Authors: Helen Prejean
He reads evenly, without any sort of inflection. Understatement, every bit of it, these words to win grace, to save his life. But his words are stamped with his pride. He begins by saying that he did not kill Faith Hathaway and that he’s not going to “beg” for his life, and then he says, “This whole case was politically motivated from the first beginning,” and tells how D.A. Marion Farmer “had got himself into the hot seat by letting them New York murderers cop a plea which then led Mr. Farmer to tighten up and come down hard on my case, using me as a stepping stone in his political career. Before the election Mr. Farmer stated publicly that I would go to my death before the first of the year.”
As he reads on I find out why, after his arrest, he had changed his mind and given a statement to officials about the Hathaway murder without an attorney present.
“The District Attorney investigator [Assistant District Attorney
William Alford, Jr.] told me that at the present time my mother and stepfather were being arrested [for driving Robert and Vaccaro to Mississippi, helping them to evade arrest] and he was going to make sure that my Mother got the maximum sentence if I didn’t tell him my involvement in this crime. After I gave them the statement I asked the District Attorney investigator if he would help my Mother, and he said he couldn’t promise me anything but he would put in a word for her.”
3
Robert argues that his court-appointed counsel was ineffective. “After I received the federal prison terms of life my state attorney told me that he didn’t really have to prepare for my charge in the state [capital murder] because I would never be turned over to Louisiana. He said that he would go through the usual procedure and put on what defense we had, which was nothing.
“He came to see me in New Orleans and brought me over a hundred news clippings of my case. On the same day he visited me he said somebody had dumped his garbage cans full of garbage all over his yard and he said he didn’t know if he was making a mistake by taking my case or not.”
He ends by saying:
“If I would have had a proper defense without all the pre-trial publicity and an attorney that wanted to put forth an effort to really give me the due process of law, which the Constitution of the United States of America says that I’m entitled to, I know I wouldn’t have been found guilty and sentenced to death because I would have been given the opportunity to probably plead guilty to a lesser offense.
“I know the death of Miss Hathaway has caused a lot of pain and sorrow for her family members and I truly regret everything that has happened. But my death is not going to bring Miss Hathaway back to this earth. Thank you for listening to me.”
I tell him I agree that politics did play a role in his case, but I tell him why the hearing is not the place to raise the issue.
He listens intently, smoking and looking down and taking in everything I say, and he says he’s going to have to think about it.
“Your poor Mama,” I say, thinking of her terrible conflict — caught between the law which forbade her to assist escaping lawbreakers and her maternal instinct to help her son.
“She did six months in jail,” Robert says, “and you
know
I’m mad about that. They double-dealed me. I gave them the statement without a lawyer there, which my better judgment told me not to because I couldn’t see my mother going to jail. She’s not strong
anyways.” And he says that his mother has had “a real hard life” (he always says this) and has worked hard all her life — as a cook, a maid, a waitress. “She didn’t have a criminal record,” he says. “They could’ve given her a suspended sentence. They were mad at me and took it out on her.”
He says he’s not so sure he wants her to come to the Pardon Board hearing. “She’s just going to bust out cryin’ and won’t be able to say nothin’ ‘cause she’s gonna be so tore up. It’s just not worth it to put her through all that. And she’s gonna have to sit there and hear the Harveys and the D.A.”
I try to think of Mama in a situation like this, having to plead for the life of my brother, Louie, in such a public setting before such an unresponsive group.
But I can’t get the picture. It’s just too far-fetched to imagine. It’s hard to know what Robert’s mother must be experiencing. She must feel that she’s walking around in a place where trees grow with their roots in the air and birds fly upside down. She must feel that she can’t get out of a nightmare.
I find myself now saying to Robert some of the same words I had said to Pat, words drawn from some force that taps deep and runs strong, and I tell him that despite his crime, despite the terrible pain he has caused, he is a human being and he has a dignity that no one can take from him, that he is a son of God.
“Ain’t nobody ever called me no son of God before,” he says, and smiles. “I’ve been called a son-of-a-you-know-what lots of times but never no son of God.”
