My sister, three years older than me, was always my best friend and biggest fan. When I was twelve she moved out of state to live with her father for two years. When she returned, she found I had transformed into someone she didn’t know. I had fallen in with the bad boys and gone far astray. I was using drugs, running with a gang, and committing crimes regularly.
After my first arrest I spent several months in a juvenile detention center, thrown in an overcrowded dormitory with kids that made me and my buddies look like saints. It was a concentration of the worst kids in the county, delinquents much further along in their state of corruption than I. It was the worst time of my life.
I left the detention center with a new attitude and outlook on life. I decided the criminal life was not for me. The problem was, I was stuck. I was in debt to my gang. Not a monetary debt that could be paid with a certain amount of cash, but a circumstantial debt with no exact figure attached to it. Not only had they shared their knowledge and secrets with me, but I had accepted their terms of life-long service upon my initiation. I was in, and there was no easy way out.
I accepted the fact that I was stuck and sought to simply meet the bare minimum of my obligations, hopefully avoiding jail or death. Then our gang’s leadership decided we were to enter the illegal drug trade. My obligations mounted along with the list of expectations. My days became more demanding and dangerous.
Just as I was honest with my sister about my new lifestyle, I was also honest with her about my desire to get out of the gang after my stint in detention. I once again opened up to her about our leap into narcotics sales.
My sister was seventeen and not all that experienced in the ways of the world, even less when it came to matters of the underworld. Her advice was severely limited, but she did have some interesting things to share with me about myself; a subject that she was very knowledgeable about.
I came home one night and my sister sat me down for a talk. She’d heard that some members of my gang were involved in a shooting and a rival gang was expected to retaliate. I didn’t know anything about it, but I admitted it didn’t matter. I didn’t see any way to avoid being at risk. The only ways I knew of how to get out of the gang were to move away and never return, which was not a possibility for me, or to be kicked out for violation of a major gang rule. The latter would result in me being beaten badly and likely injured or even killed.
Tearfully, she recounted memories of me overcoming major challenges in the past. She reminded me of the trouble I had walking when I was a toddler and the braces I wore on my legs. Even at that age I was so stubborn I refused help from anyone because I wanted to master walking on my own. I used the family dog as a walker and did just that.
She reminded me of how close I came to repeating second grade because of my struggles with reading and writing. Nothing that anyone did to help worked. Eventually, I came up with my own solution, which was to divide words according to my unique way of sounding them out. I didn’t repeat the second grade, and I became one of the best readers and writers in my class.
She stressed that I was a natural problem solver and assured me I would figure out a reasonable and safe way out of the gang. I wasn’t so sure, but her words stuck with me.
The next day my sister gave me a bag of new clothes that she had bought with the last of her money. At that time, I wore only colors that were associated with my gang, which was not many. The clothes she bought were of an assortment of colors she purchased with faith that I would be wearing them soon. At that moment I realized what was meant by the term ‘act of faith’. Her look of love and confidence was seared into my brain. Her belief ignited my creativity like nothing I’d ever imagined.
That night I awoke from my sleep with an idea, an idea that would help me be shunned by the gang without becoming their enemy. I needed to be rejected without being harmed, and the only group of people I ever saw the gang distance themselves from without any aggression were mentally impaired individuals.
The following day I instructed my sister to tell anyone who called on me that I was bedridden and in bad shape. The story was that I had smoked some marijuana that was apparently laced with something far more dangerous and I’d seemingly lost my mind. I waited until the next day during a time when I knew most people would be out and about and emerged from the house in nothing but my underwear and stumbled in zig zags, my arms waving wildly. For days, when anyone spoke to me I drooled and simply stared off in a daze as if I didn’t understand or recognize anyone. It was about two weeks into this act when my so-called friends wanted nothing to do with me.
I kept a low profile around my neighborhood and made sure to dumb myself down when any one of the gang’s members were around. When summer ended and school resumed I was living my life with no worries for my safety. I wore a wide range of colors and stayed out of trouble. Even now, when I see a rainbow or a colorful arrangement it reminds me of my sister’s love and her faith in my ability.
ABOUT THE WRITER. I’m always excited about new writers, and Mr. Gillum is just that. This is such a charming story, and he captured exactly what he was trying to express. Dushaan Gillum was chosen by the judges for second place in the recent writing contest, and I couldn’t be happier with their choice. Mr. Gillum can be reached at:
Dushaan Gillum #01256533 Wynne Unit 810 FM 2821 Huntsville, TX 77349
The summer between second and third grade was a dark period in my young life. It was also the summer I met an angel.
I’ve always believed I was a miracle of birth, an unexplainable phenomenon – that is, if my mother wasn’t pulling my leg about everything. I soon began to realize my being born dead was merely a footnote in a life plagued by misery before it even began. Yet at the age of seven, I thought my life was normal, the same as everyone else’s. Then everything changed.
