The door to the confidential attorney interview room opened and in walked Sheriff Beth Lundy, a pet.i.te brunette with some miles on her who, in another setting, might have been attractive. She introduced herself to George and Linda and a.s.sured them that she"d do whatever she could to accommodate our legal needs.
After she left, George pushed a stack of paper toward me. "These people might try to plant a snitch on you, so be careful of what you say to anyone. Here are some agreement forms for every inmate around you to sign, saying they"re not going to discuss your case with you. That should flush out a snitch."
"Do you want us to go pick up your things at Angola?" George asked. I told him no, that if I lost at trial, I"d need them when I went back. George lurched forward in the molded plastic chair. "You"re never going back to that place again," he said pa.s.sionately.
"You don"t know what you"re dealing with out here, George," I said. "This isn"t just corrupt Louisiana; this is the place that throws its biggest festival every year in honor of the pirate Jean Lafitte, who smuggled contraband slaves into the territory after selling human beings was outlawed. Pay attention to your surroundings, man. You"ve gone backward in time to the 1950s."
"Well, trust me," George said, exuding confidence, "I"ve settled much more difficult cases than this one."
Linda and I exchanged a look that said, He doesn"t have a clue He doesn"t have a clue.
They left, Linda for Baton Rouge and George for New York. I was returned to my cell, where I paced the floor. I only have to get through two days of this I only have to get through two days of this. Five steps, turn; five steps, turn, endlessly. The last time I was in solitary it was right here, in Calcasieu.
On Sunday I got a "recreation" reprieve from my cell from a white deputy who wore his prejudice on his face. While I walked briskly, he sat and smoked, watching me. After thirty minutes of the staggering July heat, he was ready to go in. I showered and returned to my cell, pacing and thinking. Someone told me I"d move in the morning.
The next morning, a young black female officer escorting four trusties pushing a food cart squealed, "Mr. Rideau! Oh, I"ve got to get your autograph before they transfer you." She slid a slip of paper at me. "I"ve been hearing and reading about you all my life. I admire anybody [who"d] fight that long without giving up."
That evening, I learned from a black deputy that I would appear before a judge in the morning who would appoint a lawyer to represent me if I didn"t already have one. I called George at home, who said to tell the judge I was indigent but had counsel.
As night fell, I was still in solitary, pacing endlessly back and forth. I wondered why I hadn"t been moved. Are they playing a mind game with me? Are they playing a mind game with me? Linda"s words from yesterday"s visit penetrated the panic rising in me: Linda"s words from yesterday"s visit penetrated the panic rising in me: Don"t ever forget who you are. Be true to the best in yourself and they can never break you Don"t ever forget who you are. Be true to the best in yourself and they can never break you. Fifteen minutes later my stress was under control.
At 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday I was taken to "seventy-two-hour court," a large, plain-looking room across from the attorney interview rooms. It"s meant to resemble a courtroom, but nothing about it suggested the majesty of the law. Some forty pretrial detainees in orange jumpsuits and orange plastic flip-flops sat in molded plastic chairs facing the lieutenant I had met earlier, who was standing at the front explaining that they were not to talk, smoke, or sleep. About a dozen of the detainees were white. I noticed five females in the crowd; they all looked drained of spirit and tired of living. Lawyers sat off to the left, a couple of court secretaries to the right. A video camera and TV were perched behind the bench, where the judge would ordinarily be. This is the trendy video court system adopted across America. The only beneficiary is the judge, who doesn"t have to leave the comfort of his office to come to this special courtroom, which was designed to spare citizens the expense and danger of transporting detainees to the courthouse downtown. The face of Chief Judge Al Gray appeared on the TV screen. As he read off the names of the detainees, they stood and answered the judge"s questions about their ability to hire an attorney. One after another, they declared themselves indigent, to no one"s surprise. If these people had money to pay a lawyer, they"d also have money to post bail, which is available to anyone not charged with a capital offense. So, as a rule, only poor people await their trials in jail. Judge Gray was a broken record, a.s.signing each detainee to be represented by the public defender.
"I"m indigent, but with counsel," I announced when called.
