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A lawyer. Who will pay for us to get a lawyer? Legal Aid refused to take our case. I guess it would have been an expensive case to take.
Traudl comes back. She has info printed out from the Death Penalty Information Center's website. She shows me the list I'm on on the site of people waiting to be executed. It describes me as a “volunteer”. Rage boils inside me. I'm not volunteering for execution! I didn't even drop my appeals! I just can't afford a lawyer!
She shows me printouts of stuff from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's website too. I didn't know my fellow inmates who were not my friends from before had done that stuff! They actually murdered people for money, for politics, for convenience, for attention, for personal blackmail, or for fun. I'm not one of them! I can't believe I talked to them. I can't believe I was stupid enough to think that just because they talked to me, they were okay.
And the TDCJ's website doesn't even tell the whole story of how and why me and my friends did what we did. It just says we stormed into the hospital in an attempt to free a potential child abuser and shot the cop guarding her door “in cold blood”.
Traudl has some printouts of pictures of my friends behind bars: the girls here in the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Geoff and Elton at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston. The pictures are part of profiles Traudl had put online for us, at the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty's site.
I cry when I see pictures and profiles of Geoff and Elton, especially Geoffrey. It's been so long since I've seen or heard from them. I read their profiles. They tell about themselves, their cases and their new daily lives. They're suffering there. Their cells are hot, small and stuffy, and they're never allowed out of them at the same time. They do their laundry in their sinks or toilets. The little box for their stuff is very little indeed. And they're not allowed any physical contact with their visitors. Some of them get beaten, sprayed, gassed, or shot with rubber bullets or bean bags by guards. Sometimes for trumped-up reasons.
“Tell me a little about yourself, Anne-Marie, and I'll write it down for the site,” Traudl says. So I do.
I got mail.
Lots of mail. From people I know. My parents. Telling me I'm a piece of shit. It's so stupid I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or throw something. Uncle Matt tried to kill me and they're telling me to let it slide, but their own daughter, who did a lot less, apparently deserves the death penalty.
I get a letter from my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Kaye, telling me she could tell I was bipolar even in sixth grade and that she's so sorry I'm on death row despite my mental illness, and that she might come to see me soon.
And from an enemy of mine from high school, Shyanne, telling me she's sorry she picked on me for being weird and that she's since been diagnosed with bipolar disorder too.
From Rachel, the leader of the bipolar group at the Ripley Clinic, saying she’s going to bring some of our friends from group to see me, if I don’t mind.
From Chantal and Shaniqua, who have been released from the HCPC though they had a hard time in there, being questioned by the police, after I left with our other friends. I write back and apologize to them. I didn't realize they would get in so much trouble. I also, just like I promised to myself, write back to Natasha, care of the HCPC, to apologize to her for when my friends sprayed her with pepper spray.
Nothing from Zygmunt.
Nothing from Jakub.
Instead, I get letters from people I don't know.
Firstly, from all around the world. Giorgio Giovanni, from Italy. Waldek Warzecha, from Poland. Lucy Platt from England. I put them all in touch with each other, not thinking they will care about each other, but then a week later I get a letter from the three of them together saying they’re starting an anti-capital-punishment-for-the-mentally-ill league in Europe.
Of course I get even more from North America. Marcia Bloom and Kay Kay Roush from Boston, Massachussetts. Luanne Fitzmaurice from New York, New York. Diane from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Barbara Iskandar from Montreal.
And a whole bunch of creepy men, but some legitimate men too.
Including a lawyer. Girard Packer, from Houston. And other lawyers from all over. I suddenly have lawyers coming out of my ass. Looks like Traudl didn’t have to sell her houses after all. Too bad they all came too late. Executions move fast in Texas. Why, oh why, did I have to be born in Texas?
It's too late for me to write back.
You see, just yesterday I got my date.
It's tomorrow.
But then my brain starts working again and I realize he left his number, so I call him. He rushes down here. And gets me a stay.
The stay is based on the fact that lethal injection the way they do it is cruel and unusual, as I said before. The judge throws out the case, because there’s no evidence that it’s that painful. “But why take the chance?” I shriek in court, knowing a contempt of court charge won’t matter because I’m going to die anyway. “If someone was reported missing at sea, would you waste time you could spend looking for them because there’s no EVIDENCE the person is actually lost at sea?”
Girard Packer, my lawyer, grabs my hand and tries to make me sit down.
On to the Supreme Court. So the executions are still stayed.
He also gets stays for all the others.
The next trick is trying to convince them that we were insane at the time of the crime… after all, most of us were inmates in a state hospital, and all of us were being treated by the MHMR. Girard gets every detail from our files from the Ripley House MHMR clinic, the NPC, the HCPC. So another stay, until that’s decided on.
But even though we were mentally ill at the time, this Supreme Court justice still says we knew right from wrong at the time. “The death sentences still stand,” he says.
He keeps getting us stays, until he can't any more.
Now we all have dates, and there's nothing left to do. Girard makes an impassioned plea for us in court, saying we were trying to save ourselves and each other from a corrupt system. That we were abused by the mental health system.
No can-do. “A murderer is still a murderer, no matter why,” the judge says.