First came the car accident. My father grabbed my little brother and ran, never looking back, leaving me and my unconscious mother. I wondered if he gave us a second thought as I watched his back going down the street.
Not long after that I got into a mysterious fight with two brothers – who were my best friends. I later found out my father paid my friends to jump me.
Like an unstoppable tsunami, those events damaged my soul. The reality I thought I knew was forever shattered. I was stripped of my illusions. I could trust no one, not even my own parents.
Then I met an angel, a force of nature. My father drank and gambled a lot. He often took me to strangers’ homes where I would find myself sitting on unfamiliar porches for hours. Wary. Until other kids would try to make me leave. I had so many fights, I lost count. I sometimes found myself wondering if I was what the adults were really gambling on. That’s why I was expecting trouble when the door to the upstairs apartment opened. The Knox family lived there. That summer Neal Knox, who was older than me, became my nemesis.
I was surprised when the person who exited wasn’t Neal or his mother but a girl my age. Her hazel eyes drank in the environment, and she stared at me as if she knew my thoughts. “Do you want some candy?” Without waiting for my reply, she sat down and divided the bag.
Then she smiled, revealing a deep set of dimples, before saying absentmindedly, “Oh, my name is Tiffany.”
As we talked, I learned she and her mother were visiting. Neal was her cousin. We soon decided to go play with the other kids from the area. Being kids, someone eventually dared everybody to go into an abandoned house down the street. Everyone believed the place was haunted. I had to go. I wanted to prove I wasn’t afraid. So, what the house was a condemned, burned out husk. So what we’d all get into big trouble if we got caught. So what if everybody believed the house was haunted. I needed to do it!
We made it to the second floor. How, I don’t know, because all of us were afraid. We were bunched together like sheep surrounded by hungry wolves. Then someone screamed they’d seen a ghost. Neal and many others ran. I ran too, only my feet carried me further into the empty, soot-covered room in search of the ghost. I noticed immediately I wasn’t alone. Without doubt or hesitation Tiffany had come with me. From that moment onward, we were inseparable.
We did everything together. We played tag. We raced. We tumbled. We even climbed trees till our hands hurt. The field house at the park and our neighborhood community center offered lots of programs and we joined. Swimming. Gymnastics. Basketball. Little league baseball. After I turned eight, we began martial arts classes. Tiffany continuously supported and practiced with me. Her belief in me enabled me to believe in myself.
When the new school year began, Tiffany was in my class. The school we went to was only a block and a half from where I lived, but I’d walk three blocks in the wrong direction just to walk with Tiffany.
One day during our lunch break, Tiffany and I were racing the half block to the neighborhood store. We ran to the crossing guard to get to the store before it got crowded. I got there first. That had begun to happen a lot.
I was standing and looking to see how long we’d have to wait when a blur suddenly passed me. I watched as car hit whoever had been standing there. I saw their body as it went under the car. I was in shock being so close to something like that. I couldn’t move, and I watched the small mangled body as it got twisted around the tire’s axle. People appeared from everywhere trying to save whoever was hit. The drunk driver tried to drive away but the crowd pulled her out through the car’s window.
A small unmoving body was pulled from under the car. In my catatonic state I could barely breathe, much less think clearly. As I watched, they pulled Tiffany’s body out. But how? She was supposed to be standing next to me…
I’ve mourned Tiffany my entire life. In the eight months and thirteen days I knew her, she showed me with her every action how much she believed in me every day. She believed in me before I believed in myself. I carry her memory with me always. Whenever I find myself at my lowest, Tiffany reminds me to believe in myself. I know she would.
ABOUT THE WRITER. The author writes under the pen name Resolute. This is the first time we have had the opportunity to share his writing, and he is also the third place winner in our most recent writing contest. As time goes by, the level of talent that we share here just gets higher and higher. I’m anxious to see more from this writer in the future.
It’s the look in his eyes as he spits some slick disrespect in my face, not bothering to stop at my cell, casually flaunting his freedom. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to me. It was such seemingly casual violence on my part that saw me into a cage after all.
But the sting of helplessness, of a raw, exposed nerve, the vulnerability, leaves a metallic, blood-like taste in my mouth, slashes at my soul… It’s a feeling I quickly cover with splashes of rage, the most potent form of emotion I can find. Funny that it lives next door to passion and across from love in me.
It’s a child’s reaction to the inability to deal with a moral responsibility seeking to overwhelm me, to rise in me until it covers my nose and I can’t breath for the insanity in my mind… a refuge denied to a man with a gun in his face.
The greater the fear, the thicker the lid of the angry outburst needs to be to hold it down, the fear of being at another’s mercy, subject to their whims, their madness.
This is what people felt when a kid stuck a gun in their faces and took their money, their freedom, boldly stomping through their lives as if they didn’t matter. Was my stride the same as George Zimmerman’s, the officers’, the guards’? Did I have the same ‘fuck you’ strut and that same look in my eyes?
