The Autobiography of an Execution

nodded. Winston drummed his fingers against the glass that separated us. The Randy Newman song “Marie” started playing in my head: You looked like a princess the night we met. I listened, lost, while Winston thought. Finally he said, Yeah, go on ahead. You’re the first dude that’s been straight with me. Everybody’s always sugarcoating everything. I’m tired, man, tired of being lied to. Do what you can do.

I told him I would and asked if he had any questions. He said, Yeah I do. Do you have any good news for me? He smiled.

I said, I’m seeing a guy named Ezekiel Green when I finish talking to you. Do you know him?

Winston said, Bald-headed skinny dude with a tattoo on his face?

I said, I don’t know. I’ve never seen him.

He said, I think that’s the guy. Something ain’t right with him. They gassed him once and he didn’t cough or choke or nothing. Just laughed. Talks to himself a lot. Dude showers with his boots on.

I said, Thanks. I’ll send you what we file. I probably won’t see you again. Take care, though, and I’ll talk to you. He touched his hand to the glass between us. I touched it back.

MURDER IS PERHAPS the ugliest crime, which is why it is so shocking that most murderers are so ordinary in appearance. Average height, average weight, average everything. Even after all these years, some part of me expects people who commit monstrous deeds to look like monsters. I meet them, and they look like me.

I stare at their eyes or their hands and try to picture them doing the terrible deed. At the time, this was how I imagined it happened: She was sleeping on the sofa when she felt the gun barrel pressed against her temple. She would have thought it was one of the kids horsing around, except for the hiss of shhhh, followed by, Open your eyes, bitch. She did. Did she think she was dreaming? The gun looked like the one she took to the target range, and she wondered for a moment whether it was. That was the last thought she had. The killer fired one shot, killing her instantly.

He chose the small-caliber gun because it did not make a lot of noise. It would not disturb the neighbors, but it did get the attention of one of the children, who had been playing in another room. The killer looked up and saw him there. There weren’t supposed to be any children. The boy looked to be around twelve, old enough to remember what he’d seen. The boy ran back into the bedroom. The killer walked toward the boy’s retreat, blood dripping from the gun. The boy was on the floor, under the bed, cradling his little sister. The killer pressed the gun against the boy’s chest, and fired one time. The little girl screamed. He pointed the gun at her heart and pulled the trigger again, and she was quiet.

On the day I met with Winston, I did not have time to meet with my client Henry Quaker, who had been sentenced to death for committing the triple murder. But his case was why I was at the prison. Ezekiel Green had written me a letter, saying he had important information that would prove Quaker was innocent. There are some letters I don’t ignore.

GREEN WAS WAITING for me in the booth. He had an elaborate E tattooed on his right cheek and a G on his left. I introduced myself and addressed him as Green. He said, That’s not my name no more. I changed it. I’m Shaka Ali. He paused and looked back over his shoulder, checking to make sure the guard was not standing behind him. He asked, Did you get my letter?

I told him that’s why I was there.

He said, I know all about you. I read your book.

You don’t hear much about people like Green from people like me. Most abolitionists like to focus on innocence. I see their point. They think as soon as we use DNA to prove with certainty that an innocent man has been executed—and that day will surely come—even the sheriffs and prosecutors down here in Texas will choose life.

But the book of mine Green said he read argued that even the guilty should be spared. I used to support the death penalty. I changed my mind when I learned how lawless the system is. If you have reservations about supporting a racist, classist, unprincipled regime, a regime where white skin is valued far more highly than dark, where prosecutors hide evidence and policemen routinely lie, where judges decide what justice requires by consulting the most recent Gallup poll, where rich people sometimes get away with murder and never end up on death row, then the death-penalty system we have here in America will embarrass you to no end.

Sometimes I think I became a lawyer because I believe rules matter, but I suppose I could have the cause and effect reversed. Either way, I said in that book that the abolitionists’ single-minded focus on innocence makes them seem as indifferent to principle as the vigilantes are. I might have gone too far. One abolitionist group invited me to give a talk at their annual conference, then disinvited me after the head of their board realized who I was.

I don’t know whether Green had really read my book, but if he had, I bet he would have liked it. It’s about people like him: murderers who did exactly what the prosecutors said they did.

He said, You’re an activist just like me. Did you know my old man helped organize factory workers?

I raised my eyebrows, trying to look impatient, which I was. I said, No, I didn’t know that. I looked at my watch.

He said, I’m going to organize the guys in here. We can’t stay locked up all day long, man. They treat us like animals. It’s harassment. Captain wrote me up the other day for saying fuck. I got a right to free speech, man. I can say what I want. I been talkin’ to the ACLU people about suing. They sued about the conditions in Mississippi and Oklahoma. Did you know that?

I did know that, but Green did not wait for me to answer. He kept on: They should let us work, listen to the radio, something, you know what I’m sayin’? His right eyelid pulsed like a cricket was trying to get out. He rubbed his hand across his shaved head. He smiled. His two front teeth were gold. He said, When I do this to my hair the guards know not to mess with me. No ’fro for them to grab ahold of. I’m ready to rumble, man. You know what I’m saying? I been keeping it like this for almost a year. They gas me when they take me to the shower, but it don’t bother me none. I can hold my breath for twenty minutes. I wait till it’s all gone.

I looked at my watch again. He said, You gotta be somewhere?

I told him that I had to get back to my office to get something filed. He asked, Who for? I shook my head and didn’t answer. He said, Don’t matter. It’s good you came to see me. We need to be dialoguing. We can learn from each other. You got the book smarts. I know what’s going down in here. I tell you, and we can take it on. You can come see me on a regular basis, all right?

He said, Can you get me something to eat?

Death row has several vending machines, filled with junk food and soda. People visiting inmates can buy them food by putting change into the machines, pushing the buttons, and letting the guard remove the items and pass them to the inmate. Visitors cannot bring paper money into the prison. The prison has a lot of rules. I told Green I didn’t have any change.

Green had murdered two people. He said God had told him to do it. His lawyer asked the jury to rule that Green was insane. The jury said he wasn’t, and the jury was right. Green knew the difference between right and wrong. He was not insane. He was just crazy.

I said, Can we talk about the letter? What do you know that can help me?

He said, Hold on, bro. You got to do something for me first. You got to earn my trust. Then he was off and talking again. He was talking about filing a civil-rights suit against the prison so he could get different medication and satellite radio. He said the only stations they could get were Christian talk shows. He said they were discriminating against the Muslims. He said they punished people arbitrarily. He said the guards let some inmates use cell phones in exchange for sex or bribes. A lot of what he was saying was probably true, but what he wanted was somewhat outside my expertise and way outside my interest. I looked at his face and pretended to listen. All I heard was blah blah blah blah blah. I heard him say, You hear what I’m sayin’, bro?, and I felt myself nod. I was staring at the tattoos on his face, trying to figure out how to change the E into an S, seeing if I could find a way to make the G into an A. He must have asked me a question I didn’t answer. He stood up and banged the phone against the window. He screamed, Are you listening to me? I stared at him. He banged the phone again and said, I don’t even have to be talking to you, motherfucker, do I?