"What does that mean?" Gray asked.
"It means I"m poor and cannot hire lawyers, but I do have attorneys at present, who"ve been neither hired nor court-appointed and have been fighting my case on principle."
Gray instructed deputies to bring me downtown to court at 1:30 that afternoon. A mild-mannered, light-complexioned black man in casual dress followed me into the hallway and introduced himself as Ron Ware, head of the local public defender"s office.
"You Dennis Ware"s son?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said, a smile breaking over a set of perfect white teeth.
I inquired about his dad, now seventy-eight. He had been a teacher of mine before I dropped out and for years was a staunch supporter, publicly taking on some of my most vocal adversaries to argue that I should be treated the same as other offenders from Calcasieu. I hoped the apple hadn"t fallen far from the tree; because I was indigent, the court would automatically a.s.sign my case to the public defender, no matter what I said. I asked Ron if he could get my court appearance rescheduled so that George would have time to get back to Lake Charles (he got it switched to the next morning). He said he couldn"t find any conflict of interest among his small staff that would give him the legal right to refuse my case. He expected my defense to cost a lot of money because the age of the case would require ma.s.sive research into the long-defunct laws that would govern the trial as well as into the places, people, and evidence connected with the case. The cost would come out of his budget. Ninety-two percent of his budget went to defending capital cases. The rest, he lamented, was totally inadequate for the steady stream of other indigents I saw in "seventy-two-hour court."
At noon, a young female officer escorted me to my new quarters, and my relief at leaving solitary vied with apprehension about what lay before me. Mine was a unique placement: Although the jail officials were unwilling to make me a trusty, I was a.s.signed to live in a trusty dormitory with ten detainees. In this way they avoided housing me with the general population, where they thought I could conceivably cause real problems for them; at least that"s what several black deputies said to me.
My dorm was a split-level room with one wall of windows for the jailers in a gla.s.s tower to observe activity inside and three beige walls with blue trim. Intercom speakers in the ceiling provided a means of communication between the inmates and the tower jailer. Metal stairs against one wall led to the upper level, which extended halfway across the room and formed a ceiling over the bottom sleeping area. Upstairs were five double bunks, a shower, and two toilets. The floor crew, who cleaned the jail floors at night, lived there. Below there were six double bunks, one shower, and one toilet. All three toilets sat too close to the bunks on the end of the row, requiring anyone using the commode to improvise "respect" for the bunk man by stretching a bedsheet over a string in front of the toilet.
Half of the room served as a dayroom furnished with five octagonal steel tables with four round steel seats affixed to each. The seats were too small for men to sit on comfortably, raising the level of frustration in the dorm, which was obviously created by an "expert" jail designer who hadn"t a clue as to what really works in day-to-day jail existence. As with the toilets, inmates improvised, using their pillows to sit on.
I was given a bottom bunk on the bottom floor, on the opposite end from the toilet and shower area, about four feet from the wall. The only person near me was an old ex-con on the bunk to my immediate right. Two night laundry workers and an orderly also slept on the bottom floor. Two ceiling fans and an industrial fan mounted on the wall above the stairs struggled to cool off the place, but it was a losing proposition. It was stifling, and all the men there wore shorts or drawers.
Unlike the harsh and barren lockup of forty years earlier, this jail had cable TV, a chest for ice and cold water, reading material, and a fledgling literacy and GED program, as well as a much more tolerant administration. Pay phones were located everywhere for inmates to make collect calls to whomever they wished at usurious rates that included kickbacks to the jail. The commissary offered small radios, cheaply made clothing, seasoning for the food, and a variety of unhealthy snacks, all at rip-off prices. Jail is a captive market where profits are guaranteed by official policy, and it has been my observation that personal friendship and political cronyism figure in who gets awarded the contracts to provide the goods and services to jails and prisons.
New detainees are stripped of everything upon entering and can have only what they purchase from the commissary. I came with possessions already approved by the penitentiary, so I was told I could keep a couple of T-shirts, shorts, and a pair of socks; anything else, I would have to buy.
