Carthage (29 page)

Thinking too
But he has given up this life—of the emotions. He has moved on, he has abandoned these people. Those are the terms on which we can be together.

The new project was tentatively titled
SHAME! CRUEL & USUAL PUNISHMENT:
Publicly Sanctioned Murders in the U.S.

Though the Investigator was meticulous in his research, the Investigator did not care for a subtle, Jamesian prose style in his writing—his aim was to surprise, to shock, to dismay, to disgust, to
convince
and to
emotionally involve.

The Investigator had been amassing information on death-penalty cases since the highly publicized successes of the Innocence Project in the first decade of the new century, in which more than 260 convicted individuals, many on Death Row, were found innocent through DNA testing. In his computer-files were hundreds of pages of documents including lengthy law journal articles by such specialists in the field as Barry Scheck, Austin Sarat, and Leigh Buchanan Bienen. It was sobering—more than sobering, appalling—to speculate how many individuals, a high percentage of them dark-skinned, had been sentenced to death, though in fact they were not guilty of the crimes for which they’d been sentenced; to speculate how many such individuals were incarcerated in Death Row cell blocks at the present time, who might be freed, if the Innocence Project had access to their cases.

The Investigator characterized himself as a “skeptic”—“since the age of twenty, a cynic in the tradition of Swift and Voltaire”—yet he was astonished and outraged by the fact that in a distressing number of states, virtually nothing had been done to reduce death-penalty judgments, despite the possibility of DNA exoneration. The Investigator raged to the Intern: “Even the Supreme Court of the United States doesn’t seem to care if an innocent person is executed, once he’s been found ‘guilty’!”

The Investigator particularly detested the “right-wing-leaning” chief justices of the Court. His bêtes noires were Scalia and Thomas. He’d have dearly loved a
SHAME!
exposé of the (secret, concealed) lives of the Supreme Court justices, but these American citizens were so far removed from accountability to anyone, it was all but impossible for “J. Swift” to imagine exposing them.

“Oh God! If I could live forever. If I never slowed down. If I could go back in time, enter law school, manage to get myself appointed a law clerk for Scalia or Thomas! So much of contemporary evil springs from the Court, as from the White House and the Pentagon, dripping down like a shit-stained ceiling . . .”

The Intern was flattered that the Investigator should speak to her so openly. The Investigator had no fear that his Intern hadn’t been hired by his enemies to spy on
him
.

Often she heard him on the telephone talking to old friends, colleagues and comrades in his activist organizations—she heard his aggrieved voice, his harsh laughter.

She felt a thrill of pride. She was the Investigator’s
intern.

Though unknown to anyone except the Investigator, at the present time, perhaps sometime, after the new
SHAME!
project was completed, the name “Sabbath McSwain” might be linked with his name, and their names.

Naively thinking
Maybe we will make a difference. What we expose to the world—will change the world.

THE FIRST VISIT
to a Death Row facility had been arranged: March 11, 2012, at 10
A.M
., at the Maximum Security Correctional Facility for Men at Orion, Florida. Orion was a small town in the flatlands of Central Florida north and west of Lake Okeechobee approximately a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Temple Park.

“The tour is arranged, McSwain? Good work!”

The Investigator never failed to express pleased surprise when the Intern accomplished something of a kind he found difficult to undertake: simple telephone requests, reservations and bookings, filling a prescription at the local drugstore, querying a bill that had already been paid. The Investigator was temperamentally
vexed
at having to execute such ordinary tasks, as a musical prodigy would be vexed having to play “Chopsticks.”

The Intern had long been “shy”—that is, not-very-sociable—inclined to extreme taciturnity, even to sullenness—but had quickly assumed, as Dr. Cornelius Hinton’s assistant, a confidence, a kind of hearty arrogance, befitting her position. Her ordinary voice was hesitant and scratchy and near-inaudible but her telephone voice was sharp and forthright; the impressively pompous
Professor Cornelius Hinton, Institute for Advanced Research at the State University of Florida at Temple Park
rolled off her tongue as if she’d been uttering it for years, to intimidate others.

From a contact of the Investigator’s in the University of Florida Law School at Gainesville the Intern had managed to secure two places in the Orion tour, which was reserved for individuals in the field of criminal justice, professors and educators and psychologists, politicians, social welfare workers, clergy. In theory, background checks were to be made of all visitors to Florida prison facilities; in practice, the Intern gathered, such checks were cursory and random. Since a professor at the Law School had vouched for Dr. Hinton, neither Hinton nor his young assistant was likely to arouse suspicion in the Orion authorities.

On the morning of March 11, 2012, the Intern came early to the Investigator’s office at the Institute. The plan was that the Intern would drive them in the Investigator’s leased Acura SUV to the prison facility north and west of Lake Okeechobee. On the drive—on U.S. 27, along the North New River Canal—the Investigator studied Death Row documents he’d downloaded from the Internet, made cell phone calls and rehearsed with the Intern what their strategy should be during the guided tour—“I will be recording when I can. What seems valuable. Just the tour-guide talking, if he’s a corrections officer, is the sort of thing I want. Death Row anecdotes. ‘Off the record’ kind of things—he’d never say in an interview. And in the execution chamber, if the tour takes us there—we’ll both want to take pictures, if we can. The closer to the execution site, the better. But don’t worry: I won’t expect you to do anything risky, this first time. Though you’re my ‘assistant’ we won’t acknowledge any connection during the tour. The tour has been organized through the warden’s office, it’s doubtful that the guide would even know that ‘Sabbath McSwain’ is ‘Cornelius Hinton’s’ assistant. I’ll signal you if I want you to do something in particular but don’t try to anticipate anything—just behave naturally. Fit in with the others. You look like a student—you won’t attract attention. I will take as many photos as I can, that seem to me pertinent to our project. But we should both be
sparing
.”

