Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row (33 page)

It’s nine days until the Feast of the Archangels and ten days until the hearing.

S
EPTEMBER
30

Today was the hearing before the Arkansas Supreme Court. I haven’t heard all the details yet, but I’ve been told it went well.

I’m exhausted. The guards spent the day doing their best to destroy everything in my cell. They took my books, my journal, my shoes, and left a pile of destruction behind. I was told it’s because the prison is tired of me doing interviews. Every time a camera crew comes in here it’s another chance they’ll catch a glimpse of what goes on back here. That makes the officials extremely uneasy, so they decided to teach me a lesson. I guess they want me to lie quietly on my concrete slab while they’re trying to kill me. I’m trying to look on the bright side—since I have nothing to read, I have more time to meditate.

I’m very curious to hear all about how the hearing went and what happens next. I hope the court won’t take too long to make a decision. Seventeen years is long enough.

I’ll write more soon. Right now I’m just tired beyond words.

Twenty-seven

T
he oral argument, when it finally happened, was a mob scene. I watched on the news, seeing hundreds turn out for the event from nearby and as far away as Australia. I was granted a full evidentiary hearing—after which we would be going back down to circuit court for a new trial with the old evidence and all the new evidence, without a jury, and with a new judge.

O
CTOBER
5

The days are passing so quickly. This is the only time of year when I want to slow time down. I spend the entire year trying to get here as fast as I can, then once I’m here I want to slam on the brakes. I’m beginning to have those moments when the feel of autumn is so strong it drowns out everything else. Lately it’s been making me think about the perfect sound track for a Halloween party.

The top of any Halloween music list has to be the theme song from the movie
Halloween
; right on its heels is “Pet Sematary” by the Ramones. For some reason I’ve always equated the old Van Morrison song “Moondance” with Halloween, too. I love that song. “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus is an October classic, as well as anything by Type O Negative. And Midnight Syndicate. If you’ve never heard anything by Midnight Syndicate, look them up right this moment. If you distilled the raw essence of every spooky story you ever heard, you would have Midnight Syndicate. I have a friend who swears by them, believing them to be a vital element of any Halloween party. To finish off the list you must have “The Lyre of Orpheus” by Nick Cave and “I Feel Alright” by Steve Earle.

Strangely enough, I’ve already heard the first Christmas song of the season. It was the one by Paul McCartney—“Wonderful Christmas Time.” One of the radio disc jockeys wanted to be the first person to play a Christmas song this year. Shortly afterward the prison forced me to fill out a form indicating who I wanted my remains to be released to.

O
CTOBER
12

Rat season is about to start. There are two seasons in here: rat season and cricket season. During the summer the prison is overrun with big black crickets. Once the weather starts turning cold, the rats from the surrounding fields all come into the prison in search of food and warmth. I prefer the rats to the crickets because they’re quieter. The crickets can drive you to the breaking point with the chirping and singing. It’s not like when you hear them outside. In here everything is concrete, and it echoes. A single cricket in here can make more noise than ten outside. They get into the drains and crawl spaces and scream like banshees for days at a time. When they start to die, they’re everywhere. Once I was taken down the hallway and the whole floor was littered with dead crickets.

The rats are a millions times more destructive, but at least they do it quietly. You have to be constantly on guard against them because they’ll eat holes in everything. They’ll gnaw your books, shred your clothes to make nests, and God help you if you’re trying to save food. You can’t even let your blanket hang off the bed or they’ll climb it like a rope. I couldn’t begin to count the times rats have woken me up by running across the bed. The guards used to put poison out for them until an inmate put it in someone’s coffee.

O
CTOBER
14

It’s getting cold at night. The temperature has started to drop into the 40s. I woke up shivering, and it felt like the summer had never happened. It suddenly seemed like I’d spent most of my life shivering. I don’t mean that in a bad way, although if you hate the cold it’s probably horrible. For me it just feels like home.

I miss the snow. I miss looking at it, walking in it, tasting it. I used to love those days when it was so cold everyone else would be tucked away inside trying to stay warm. I would be the only one out walking, so I could look across the fields and see miles of snow without a single footprint in it. It would be completely silent—no cars, no birds singing, no doors slamming. Just silence and snow. God, I miss snow. The stars, the moon, the wind, and blankets of pure, pristine snow.