“It ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.”
I fall back on my bunk, into the prison of my life, swallowing the taste in my mouth. Life is about the connections you make, if and when you are able to put the pieces together. An I.Q. test measures how quickly a person can pick up a concept, make a connection, spot a pattern. Is there a test to show whether someone cares enough to make the attempt? That info seems more valuable to me somehow.
This isn’t who or where I wanted to be, living within circles within circles of violence, violence with no goal of shaping me into the dreams of my grandmother, my father.
Change. That’s what’s left after trans-for-mation. No matter what I change, or who or what I forge myself into, the things that truly confine my life will not budge. They’re built to outlast me. Despair? No, reality.
Hear me. Most people live in a world of ‘potential’. Some one(s) planned on me being in this cage more than eighty years before I was born. How do I change that? How did they know that I would shoot that white man? That my seventeen year old black face wouldn’t be remembered by him in either rage or fear?
In the face of such forgiveness, how could I fail to forgive the guard? His ignorance hadn’t left me with a bullet in my spine, unable to walk or live without pain. I couldn’t say the same for my own.
Moral culpability is the substance that adulthood is made of, the mortar that binds the actions of our lives together like so many river stones. But the energy of such a powerful emotion – rage – doesn’t simply evaporate under the heat of responsibility. It was only then, after I pulled that trigger, that I recognized the extreme danger – Quicksand!
This is where brown boys who are guilty get reduced to numbers in boxes, like lotto balls, to consume what is left of themselves. It happens in secret – a private meal washed down with a grandmother’s tears, as the child she loves crumbles under the weight of a basketball score in years.
That’s all that was left after I sacrificed my childhood’s hopes with the blast that shattered multiple lives, only to rise like smoke on the winds of reason. I couldn’t to this day tell you why I pulled the trigger. Reason will ever be the enemy of children.
It’s what was left after the white D.A. and my white attorney saw a seventeen-year-old brown boy agree to plead guilty and to ninety years in prison.
It’s what was left after the white judge refused to find anything redeemable in my childish eyes. I was guilty, nothing more.
What is left is twisted into this callous on my soul. Armor. A thickening of the skin, instinctively grown to protect the child in me from what I’d done – what was being done to me. An act that none of the only white faces, save my three people, in the courtroom seemed to look interested in, watching the judge hand down a ninety year sentence for a non-homicide offense to the brown kid that I was.
Should race have excused or defended me? Never. But when the lines of brown boys waiting to be sent to prison by predominantly angry white judges stretches into the horizon… and has done for decades…
If you are looking for the stereotypical black rage found in the ink of most prison pens that allows one to dismiss the words as broken, to look away from the destruction by fire of brown skinned boys measured not by the love and mercy due a child at their worst but in metric tons – this is not that.
To not look away is to see, to see is to know, and to know as an adult makes us morally culpable to act. Adults should expect the morals of their justice system to reflect their own values. It’s the only way the American system works.
There are white people standing with the black lives movement, armed with their own rage at what they have seen and know to be deadly and murderously wrong with what is being reflected back from our justice system. “What are they doing out there?” is what some ask. What should be asked now that they’ve seen and know is, “What am I doing in here?”
It’s what I ask myself every day.
ABOUT THE WRITER. Mr. Jones is one of the newest writers in this family. His writing is brutally honest, and although being vulnerable might not be comfortable, he goes there every time with his writing – setting him apart. I don’t think he could write anything I wouldn’t like.
Mr. Jones has served 32 years for a crime he committed when he was seventeen years old. He can be contacted at:
DeLaine Jones #7623482 82911 Beach Access Road Umatilla, OR 97882
My Ma may be many things but listening to her testimony, you’d know she always wanted to be a mother – and I wouldn’t want any other. She’s an affable woman, kinda quirky, though stern, sorta introverted, yet capable of being extroverted. She was the perfect match for me. But early on there was a problem. According to her, doctors told her she would not be a fruitful woman. You’d have to know her struggles growing up to understand how the nineteen-year-old-her felt hearing such news. But she clung to her faith, praying to her God to be able to have children.
Some time later she became pregnant with me.
To let my mom tell it, the voice of God spoke to her and told her she would ‘produce fruit and multiply’, akin to some women in the Bible, Manoa, Hannah, Elizabeth, to name a few. Some folk thought my mom read the bible too much. Some would tell her to eat kale with her stacked plate of gravy filled pork chops. My mom’s mother also told her I would grow up to be a preacher preaching from the pulpit. HA! I’m sure she’s turning over in her grave if it is possible and if she can see me now.
In all, my mother gave birth to six beautiful children with good character. Not bad for a single mom. When her time comes to enter those pearly gates, they will accept her with open arms.
Recently, my mom wrote to tell me that upon receiving one of my letters, she almost questioned her faith, that it took her a few days to reason with her better self and allow the Lord to help her move on.