The Intern smiled uneasily.
Sparing!

The Intern had no wish to call attention to herself. The Intern had a strong wish to remain invisible for as long as possible.

At the Orion exit, all signs led to the prison facility.

At the Orion exit, already you could see the flatland-acreage of the prison grounds bordered by a fifteen-foot electrified wire-mesh fence topped with coils of razor wire. You could see, at regular intervals along this fence, guard-tower stations. And beyond, only just visible, the ugly fortress-like buildings of the prison. The Investigator said thoughtfully: “I’ve been ‘jailed’ a few times but not yet ‘imprisoned.’ There’s a profound psychological difference, it’s said. And only just imagine—a sentence of
life behind bars
. A sentence of
death
.”

The Intern detected an air of excitement and apprehension in her employer’s voice. The Intern did not wish to think
He is anxious, too—but will never show it.

On the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Temple Park, the Intern had thought
If something goes wrong now—an accident—we would be spared. The worse danger would be averted.

But the Intern was a careful driver. The Intern was a precise driver. The Intern was something of an obsessively careful and precise and
law-abiding
driver in the very face of a (secret) wish to sabotage the morning’s project, to spare the Investigator and herself the risk of entering the maximum-security prison and confronting what lay within.

By 9:45
A.M
., the prison facility was bathed in the dull-winter-glower of central Florida in late winter: no visible sun, a sky of coarse clouds, yet a shadow-less light everywhere. The Intern could recall—vaguely, as one might recall a childhood movie never seen in its entirety, or consciously—a very different sort of late-winter, in another, more northerly climate.

Especially in the mountains, snow would lie everywhere in mid-March—in heaps, in layers, in rivulets, some of it gritty and discolored and some of it fresh, freshly-fallen and dazzling-white.

Here in Florida, snow never fell. No startling surprise out of the sky—
snow.

By 9:45
A.M
., the prison facility was well into its day. Very likely, the prison-day began, for corrections officers and other employees who came into the facility, at dawn.

The employees’ parking lot was nearly full. The visitors’ lot, which had to be at least an eighth of a mile beyond, was already about one-third full.

Before they were allowed into the prison, the Investigator and the Intern had to lock away personal items in their car trunk or glove compartment: wallets, credit cards, cash, all electronic equipment including cell phones, laptop computers, iPads. They were forbidden to bring inside
contraband
—cigarettes, for instance, or any sort of medication. Any sort of instrument or weapon, anything that might be fashioned into a weapon, a toothbrush for instance, house or car keys, gold-chain necklaces, any sort of conspicuous jewelry. They were allowed to wear wristwatches and they were allowed to bring inside with them a single pen and a single small notebook—no recording devices or cameras, of course. They were forbidden to wear any shade of blue for blue was the prisoners’ primary color, nor could they wear denim of any color, including black, for denim was the prisoners’ primary fabric. They were forbidden to wear orange—orange jumpsuits were the uniforms of a certain cadre of prisoners who were not-yet-sorted into the general population. And they were forbidden to wear brown, or beige-brown, for these were the colors of the COs’ uniforms.

Visitors were forbidden to wear shorts, sleeveless shirts or pullovers, open-toed shoes like sandals. Female visitors in particular were not to wear “provocative” clothing no matter the heat. (Some administrative offices were air-conditioned at Orion but, overall, the facility sweltered and baked in the heat of the sun through April to October and beyond: if you believed you could not bear temperatures in the mid- or high 90s, or higher, it was not recommended that you visit Orion during these months.) On this chilly day, the Intern wore dark corduroy trousers and the Investigator surprised her by wearing a quite striking suit, dove-gray, pinstripe, of a light flannel wool, with a white shirt and a silk necktie, which she’d never seen before.

He’d even trimmed his white beard. He’d trimmed his fingernails.

Of course, visitors were forbidden to speak with—“signal to”—any inmate. They were not to drift away from the tour-group under any circumstances. They were not to attempt to pass notes to any inmate—or corrections officer. If the tour-guide introduced them to a trustee—an inmate-worker—they could speak to this man, but not otherwise; and they could not ask him any personal questions, whatsoever.

“It will be like taking a tour through a ‘factory farm,’ or a slaughterhouse, which I’ve already done and which can be pretty ghastly. Essentially, our aim is to soak up as much information as we can, and take pictures when we can, and get back out alive.” The Investigator laughed, as if he’d said something witty.

The Investigator instructed the Intern to please walk ahead of him, to catch up with a half-dozen other visitors who were making their way up a flight of crude stone steps to the roadway above. The Investigator remained at the SUV for a few minutes longer, before following after her. And when he joined the group of fourteen visitors assembled outside the prison gate it was 9:58
A.M
., he did not so much as glance at her.

THOUGH SCHEDULED TO BEGIN
promptly at 10
A.M.,
the tour did not begin until 10:38
A.M.
when the tour-guide—the Lieutenant—arrived, from inside the prison facility. He was a tall fit-looking man of indeterminate age, not old, yet certainly not young, in the dull-brown uniform of the Orion correctional officers; his shoulders were muscular, yet slightly slumped, as his chest seemed just slightly concave, as if he’d been ill recently and had not yet regained his lost weight and strength. His jaws looked as if they hadn’t been shaved recently—at least, not clean-shaven. His eyes crinkled at the corners with an unpredictable sort of merriment. He checked the IDs of the tour-visitors and passed them back without comment except to say, apropos the “sociology of crime” class and their (female) professor from the Florida State University–Eustis—“Might be, I could learn something from
you
.” His tone was somewhere between sneering and flattery.