Hard Time (35 page)

‘I can’t believe this!’ I said, furious with her public defender. ‘I didn’t know an attorney can just lie to you like that. You need to put a complaint in to the Arizona Bar Association.’

‘That’s not gonna get our visits back!’

‘Maybe I can get Alan Simpson on it.’

‘When? What are we gonna do in the meantime? I’m so sad.’ She sobbed. ‘I don’t think I’m ever gonna be able to see you again until you’re out. They haven’t even tried you. They’re moving so slow.’

‘We’ve come this far, and it hasn’t been easy. We can make it through all the dirty games these attorneys are playing. Look, I love you. We can get through this.’

‘You’re always so positive. Maybe too positive.’

Without the visits, I feared for our relationship. That Claudia was the victim of a mess I’d made receded into the background as my anger erupted at the prosecutor and Claudia’s public defender for subjecting her to more injustice than she could bear.

‘How’re you doing, Million Dollar Bond Guy?’ asked Dr Ross – a $600,000-a-year abortionist accused of molesting his patients – as we were escorted to court in chains. During the ’90s, Dr Ross had become famous on TV for criticising the escalating violence against abortionists and their clients. He’d patrolled his clinic in a bullet-proof vest, armed with a gun. He was a strapping man, greying at the sides, with a wolfish shape to his face.

‘Holding up,’ I said. ‘I’ve been hearing about your case on the radio all week. Is it true you may get a new trial?’

‘I didn’t even hear the news this week. What did they say?’

‘They said one of your alleged victims was arrested soliciting two undercover vice cops, that she lied on the stand, hid her true occupation as a prostitute and that your attorney is asking for a new trial.’

‘Oh yeah, it’s all true. The Attorney General’s office must have known she was a prostitute before the trial. Most of my alleged victims were highly sexually active drug users who were using abortion as a form of birth control. Some were up to their fourth abortion. I’d tell them, “Protect your vagina! Use a condom!” But, no, they didn’t like to use condoms. They’d rather get pregnant and pay me $360 for a fucking abortion.’

‘Why didn’t they just take birth control?’ I said.

‘Because they were too fucking high and stupid to remember to take their pills. You know all about trial by media, Million Dollar Bond Guy, but it’s much more corrupt than you can imagine.’

‘How so?’

‘Let me tell you what’s really going on here. Most bastard DAs are seeking higher office and would run over their own mother to get a higher appointment. To make it look like they’re getting tougher on crime, they arrest several people and take their cases straight to the media. They’re probably all at it, contributing to press articles and news reports claiming they’re “from sources close to the investigators and prosecution”.’

‘In my
New Times
article, there were quotes from sources close to the investigators and prosecution, and a quote from the prosecutor.’

‘Exactly. That’s how they begin their game. I suggest you go to the
New Times
, and search under David Ross, abortionist, and pull my whole series. How does it feel to have your civil liberties denied by these bastards taking their cases to the press?’

‘They’ve trampled on your right to a fair trial. What they did to me was nothing compared to you.’

‘Justice – ha! Look at my charges. I allegedly molested my patients. Do you know what that means?’

‘No.’

‘It means that I put my fingers into their vaginas. What do they expect? I’m an abortion doctor! Some of the women had rectal examinations and now they are screaming abuse.’

‘So are these women motivated by money here?’

‘Maybe it’s the guilt. Some of them are on their third and fourth abortions and they want to take their anger out on someone else. I hope to God that none of them get awarded compensation.’

‘I’m writing a book about my experience; maybe you should do the same.’

‘Someone needs to write about this and let the world know what’s going on in Arizona’s justice system.’

The inmates told Dr Ross he’d get a life sentence if he didn’t sign the plea bargain offered to him. He said his conscience prohibited him from admitting guilt when he was innocent. To take a life sentence when you could sign for much less, you have to either be crazy . . . or innocent. My gut told me he was the latter and that his foul mouth had contributed to his demise.

On 2 January 2004, Dr Ross, who’d lost at trial and was facing anywhere from probation to 74 years, went for sentencing. Seventeen supporters wrote to the judge that he was a skilful surgeon who’d battled for women’s rights to have abortions. His wife said the alleged victims were ‘strangers who enter your life uninvited and pluck you out of your existence in one beat of the heart’. Even a female judge who’d known him for 20 years wrote, ‘Dr Ross’s manners at times raise hackles, but he . . . would not use his position to harm defenceless women.’ But continuing to protest his innocence only aggravated his sentence. The judge chastised him for being remorseless and sentenced him to 35 years. On my radio, I heard the alleged victims rejoicing at the judge’s decision. One said, ‘I hope he dies in prison.’

