The Execution of Noa P. Singleton (28 page)

C
ONFUSED SPEARS OF DARKNESS SPIKED THROUGH THE METAL
bars, leaving faint shadows on the ground. About six guards marched into our unit like lethargic storm troopers, their boots stepping in unison, their hair slicked back behind their ears.

I was in bed, trying to get some sleep at the time. My right ankle cradled my left. My left hand cradled my head like a canopy, its heavy weight sinking deep into the pillow all the way to the mattress beneath. But my legs awakened to a tremor when the stomping began. Wide heels of rubber slapping the cement floor. A humming from one novice officer. The heartbeats of them all moving together as one machine. I didn’t open my eyes. I knew what was happening. It was October. Maybe it was November. It was sometime around Halloween, and it was Patsmith’s X-day.

A jingle of keys rustled against a thick leather belt as breathing continued in a symphonic round. Some sounded like they might have had asthma and refused to carry around their inhalers for fear of losing their virility. Others breathed in pain, as if from years of filter-less smoking. I imagine they counted along the beats of their hearts so that at least something made sense to them that night. The only breathing I didn’t hear was Patsmith’s. She must have been holding it in this whole time as if she just didn’t know what to do with it.

Next, I heard the insertion of the key, the twisting of the lock until it clicked open, and the smooth shifting of metal upon metal.
Patsmith’s door opened, but still, there was no sound from her. No breathing, no crying at twenty-one past the hour, no need to see her daughter one last time. Just silence. Then the simple and expected placement of handcuffs closing, the sequential footsteps of a shackled inmate strutting on the floor like little bird steps between the longer ostrich gait of the guards as they walked forth.

I didn’t open my eyes to see her marched off. I didn’t get up from my bed to watch. It wasn’t my place to ogle her. This was just the next part of the process. Arrest, conviction, incarceration, appeal, execution. And even though I knew this was coming for her—for me, too—knowledge is a different beast entirely from experience.

The footsteps faded as she walked farther away. She never got to see her daughter. At least I don’t think she did, and perhaps that’s what makes me sad. She didn’t feel closure as she walked to the gurney. She wasn’t able to see the one person who mattered to her. If I had one person still alive, I would have given her mine.

A few weeks ago, Patsmith abandoned her nightly cry for just one evening. I asked her why she stopped calling out for Pat that night. I was worried I actually might have to give her a new name.

“I dunno,” she said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“It’s kind of pointless, right? I’ve just been thinking, you know, it’s kind of pointless to call out for someone who isn’t there.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It shows you care.”

“I don’t care, P,” she said. “Not anymore.”

I didn’t respond.

“Maybe I just needed a change in my day. A new routine.”

“Routine?” I laughed. “Isn’t that what prison is all about?”

“Isn’t that what life is all about?” she shot back, as if she’d picked up a GED, BA, and master’s in philosophy in the course of a thirty second conversation. “I mean, if we change our routine, then we can sort of feel something again, right?”

I shrugged, thinking back to my mother’s living a new life on stage each season in my youth. To my father, who shacked up with a
new correctional facility every other year. To Ollie, who was learning something new about himself each day he visited me. They were all living.

“Sure,” I said. “I guess so.”

At twenty-one past the hour that night, I sat up in bed, hoping to hear her nightly call. “Pat, I love you, Pat! I need you, Pat. I miss you, Pat!” It’s not that I truly expected to hear it. I heard her walked out of her cell. I heard the bars screech as they yawned. I even heard her teeth as they clapped in fear. I knew she was gone. But for nearly ten years, I’d listened as she cried out to her lover.

There is something illuminating in the change of routine, no matter the direction. Wake up. Urinate. Sometimes defecate. Have your wrists cuffed. Feel the butt of a nightstick thrusting you from your cell. Shower. Feel the butt of that nightstick thrusting you back to your cell. Sleep. Listen to the nightly moaning of your neighbor calling out for her beloved victim. Repeat. This is the life of a decade. And now, it’s gone.