One thing that hadn"t changed in forty years was the age of the jail population. I was the oldest in my dorm. Here, as elsewhere in the state, jail detainees were largely eighteen to twenty-eight years old, black, and poor. They were stunted emotionally, intellectually, and behaviorally, their development arrested around age fourteen or fifteen. They were basically adolescents in adult bodies-unsanitary, undisciplined, and noisy. They pretty much raised themselves, shaped by street culture, rap music videos, advertis.e.m.e.nts, needs, fears, and what little education they acquired in school before losing interest and quitting or getting expelled for behavioral problems. They regard getting arrested, shot at, or jailed as natural experiences to be taken with a shrug of the shoulders. They do not accept responsibility for what happens to them in life. They blame everyone and everything else for their frustrations, anger, and problems. Nowadays, most are crackheads and thieves. My guess is that most of these youngsters never held a job. They are not part of the American economy and exist at the fringes of its society.
They display adult comprehension and abilities in only a few things. For example, one man I met in my dorm was expert at dope pushing and the economics attached to it, but was largely ignorant of and inept at everything else. He planned on "getting some b.i.t.c.h pregnant" when he got out.
I asked why, and he looked at me, puzzled. "That"s part of being a man. That"s what you supposed to do, so your name lives on after you dead."
Love and a relationship don"t enter the picture, and he had no plans to care for the child.
"That"s on her," he said, then laughed. "If she don"t want a baby, she shouldn"t open her legs."
There is little respect among these men for females, who are viewed as prey to be conquered and used. Women are commonly referred to as "b.i.t.c.hes" or "hoes." "n.i.g.g.ah" and "dawg" are the terms most frequently used for other people, and they call whites "n.i.g.g.ah" as quickly as they do fellow blacks. Their major endeavors in the streets were hanging with the brothers, chasing s.e.x or some form of dope, and trying to make a hustle.
When I was jailed forty years ago, a substantial percentage of the detainees were unable to read or write and many more did so only with great difficulty. Today"s inmates are better schooled but more stupid. Most are dropouts who travel in marginal orbits with few perceived options in life. They spend their time telling and retelling street experiences, talking about the personalities who populate their small worlds, and playing cards, chess, or dominoes. They neither watch nor read the news. Their TV fare is a diet of sports, violent action movies, The Three Stooges, The Little Rascals The Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, Sat.u.r.day-morning kiddie cartoons, and Discovery Channel doc.u.mentaries that show violent animal behavior. Some listen endlessly to rap music, their heads bobbing like corks in running water, or dance by themselves in a corner. Others engage in boisterous horseplay or argue over petty things. Their power to reason with others is almost nonexistent, and the loud disputes that often end in threats stem from an inability to explain their point of view to those who don"t understand. Crippled by rap slang and a deficient sense of cause and effect, they simply repeat themselves over and over, getting louder and louder, until one of the frustrated speakers turns to nonpartic.i.p.ants in search of agreement or begins to issue threats, raising his voice to dominate and drown out the point of view he"s unable to win over.
They wear two or three pairs of underwear, each falling lower, with the third one hanging just below the backside. They wear their pants hanging off their a.s.ses, too. None was able to give me a reason for doing so other than it "gangsterfies" them. Understandably, they must constantly pull up their britches.
It was painful for me to look at these street-raised weeds, these outcasts and misfits. I knew only too well that they do not care about a world that does not value them. This makes them walking time bombs.
My history made me a living legend in the jail. Returning to Calcasieu after a thirty-year absence, I was at once both a heroic larger-than-life figure and a martyr, generating admiration, sympathy, and respect among many, especially blacks.
I settled into the dorm and stowed my meager belongings in the footlocker bolted to the head of the bunk. Although I"d given up cigarettes a decade earlier, I brought a couple of cartons of Camels from Angola. My immediate need was for a combination lock, which I bought from Fred Matherne, one of the two white men in the dorm, for two packs.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening listening to the inmates" problems and their cases. I heard it all-those who claimed they were innocent and had a witness to prove it; those whose warped sense of right and wrong convinced them they were justified in whatever they did; men who said they should have already been released but weren"t because of bureaucratic foul-ups computing the "good time" credits that shorten sentences. They were all frustrated because their cases were stalled somewhere in the system and they had no one to talk to about it. Desperation tinged their voices as they unloaded their anger and grief.
