck out his eyes, so, to receive divine enlightenment, he instead had committed to hand- copying the Bible’s one thousand three hundred and eighty-nine chapters, every jot and tittle using crayon-sized floppy- rubber pens that were approved (suicide-proof) for segregated inmates. He’d been at it two years, during which his hair and beard grew like Jesus’. His eyes widened, crackling with supernatural energy as he showed me a waist-high tower of babbling pages.
II. Skyler, freckled and well-muscled from toting hay bales, had never traveled past city limits until he got arrested. An accent is not an accent in one’s hometown – it’s invisible – but Skyler’s tobacco bent even further into ‘baccer. At first. Six months in, we were friends. I called his name from behind my door, since it’d been several days since we’d spoken. I pressed my ear to my door’s steel crack to catch his answer. That’s not my name. My name is Fahbo (Fabulous, in short) from New York. I’m an ahtist. I could feel his tongue wrang- ling his identity, twisting it’s straight but tilted spine into a kind of personal scoliosis, figuring nobody would care to remove his corselet. He was right.
III. This one guy loved the hole. He’s been in and out of many holes since age fifteen. This manimal fancied himself a hunter. He’d cover his cell’s light fixture, and his rear-wall’s strip of window; so, to see in, an officer was forced to shade her eyes from the tier’s glare while leaning face against the eight-inch door window. They’d hear a faint but steady friction: ch-ch-ch-ch-ch- and suddenly a milky roar would splat into the Plexiglas at mouth- level, followed by a weaponized penis thudding and rubbing it in. The guard would scream a variation of, “Oh, you nasty muthafucka! Get your sick ass down from there!” He’d built a ‘deer stand’ he bragged, by stacking books on either side of his door so he could get a clear head shot. He seemed shocked when I admitted I didn’t do it too, as if I were some strange beast.
IV. Evidently, prison administrators have figured out how to remove evolution’s rev-limiter and take off its restrictor plate. Its transformative mutations now take place in as little as six months using Therapeutic Seclusion – also known as THE HOLE, in prison lingo. No one who passes through ever leaves the same person if he entered a year ago. The hole is a tool designed to break man down to his quintessence. It hyper- bolizes by creating a parody of one’s character. I’ve seen it strip away the masks and games of faith – no time for masquerades when insanity is gaining – forcing a sort of apotheosis. I have watched it petrify pretense into cement, making men fake forever. I’ve even witnessed it dissolve humanity in atavistic acid: acting like an animal now comes naturally to him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He is a talented writer, always keeping us on our toes, and an occasional contributor to WITS. Mr. Wilkerson is a co-author of Crimson Letters, an eye-opening book released in 2020, sharing the voices of those living on North Carolina’s Death Row.
Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at: George T. Wilkerson #0900281 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
As a Boy Scout grasping the basics of wilderness survival and hiking through buzzing, mosquito-infested forests while life as I knew it faded behind, I first had to grapple with transience and the pain and fear interwoven with impermanence. Everything I carried served a practical function, and after being rolled up, tucked, folded, stacked and packed, it altogether occupied six cubic feet, or so my canvas rucksack advertised.
An object’s value was the sum of its utility minus its volume and mass, measured in cubic inches and ounces. The less I had, the freer I felt. My sense of liberty kindled when I was limited to basic necessities, my creativity sparked to life by the demands of simple survival. One of my handiest items was twine, a fat spool of the sturdy kind for starting fires, building snares, catching fish, dangling food from a tree branch, wrapping tourniquets, and generally for binding. Many things find a higher purpose when bound.
Now I camp in a cell with the square footage of a tent. According to prison policy, I should be able to fold tuck, roll, stack and pack all my belongings into three boxy, flimsy, white plastic shopping bags about the size of brown paper grocery bags, all amounting to a total of six cubic feet.
Books qualify as personal property, no more than ten. It takes ten books to adequately study my faith, but it also takes ten law books to adequately work on my legal appeals and get my body off death row. That’s 2.5 cubic feet of mental and spiritual acuity for me.