Geoffrey’s dad Humphrey was always a nice guy. I knew he would turn up here. He turns up with a woven cross made by Geoffrey from strips of Geoffrey’s white prison uniform. He also leaves me some letters from Geoffrey. As much as I love Humphrey, I can’t wait to get back to my cell and read the letters.
Then I remember we’re all going to die anyway. Reading the letters turns suddenly into a bittersweet task with a tragic, depressing bent.
If we weren’t dying, it would have been even better than I thought. He loves me! He says loves my smile, the prank I played on Jakub when Jakub gossiped about Geoffrey, my intelligence (REALLY, now?), how we played games and played hooky and played pranks as kids, how he loved me even then, how I defended him to our teachers when he hadn’t done his homework or was caught passing me a note in class…
Why did I not know? Why did we not hook up? I could have had years with him. I must send him a letter and tell him I’m so, so sorry.
I send him a letter back, telling him I’m sorry, how I want to be with him, saying I love how he stood up for me when Jakub criticized or manipulated me. I lay it on thick, I spit it all out, I spill the beans, I cough it up, I tell it like it is. I tell him everything that happened on 2D at the Harris County Psychiatric Center… a full rundown of everything he missed with every juicy detail.
Two days later, I get a reply. He tells me he loves me, that he’s so glad I want to be with him and he wants to be with me. He tells me of his friends on death row… many are guilty, but then there’s Alex Dale Frank, who killed his dad for beating him and his siblings and sexually abusing his sister and threatening them with death when they left at age sixteen and eighteen.
Derek Merril Hutton, another friend of his, also doesn’t deserve the death penalty; he deserves punishment, yes, but he says he would have stopped his friend from killing a boy for his lunch money (in high school when they were still minors, at that!) but he was afraid, when he saw his friend get violent, that his friend would turn on him and kill him.
Last but not least, Elias Thorpe. Elias’s mom got into a rage at him for getting some notes wrong on the piano; she had always been a mad genius with no patience who cared too much about passing the genius down and not enough about her children themselves. Elias, scared for his life, had punched her out, and her head had impaled itself on a sharp statue on her way down.
Geoff tells more about his life on death row, how the hot sauce from the commissary that they use to smother the inedible food costs an arm and a leg, that the men there aren’t allowed to have hair (they must either shave or buzz it) because men have been known to hide weapons and drugs in their hair.
I knew I should have been with Geoff and not with Jakub. Now it’s too late.
Or maybe not.
How can I get out of here? Can I somehow get sick enough to be sent to the hospital but not sick enough to die? But how? I could hurt myself, give myself a wound, and deliberately infect it, I guess. But it's too late. I'm on death watch. Geoffrey, Elton, and Johanna are in other cells here on death watch in the Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas. The death house. At least I can finally talk to Geoffrey and Elton. (We can shout up and down the row to each other.) But what a situation to get my wish in!
We arrived last night at the Huntsville Unit amidst a storm of reporters, curious bystanders, supporters of the death penalty, and supporters of us.
“We love you, Anne-Marie!” some girl shouted at me as I was led inside. And I looked, and I realized it was one of my former enemies from high school, a real snob and bully back then, holding a sign saying “Stop Legal Murder.” Other signs said “You can't pardon a corpse!” and “'Exonerated' means SHIT to a dead person.” And simple ones like “Choose LIFE!!!” Then the ones from our enemies: “The show must go on.” “Vanquish the vermin.” “No drugs, please. Just hang em high. Let them suffer before they die.” And simple ones like “KILL THEM ALL.” Chants of “Stop legal murder! Stop legal murder!” followed us inside.
The first thing I did when I saw Geoffrey— when I was led past the cell he was in— was tell him I loved him.
He told me he loved me very much too.
I had to shout right in front of the guards my very personal feelings, or I wouldn't have gotten to tell them to Geoffrey at all: “We could have had so much together! But then, if I hadn't been committed, would we even have thought of being together?”
Then the guard stopped, stopped me from walking further, turned me sideways, and deposited me in my new cell.
I cried myself to sleep.
The chaplain from the Polunsky Unit is here. I reject his god because it’s the same Christian God my mom had, and we all know my feelings about her.
He asks us all if we all understand the procedure to be carried out. I tell him, “I know better than you what’s going to happen… you’ve just been fed what the prison wants you to believe, but I’ve read more liberal articles, and I know it’s going to be agony!”
He says, “I wasn’t going to say it will be painless. I don’t know myself. I have never experienced it.” Soon we’re talking about other things and we’ve warmed up to each other. I tell him that I want to call my mom, that I love her but don’t want to encourage her abuse by rewarding her for bad behavior by telling her I love her. The chaplain tells me, “Why don’t you tell her you love her but that you hate her abusive behavior?” I tell him about the abuse.
Then he asks me if I rejected his God because it’s my mother’s God. I say yes. I tell him, “Why can’t we have a God but no religion? It’s not that I hate God; I just hate THAT God.”
“It sounds like you’re a Unitarian Universalist,” the chaplain says. And we talk about that.