Claude "Collie-Boy" LeBlanc, a stocky ex-con in on a drug charge, had been unable to get his records from the clerk of court"s office.
"Did you see your lawyer?" I asked.
"h.e.l.l, I been here six months six months and I ain"t seen the b.i.t.c.h yet, and I go to court in less than a week," another detainee, Eric Alexander, interjected. and I ain"t seen the b.i.t.c.h yet, and I go to court in less than a week," another detainee, Eric Alexander, interjected.
"That"s when you gonna see "em, when you sentenced," Claude said.
"I thought the new sheriff, Beth Lundy, had a free, direct line to the public defender"s office installed," I said.
"Yeah," said Eric, "but you can never get past the receptionist."
Claude continued: "I have never had a lawyer come to this jail and talk to me. Only seen a lawyer when I went to court. Look, you got a handful of public defenders and they represent everybody in the jail. Their caseload so big till everything here is plea bargains. There"s no fighting here. The DA and the judges know that, at some point, you gonna come around, get tired of sitting here, and accept whatever they offer. That"s the reason they set court dates so far off in the future. These people full of s.h.i.t, man."
The other men said that was their experience, too. Adili Barfield, short and light-complexioned, was charged with probation violation when he was arrested for possession of marijuana and narcotics. "I"ve been here eight months and they haven"t even arraigned me," he said. "Trial? h.e.l.l, people rarely go to arraignment to schedule a trial, and when they do, the trial date is so far off until you"re ready to cop out. But I"m not copping to anything. That would put me in the joint. If I was guilty, that"s one thing, but I"m not guilty, and I"m not pleading guilty."
"Do you know anyone in jail who"s had a trial by jury?" I asked.
Adili thought long, then shook his head. "No, don"t know anybody. The only people you see going to trial is for big charges, like murder. You barely ever see anybody else go to trial."
About 10:00 p.m. George and Linda came to prep me for the next day"s hearing. They told me that the sheriff had a press conference scheduled for 10:00 a.m. to announce what the media"s access to me would be. George said media from around the country had been trying to get an interview with me, either through him or Julian or directly through the jail. So far they"d all been turned down.
On Wednesday morning, I was shackled hand and foot and transported to court in a caravan of vans and escorts with two other men, each charged with triple murder.
George and Ron Ware came to my holding cell in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the courthouse, where I was being held, isolated from anyone else. George handed me black trousers and a blue shirt to wear in the courtroom. Cops took the chains and flak jacket off so I could dress. One asked if I wanted to wear the body armor under or over the shirt. "I don"t need it at all," I said. "I don"t think anyone is going to try to do anything to me and, if they do, I have confidence that you all will stop them, in which case, perhaps one of you needs to wear this thing."
They laughed and reshackled me over the clothing. Everyone left. The cops returned shortly afterward, informing me the judge said I had to wear the orange jail uniform.
The small courtroom was just about filled, mostly with white people. I took my place between George and Ron, with two cops taking seats behind me. One leaned forward: "Take a look around the room. See if there are any hostile faces you think might try to hurt you, anyone who might be dangerous."
My eyes swept the audience, catching Linda and a few black faces, who I a.s.sumed were supporters. The white faces defied easy definition. The pockmarked district attorney was standing in the aisle talking. I leaned back to the cop. "I see one."
He stiffened into alertness. "Who?"
"Rick Bryant," I whispered.
He smiled as his body relaxed. "I think I can handle him."
Court came to order. Presiding, as predicted, was Judge Canaday, who hailed from aptly named Sulphur, a white enclave across the river in West Calcasieu, where the noxious odors emanating from chemical plants can be smelled, when the wind is right, ten miles away.
Canaday immediately rejected George"s argument against disrupting an existing attorney-client relationship and then appointed the only local capital-certified attorneys he knew: Ron Ware and a New Orleans attorney who had recently lost a death penalty case in Calcasieu.