I own one cubic foot of hygiene items, luxuries to prevent odors, rashes and to preserve dignity, to soothe my itchy need to feel neat and clean. Two more cubic feet are crammed with my creativity – paper, pens, poetry, essays, drawings, notebooks full of ideas.
That leaves half a cubic foot for commissary food and sentimentality. I own a large brown envelope packed with tattered pages scrawled on by my dad before he died and crappy-but-cute kindergarten drawings by my nieces who swear I’m the world’s best uncle even though I was already here when they were born. I also have a two-inch stack of photos of my brothers and me when we were little boys, of our parents prior to their divorce, of people I’ve never met and places I’ve never been but that are important to my friends or family and therefore important to me.
That’s how I fill and maintain my six feet of cubic space, carved from a hard place. Technically, then, my commissary food is actually considered contraband and could be confiscated. To keep anything new is to discard something old.
I keep my life packed up in bags that tear easily, which is fine by me. In the end my real treasures – my faith, my memory, my love and my creativity – they all inhabit the infinite space inside my soul, incorruptible, ethereal, eternal… and free to bloom.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He is a talented writer and occasional contributor to WITS. Mr. Wilkerson is also a co-author of Crimson Letters, an eye-opening book released in 2020, sharing the voices of those living on North Carolina’s Death Row.
Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at: George T. Wilkerson #0900281 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
Suicides, assaults, perpetuated acts of nonsense, exonerations, relationships severed and put back together – I thought I’d experienced all there was on Death Row. I’ve seen mild, treatable medical conditions fester and decline, often turning fatal due to inadequate healthcare. And I’ve seen the dismal look in a man’s eyes, helpless and void, moments away from being executed – yet even after twenty years, nothing could’ve prepared me for today.
For over six months now, due to global restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, all weekly in-person Death Row visitation has been suspended. As an alternative, online video visitation was implemented, which was a welcome remedy to the growing concerns of our loved ones for our well-being. For men decades removed from society, video visits ignited Death Row with an ever burning anticipation to view our family in the comforts of their homes as opposed to a concrete booth with reinforced glass and steel bars. Appointments were made faster than a sweepstakes giveaway and everyone that returned from a visit had a tale to tell, some recounted with exuberant smiles, some with heavy hearts.
In the following weeks, as per safety regulations, the site for Death Row video visits was moved to another area in the prison. Many of us know the new location as the ‘Death Watch’. It’s where capital punishment is performed. Few men here have suffered the Death Watch prior to having their scheduled executions vacated, one in particular describing the most dreadful night ever with a broken voice to match. More often, the men who’d been hauled off to the Death Watch would not return. It was a wasteland that was now being assigned familial merit and a path on which I would walk.
Friday, September 18, 2020, at 9:03 a.m., a call blared over the P/A system, one that came expectedly as I had awaited the sound since the night before. It would be my first video visit with my family, whom I hadn’t seen in months. The anticipation of it all elevated my mood beyond the reach of my daily struggles. I hopped into the standard Death Row uniform, one meant to evoke guilt – a hot red jumper that draws heavy around the shoulders in a color scheme that clashes with one’s dignity. With nothing left to do but settle my eagerness, I strapped on my face mask and headed on my way.
I joined the company of two other inmates, also with scheduled visits, as they shuffled slightly on their heels, anxious to be off. One guy, like myself, was a first-timer; I surmised he was equally as nervous. The other inmate had attended video visits prior and schooled me on what was to come.
With the arrival of the escorting officer, we set out on our trip from the Death Row facility down to an area usually reserved for visitation, nothing to heighten the excitement along the way, yet nothing to diminish it. We then discontinued the familiar route and veered down a flight of stairs, a control station identical to the one above at the bottom. We crossed the lobby to a sliding glass door that held beyond its threshold something menacing – the very path condemned men had journeyed before as they faced a despicable end.