He doesn’t have a chance with the Pardon Board, I know that, and I think he must know it, too. I’m starting to count the weeks left in his life — four weeks? six weeks?
I glance at my watch. It’s almost time to go.
“Okay, I’ll let the political stuff go,” he says. “I see what you’re sayin’ that it won’t help my case even though it’s all of it true. I mean, this whole death penalty ain’t nothin’ but politics. The Pardon Board, they’re all a bunch of political appointees who do whatever the governor wants. But I’ll take my ballpoint pen and scratch out those parts.”
“You may want to think about your mother,” I say. “I know it’s bound to be upsetting for her to be part of this hearing, and you’d like to save her from it, but if you die, after you’re gone, it may be bad for her if she didn’t have the chance to speak for you. Maybe she will always wonder if she had been there for you, maybe it would have made a difference.”
“Yeah,” he says, he’ll think about that. It’s an angle he hadn’t thought of.
I freeze with dread at the thought of the hearing. But he seems resigned. Maybe he’s found a way to steel himself not to expect anything.
I put my hand up to the screen to tell him good-bye.
“See you at the hearing, Robert,” I say.
“I want you to know I got my pride. I’m not grovelin’ in front of those people. I don’t grovel to nobody,” he says.
It feels odd going through the visitor center at Angola on a Monday. Usually visitors are not allowed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Guards ask each of us coming for the Pardon Board hearing to state our names so they can check them off a typed list. When the inmate is to be present, I find out, the hearing is held here at Angola. Which gives my heart a turn when I remember that Pat did not attend his hearing.
Visitor rules are relaxed today. No pat searches, just metal detectors, and women are allowed purses and men don’t have to empty their pockets for inspection. Anyone desiring to attend the hearing has had to contact the Department of Corrections beforehand and give his or her name.
Marcia Blum and Liz Scott, my writer friend, have driven to the prison with me. Liz is at work on an article for
New Orleans Magazine.
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Next week she plans to interview Robert Willie and the Harveys.
Through the window of the visitor center I see a yellow Cadillac driving up to the front gate. Marcia whispers to me that the people in the car are Pardon Board members.
I have my plea for Robert typed out and I feel ready. No, not ready. I feel cold and tight. I keep telling myself that we are going to do our best, we are going to make the best presentation we can and the Board is summarily going to approve this killing. I have spent hours and hours trying to get the right words. I prayed, I wrote, I scratched out words and wrote new ones in the margins, I consulted with Bill Quigley and some of the Sisters, then prayed again. Preparing for Pat’s hearing seems simple compared to this. Then I had hope that the right words could matter.
The hearing is being held in the big meeting room at the main prison, the same room where Eddie and I visit. At the far end of the room there is a long table where the Board will be seated.
Marcia, Liz, and I sign the book on the “defendant’s” side. I remember this from Pat’s hearing, how each person must declare for the defendant or the state. Inside the rooms chairs are divided by an aisle down the middle. Blue chairs for the state’s “side” are on the left, and I see the Harveys there. Red chairs to the right for Robert Lee Willie’s “side.” There’s a group with the Harveys, maybe fifteen people. On Robert’s “side” there are his mother, John Craft, Marcia, Liz and me. John is already sitting at the defendant’s table, sorting through papers.
I look into the face of Elizabeth, Robert’s mother, middle-aged, in blue polyester pants and a white sweater. Her hair is short and sitting rather flat on her head. She has deep circles under her eyes. I had met her briefly a few days ago when Marcia and I helped her prepare for this hearing. I put my arms around her. She says, her voice quivering, “I don’t know what I’m going to say. I just don’t know what I can say to these people.” Marcia and I sit on either side of her. “Don’t worry about the words,” I tell her. “You’re here. You’re his mother and you’re here, that’s everything.” But the words don’t seem to help much. She smokes one cigarette after another. Her hands are trembling.