Canaday announced he would compile a list of lawyers who could visit me in jail; anyone not on the list would be turned away. Ron asked the judge to allow George to stay on the case and pleaded to be taken off, saying he could not adequately defend me because he had four other capital cases and another four hundred felony cases to defend personally, in addition to his administrative duties. Canaday refused to release him but allowed George to a.s.sist in the case pro bono.
George never stood a chance of being officially appointed to defend me. He was the ultimate outsider, a Yankee from New York poking his nose where Canaday thought it didn"t belong. Worse, he was a white man working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, still considered a betrayal among some of the locals. Julian, one of the state"s preeminent criminal defense lawyers, was left completely out of the equation, even denied access to me by the judge. I wanted to ask Canaday why he was so insistent upon divesting me of my excellent lawyers and replacing them with attorneys unfamiliar with me or my case, but both Ron and George vetoed my getting into a fight with the judge.
When I was back at the jail, a couple dozen inmates and I spent an hour of recreation in a small, walled-in area with two basketball courts. Whites played at one and blacks at the other. A female officer, clearly a descendant of the long line of pale-skinned offspring that began when white Louisiana masters coupled with black slaves, sat in the shade reading want ads. I was on my fourth lap of power walking when called for a visit with George and Linda. When I arrived, they asked the officer escorting me for another room. He said there were no others. Linda had spotted former district attorney Frank Salter in the adjoining attorney room talking with an elderly man, and she refused to believe it was coincidence. We pulled our chairs close together and huddled in whispered conversation.
"You"re stuck in jail until pretrial motions in the fall," said George, "but I think we"ll be able to get you out on bond then; meanwhile, we"ll have another hearing on getting Julian a.s.signed to the case in about a month."
My life at the jail went on. I received several letters from female prisoners wishing me luck. I got a laundry connection, which meant I"d have bleached whites and pressed uniforms. One of my dorm mates set up a connection for salt, pepper, and sugar. Some fellow detainees made sure I saw a newspaper every day. I was grateful for even the smallest kindness.
I slept fitfully in my new environment, alert to every sound. I knew how the justice system can work under the control of ruthless individuals. Snitches can be planted. Hit men can be moved near you-men who have no history of violence but are desperate to get out from under a charge that might send them to prison for years. (At Angola, my request that no prisoners from Calcasieu live in the same dorm as me had been honored for just these reasons.) I could afford to trust no one.
The days pa.s.sed slowly. I had nothing to do-no work, no court appearances, no visits from anyone. I was still trying to digest the fact that Julian, who had represented me for fifteen years, did not have access to me. When the judge and district attorney rearranged my defense team, the local media reported nothing amiss-and no other media people came to that backwater. The sheriff did indeed hold a news conference to announce that the media would not have access to me, and it"s difficult to sell an editor on the idea of a story without an interview. KPLC-TV-the same Lake Charles television station that had repeatedly aired my "interview" with Sheriff Reid in 1961-now repeatedly ran footage of me shackled or getting out of the transport van, or used the jail"s ID photo of me in orange scrubs, although the televised version was darker and made me look menacing. None of this surprised me, because the Lake Charles media was little more than an arm of the prosecutor"s office, at least where I was concerned. More often than not I wasn"t even allowed a daily hour of recreation, despite Sheriff Lundy"s public statement to the contrary.
My fellow inmates also had nothing to do until it was time to clean the floors in the afternoon, so the morning TV report of my court proceedings became a subject of conversation. All ten men in the dorm agreed that I was about to be railroaded. Eric Alexander, who after six months in jail still had not met the public defender representing him, said it most straightforwardly: "They already got their game together, dawg. They hijacked your a.s.s from Angola where you got everything goin" for you and brought you down here where they control the game and all the players. They take your high-powered lawyers and give you some cheap-a.s.s, overworked attorneys that guarantee you gonna lose. Then they give you this rookie-a.s.s judge ain"t been in office a year, never handled a serious case before. Them b.i.t.c.hes railroading you, dawg. Them DAs know they ain"t never dealt with heavy-hitting lawyers like you got. They ain"t no match for "em. That"s the reason they takin" "em on out and getting you some lawyers they can control. But the way I see it, they playing so dirty with you that while they think they f.u.c.kin" you, they really f.u.c.kin" themselves, "cuz they givin" you grounds to come back on "em and win in the future."