When I was arrested for capital murder in 1998, every day felt like intertwined moments travelled in slow motion. Days passed in a nebulous state. Mentally, I was part optimistic, believing, ‘Okay, I know I did not kill any girl. I will tell this to the jury, and I’ll be back to the hole-n-the-wall in no time’.
I was part delusional when I spoke to my baby mommas, ‘Yo, don’t worry. I’ll be home in a few months. Nothing has changed.’
Reality though? Reality can be a cruel and cold awakening. That was my reality after the verdict came back. The all non-black jury got it wrong. It was harsh. Wrong. So fucking wrong.
The pain I felt for the next 2,160 hours was a feeling I beg to never endure again – and there was nothing I could do about it.
While I awaited trial, I was held in Harris County’s jail, the 701 annex. They had regular church services there, and I was invited to attend. The room held about fifteen young men – all black, many serving county jail time, a few waiting for the ‘prison chain bus’ to begin their lengthy penitentiary time. And a couple of our fates were still up-in-the-air. I thought that if I showed God I was willing to sit in a banal smelling church’s chapel in a genuflection pose, mumbling a few amens, God… this mighty Being, would help a brotha out. I have to be honest to give my testimony, right?
One inmate was asked to sing a song. His last name was Cook. He was about to go home. He spoke about wanting to become an R&B artist. Other brothers laid hands on him, as if to pray for his success. I recall a lot about that moment, and I’ve forgotten a lot about that moment. I’ll never forget his voice though, the lyrics he would sing, nor the emotional tsunami he stirred inside of me that night.
“I AM a Living Testimony. Should have been dead and gone, but the Lord helped me to move on…”
His voice was celestial, and a montage of images from my life – good times and bad, accomplishments and many failures – cluttered my mind. You see, I should have been dead and gone, and for whatever reason, the Lord helped me to move on.
Still today, I live, not because I’m good looking or wear two pair of socks on my left foot and only one pair on my right. I survived not because I am a con man, nor because I have dodged the wrath of the racist judicial system. No. I live ‘cause the Lord God wants me to live on.
Before I was sentenced to death, folks said I wouldn’t live to see 21. After I was sentenced to death they said I wouldn’t live to see 35. As of April, 2021, I’m 46 years old and counting. I’m not bragging about ‘me’ –existing in solitary confinement for over two decades is a daily struggle, mentally and physically. But what I do want to brag about is my ‘message’. What I’ve learned. Whatever you are going through – addiction, your cross to bare – you are greater in will than any drug that was designed to crush your will. Illness can wreck your body, but it can’t wreck your spirit. If you are homeless or incarcerated for a crime you didn’t do – you are alive.
Do better. Be better. Love more. Each of us is a ‘living testimony’. For some reason, the Lord has let us live on…
‘Anyone who is living still has HOPE. Even a live dog is better off than a dead lion.’ – Ecclesiastes 9:4
There is also a facebook page dedicated to Charles Mamou’s troubling case.
TO CONTACT CHARLES MAMOU: Charles Mamou #999333 Polunsky Unit 12-CD-53 3872 South FM 350 Livingston, TX 77351
You can also reach him through jpay.com.
SIGN HIS PETITION – LEARN ABOUT HIS CASE. Charles Mamou is a long time WITS writer. He is part of our writing family and his case has been studied and shared here for a couple years. Please sign a petition requesting that his case be investigated – for the first time. What we have found has made it clear to us that it never was.
His features typically dour, Peter seemed transfigured today when he returned from wherever. He was giddy, like a person after
sex, “I just came from visiting the orthopedist at an outside hospital. She said my herniated discs are squeeze-
ing against my sciatic nerve. It’s excruciating, and I need surgery. But guess what?” I shrugged. “On the way back, they opened
the window a little. I pressed my face into the gap the whole time.” I noticed red parallel welts tracked up his chin,
lips, and cheeks – two inches apart. Even a transport car’s air is restrictive. As an extension of prison, it’s a portable cell with
an incarcerated atmosphere: A death row prisoner cramped in back, bound in full-restraints – handcuffs, ankle-shackles; waist
chains connecting them – behind a stab-proof stainless steel cage protecting armed guards up front. Evidently, the line dividing freedom
from imprisonment is thinner than a thought. Even now his face is pressed against that two-inch gap, mushrooming out,
tongue flapping happily in wind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. George Wilkerson lives on Death Row. He is a talented writer with a unique style, and a solid commitment to his craft. 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. We always enjoy hearing from him.
Mr. Wilkerson can be contacted at: George T. Wilkerson #0900281 4285 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-4285
Oh, how I wish fate would grant justice to the broken soul, For then you’d be called to account for the mess you’ve made of me.
To lay bare the scars and wounds inflicted by your folly, The fruits of your finest hour for all the world to see.