I leave Marcia and Liz with her and make my way over to the Harveys. “So, we meet again,” I say to Vernon as I shake his hand. Elizabeth looks pretty in her long-sleeved blouse and skirt. Vernon has on a tan polyester suit, a white shirt and a dark tie. I go with small talk — the drive, the weather. Vernon points slyly toward the Board members (there are three black members of the board and two whites) and says,
“They
outnumber us, but maybe we’ll still win.” He lowers his voice when he says this, using that confidential tone that people use with a trusted friend.
Remembering Marsellus, the black chairperson, and the way he had voted with the others to uphold Pat’s death sentence, I tell Vernon that I don’t think the race of the Board members will make a difference.
I see Robert, legs and hands cuffed, coming into the room with guards on either side. His hair is nicely combed. No black knitted hat. Even with the leg irons scraping across the tile floor, he has that cocky spring in his walk. He is smiling. I tell Vernon maybe I’ll get to see them afterward, and I move back to Robert’s “side.”
The guards escort Robert up to the defense table and remove his handcuffs. They remain standing nearby. For the moment, John has stepped away and Robert is at the table alone. I go up to him
and greet him and ask if he’d like a cup of coffee. He nods and says, “Thank you, ma’am,” and I bring the coffee in a Styrofoam cup.
The prosecution takes its place at its table; two men, District Attorney Marion Farmer and Assistant William Alford, Jr.
The Board members begin taking their places at the front table. Two television cameras from local stations are mounted on rolling tripods on the side aisles. Chairperson Marsellus announces the procedures and rules. He says that there is no need to give lengthy speeches because the Board has received copies of the presentations and has already studied them. He encourages everyone to be brief and to the point.
John Craft goes first. He says that despite the court proceedings, “serious issues remain unsolved, which cast doubt upon the constitutionality and fairness of the proceedings” which have sentenced Robert Willie to death. And then he ticks them off, every one of them I’ve read and studied in the writs and appeals: the inept attorney, the prejudicial pretrial publicity, the failure of the defense to present documentation of Robert’s substance abuse during his sentencing trials. He adds that to his knowledge he knows of no other prisoner who has been turned over by federal authorities for state execution. He ends with a quote from Dostoyevsky, that famous quote about how a society is judged not by how it treats its upstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals.
Robert’s mother is called to testify. She comes to the table and sits by her son and does not look at him. He doesn’t look at her either; nor does she touch him. They both look at a spot on the table in front of them. The television moves in. Cameras flash. Anyone with an eye for drama knows this is a special moment: the mother pleading for her son. But Elizabeth can only blurt out a few words. She says that Robert had had a hard life, that … She stops and her eyes fill with tears and she puts her head down into her hands and tries to continue, “but he was a good boy,” and bursts into irretrievable sobs. Her head is down and Robert’s head is down, and John Craft gets up and takes Robert’s mother by the arm and leads her out of the room. I know that John needs to be with Robert, so I get up and go out to be with Elizabeth. All I can do is hold her in my arms and let her sob. She keeps saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” and I try to comfort her, saying that I am sure her tears are a far more eloquent testimony for her son than any words could ever be.
When I return to the room, Robert is already into his statement.
He is sticking strictly to what he has prepared. His voice is calm and clear. His arms lie alongside either side of his typed pages. Sometimes he looks up toward the faces of the Board, but mostly he looks down at his typed pages.
Listening to Robert, I struggle to stave off fierce feelings of futility. Maybe by some miracle the Board will vote to spare Robert’s life.
Please, God, help me
, I pray. My heart is pounding in my ears. I am the last from the “red chairs” to speak.
I sit next to Robert and put my hand on his blue-denimed arm stretched out on the table. I bring the microphone close. The same feeling of strength and calmness that I had in the death house with Pat comes upon me now. I take a deep breath and look up at the five faces. One day, I feel sure, all the death instruments in this country — electric chairs and gas chambers and lethal injection needles — will be housed behind velvet ropes in museums. But not now.
“I come before this Board of Pardons today to plead for the life of Robert Willie. You’ve met me before. I was spiritual adviser to Elmo Patrick Sonnier, and I came before you last spring to plead for his life. He is dead now, executed on April 5, 1984.”