What Eric didn"t see was that, in that scenario, I couldn"t win. The appeals process would be endless. In this case, a tainted conviction would be just as good as a proper one; the district attorney knew that. What I knew was that either my lawyers would have to settle the case by getting the prosecutor to agree to let me plead to manslaughter, or we"d have to win it outright. At age fifty-nine, I couldn"t lose this case. I dreaded the court proceedings, but I never lost my faith.
A month later the judge let Julian replace the other New Orleans lawyer and work with Ron Ware. George still couldn"t get appointed but could work for free. In the courthouse one day, Judge Canaday took us into the back room, away from the public, and instructed my attorneys that they had fifteen days to file all the motions they intended to file in connection with the case. Ron again pleaded to be taken off the case. Canaday instead told him he was lead attorney: "You are to do the lion"s share of the work on this case."
The prosecutors, who would not even speak to George or Julian, were looking smug.
I told George and Linda that we couldn"t afford to trust Ron. As part of the Calcasieu justice machinery, he had hundreds of other defendants who could suffer if he p.i.s.sed off the district attorney or the judge by fighting too hard for me. I even felt we had to be extremely careful about what we said around Ron, as he could hurt our case, even inadvertently.
Another Wednesday rolled around, and I rose at daybreak to get ready for Linda"s weekly visit. She arrived like clockwork at 9:00.
"I"ve got "em!" she said, barely able to contain her glee. "I figured out how the DA got around the random selection to have Judge Canaday a.s.signed to this case. Look at this!" She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of letters from the clerk of court to various judges informing them that they had been a.s.signed to preside over a capital case. My heart was pounding.
"There"s a flaw in the system. They use seven bingo b.a.l.l.s-one for each judge-and mix them up in a hopper before selecting one at random. But the problem is, each time a judge has been selected, his ball stays out of the hopper until all the other b.a.l.l.s are gone. The selection is only really random on the first pull, when all seven b.a.l.l.s are in the hopper. In your case, Canaday"s ball was the only one left." She lifted the cover of a manila folder to reveal a typed chart she"d constructed that graphically ill.u.s.trated the cycles of cases a.s.signed and the dwindling b.a.l.l.s in the hopper since 1993. "There was a one hundred percent certainty that Canaday would be your judge. And, because Bryant gets copies of all of the clerk"s letters a.s.signing the judges, he knew that."
"So the sonuvab.i.t.c.h timed his indictment of me to get the judge he wanted?"
"Bingo! But it"s worse than that." Linda shuffled her papers and brought a new one to the top. "See this? Here"s a guy who was indicted on capital charges on July 19. He would have gotten the last ball in the hopper, Canaday. The next thing that happens is that Bryant turns around and indicts you on the same day, only days after telling both Julian and Judge Polozola that it would probably be about a month before they indicted you."
"That"s why they yanked me out of Angola."
"But they still had some manipulating to do," Linda said, "because cases are a.s.signed judges according to their docket number. The DA a.s.signs the docket numbers, so he could leapfrog you in front of this other guy. Otherwise, you would have had a full bingo hopper and two out of seven chances of getting a judge Rick Bryant doesn"t want handling your case."
"Oh, he"s not about to let either of the black judges anywhere near this case," I said. "Junior, how did you get this information?"
"Well, you have to understand, they don"t know me yet over at the clerk"s office. I told one of the clerks that I was researching Calcasieu"s capital allotment system and asked if there were any public records I could go through. The deputy clerk of court himself then gave me all these letters and even photocopied them for me for free. I thought I was going to have to spend a week sifting through ledgers or books of records. Can you imagine the clerk"s surprise when we file all this in court and he realizes his office handed it up on a silver platter?"
"This may be what we need to oust this judge and rearrange their game plan," I said. "What does George say?"
"He"s pleased."
I returned to my dorm, my spirits buoyed by Linda"s discovery. Time and time again she had come through for me. I cannot imagine where I would have been without her.