I want to say I miss it. That I will miss her. Patsmith’s routine was the same as her mantra: “Pat, I love you, Pat! I need you, Pat. I miss you, Pat!” For Marlene, it was career, money, power. For Persephone, it was probably china patterns, tennis, and laughter. For my father, something having to do with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Or children, love, and freedom. Maybe my new mantra will be: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Perhaps Patsmith will hear me and relay the message to the others.

“T
HEY TURNED US DOWN
.”

Oliver’s expression was weak, almost flaccid, as he closed the door to my appeals as easily as, say, he would close the laminated pages of a menu.

“Oh …”

That’s all I said.

And I said it again.

“Oh.”

Really, in that situation, what are you supposed to say?
Thanks for trying, young chap. I appreciate your effort. You coulda done better? Why didn’t you try harder? Go with God? You just killed me. The court was wrong. Et cetera, et cetera
.

There aren’t lists of preordained truisms in this situation. So I did the only reasonable thing I could. I acted upset and feigned concern, as if I had actually sat in the passenger seat on his virginal ride to salvation. My head ducked to my chest and without even feeling my muscles move, I gave him one of those smiles you give when you are uncomfortable or when enough years have passed with an old acquaintance that you no longer have to say hello to anymore when you see him on the street. And then I said it again.

“Oh …”

There it was—the rule of threes.

It was only then that Ollie felt the requisite imperative reply. He was reading from a printed copy of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling on his filing without even bothering to look at me.

“I tried everything, Noa. The court said that even if there were jury tampering issues, it would not rise to the level of reversible error. They claimed that, even if there was error with jury deliberation, with respect to Lavonne and Felipe’s relationship, the error was harmless in nature. In other words, you would have been found guilty nevertheless, and it wouldn’t have impacted how the jury determined your punishment. The same with the Miranda issue. The police read you your rights, and even though I don’t believe they stopped questioning you when the Constitution demands, the court found that that error was also harmless in nature.”

He continued reviewing the opinion. Sweat slipped around on his cheeks, and bubbles of saliva jumped out from his lips, a Shakespearean actor on center stage each time he said any word that started with the letter
c. Constitution
and
court
and
claim
.

“During your interrogation, you asked for your attorney, and then they continued to question you. Your former appellate lawyers should have argued this on appeal. And again, the Supreme Court claims that Harris and McCall’s strategy was deferential and did not rise to the level of ineffectiveness.”

Still, I didn’t know how to respond. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what he was saying, but simply that I didn’t know how to comfort him from his first very serious and very personal professional loss. I wanted to remind him that they did try to appeal the Lavonne and Felipe issue before, but I cautioned them against it. They did also bring up the issue with my Miranda rights, but again, it went nowhere.

“Okay,” I said to him.

“There’s nothing more we can do on those issues,” he replied.

His fingers darted to his eyes, and he rubbed them counterclockwise. Minute scabs framed his nail beds. Heavy bags bulged under
his eyes as if they were filled with water, weighing down his youthful face. I take full responsibility for that transformation.

Plagues of seconds sired the silence between us. He was looking at me without actually looking. Perhaps he was just staring at his own reflection in the Plexiglas as he stared my way. But it was clearly my turn to say something.

“What does Marlene say about this?”

He lay down his chin on his free hand and rested on it like a pillow.

“She hasn’t had a chance to read it yet.”

I nodded.

“Why not?”

“She’s busy working on other cases. And she’s preparing for her meeting with the governor for your clemency petition.”

He answered that a little too quickly for my taste.

“But perhaps she would interpret the decision another way,” I added.

He dropped his hands to his side, freeing his chin, and looked directly to me.

“Their message is clear, regardless of interpretation. They are not granting our request.”

“So all that is left now is clemency?” I asked. “Exactly where we started?”

“But we’re making headway with clemency, too. We’ve gotten a few declarations in from people who have written in support of you. For example, Andrew Hoskins sent in a notarized statement which we can use.”

I wanted to laugh at that point, but something held me back. Respect? Boredom?