The door cranked open with a woeful whine, like a symphony of restless souls. I followed the group as they seemingly proceeded with no ills for our whereabouts. What looked to be a short distance to the other end of the hallway became a faraway stretch of land, my steps laden with the realization that, for some, this was their final walk.
Rows of windows, made murky and distorted to deny one last peaceful look at nature, lined the passageway. Here, nothing would be offered to soothe the spirit of the wretched, though in a failed act of humanity, sedatives would be used to ease their pain. At the midway point was a sally port with its inner workings obscured as it sprang into view like a childhood boogeyman, chasing away my sense of security. I needn’t inquire of anyone to know this was the Death Watch. It appeared nothing like the horror I’d dreamed of, yet it incited the same despair. I was standing in the final resting place of a friend of mine named Joe who was executed in ’03 by lethal injection. Longing for his company, I whispered to myself and hoped he could hear me.
We made our way to a waiting area, each taking up a station as the first of us was ushered away to begin his scheduled visit. It would be some twenty minutes later before he returned, talkative and rather giddy as the next guy hurried off in his place. I sat and thought of all the laws passed over the years that would’ve prevented some executions, like the Mental Retardation bill that would’ve saved a man named Perry, or the Racial Justice act for another guy, Insane. One law that was enacted excluded defendants under eighteen years of age from being eligible to receive the death penalty, an amendment that would’ve kept two other men, Hassan and J-Rock, alive today.
The second inmate emerged with a smile so bright I soaked up a bit of his joy. I was sure that I’d seen the worst of the Death Watch. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I stepped around the corner to what I thought would be a cozy, makeshift cubicle with a monitor on which the faces of my loved ones awaited. Instead, I happened onto an arching hallway with blinding lights at the far-end and a metal tank made obvious by the gear-wheel bolted to the door. I was told it was the crank that released the gasses into the chamber during executions. Beside the Death Tank was the viewing area, where the deaths have actually been watched by those who would champion vengeance while holding others to a different standard. I cringed at the thought of such an immoral practice and the historical transgressions. I’ve often wondered if my friends felt alone when they were executed – part of me now prays that they did.
After visitation, I passed by the infamous Death Chamber once more and peered into the darkened sarcophagus. I had hoped to get a feel for my friend, Joe, but all I got was a question of fate.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Terry Robinson often writes under the pen name ‘Chanton’, and this year he and others co-authored Crimson Letters, Voices From Death Row. He continues to work on his memoirs, as well as a book of fiction. Terry Robinson has always maintained his innocence, and hopes to one day prove that and walk free. Mr. Robinson can be contacted at: Terry Robinson #0349019 Central Prison 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
I am change in progress, striving not so much to be rid of my adverse circumstances, but to die a better person than I lived, and the last twenty years have taught me a lot. It wasn’t long ago I faced my greatest fear and stepped onto the set of a live production of Reginald Rose’s ‘Twelve Angry Men’ to perform before a swell of doubtful prison administrators. Just this year, I made a goal to start a college fund for grandchildren I’ve yet to meet. And probably the most life-changing thing I’ve done is fully accept myself and taken accountability for the wrongs I’ve done in my life.
My wrongs aren’t what landed me on Death Row though. A verdict doesn’t change the truth. I wasn’t in the Pizza Inn the night its manager got shot and killed, and for over two decades I’ve wondered why my cousin would testify I told him I did. I knew he must have a good reason. Fear, maybe, is one thing I came up with, fear of what the system might do to him if he told the truth, whatever that might be. Since my trial, I have learned his dreadlocks were at the scene of the crime. The jury never heard that. Maybe I wouldn’t be here if they had. Maybe he thought we’d have to trade places if he told whatever he really knows. At least that’s what I told myself for twenty years.
That was before I saw what he told an investigator who sought him out in an attempt to help me. Jesse Hill made it clear he was only interested in keeping me right here.