Two days earlier, I had relieved my boredom by getting involved with the plight of John Jollivette, a Creole-speaking black who slept on the bottom bunk to my right. He was forty-nine, but the guys called him "Pop" because he looked older than everyone else in the dorm, probably due to a hard and varied past. He had been a rhythm-and-blues and gospel lead guitarist when he was sent to Angola for rape. As a condition of his release, he was prohibited from working anywhere liquor was served, which effectively ended his ability to earn a living as a musician. He found work as a truck driver and as a merchant seaman. Earlier in the year, he was arrested for stealing two bottles of wine valued at $7. He was released on his own recognizance. Three months later he got into a dispute with his landlord, who called in the police. Pop was arrested for "remaining after forbidden" and "resisting an officer." Bond was set at $1,000. The next day he went to the jail"s seventy-two-hour court and was appointed a public defender, who was not present. When he called the public defender"s office, he couldn"t get past the receptionist.
"The receptionist says the charges over the dispute with the landlord were dropped," said Pop, "and I should contact the DA or the jail to find out why I"m still being held here. When I asked the jail authorities, they said the charges weren"t dropped. I don"t know what"s goin" on."
When he finally went to court, he learned that he was there on the old $7 wine-theft charge and was given credit for time served.
"I didn"t see a public defender there," he told me. "I pled guilty. I just wanted to get it over with, so I took the deal they offered."
But he was never in jail for the theft charge; he was in for the dispute with the landlord, a charge the receptionist said was dismissed. How could he be given credit for time served on a charge that had been dropped? When Warden LaFargue came to see me that afternoon on a minor matter, I introduced him to Jollivette and explained the situation.
Looking at Jollivette, the warden said, "We don"t want you here if you"re not supposed to be here."
When I returned from my visit with Linda, I found Jollivette packing in preparation for his release.
Months later, I was given an office right outside my dorm, where I could listen to inmates" problems and try to facilitate solutions for those that were legitimate. Having a sense of purpose, something productive to do, was a lifeline for me, and the office provided me a quiet haven away from the constant cacophony of TV and jive in the dorm. For a while I had a computer there, until the administration tightened down on everything following an escape from the maximum-security section of the jail. I don"t know if the district attorney knew about my job and office or not. I"m not even sure the sheriff knew. But the curious thing about the law enforcement and criminal justice powers in Calcasieu Parish is that once they believe they have you snared, they can be downright gracious in small ways. In my own mind, the symbol for this has always been the black-walnut ice cream deputies used to bring to Robert Lee Sauls every day in the mid-1950s as the black man awaited execution.
Sat.u.r.days always brought a visit from my seventy-seven-year-old mother. She could now visit me far more often than when I was in Angola, two hundred miles away. She would often apologize for not being able to do more to help me during the past forty years. Her sense of guilt was bitterly ironic because no one knew better than I that my actions so long ago had changed her life profoundly, causing her not only untold personal heartache but public scorn as well. Tied by poverty to Lake Charles, she was forced to remain there, mother to the most vilified defendant in the city"s history, whose demonization was fueled by the vengeance reserved for black men convicted of killing a white. I told her over and over that for decades she was my only friend and visitor, that during my darkest days she was the only reason I kept going, that I became the man I am today in an attempt to make up not only for the incredible damage I caused to my victims and their loved ones, but to my own family as well. No matter what I felt, though, this was still one more thing I couldn"t make right.
One Sat.u.r.day in early September, my mom brought Lawrence Morrow to the jail to share the forty-five-minute visit I was allowed each week. Lawrence is a little younger than me and was publishing Gumbeaux Magazine Gumbeaux Magazine, a biweekly giveaway aimed at a black audience. I first became aware of the paper when one of its writers did a nice feature on me in the mid-1990s. Morrow asked how he could help me. I told him I was being held incommunicado from mainstream media, that the district attorney would not even say h.e.l.lo to my attorneys much less speak to them, and that we had discovered that Judge Canaday was essentially handpicked by the district attorney. Morrow immediately commissioned a piece by Bobbie Celestine, a Lake Charles native about my age, who based his article on a face-to-face interview with the district attorney. This was the only way independent news about my case reached the local community.
