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/
