The Innocent Man (28 page)

So they talked. He talked about his baseball career, his failed marriage, his guitar playing, God and religion,
his mother. He had gone to high school with her ex-husband, who was a part-time bouncer at the Coachlight. At times he was quiet, peaceful, even tearful, at other times he was erratic, loud, and angry. Andrea worried about the children, all five of them. As he talked, she kept thinking of some way out of the ordeal. He erupted into violent fits, hitting her again and trying to pull off her clothes. He was too drunk to maintain an erection.

At one point, Ron allegedly said that he figured he would have to kill her. Andrea was praying fervently. She decided to play along. She invited him back the next afternoon, when the kids would be gone, and they could have all the sex they wanted. This proposal appealed to him greatly, so he left.

She called her ex-husband and her father, and together they patrolled the streets looking for Ron. They were heavily armed and not shy about roadside justice.

Andrea’s face was a mess—cuts, bruises, swollen eyes. Ron wore a ring engraved with the head of a horse, and this caused numerous small puncture wounds around her eyes. The police were called the next day, but she adamantly refused to press charges. Ron lived close by, and she was terrified of him.

Barney was unprepared for her testimony and muddled through a halfhearted cross-examination.

The courtroom was silent when she stepped down from the witness stand. The jurors glared at the defendant. It was hanging time.

Inexplicably, Barney called no witnesses to mitigate the damage and try to save Ron’s life. Annette and Renee were sitting in the courtroom, ready to testify. Not one word had been uttered throughout the trial about
Ron’s mental incompetence. No records had been introduced.

The final words the jurors heard from the witness stand were those of Andrea Hardcastle.

Bill Peterson begged for the death penalty in his closing argument. And he had some fresh evidence, a new fact or two that had not been proven during the trial. There had been no mention of Ron’s horse head ring until Andrea Hardcastle’s testimony. Peterson jumped to a few conclusions, expanded the evidence, and decided that Ron had used the same ring when he beat Debbie Carter; thus, her facial injuries most surely were similar to what Andrea Hardcastle’s must have been back in January 1981. It was just a wild idea. There was certainly no proof, but then no proof was needed.

Peterson dramatically told the jury, “He left his signature with Andrea Hardcastle, and he underlined it with Debbie Carter.” He ended his remarks by saying, “When you come back in here, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to ask you to say: Ron Williamson, you deserve to die for what you did to Debra Sue Carter.”

With perfect timing, Ron blurted, “I did not kill Debbie Carter.”

The jury retired but made quick work of the penalty deliberations. In less than two hours, they were back with a sentence of death.

In a bizarre case of judicial second-guessing, Judge Jones called a hearing the following day to ponder the state’s
Brady
violation. Though Barney was exhausted
and fed up with the case, he was still indignant that the cops and Peterson had deliberately withheld the 1983 videotape of Ron’s polygraph interrogation.

But why bother at this point? The trial was over. The video was of no benefit after the fact.

To no one’s surprise, Judge Jones ruled that the suppression of the tape by the authorities was not a
Brady
violation after all. The tape wasn’t really hidden; it was handed over after the trial, sort of a delayed submission.

Ron Williamson was on his way to F Cellhouse, the notorious death row at the Oklahoma state prison in McAlester.

C H A P T E R  10

O
klahoma is very serious about its death penalty. When the U.S. Supreme Court approved the resumption of executions in 1976, the Oklahoma state legislature rushed into a special session for the sole purpose of enacting death penalty statutes. The following year, the lawmakers debated the innovative idea of death by lethal injection, as opposed to going back to Old Sparky, the state’s dependable electric chair. The rationale was that chemicals were more merciful; thus, less likely to attract constitutional attacks of cruel and inhuman punishment; thus, more likely to speed along executions. In the excitement of the moment, with the press watching closely and the voters egging them on, the legislators debated the various ways in which to take human life. Some hard-liners wanted hangings and firing squads and such, but in the end lethal injection was approved overwhelmingly, and Oklahoma became the first state to adopt it.