Far from helping me, my cousin implicated another member of my family as a possible accomplice to the crime, and time and again brought my mother into the conversation, “His momma know he did it. She know how that boy is.” “My aunt did this.” “My aunt should have gave it to you,” when asked his middle name. “Why does my aunt keep doing this shit.” “She need to talk to her son. He done what he did and bragged about it.”
Hill blamed the bad blood between us on me choosing to confess to him – but the truth is, I never did that, because the truth is – I had nothing to confess. I never saw Jesse Hill that night, and I never confessed to him that night. Jesse Hill and Ronald Bullock both know that. Truth doesn’t change.
For all Hill’s fierce condemnation of me, it was a bizarre contradiction when he wanted it on record that his feelings had been hurt. “That’s my family, it hurt me even to go in there. I ain’t see you wrote that down.” I guess he didn’t see the irony in what he was saying.
As much as my cousin wanted to be portrayed as hurt by our familial bonds and clamored for sympathy, his defamation of my character was limitless, his agenda clear. “I know he did it.”
When I was a kid, I looked up to my cousin. I looked up to him when I was a man too, and for over twenty years, I wondered ‘why?’ I still don’t know ‘why’, but it cleared up a lot when my cousin told the interviewer, “I regret even knowin’ ‘em.”
It used to be that the most meaningful word I knew was ‘family’. The term denoted loyalty, safety, honor and trust. It was the highest respect one could pay another. But when a person you once admired says they regret knowing you… what’s left to say? We aren’t family – just people who share an insignificant past. Jesse Hill contends his version of the events on May 16, 1999, are true. I maintain he is a liar. Those who really know who I am – know the truth. And my truth says a lot more about Jesse Hill than he could ever say about me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Terry Robinson often writes under the pen name ‘Chanton’, and this year he co-authored Crimson Letters, Voices From Death Row. He continues to work on his memoirs, as well as a book of fiction. Terry Robinson has always maintained his innocence, and hopes to one day prove that and walk free. Mr. Robinson can be contacted at: Terry Robinson #0349019 Central Prison 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
NOTE TO READER. Please contact kimberleycarter@verizon.net if you saw Terry Robinson in Wilson, NC, any time of the day or night on May 16, 1999 – or his accusers, who claimed Robinson was with them for most of the day and night. What may seem irrelevant – is often the most helpful. Details of this case will be shared at https://walkinthoseshoes.com/category/terry-robinson/
A few years ago here on Death Row, a handful of men were summoned to our unit manager’s office. They didn’t return for weeks. Prison administrators accused the men of plotting… something that was never explained. All we knew was that the guys, our friends, were put in segregation while being ‘investigated’. They returned a couple weeks later after nothing turned up, a few pounds lighter physically and also in terms of their property.
Putting a prisoner ‘under investigation’ is the prison’s way of segregating him without charging him, without writing him up for an infraction, without due process. It’s a way to punish in advance while searching for a legitimate reason to justify a formal write-up. It’s a discretionary tool administered in response to rumors or suspicion of a rule violation, vengeance, say, for pissing off a duty lieutenant.
Prisons are highly structured, highly controlled environments, governed by routine, every day much the same as the food – bland, monotonous, repetitive. You’d think being permanently imprisoned would mean where a person lays their head would be set in stone, right? Despite control mechanisms shaping nearly every facet of daily life, being incarcerated means shit can happen at any second. No one can be sure where they will sleep at night – their current cell, bandaged on a hospital bed, shivering in a psyche ward, handcuffed in a holding tank, waiting for a cell assignment in solitary. And anytime someone is forced to move off the unit, their personal property is searched and held to the strictest standard. Extra anything equals contraband.
Every time we get sent to the hole, we lose our personal property. Our jailers, tasked with packing our belongings for these moves, say much of our property is ‘contraband’ because it ‘exceeds space limitations’.