Hold you in chains till you answer for every lie, Rob you of everyone and everything.
Let you share in the measure of my humiliation, Till the whole world learns to hate your name!
So that I can finally free myself from this pathetic life, And find a peace I’ve yet to know.
But instead, I followed you all the way to rock bottom, Where only the lost and condemned should go.
A place where you promised me warmth and love, Where you swore we’d find comfort in each other.
Only all I found was a new kind of hell, And embraced misery and despair as my lover.
There in those depths – longing for darkness and silence, Where I sought to hide from my pain.
I begged for my final breath to be swift, I begged to be blessed with enough tears to wash away my shame.
Yet, as your spell over me is broken, And I finally see the dwindling sunset of my time,
I wish the world had seen a better version of me, Something more than words to leave behind.
Instead, there are broken homes, ruined lives left To grieve and mourn over another senseless grave.
Because of you – so many are remembered for their worst, Instead of how much of themselves they gave.
No logic or reasoning, no comfort found In the poems etched into headstones.
Only a lonely mother’s tears flooding the ground That holds savage bones.
ABOUT THE WRITER. This is the first submission by James Bonds. If anyone is familiar with addiction, this poem hits home. The timing is right on target, and I am very grateful that Mr. Bonds chose to share this with us. I hope this is the first of many. He can be contacted at: James Bonds #19111-033 1-unit Federal Correctional Complex USP-1 P.O. Box 1033 Coleman, FL 33521
The first time I put my lips to a crack pipe… Whoever would’ve thought I’d indulge in that life? Mover Man Chris showed me how to smoke it, Inhale. Inhale. Now, hold it! I held it… until I had to release it. Cloud 9, no longer a cliché, For I had reached it. I learned the tricks Of the trade, Never cared how the crack came! If you use a glass pipe, Be sure to know how to work the flame! Glass was the best, Better than the rest. White smoke, thick, Tryna get it all, Get it all, My life depended on that toke. But, damn it! I always used too much flame! Had to resort to the tire gauge, Fell in love with the sound it made When the fire hit the rock, That snap, crackle, pop! Rock after rock after rock, On and on and on, Till the crack was all gone! Whole cigarettes burned out, Forgot they were on. Then comes the push, Heat it, push it, cool it, hit it. Repeat. Then comes the voice Dog, you ain’t stopped yet? Naw… not yet. The next stage is no fun! Down to the floor, Looking for crumbs. On hands and knees, Straight trippin’! No dope to be found, Only paint chippins. And when you finish, There’s a feeling of resolve, Knowing and accepting That the dopes all gone. I light another cigarette, Look out the window, And know that this come down Will be Hell! I learned all of this At the age of Twelve!
ABOUT THE WRITER. Jarod Wesenberg is new to WITS, but as with all the writers here, he is now part of our family. This is exactly what we are looking for. Not every story here is pretty, and to honestly share experiences of all kinds through writing is what we are. Jarod can be contacted at:
Jarod L. Wesenberg, Sr. #1830643 Michael Unit 2664 FM 2054 Tennessee Colony, TX 75886
Charles Mamou is a WITS writer. He has always maintained his innocence. He has been on death row for over twenty years. There is evidence and information the Harris County prosecution had that Charles Mamou didn’t know existed for over two decades. That information could have been used to determine what happened to the victim if anyone had pursued it.
Nothing physically ties Charles Mamou to the scene of the crime, other than the testimony of witnesses that were involved in a drug deal with him that night. There is not a fingerprint of his there. There is not a footprint of his there. No witnesses saw him there. There was a shell casing – that cannot be tied definitively to any weapon, but no weapon was ever found. Mamou was from out of town, the men who testified were not. The body was found in a location even the police described as difficult to locate. One of the witnesses worked for Orkin – on the side of town where the body was found behind a house for sale.
The individuals who testified against Charles Mamou were apparently never charged for their involvement in any of the events that took place that night – and phone records the prosecution had access to indicate two of those witnesses were not telling the truth on the stand.
A letter never presented to the jury and written by the ‘star’ witness who said Charles Mamou confessed to him says, “I’m glad you didn’t tell me shit about that cause I don’t wanna know shit, I feel better off that way.”
Charles Mamou has waited long enough for someone to help him. He’s not asking for any breaks – he’s asking for an investigation into his case, one that includes all the evidence the Houston Police Department had twenty years ago, which includes trace evidence obtained in a rape kit that was never shared with Mamou.
Please sign the above letter asking the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to reinvestigate this case.
UPDATE: This post was temporarily removed, after I was contacted and told I couldn’t share this information. After a thorough review, I disagree. The information came from trial transcripts that Charles Mamou gave me access to. In addition to that, the other records are public and the letter was written to Charles Mamou and belongs to him. Walk In Those Shoes is about writers in prison and trying to understand their experience with the justice system. If I can’t share public information without being warned and told not to – is it a wonder people end up on death row that are innocent?