“Andy? Really?”

He mouthed the word
yes
, as he looked back to the copy of the opinion in his hand.

“I’m so sorry, Noa,” he said, dropping the paper on the table.

I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder and push up his chin
with a little dose of adrenaline. It’s not your fault, I wanted to say. But it was he who failed—not me. I expected this. It wasn’t my first appeal to be turned down. After all this time, I had forgotten that it was his.

I hovered for a moment, thinking.

“Well, okay then.”

He wiped his nose and didn’t reply, as if he were thinking. Of Andy? Of Marlene?

“So what exactly did the pathologist say in his report? What did you include?”

Ollie opened his mouth to orate in the only way he knew how. Properly. Formally. Legally.

“As we discussed before,” he said, “the court will reconsider a case if there is some newly discovered evidence that would provide conclusive proof of actual innocence. This doctor, this expert witness, was going to testify about Sarah’s condition at her time of death.” He sighed, looking down at the opinion in his hands. “I knew it was a long shot, but I thought we at least had a chance.”

“Oliver,” I said, gently placing one hand outward. But his hands danced before his face—naked, neurotic, skittish.

“With his opinion, his declaration—”

“—like you said, the court didn’t buy it,” I shrugged. “These things happen.”

He refused to look at me.

“It’s okay,” I said again. “There’s not much to work with. The case against Noa P. Singleton is over.”

“I read the record. I saw the evidence. But—”

“—but nothing,” I said. “It’s over. Go home,” I pleaded. “Go to your family. Go to MAD. Go back to Philadelphia or London or wherever is home to you these days. It was a nice story, but now …,” I started, trailing off.

“What are you hiding from me?” he asked, sitting up in his chair. His voice shifted.

“Nothing, I’m not hiding anything.”

“You’ve told me about your childhood, Noa. You’ve told me about your father. And Sarah.” He brought the chair closer to the divider and even muffled by glass, I could hear it squeal. “What aren’t you telling me? I know it’s something. I know you’re hiding something.”

His lack of experience could only exacerbate his passion for advocacy.

“You didn’t break into Sarah’s apartment,” he blurted in self-determined epiphany. “She let you in, didn’t she?”

I looked away.

“Noa,” he persisted. “There’s no evidence to claim that you actually broke in. You just have a broken fingernail, which could have come from any number of sources. Both aggravating factors are eliminated, meaning there is no capital murder. No break-in. No baby. Just murder.”

“Just murder?” I laughed. “And the ‘newly discovered evidence’ for that is where?” I asked. “Stop, Ollie. You’re embarrassing yourself. One failed appeal a case is more than enough for someone as green as you.”

“Fine. Let’s say even if she was still pregnant, how could they prove that you knew she was pregnant? You said it yourself a thousand times, you could barely see it on her.”

“I knew she was pregnant.”

His eyes danced along with his fingers and the veins in his forehead and neck.

“They never found the man who broke into Sarah’s apartment and shot her and you.”

Droplets of water collected under my breasts. My skin was moist and itchy. I wanted to scratch my right shoulder, but held back.

“You were placed in the holding cell for nearly twenty hours without counsel, without food or water, and most important—”

“I had water,” I argued.

“—but most important, Noa, you didn’t have medical attention.”

I looked away.

“You were sitting in that holding cell bleeding out, and nobody thought to get you to the hospital? They didn’t talk about the struggle at Sarah’s apartment or your gunshot wound. The only thing they talk about is you faking a fainting spell to get out of an interrogation.”

“That’s part of why the state looked so bad in my trial, but it doesn’t change anything,” I said to him.

“You told me about your mother dropping you as a baby. Your father’s lip wound. I know the bloody details of every episode of your youth. We’ve known each other long enough now that I think you would have told me about what really happened on January first.”

“You know what happened. It’s in the record.”

“Please tell me what really happened to you. Was there a struggle? Was there really an intruder who shot both Sarah and you? Did you really shoot her in self-defense? Did she go after you first? Is that what happened?”