‘I was sliding soap under the doors in the next pod, and Dr Ross was crying. I gave him shit for breaking down,’ Mack said.

The next day, Dr Ross was at Visitation with his mother-in-law, who he called Big Bertha.

‘How does it feel to stand up for yourself and have your life taken away?’ I asked.

‘In this justice system, if an innocent man doesn’t kowtow to the court and proclaim his guilt, heaven help him. There’s nothing I can do now except start my appeal.’

‘How long does an appeal take?’

‘Five years if I’m lucky.’

Terrified of ending up like Dr Ross, I began to contemplate what to say to the judge at my sentencing hearing.

For the first time, I did a ten-minute headstand. I discovered Greek philosophy and became obsessed with Plato’s
Republic
. Biographies took up much of my time: Timothy Leary, Howard Hughes, Aldous Huxley . . . Meditating, I visualised being inside various shapes: spheres, tetrahedrons, spinning Platonic solids . . . I imagined light running down my spine, grounding me with the earth. I sat in the lotus position for 20 minutes staring at a mandala, and then when I closed my eyes, the glowing image of the mandala remained. I discovered higher states of consciousness without poisoning my body with drugs. I longed to visit an ashram and to read Sanskrit texts. I rambled in letters home about parallel universes, sunspots, supervolcanoes and the Illuminati. I moved on to an advanced Spanish text. Attempting to learn Mandarin, I sketched Chinese characters. All of these things were helping me take my mind off the time I was facing.

Some of the inmates in the upper-tier cells thought it would be fun to coax Chicken Wing into climbing the metal-grid stairs that rose from the front of the day room up to the balcony.

‘I’ve got crackers! Come and get them!’ a prisoner yelled as if talking to a dog.

‘Cookies for you over here, Chicken Wing!’

‘You can do it, Chicken Wing!’

Chicken Wing looked around for his cellmate to get the food, but his cellmate was in the shower. Chicken Wing attempted the first stair but stopped when he almost fell over.

I got on my hands and knees and yelled through the gap under my door, ‘Don’t do it, Chicken Wing!’

‘I can’t come up the stairs!’ Chicken Wing yelled.

‘Come on, climb the stairs!’

‘
Cookies
,’ a man shouted in the Cookie Monster voice, shaking a rack of cookies.

Egged on by their shouting, Chicken Wing tried again. The inmates stood at their doors and cheered. He made it to the second step, swaying, hanging onto the railing with his good hand, and they cheered again. He almost fell forward onto the third, but he righted himself to more cheering. Pausing to consolidate his gains, he looked over his shoulder at the distance he’d travelled and grew scared.

‘Don’t give up now, Chicken Wing!’

‘You can do it, homey!’

‘You better get your ass up here if you want these cookies, dawg!’

‘
Cookies
,’ came the Cookie Monster voice.

Using the railing, he pulled himself forward but fell to one side and collapsed on the stairs. The inmates booed, laughed and rained abuse down on him.

Emerging from the shower in his pink boxers, his cellmate found Chicken Wing sprawled on the stairs. ‘You shouldn’t fuck with a cripple like that!’ he yelled at the men upstairs. ‘I’ll be right up there when I get dressed to get those cookies from y’all!’ He helped Chicken Wing up, got dressed, charged up the stairs and demanded the cookies.

Chicken Wing’s cellmate was sentenced and rolled up a few days later. The guards celled Chicken Wing with a schizophrenic old man who urinated on the walls. Chicken Wing spent most of his time on the bottom bunk at exactly the height the old man urinated at. Living in constant fear of the old man urinating on him sent Chicken Wing into a depression. He stopped badgering us for crackers.

On my hour out, I watched the old man accost a guard. He was standing at his cell door, gazing at the Mexican American female through the window. ‘Why I am here?’

‘What do you mean: why am I here?’ she replied.

‘Why am I here?’

‘’Cause you’ve got charges.’

‘I’m not here for the good of my health, you know! Why am I here?’

‘You have charges,’ she said in a sympathetic way.