I can’t swim. I can’t even float. It’s not very dignified for a former athlete, but I paddle like a dog, and I’m ashamed to admit my little sister taught herself to swim before I ever knew what dog paddling was.
Some would say that learning to swim is about overcoming large fears. Others would say it’s about overcoming the fear of death and gaining confidence in self. To not learn to swim efficiently speaks of some form of cowardice, a lack of heart – something that can’t be taught. The ability is held in such high esteem that fathers throw their frightened children into the deep, forcing them to literally ‘sink or swim’.
I was eight years old when I left the three foot end of the pool to get in line to dive off the high dive and into the twelve foot end. I knew I couldn’t swim, and I was likely to die. I simply did not care to let this chance pass me by. Some would claim I’d been thrown into the deep end long before that moment.
My heart threatened to break a rib with its hammering, but I’d been my little sister’s protector and her go-to, and whenever she called my name I’d never failed to answer the bell. I could not allow her to continue to see me fail, to see me in fear. So, I got in line. I braved the line not only to confront my fear of death, but my fear of seeing disappointment in my lil sister’s eyes. Truth be told, there were few things in life I feared more. Her love and adoration were, in my mind, forever bound to my ability to protect her, to lead the way, to provide something that neither of us had. Self-worth maybe? Identity?
It all began before that day at the pool. We lived in Compton, California, on Primrose Street. I was still young, it was before I’d started school, before crack and the justice system ravaged my family, but after my mom was murdered. My “G”-mom was simply trying to do right by her daughter’s children, keeping us together, safe and fed while trying to keep herself together mentally and emotionally. She was trying to find a way to hold on to her God’s hand while her own heart and hands were overflowing with pain.
My granny must have been watching from the shadow of the screen door when my sister and I were fighting in the backyard over a toy. To win, I pushed her down, and she began to cry. In a flash, the door banged open and my grandmother had me in her clutches. She lit into me in a real way, and through my tears, she took my cheeks in her hand and pointed to the little girl on the ground.
“That is your sister, not some stranger on the street, but yoursister! You are the only big brother she has! Don’t you ever hurt her, and you better not let anyone else ever hurt her!! Do you hear me?!”
Where I come from there’s a phrase for learning to face the very real dangers of life outside the protection of your home. We refer to facing death and learning to survive in the deep end as ‘stepping off the porch’. This was my splash! moment.
I was in middle school when I stabbed a middle-schooler for pushing my lil sister down and taking her money as she waited in the candy store line for me. I’d come home with my sister in hand and a black eye that was talking to me. I’d confronted the kid and he’d took a swing – my first fight ever. He parked me on my butt like he was taking a driver’s test. My black eye elicited a warning from my granny. She better not hear from that school about me fighting, she’d sent me to school to learn, not to fight. No one cared to ask why I had a black eye. Why should they? This was my little sister, not theirs, so it was up to me to deal with it, right?
When my uncles and grandmother found out what happened from my sister and my attempt to wash my bloody school clothes with some Tide, a hairbrush and the water hose, they all called me crazy. Angry. ‘Touched’. All but my grandmother. She never condemned me over what I’d done, nor did she admonish me over the situation. She merely looked at me with a new tilt of curiosity to her head, like she was seeing me for the first time.
I bounced twice from the high dive and did a triple tuck back flip (my grade school had a gymnastics team). I hit the water head first with my arms extended to break the surface, body like an arrow. Best dive of the day! Then I sank right to the bottom, twelve feet of water!
Panic? Never that. I could see the ladder on the other side of the pool. I’d just ‘walk’ over to it and climb out. I pushed off to get a few sips of air into taxed lungs, only to start panting like a dog. A few sips wouldn’t do! Sputtering and choking and thrashing, I sank again. The older kid who came to save me came from behind. I fought, thinking it was an attack. I sank yet again! I passed out in the pool. My lil sis watched me die trying to lead the way – to continue to be her hero. They dragged my lifeless body from the pool and revived me.
Welcome to my deep end.
I once had to face down a kid who had his heart set on chopping me with a machete over my sister. Once brained a grown man with a brick who tried to rape her. I’m otherwise a non-confrontational person, but when it comes to my mother’s only daughter? I would hurt you. Bad.
What I didn’t know was that there were threats in our own home. Family members came to live with us, having fallen on tough times financially. I was only a kid, mom was dead – murdered – and neither of our fathers were worth the ink it would cost to write their names. I never knew the love and trust garnered from helping with homework could lead to the ripping of a soul or that the resulting screams are seldom heard because those who cause them are likely the same who stand at the gates in defense.
When she became pregnant at fifteen due to this molestation, I was in chains already, after being on the row for months. My lil sis was alone. She came to see me – alone. Her belly large, her eyes pregnant with fear and secret pain. We held each other and wept, just as we had in the backyard in Compton, California, on Primrose Street. We both drowned that day. Who knows, maybe if I had learned to swim, things could have been different. Maybe some cries can only be heard under water, when you are out of breath – in the deep end.