I was just rinsing my coffee cup one Tuesday morning when Albert Bradley called down to me from upstairs, where he slept: "Man, there"s something on the radio about a hijacked plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York. You might wanna check the TV to see if they"re showing anything."
The disaster immediately filled the screen-smoke billowing from one building, then another building, then the side of World Trade Center One crumbling and, below, people running for their lives through the streets, others looking back in stunned horror, still others sitting on curbs, sh.e.l.l-shocked and grieving in a landscape instantly turned ashes-to-ashes gray. My thoughts turned to all my friends in New York, and I prayed silently for their safety.
As the television kept rerunning footage of first one plane and then a second plowing into the Twin Towers, my dorm mates became increasingly excited, their fervor a mix of patriotism and glee at the prospect of our country going to war and killing people in retaliatory violence. They became so boisterous it was difficult to hear the TV Every now and then some image would capture their attention, and a momentary silence punctuated the air before they erupted with renewed shouting and vigorous cursing. Some boasted about how they"d willingly go fight, if they could: "I"d teach them Arab terrorist motherf.u.c.kers about f.u.c.king with America." There was something bizarre about this odd blend of criminality and patriotism and their fierce allegiance to a country in which they were outlaws, lumped by politicians and society into more or less the same cla.s.s as the enemy on TV.
George"s wife, Tanya, saved his life on September II II by asking him to drop their children, Hallie and Sela, off at school that morning, so he was running behind schedule. Had he been on time, he would have been getting coffee in the World Trade Center, as usual, as he pa.s.sed from the train stop to the street, when the planes struck. by asking him to drop their children, Hallie and Sela, off at school that morning, so he was running behind schedule. Had he been on time, he would have been getting coffee in the World Trade Center, as usual, as he pa.s.sed from the train stop to the street, when the planes struck.
A week after the attack, George was one of only ten people on his flight from New York to New Orleans, a testament to the public"s newfound fear of flying. A day before coming, he had finally been able to get into his office, six blocks from Ground Zero, to retrieve my case file. Going to court the next morning, I rode in a van with a young, white baby-killer chained up in the seat behind me. Hyper, almost happy, he beamed when we reached the courthouse and he saw the cameras: "Oh, we"re gonna be on TV!" Of course, the media wasn"t there for him, but for me.
Days turned into weeks, then into months of constant court activity that seemed to eat up the calendar of my remaining life. Judge Canaday imposed a gag order in the case and refused to recuse himself despite indisputable evidence that his appointment was subject to manipulation. He saw his selection as a "harmless error" and set a January trial date. On appeal, the Louisiana Supreme Court ordered Canaday off the case and a new judge to be selected from a full hopper of seven bingo b.a.l.l.s. That ruling marked the first time in forty years that the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in my favor on anything. I thought the ruling would get my case moving more quickly toward trial, but I was wrong.
Life in the Calcasieu jail became even more difficult as opportunities for recreation virtually disappeared. When we did get out of our dorms, I"d jog around the track, which ran past windows of the solitary-confinement cells; from one window, a naked white woman made a point of counting off my laps to me, while from another, an agitated white man yelled "Nigra white boy" at me. In the wee hours of a Sat.u.r.day morning, eleven new men a.s.signed to the road crew that picked up paper and trash alongside the parish roads were transferred to my dorm, filling it up. The overcrowding was awful. Clothing now hung over everything, making the place gloomier and darker. It was noisier, too. The funk of unwashed bodies was inescapable.
Several successful escapes caused authorities to curtail unnecessary movement by detainees, which didn"t help the atmosphere. The authorities knew that giving inmates an outlet for their mental and physical restlessness through movies or recreation helps maintain the stability and safety of an inst.i.tution. But rather than confront grandstanding politicians, who influence the media and the public, they crumbled in the face of criticism, restricting or eliminating these outlets. That, of course, made their own jobs tougher and their workplace less safe, not to mention less humane for individuals awaiting trial, who had not yet been convicted of anything.