Before I go to bed most nights, I usually check Huffington Post or msnbc.com for news. Given the weirdness in the world, it’s probably not a smart thing to do for a peaceful night’s sleep. It saddened me to find this headline about Troy Davis, executed this evening in Georgia for allegedly shooting a police officer in 1989.
There was ample evidence for reasonable doubt in this case. Quoting from Huffington Post: “Though Davis’ attorneys said seven of nine key witnesses against him disputed all or parts of their testimony, state and federal judges repeatedly ruled against granting him a new trial. As the court losses piled up Wednesday, his offer to take a polygraph test was rejected and the pardons board refused to give him one more hearing.”
Excuse me, this is Georgia, the deep south, where racism is alive and well. Troy Davis was a black man. That’s the smaller picture. The larger picture here is about capital punishment. Currently, according to Wikipedia, “over 60% of the world’s population live in countries where executions take place” – China, India, Indonesia, and the U.S.
In 1976, I worked as a librarian at a minimal security prison for young men between the ages of 16-19. We had older guys, but the majority fell within that age group and were doing time for drug offenses. One of these guys, a black guy, Aiken, was older than the general population and had been sentenced to twenty years for killing a police officer.
I liked Ake. He was smart, was enrolled in college classes, and read voraciously. He claimed he was innocent, as so many do, but oddly, I believed Ake. I think he was at the wrong time and place and was a fall guy. He and I used to sit in my office for hours, talking about world events, about life. I used to bring him books from my personal library and he always returned the books in pristine condition and we would talk about the ideas in the books. He was also in the Spanish class I taught at the prison twice a week, at night. He was motivated.
I was one of 15 women who worked on the compound. My library, a double wide trailer, was a sanctuary for inmates like Ake who sought to improve themselves. They knew they could come there for conversation, good coffee, pastries, anything I happened to bring to work with me. One day during an escape attempt, Ake and two of his buddies rushed into the library and stayed until the lockdown was lifted. I knew they were there to protect me in the event of an uprising on the compound.
I sat in on his parole hearing. I was in his court. I knew he was innocent.
Some years later, long after I’d left the prison system, I was in a grocery story and heard someone shout, “Ms. Trish!” I turned and saw Ake rushing toward me. He was out, he was free. We rushed toward each other and hugged. “You saved my ass,” he said.
We talked for a while in the parking lot, catching up on each other’s lives. I’ve never seen him since. But when I saw that Huffington Post headline tonight, I thought of Ake, a black man far more fortunate than Troy Davis.
In 1979, I was feeling like an inmate myself and knew I needed a change. The supervisor of the prison where I worked arranged an interview for me at Huntsville State prison in Texas. It wasn’t exactly the change I had in mind, but I was flown out to Dallas, then transported to the prison for an interview, and toured their Death Row.
Up until this point, I was ambivalent about the death penalty. That’s a horrible thing to admit. But honestly, I just hadn’t thought about it that much. I was in my twenties, I was naive. The prison where I worked was minimum security, which meant none of these inmates would be hitting death row. But my tour of Death Row at Huntsville changed all that in a instant. It was the most desperate, depressing, and despicable place I’ve ever been.
Imagine: men languishing in solitary for years, released for just an hour a day for exercise or a shower, no contact with anyone else. The cells were impossibly small, just a toilet and a sink and a cot. The entire cell block stank of terror, a very real and tangible smell.
“So when do you think you can start?” the prison supervisor asked me afterward. “Our library really needs someone like you.”
Never, I thought, and flew back to Florida and ended up leaving my job not long afterward.
Yes, heinous crimes are committed. Yes, lives are shattered. Yes, some part of us screams for retribution. But capital punishment is like war. The executioner, like the invading country, is a murderer. And there’s this religious thing, an eye for an eye, that has been twisted and perverted so that we actually accept lethal injections, that we actually accept invading sovereign countries. What the hell is wrong with this picture?
Every time a person is executed, a country is invaded, every time an eye for an eye is implemented, we are diminished as a people, a society, a country, a planet. You lose a child, a spouse, your life is violated. But an eye for eye just doesn’t set things right.
Ake, I hope you’re reading this. I hope you’re flourishing. And always, I wish you well and thank you for what you taught me.