After the chaplain is gone I call my mom, collect from the Hunstville Unit. She doesn’t take the collect call. She hangs up when she hears my name. I try my brother Ira. I hate him, but maybe he’ll pass on my message to her. He doesn’t answer at all. I finally write my mom a letter. I hope she reads it. I won’t be around to make sure she does.
The first thing I'm going to say in my final statement is that the mental health system failed us.
They didn't treat us... they just treated us badly. They just wanted to kill some of us. Among other atrocities, like electric shocks to the brain (like what almost happened to me), punishment for not acting normal (like what was going to happen to Kurt), ignoring of physical illness symptoms and/or dangerous medication side effects (like what actually happened to Kurt), unwanted Do Not Rescuscitate orders (like what was going to happen to Bethany), hospitalization for no good reason (like what happened to Teresa), being indefinitely put away for no good reason (like what almost happened to Ana), guardianship for no good reason (like what was about to happen to Teresa and Bethany), human experimentation without consent (like what happened to Elton), and guardianship abuse (like what happened to Kurt).
I also write my final statement down.
“Anne-Marie!”
It's the warden. Oh my God. Is it my time NOW? I thought it was tomorrow.
“Did you hear? You all got a stay from the governor!”
Next thing I know, I'm laying on the floor.
“The governor wants to talk to you,” the warden says.
They pass me the receiver of the phone through the door. “Hello?” I say shyly. I'd better be polite, or he might change his mind.
“Anne-Marie? Yes, I already talked to your friends about the stay. How are you doing?”
“Much better,” I say. I decide not to say that I feel much better now that I got a stay. That sounds like I have no remorse and just care about my own survival. It might blow the whole thing out of the water. For all of us.
Relief is still washing over me. I hope I don't pass out again while talking to the governor.
“The fact is, I think it would be a serious miscarriage of justice to execute a person who committed a crime because they were mentally ill at the time.”
Even though it goes deeper than that— it wasn't just our mental illness, but the way we were treated— I better not argue.
“I'm going to commute all of your sentences to life,” he says. “The judge will decide if you get parole, but I think they will rule in your favor. You'll be staying at the Mountain View Unit, in the same building, but in the psychiatric unit, not death row.”
“Thank you so much!” I say.
“And Anne-Marie? I hope you all get the help you need at Mountain View.”
I doubt it. What I need is to talk about my family. Well, maybe I can write a book about my family.
Look at me, already planning my life because I’m not going to get executed after all.
Life. With parole. That opens up so many possibilities for... a life.
There are people who think their life is over when they get life in prison, even with parole, and they commit suicide. They have never been on death row. In many cases that's why they don't realize what they could have done with a life sentence instead of a death sentence.
I can write a book about our experience from prison. I can have visitors in prison. I can write and receive letters from prison. Even to Geoffrey and Elton. I can even possibly make more friends in prison. I can get an education and work in prison for commissary money. I can take up hobbies in prison... drawing, writing fiction, making origami, whatever. I can even write articles in prison for mental health activism.
I couldn't do that stuff if I was dead.
I'm already planning my life, in and out of prison. It doesn't look bad at all.
“HEY! GEOFF! ELTON! JOHANNA! WE GOT A REPRIEVE! WE GOT COMMUTED! OUR SENTENCES GOT COMMUTED!”
“We know! We just talked to the governor too!” Elton shouts back.
“Ve are saved!” Johanna says. I can tell she's crying. “Ve're going back to the Mohntain View psych vard and ve might see Teresa!”
There's an even bigger crowd outside, so big they try to sneak us away out another door, but that doesn't work. Then I realize that this is probably the last time I see Geoffrey, unless one or both of us gets paroled. But I can call him and write to him. And maybe we can even get married. Conjugal visits might even be allowed.
The guards don't let me give Geoffrey a hug. They lead Geoffrey and Elton into one truck, heading to the Ellis Unit, and Johanna and I to the other, heading back to Mountain View in Gatesville.
From the truck, I can still hear half the crowd booing and the other half cheering.
Some of them are yelling for us to be hanged, but that's gotten so predictable it's boring. Others are yelling for us to be freed, and for the first time, I think it might eventually become a possibility. For the first time, I allow it to make me smile.
“Anne-Marie! Anne-Marie! I'm happy for you!” shouts a voice I haven't heard in five years. Since high school.
It's an enemy from school. Not the one I saw holding the sign, but another one.
If she was still my enemy, wouldn't she be among the ones booing and shouting for me to be hanged?
And then I see them... my parents. Just before the truck doors close. The hatred on their faces is legendary.
But I mind very little. I have a real family now.
As we drive away, Johanna turns to me. She looks shocked, but not a bad kind of shocked. “I just saw my aunt who hasn’t talked to my family in ten years,” she says. “She vas holding a Save Johanna sign.”
“Great!” I exclaim, as someone passes outside the van with a big sign with our pictures on it and “SAVE THE HOUSTON 8!!!”
I never got a chance to say goodbye to Carmen, Mindy, Felicity or Yvonne. Oh well, I can always try calling them, and I can write to them. Hopefully before it’s too late. Maybe I can use my connections to save them.
Yes.
I can use the crimes I committed and the connections I made to help people.
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