ABOUT THE WRITER. Mr. Jones has a style all his own. His writing is honest and thought provoking and exciting to work with. I look forward to hearing more of his insight as well as more of his life’s experiences.
Mr. Jones has served 32 years for a crime he committed when he was seventeen years old. He can be contacted at:
DeLaine Jones #7623482 777 Stanton Blvd. Ontario, OR 97914
Jesus was executed, as well as countless others throughout history. Although Christians believe that was a necessary evil, looking at what was done to a man that had a reputation for kindness and advocating for the downtrodden, one is struck by the injustice and immorality of it. Jesus wasn’t a murderer or a rapist or a thief. Can anything justify the torture and execution of a man that committed no crime, other than irritating those in power?
Even if looked at from the retributive theory, Jesus’ execution was not justified. He did not commit murder, and Pilate most likely did not believe Jesus deserved the sentence he was given, but felt pressure at the time. Thus, Jesus was executed. The most famous of all retributive punishments is an illustration of all that can go wrong with the perspective that execution is acceptable. Although Christians know that Jesus had a path to walk, looking at this case apart from the religious aspects, it couldn’t have been more poorly justified.
Jesus’ crime, according to authorities, was treason, calling himself king. For that he was beaten, tortured, and left to die on a cross. The punishment did not fit the crime. Those same words can be said about what sometimes happens in the halls of justice every day on every reach of the planet – outside forces, such as pressure in this particular case, influence the sentence. It could be a court appointed attorney with no time to adequately prepare up against a highly motivated prosecutor, well practiced at manipulating a jury. It could be a police force that has a tendency to toy with evidence. It could be the color of the defendant’s skin in a courtroom full of people that don’t resemble him or her. But, as we saw in the case of Jesus, people are not perfect and sentences don’t always match crimes. This happens more than anyone would like to believe, and it is certain to continue happening.
As of this writing there is a man on death row in Texas, and he has been there for over two decades. In his case, the prosecution had evidence they did not share with the defense that could have been pursued, and if it had been shared, could have very well impacted the outcome of the case. This information is now known, documented and available to anyone who wants to see it, but Charles Mamou has had four attorneys over the last two decades who never located the information. It wasn’t until an unpaid advocate came along and started researching the case that everything that had been there all along came to light. It wasn’t a trivial tidbit, there was actually a rape kit discovered twenty years later that has physical evidence in it. There were phone records of key witnesses who testified they were asleep. The information was never shared with the defendant. Mamou’s case is not an anomaly. If you work with the incarcerated for any length of time, you will come to learn cases like his happen more than anyone would like to admit.
The argument that the number of lives saved from the use of capital punishment as a deterrent, is hard pressed if the true number of unfair prosecutions were tallied. There is no way to even calculate them all accurately, as most cases are left unpursued in spite of questions left behind. It is naivety that believes wrongful or over incarcerations are few in numbers and therefore a viable trade off. From the beginning of time, and the execution of a man whose reputation has remained that of a ‘good man’ over hundreds of years, until today when you can walk in any well-populated death row facility and find people that have not had a hand in murder, we have gotten it wrong. The numbers are greater than anyone would like to publicly acknowledge.
For the sake of argument, and although unarguable evidence has shown us differently from the beginning of time, we will pretend justice is always perfect. We will overlook the imperfections and intentional mistakes along the way, such as the execution of Jesus, a good man. Let’s say then, punishment should reflect the crime, an eye for an eye. Yet, we have been getting it wrong one way or another from the beginning of time on that as well. If it were truly to be an eye for an eye and a reflection of the crime, we would rob from robbers, we would rape rapists and we would murder murderers. In the world of right and wrong and if we are going to make rules of order, you can’t compare apples to oranges. A perfect system of an eye for an eye that punishes according to crime, can’t have exceptions to the rule. What makes murder any different than rape?
In our country, we execute people who have not actually had a hand in a murder, sometimes letting the actual ‘murderer’ receive a lesser sentence. It is called the Law Of Parties, and people who have not had a hand in murder have been and will continue to be executed under it. So, in the ‘eye for an eye’ thinking, we make exceptions for all cases except murder where we stand firm on taking a life for a life, while letting the rapists go unraped, and not only do we make exceptions, we make exceptions within the exceptions. If a murderer has the right attorney and chooses to testify against other parties, involved or not, he betters his chances of not having to pay the price of murder with his life, making himself an exception, and in doing so, assists in the execution of an individual who played no part in the murder, creating another exception. The overall theory of justifying capital punishment under the ‘eye for an eye’ platform that justifies the act as the appropriate punishment has no foundation, as it is not even close to being uniformly performed and enforced.