Right before I came here in ’06, someone wrote an anonymous note on one of the guys already here. The staff despised him, and he was accused of bullying the men on his pod. Though no one ever came forward with evidence or testimony to substantiate this claim, he was placed ‘under investigation’ and didn’t return for years.
Once you are in solitary confinement, if you violate even the most trivial policy – having an extra pair of socks, things that typically go ignored or at worst elicit a verbal warning – you earn additional write-ups. Fifteen days. Thirty days. Forty-five days. Days pile onto your stay. Receiving a series of write-ups in quick succession can get you recommended for long-term isolation, a minimum of six months but usually at least a year.
Another time, while awaiting my trial, officers raided the cell next to mine. Through an interconnected air vent, I heard the officers informing the irate and disbelieving occupant that they had to take all of his property, including the clothes he had on, because he was being put on suicide watch. I never found out whom he’d offended, but somebody – a prisoner or staff member – had filled out a sick-call in his name, posing as him and threatening to kill himself. He was forcefully stripped naked and dragged to an observation cell on the psych ward, where he spent the next two weeks.
Incarcerated people accumulate a ton of attachments, possessions, sentiments, activities, etc. We latch onto them, make them a part of us, become dependent on them. They make us heavy. For that reason, many guys in here walk around high-strung and hyper vigilant about their interaction with staff, “Man, I won’t even speak to that officer. He’s too spiteful. I don’t want him searching my cell – I’ve got too many books.” Or photos. Or art supplies. Or food. Any time I’m called to the office for an appointment or to pick up legal mail, my heart races. I question whether I’ve pissed off anyone, I wonder if I’ll return.
Before officers enter our area to search cells or arrest someone, they stop in the hall at the guard booth and start putting on blue latex gloves like nurses wear. We watch through the Plexiglas wall. Someone will holler, “MAN DOWN!” and during the fifteen seconds prior to the guards’ entrance, we ask ourselves, “Who are they coming to get? Did they glance up at my cell?”
Several toilets will flush, swallowing…. whatever. Most of us prop ourselves in doorways, or continue what we were doing in the dayroom, watching but not watching TV, playing but not playing chess, stiff but nonchalant, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves in case the guards are undecided about who they are coming for.
Some guys are sentimental hoarders, their cells thick with excesses of everything. Others keep nothing. Other than a cup, toothbrush, toothpaste, bar of soap, and neatly made bunk, their cells hardly look occupied. They give the guards nothing to hurt them with, no leverage. They’re nearly invisible and are impervious to prison life.
Incarceration has a transient quality, akin to homelessness, forcing us to continually determine which of our possessions are extra baggage. And, how do I avoid the unavoidable and unpredictable? I don’t. I simply prepare for it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He has been writing for some time, and is undeniably talented. Not only does Mr. Wilkerson sometimes share his writing with us, he was also a contributor to Crimson Letters, an eye-opening book released in 2020, sharing the voices of those living on North Carolina’s Death Row.
Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at: George T. Wilkerson #0900281 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
“The State has proved it beyond a reasonable doubt, and presented evidence that puts him there, puts him telling people what he did. And that is enough.”
That was the prosecution during the closing argument that sent Terry Robinson to death row for a crime he has always maintained he knew nothing about. There wasn’t any physical evidence in the case that could tie Robinson to the murder.
We don’t have to have DNA. We have to present enough evidence so you know in your heart that he was involved, and he did this. The State has done that.
“So, convict this man. Don’t let him out.”
The jury did just that.
Robinson was in the area of the murder that night. It was normal for him to be in the area. Robinson lived in Wilson, North Carolina, and he had a girlfriend who lived across the street from the Pizza Inn, where a murder occurred, not to mention friends and relatives in the surrounding area.
DNA exists in connection to the crime, but it does not point to Terry Robinson.
There are also two latent fingerprints and one palm print available, but they do not point to Terry Robinson. According to the testimony of Special Agent Navarro of the NC State Bureau of Investigation, “Terry Lamont Robinson did not make any of the latent fingerprints that were of value for identification purposes.”