The old man danced around the cell, twisting his head from side to side as if seeking something. He stopped as suddenly as he’d started and looked at the guard with a crazy expression. ‘I don’t see my charges! I definitely don’t see them! My charges aren’t in here! Why am I here?’ It was more than she could take. She abandoned him still ranting about not seeing his charges.

The old man’s behaviour took a worse toll on Chicken Wing. He stopped speaking to us and barely left his cell during his hour out. Whenever I peered into his cell, he was on his bunk rocking dementedly, his face blank.

After taking a shower, I paid him a visit. ‘Come and talk to me, Chicken Wing.’

‘No! Go away!’

‘Look, if you tell me what’s wrong, maybe I can help you.’

He ignored me.

‘I’ll get you anything you want off the store list.’

‘Anything?’ he asked, his remote expression fading.

‘Anything.’

‘Cookies?’ He grinned like a child, and I knew I had him.

‘Lots of cookies.’

He raised himself awkwardly and stumbled to the window.

‘What’s the matter?’

He looked over his shoulder at the old man asleep on the top bunk. ‘He’s gonna pee on me. He already peed on my mattress.’

‘How about I fill out an inmate request form, asking they move you to another cell, and you sign it?’

‘I’ll do it! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!’

The guards moved him all right, but in with Leprechaun. Chicken Wing’s mood improved for a few weeks, until Leprechaun leaked to us that Chicken Wing had been wetting the bed. This led to many cruel jokes during Chicken Wing’s hour out. On the grounds that their cell reeked of urine, Leprechaun requested to move out.

Squeegee’s public defender duped him into signing a plea bargain stipulating a minimum sentence of four months, a presumptive sentence of one year and a maximum sentence of two years. Reviewing the police reports, Squeegee decided the police had conducted an illegal search and had no case against him. His attorney refused to prepare for a trial and insisted he stick to the plea bargain. After consulting his family, he petitioned the court to revoke the plea bargain and replace his attorney. The judge denied both requests and sentenced him to a slightly mitigated sentence of nine months.

During his last week with me, Squeegee mentioned Bonzai.

‘Throughout the jail, I’ve heard so many people talk about Bonzai,’ I said. ‘Is he the bogeyman of the Arizona prison system or what?’

‘I served time with Bonzai at Florence,’ Squeegee said.

‘You knew him?’

‘Yeah. Robert Wayne Vickers.’

‘What’s his story?’

‘He was just some tall skinny kid arrested for doing burglaries in Tempe. He was only sentenced to do a few years. He came in in the late ’70s. He was real quiet, not considered a threat at all at that time, so they housed him with the general population at CB4, all two-man cells. He snapped ’cause his celly drank his Kool-Aid and didn’t wake him up for chow. He waited for his celly to go sleep and killed him with a shank made from a toothbrush. He carved the word Bonzai – misspelled with a Z – on his celly’s back. To show the guards his celly was really dead, he put a cigarette out on the corpse’s foot. After that they called him Bonzai or Bonzai Bob.

‘They charged him with murder and moved him to a single cell in CB6 – super-max housing for death row, gang leaders and the most violent prisoners. In CB6 they were locked-down all day except to come out for showers. They said you couldn’t escape from it, but Bonzai managed to get up on the roof.

‘Another time, he picked his cell-door lock, waited for one of his neighbours to come out for a shower, came out and almost shanked the guy to death, but the guards stopped it. So he got attempted-murder charges for that one.

‘Back then, the cells had power outlets, and you could heat up food in your cell, like plug-in hotpots from the store. In ’82, Bonzai boiled up some Vitalis hair gel and took it with him when they let him out of his cell. He told his neighbour to come to the front of the cell and threw it on him. Then he used toilet paper to set him on fire. His neighbour died and a bunch more nearly died from the smoke.’

‘Why’d he kill that guy?’

‘He’d talked some shit about Bonzai’s niece. They transported him to Florence for a court appearance. In the holding cell, he picked the lock on his handcuffs but made it look like he was still cuffed when they took him into the courtroom. He waited for the judge to start, then jumped up and attacked the people in the gallery. It was on the news. When the guards were about to cuff him for another court appearance, he pulled out a shank and stabbed one in the stomach and the other in the shoulder and the armpit. He was so dangerous, the warden had a shower installed in Bonzai’s cell and had the door welded shut. They considered him the most dangerous inmate ever in Arizona’s prison system. In ’99, they finally let him out of his cell – to give him a lethal injection. The guards said in his last years his crazy eyes made him look like he was possessed by the devil.’

January 04