To the argument that there is no equal punishment to the taking of a life other than the taking of a life, there is the nasty side of the argument that most like to sweep under the rug. Let’s suppose that we never make mistakes, and the system is always fair, and we always execute the actual ‘murderer’, and not the driver of the murderer or the friend who was with the murderer on that particular evening and had no idea a murder was going to take place. In a perfect system, murder would be the appropriate choice, but should we require a murderer to murder themselves? How do we accomplish taking a life without getting our own hands dirty?
When we get to the point when we are going to actually take a life, what justification can we use for our action of taking a life, and how are those who have a hand in the act absolved? Does that call for more exceptions to the rules? Is it acceptable to murder a person who we have ‘decided’ is guilty of murder, not necessarily guilty? At this point, we have to embrace all the exceptions to all the rules that we have already established as acceptable, and accept those who are innocent, those wrongly accused, those who were involved but did not murder and those who actually did commit murder and lump them all together. They are all equally ‘guilty of murder’, and we can only accomplish this if we have decided we are justified in killing an innocent person in the name of maintaining the death penalty. So, we find ourselves having to pay people to then become murderers of the innocent as well as the guilty because of all the exceptions to the rules that have to be in place to maintain a death penalty.
It doesn’t end there. According to our own policies and systems, involved parties are sometimes executed along with the actual murder or murderers. One would have to label those who purposefully lead a person to the execution chamber, the one who voices the command to start the process, the actual medical personnel involved in the process as all parties to the taking of life of the guilty and innocent, we have determined that exception has to be made. By our own standards, what about those who have fattened up the victim for the kill for over two decades, are they not a party to the murder? Can it end there? What of the prosecutor and his co-counsel? What of the Judge and jury? What of the defense counsel who did not bother to look for the evidence? So, the actual taking of a life of someone like Charles Mamou, will have participation of countless people along the way, including some who simply turned a blind eye. Should we include those who were informed before his execution but chose to proceed with the knowledge that his trial was unfair and did not provide all the information to the jury?
How many people have a hand in the murder of the innocent, in a society that endorses capital punishment? How many people turned a blind eye to what was happening to Jesus when he was executed? Which brings us back to the religious justification, people often building their argument on words from the Bible, using their interpretation of segments to further their cause. What can be certain about the teachings of Jesus was his call for love, mercy, and compassion. Portions of the bible can be picked out to justify murder, but there is no strong case for it, not nearly as strong as Jesus’ teaching of loving your neighbor and turning the other cheek. Who are you to condemn? Although the execution might be punishment of the murderer, who is to say that vengeance is not God’s? I’d much prefer to err on the side of caution, and not hold someone down in an execution chamber and pump poison into their veins, assuming that vengeance is mine. Using religion as an argument to justify murder is at best a stretch, at worst a mockery.
So, what of the argument that there is only one punishment called for when a person walks into a movie theater and starts shooting, murdering fifty innocent people before being taken into custody before witnesses. Death, surely, is the only choice. That is the strongest argument I have heard, and I appreciate the sentiment and desire, yet, it is not that simple. It comes full circle, back to the beginning. We have a system that has been proven unjust repeatedly since the execution of Jesus. Influence brought about his execution, not any action on his part. The ramifications of leaving the door open in the name of our hypothetical deranged murderer who murdered fifty in cold blood in front of witnesses needs to be considered. The system doesn’t just end with his execution. Let’s say we all want that one man dead. At what cost? We have an unfair system, influenced by power, money, race, and, believe it or not, sometimes bad intentions. The system is run by humans, both good and bad. The price to pay for leaving the door open to execute our theater murderer, is, in part, the lives of the innocent lost, the humanity of the officers who have spent a decade with the individual they have worked around and know is innocent and a good man, and the future resentment of the children of the innocent man who in turn possibly become murderers because of an unjust system. By leaving the door open for our theater murderer, we are leaving the door open to the mistakes that have been and will continue to be made, along with the unjust on-purposes, and the chain reaction of it all.
The death penalty is not cost-effective. It cannot be justified by religion. It makes murderers out of innocent people. It has and will continue to be used to kill people who have not committed murder. It does not make us safer by taking mass murderers off the streets, when that person is already removed from the streets. It does not deter the mentally ill or suicide bombers or people determined to inflict pain. The death penalty leaves the door open to all that can and does go wrong and has no moral justification. There is a heavy moral price to pay for maintaining a method of disposing of our movie theater madman.
“But, what does my innocence matter? Where did it get me but a bus ride to prison while shackled both by ankles and spirit to a dread that becomes so unbearable – death is a welcome resolve. How relevant is innocence to time long gone and opportunities forever missed, when your dignity is in a shambles, you’ve been stripped of your identity and you have nothing left to call your own but an Opus number. With no pride left for which to hide behind, to admit wrongdoing would not be so difficult – the hardest thing to do is continue proclaiming my innocence.” – Terry Robinson, Death Row, NC