When asked, “The long and the short of it is, palm prints or other kinds of prints, nothing matched?”
Agent Navarro responded, “That is correct.”
There were hairs collected. They weren’t hairs that matched Ronald Bullock, the one man who said he was involved in the crime. They weren’t Terry Robinson’s. According to Special Agent James Gregory, assigned to the Trace Evidence Section, when asked if he was able to find a match between what was collected at the crime scene and samples from Ronald Bullock and Terry Robinson, “I did not find any hairs that had a root attached to them that were consistent with the known head hair standards collected from the – from Terry Robinson, or Ronald Bullock.”
There was a gun associated with Terry Robinson, which Robinson doesn’t deny being connected to. But when asked specifically if the bullets used in the murder were from the gun associated with Robinson, Special Agent Marrs responded, “It could not have been fired from that .380 pistol, State’s Exhibit Number Two.”
Terry Robinson was not an angel. He had a criminal record and sold drugs for a living, but the gun associated with him was not the gun used in the crime.
The case rested with two men who accused Terry Robinson of murder. Both of those two individuals have since contradicted their own testimony. According to the testimony of Ronald Bullock, who accused Terry Robinson of hatching the plot to rob the Pizza Inn, pulling him into it, and eventually murdering a man in front of him, they stopped by Jesse Hill’s home before the crime. Bullock testified that Robinson asked Jesse Hill to participate in the crime as well.
“He said he didn’t want to be part of it. We were crazy.” Bullock then testified he and Robinson dropped Jesse Hill off at his mother’s home.
After Robinson’s conviction and sentence to death, Bullock had something different to say – things he didn’t share with the jury. “Jed (Jesse Hill) gave me his dreadlocks and a headband to wear as a disguise. Jed rode with us to the Pizza Inn and to ride behind the Pizza Inn at the apartment complex.”
Bullock went on to say that Jesse Hill, “was going to get some money for his part for the help.” Bullock, in a written statement then described the robbery which differed from how he described it in his original testimony, and he also stated Jed said, “I want my dreadlocks back.”
That written statement, made in 2003, was how Terry Robinson first learned the dreadlocks he had heard about at his trial – belonged to Jesse Hill. The dreadlocks used as the murderer’s disguise, were actually made of hair that belonged to one of his accusers. A jury never heard that. They actually heard Jesse Hill described by the prosecution as an innocent ‘hero’ who received nothing for his help with the case. That turned out not to be true as well.
Jesse Hill has had a few things to say since the trial also, much of which contradicts what the jury heard.
Following is more of the closing argument from the prosecutor when he described Jesse Hill – at length.
“Now, Jesse Hill. If you ever wondered why people don’t want to come forward and testify in cases when they witness things, or they know things in a crime? If you ever wondered why? Because this man gets up there and he is trying to tell you the truth. And all the defense can do is malign him, to go on and try to trip him up on times, which don’t matter, because he said it was light or dark or whatever, and then act like, ‘You’ve got worthless check convictions?’ as if that would somehow equate with what happened in Boulder, Colorado when the Ramsey girl disappeared. Or, maybe a Bosnian war criminal.”
“He knew about something that happened that was terrible, and he could not live with the fact that they had told him about it, he knew about it, and he knew it was wrong.”
“This man is a hero.”
“He testified against his cousin, and he’s getting nothing out of it. And, don’t you know that if he was getting something out of it, both of these men would have brought it up. But, no, they want you to become cynical. They want you to look at everything, even when a man is trying to do the right thing, they want you to look at it like, ‘Well, what’s he getting out of it?’”
“Did Bullock ever come forward and say, ‘Well, yeah, Hill was involved, too. He did so-and-so.’ Which they’re going to try and make you believe, which isn’t true.”
It turns out… the prosecution was mistaken. Ronald Bullock has since stated Jesse Hill was involved, from the planning, to supplying a disguise, to being promised a cut, only the jury never heard that part.