Have you ever seen that movie
Cold Mountain
? I’ve seen it a dozen times and could watch it a dozen more. Not only does the music played by Jack White and company make me cry every time I hear it, but the winter scenes are some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. It’s so real it seems like you should be able to see your breath in the air, no matter what time of year you’re watching it. Absolutely magickal. I love the stark, bare tree limbs and the ice.

Can you believe it’s been over seventeen years since I’ve touched snow? Since I’ve heard that soft, comforting sound it makes as it crunches beneath your boots? It won’t be much longer. I can feel it in my bones. Soon I’ll have snow again. I’ll stand in it and look up at the stars until I can no longer feel my feet.

O
CTOBER
15

Mannheim Steamroller is coming to Little Rock next month. People have asked me what concerts I’d want to see, and the top two on my list are Mannheim Steamroller and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Both put on amazing shows of Christmas music that make my heart ache. The TSO is half symphony and half hair band, with all the magick of Christmas sprinkled on top. Last year the local PBS station played one of their concerts during the holiday season, and I wallowed in every moment of it. It was beautiful. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra is to Christmas what Midnight Syndicate is to Halloween. If I could get anything I wanted for my birthday, it would be to see either a TSO or Mannheim Steamroller Christmas show.

P.S. I just watched Dustin McDaniel’s debate against the Green Party candidate for attorney general. He claimed during the debate he’s not scared of new evidence being heard in my case—that in fact he’s helped us by testing even more evidence and giving us the results. Yet the representative sent from his office argued during the September hearing before the Arkansas Supreme Court that the new evidence should not be heard. Is it just me, or does this sound like political double-talk to you? You can’t have it both ways, little buddy.

He also said that the past seventeen years of suffering we’ve been put through are a testament to the fact that the system “works.” Otherwise, I’d already be dead. Three innocent people spend almost two decades in a living hell while a child-murderer walks the streets, and the attorney general’s office does everything possible to keep evidence from being heard—that’s his proof that the system “works”? Perhaps he’s helping us all to see the bright side: instead of just torturing me for seventeen years, they could have murdered me.

I will not give in to anger. If I do, then they have won. Pythagoras believed numbers held the secret to enlightenment. He devised a mathematical formula for discovering the number that represents your life’s path. Using that formula, my number is eight. In tarot, eight is the “strength” card. It shows a smiling woman gently closing the jaws of a lion while it licks her hand. That lion represents all the harsh, negative aspects of ourselves we must learn to master—our anger, fear, jealousy, greed, et cetera. The woman does not tame the lion with force. She does it with patience, with gentleness, and with perseverance. Pythagoras said that is the lesson to be learned by those whose birth number is eight. Succeed and the lion carries you to heaven on its back. Fail and it swallows you.

Please consider voting for Dustin McDaniel’s opponent, even if you’re usually not a big fan of the Green Party. Every vote McDaniel does not get is a message that you do not approve of what he’s doing. Dustin McDaniel is the heart of the problem. He is the driving force behind all that is wrong with this case. He will have the entire local establishment backing him. If there is going to be a difference, then you must make it. Please vote. Please send him a message. Don’t let him win. You stopped Fogleman dead in his tracks. Perhaps you can do the same to McDaniel.

O
CTOBER
16

It seems like the World Series is being played later and later in the year. I don’t mind, for the most part. Baseball is a summer game, played when it’s hot and nasty outside—which is why the play-offs have that incredibly “special” feel when you see them in autumn. It gives them a whole different aura because it’s cool or cold and late at night—the exact opposite of regular-season baseball games. It causes that fluttery, excited feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you giddy and happy to be alive. The whole world becomes simple, easy, uncomplicated. It’s like you’re a child again. I don’t want to know statistics or numbers and records. I just like the autumn magick. That said, November games are just wrong. October is perfect; November is too late. Baseball season should not be nine months long.

Someone recently asked me if there were other innocent people on Death Row in Arkansas. The answer is yes. There are two, besides me. There used to be three, but one was executed.