But not the first state to use it. Much to the frustration of lawmakers and police and prosecutors and a wide majority of the public, Oklahoma quickly fell behind the other active death penalty states. Thirteen long years passed without an execution. Finally, in 1990, the waiting ended, and the death chamber was used once again.

Once the dam broke, the flood came. Since 1990, Oklahoma has executed more convicts on a per capita basis than any other state. No place, not even Texas, comes close.

Executions in Oklahoma take place at McAlester, a maximum security prison a hundred and twenty miles southeast of Oklahoma City. Death row is there, in an infamous section called the H Unit.

Practice makes perfect, and executions at McAlester are carried out with precision. For the inmate whose time has come, the last day is spent receiving visitors—family members, friends, usually his lawyer. Of course the visits are painful, made even more so by the fact that there can be no physical contact. They chat and cry through a thick wall of glass while talking on a phone. No farewell hugs or kisses from the family, just a gut-wrenching “I love you” through a black receiver. Often the inmate and his visitor will symbolically kiss each other by pressing their lips against the glass. They also imitate touching with their hands.

There is no law that prevents physical contact before an execution. Each state has its own rules, and Oklahoma prefers to keep the rituals as harsh as possible.

If the warden is in a good mood, he allows the inmate to make some phone calls. When the visiting is over, it’s time for the last meal, but there is a $15 limit on the menu, and the warden can veto anything on it. Cheeseburgers, fried chicken, catfish, and ice cream are the most popular items requested.

About an hour before his death, the inmate is prepped. He changes clothes and puts on a light blue outfit, much like surgical scrubs. He is secured to a gurney with wide Velcro straps, and as he begins his final ride, there is a pep rally of sorts thrown by his comrades. They shake and kick their cell doors. They rattle the metal bars. They yell and whoop and the racket continues until just after the scheduled moment of execution, then it stops suddenly.

As the inmate is being prepared, the death chamber is waiting and very well organized. Witnesses somberly file into the two viewing rooms—one for the family of the victim, one for the family of the killer. The room for the victims has twenty-four folding chairs, but some are reserved for the press, usually four or five seats, a couple for the lawyers, and a few for the warden and his staff. The local sheriff and prosecutor seldom miss the event.

Behind this room, and behind panels of one-way glass, is the witness room for the family of the killer. It has twelve folding chairs, but often a few are empty. Some inmates do not want their families to watch. Some inmates have no families.

And some victims have no families. Occasionally, their witness room is half-empty, too.

The two rooms are separated, and the two groups are carefully kept away from each other. As the witnesses
take their places, they stare at nothing—mini-blinds block out the view of the death chamber.

The gurney enters and is wheeled into place. Technicians are waiting with intravenous tubes, one for each arm. When everything is properly inserted and adjusted, the mini-blinds are raised and the witnesses can see the inmate. One-way glass prevents him from seeing the victim’s family, but he can certainly see his own and often acknowledges them. A microphone protrudes from the wall two feet above his head.

A doctor attaches a heart-monitoring device. A deputy warden stands at a small white podium in a corner and records everything in a notebook. Next to him on the wall is a phone, just in case there is late-breaking news on the legal front or a change of heart in the governor’s office. In years past a chaplain stood in another corner and read Scripture throughout the execution, but he retired.

The warden steps forward and asks the condemned if he or she has any last words. They often do not, but occasionally one will ask for forgiveness, or proclaim his innocence, or pray, or launch into some bitter denunciation. One sang a hymn. One shook hands with the warden and thanked him and his staff and the entire prison for taking such good care of him during his prolonged visit.

There is a two-minute time limit on the final words, but it is never invoked.

The condemned are always relaxed and low-key. They have accepted their fate and had many years to prepare for this moment. Many welcome it. They prefer death to the horror of living another twenty or thirty years on H Unit.

In a small room behind the gurney, three executioners are hiding. They are not to be seen. Their identities are unknown around the prison. They are not state employees, but freelancers of some variety who were secretly hired by an old warden many years ago. Their arrivals and departures to and from McAlester are mysterious. Only the warden knows who they are, where they come from, and where they get their chemicals. He pays each of them $300 in cash for an execution.