If Terry Robinson had known anything about the murder at the Pizza Inn on May 16, 1999, if he had gone to Jesse Hill’s home prior to the crime, taken Jesse Hill’s dreadlocks and worn them in the Pizza Inn while he murdered somebody – it stands to reason he would have nudged his attorney when the dreadlocks were submitted as evidence at his trial. It stands to reason he would have said, “Hey, that hair right there belonged to Jesse Hill.” It stands to reason, facing a death sentence, Robinson would have indicated the man being hailed as a ‘hero’ was involved in the crime and his hair was found at the crime scene. It also stands to reason – Terry Robinson didn’t say anything because he didn’t know where the dreadlocks came from at that point in time.
In 2003, eight days after Ronald Bullock told an investigator the dreadlocks belonged to Jesse Hill, Hill confirmed the dreads where his, saying he supplied the dreadlocks to Ronald Bullock for a disguise, and that they were his hair. He also told the investigator he had told the police and the prosecutors about supplying the dreadlocks, but he didn’t remember when he told them. In addition, Jesse Hill said he received $5,000 for his help in the case.
Over the years, Jesse Hill, has been interviewed on a couple occasions. According to the original case file in 1999, Hill initially called police and told them Ronald Bullock and Terry Robinson were responsible for what took place at the Pizza Inn, and after sharing that information with police, Hill then drove with them to show them where Bullock lived. More recently he remembers it differently, saying Bullock turned himself in, “I heard he called the police while I was at my sister’s house.” “I heard he called them, they came down there and they locked him up.”
In contrast to Bullock’s 2003 statement regarding Hill’s involvement, Jesse Hill is adamant he had nothing to do with what took place that night in spite of his own 2003 interview with an investigator in which he admitted supplying the disguise. “That man had a family. You don’t do stuff like that. Get a job. I had a job. They coulda had a job, they coulda worked. They didn’t have to do what they did. Come on, man.”
When asked about Bullock’s statement regarding a cut of the money from the planned robbery, “No! I don’t know nothin’ about no money. Come on, man.”
Although they don’t agree on a lot there is one thing the two agree on. Jesse Hill and Ronald Bullock both agree Terry Robinson shot and killed a man on May 16, 1999.
Several years ago, when asked if he would have testified in court about the dreads if he had been asked, Jesse Hill responded, “Sure, if he asked me, yeah.”
But – neither attorney did ask him. So, the jury never heard Jesse Hill, the ‘hero’, was involved in the crime.
Jesse Hill, in contrast to what he said years earlier when he admitted to supplying a disguise for the crime, later said, “They did it them self, they need to handle it.” “They robbed that place because they want to. I ain’t got nothing to do with that.”
He even seems to have a different perspective of who went to the police, “Montrel was with him. Montrel the one told people what happened. That’s why they had so much on him. Cause he was with him. Shit, it ain’t got nothin’ to do with me and nobody else.”
I have reached out to Ronald Bullock and Jesse Hill for a response, but have not heard back. I’ve also reached out to the public, and I am doing so again. If you saw Terry Robinson at any time during the day or night of May 16, 1999, please contact me at kimberleycarter@verizon.net. According to Robinson’s accusers, he was with them the entire day from midday through approximately midnight.
The above photograph was shared with me by Terry Robinson’s mother, who has quietly stood by her son’s side for over two decades. She told me Robinson was about fifteen years old in the photograph. He is second from the left with the white hat on, and had been working in the tobacco field that day. Although not asked, Jesse Hill also spoke of Terry Robinson’s mother several times.
“His mama know how that boy is. I don’t know why she’s trippin’.” “She know how her son was.”
Terry Robinson writes for WITS when he is not working on other various projects. You can read some of his work here. He has also co-authored Crimson Letters, available on Amazon. Details of his case can be found here. Mr. Robinson can be contacted at:
Terry Robinson #0349019 Central Prison 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