O
CTOBER
25

Halloween is this week, and
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
is coming on two nights back to back. They’re airing it on both Thursday and Friday. Does time pass as quickly for you out there as it does for me in here? For me it seems like the month of May was just a few weeks ago, and the year went by so fast it’s stunning.

At any rate, the ancient Celtic people called Halloween “Samhain,” which means “summer’s end.” That’s because they only recognized two seasons (summer and winter) instead of the four we have today. Halloween was the transition point from summer to winter. It’s also the time to honor our family members and ancestors who have died. In fact, that’s why it’s called Halloween. It’s a shortening of “All Hallows’ Eve,” which is what people call Halloween. November 1 is to honor the saints, and November 2 is to honor departed family members. In Mexican culture they have big “Day of the Dead” celebrations. Catholics walk through cemeteries saying prayers for the dead while priests sprinkle the graves with holy water. The Chinese set aside the entire month of August as “ghost month” to honor their dead.

The archangel who presides over these things is Azrael. He’s commonly known as the “Angel of Death,” although I think that sounds a little scary to most people. Azrael not only escorts the dead to heaven but also helps the living get through the grieving process. We can also give him the emotions and states of mind we’ve outgrown, so that we can move forward. Azrael takes away fear, doubt, anger, worry, stress, and resentment. If it stands in the way of your developing a closer relationship with the Divine, Azrael will remove it.

N
OVEMBER
4

As you’ve most likely heard by now, we’re going back to court. Jason, Jessie, and I will all be there at once, and a new judge will hear all the evidence. In the opinion handed down by the Arkansas Supreme Court, the judges pretty much slapped down all the absurd jabber that Dustin McDaniel and company offered. Someone described it as a “sweeping victory” for us. Of course, this doesn’t mean you’ll see any actions of honesty, integrity, or sanity come from the attorney general’s office in the near future. They’ll continue to do as they’ve always done. They’ll fight to defend a corrupt trial until the state goes bankrupt. The statement they released to the media says it’s their constitutional duty to defend the guilty verdict. Perhaps I’m wrong here, but I thought their duty was to defend justice. Their comment was pretty revealing.

At least we no longer have to deal with Burnett. I never thought I’d actually be hoping that Burnett would win a senate seat, but when he did I breathed a sigh of relief. It boggles my mind that a community of people actually chose to have someone like that represent them, but I’m glad they did. By welcoming his poison into their lives, they have removed it from mine. The Lord works in mysterious ways, as my grandmother used to say. Seriously, though—it truly is odd how things work out sometimes, isn’t it?

D
ECEMBER
4

My thirty-sixth birthday is in one week. This will be my eighteenth birthday in a cage. It’s official—exactly half my life has been spent in here. In some ways it seems like I’ve only been here for a very short period. In other ways it seems like centuries. It doesn’t feel like I’m turning thirty-six. It feels more like two hundred thirty-six. Yet at the same time I can still remember being seven years old as if it were last week. Time is an incredibly strange thing. I think all of the most magickal things are probably connected in one way or another to the phenomenon we call time.

I’ve heard about the Fox News station in Memphis doing a “special report” in which they “analyzed” my body language. They commented on things like how I move my mouth. I wonder how their mouths would move if they’d been repeatedly punched in the face by sadistic prison guards. Or how it would change the way they moved if they were forced to wear chains that cut into their skin for seventeen and a half years. I wonder how they would move if they’d been beaten until they pissed blood, hadn’t been exposed to sunlight in years, and were suddenly being asked invasive questions by rude people after a decade in solitary confinement. They have no idea how strange and overwhelming other people’s energy can be when you’ve been alone for a very, very long time. Ah, well. Perhaps I shouldn’t expect them to understand. Or even be respectful. All I can do is keep moving forward.

*  *  *

O
n January 4, 2011, Judge Laser held an open hearing in Jonesboro, and a conference call with my lawyers and with Jason’s and Jessie’s.

F
EBRUARY
6

Today I had one of those brief flashes where I remembered what the sunset looks and feels like. I completely gave myself over to the memory, letting it wash through me, losing myself in it. I’m afraid that soon such memories will be gone because it gets harder and harder to conjure them up. It’s been nearly twenty years since I’ve actually seen a sunset. I regularly receive letters now from people who had not even been born the last time I saw a sunset.