The tubes from the inmate’s arms run up and through two two-inch holes in the wall and into the small room where the executioners do their work.

When the formalities are tidied up, and the warden is certain there will be no last-minute phone calls, he nods and the injections start.

First a saline solution is pumped in to open the veins. The first drug is sodium thiopental, and it quickly knocks out the inmate. Another flushing of saline solution, then the second drug, vecuronium bromide, stops the breathing. Another quick flush and the third drug, potassium chloride, stops the heart.

The doctor appears, does a quick check, pronounces death. The mini-blinds close fast, and the witnesses, many of them quite emotional, leave quickly and quietly. The gurney is rolled out. The body is taken to an ambulance. The family must make arrangements to retrieve it, or it goes to a prison cemetery.

Outside the prison gates, two groups hold two very different vigils. The Homicide Survivors sit in front of their RVs and wait for the welcome news that the execution is complete. Nearby is their display, a large three-panel memorial to the victims of the killers. Color photos of children and smiling students; poems to the
dead; enlarged headlines announcing some horrific double murder; lots and lots of photos of those butchered by the inhabitants of death row. The memorial is called “Remember the Victims.”

Not far away, a Catholic priest leads the other group in a circle of prayer and hymn singing. Some opponents of the death penalty attend every execution, praying not only for those condemned but also for their victims.

The two groups know and respect each other, but they strongly disagree.

When word comes from inside that the execution is over, more prayers are offered. Then the candles are extinguished, and the hymnbooks are put away.

Hugs are exchanged, farewells given. See you at the next execution.

When Ron Williamson arrived at McAlester on April 29, 1988, the H Unit was being discussed but not yet being built. Prison officials wanted a brand-new death row to house their growing inventory of capital inmates, but the legislature wouldn’t spend the money.

Ron was taken instead to F Cellhouse, home to eighty-one other condemned men. F Cellhouse, or The Row, as it was commonly called, comprised the bottom two floors of a wing of the old prison house, or Big House, a mammoth four-story building constructed in 1935 and finally abandoned fifty years later. Decades of overcrowding, violence, lawsuits, and riots led to its inevitable closing.

In the vast, empty, and decaying Big House, only
F Cellhouse was used, and its sole purpose was to house condemned men in a lockdown environment.

Ron was processed at F Cellhouse. He was given two pairs of khakis, two blue short-sleeve shirts, two white T-shirts, two pairs of white socks, and two pairs of white boxer shorts. All the clothing had been well used. It was clean, but with permanent stains, especially the boxers. The shoes were black leather work shoes, also used. He was also given a pillow, blanket, toilet paper, toothbrush, and toothpaste. During his very brief orientation it was explained that he could purchase other toiletries, along with food and soft drinks and a few other items, at the prison commissary, better known as the canteen, a place he was not allowed to visit. Any money he received from the outside world would go into his account, from which he could purchase his “canteen.” A man’s canteen was his private little stockpile of goodies, something he protected fiercely in his cell.

When he had changed into his prison clothes and completed the processing, he was led to the wing, or run, where he would spend the next several years waiting for the state to execute him. His hands and ankles were cuffed. As he clutched his pillow, blanket, extra clothes, and other items, the guards opened the huge barred door and the parade began.

Above his head, painted in large black letters, was his address: DEATH ROW.

The run was a hundred feet long and only twelve feet wide, with cells packed together on both sides. The ceiling was eight feet high.

Walking very slowly, Ron and his two guards proceeded down the run. It was a ritual, a brief welcoming ceremony. His neighbors knew he was coming and the
catcalling began: “New man on the run!” “New meat!” “Hey, baby!”

Arms hung through the bars of the cell doors, almost within reaching distance. White arms, black arms, brown ones. Lots of tattoos on the arms. Act tough, Ron told himself. Don’t show fear. They kicked the doors, yelled, called him names, threw out sexual threats. Always act tough.