The Innocent Man (31 page)

Most death row inmates took a daily dose of a
benign antidepressant called Sinequan. It was supposed to calm nerves and help with sleep.

The guards finally convinced Ron to take something stronger, and he became drowsy and quiet. Later in the day, he began cleaning up his cell.

Then he called Annette and, in tears, told her about the episode. She visited him later, and things were not pleasant. He shouted into the phone, accused her of not trying to free him, and again demanded that she sell everything and hire a big-time lawyer who could fix this injustice. She asked him to settle down, stop yelling, and when he didn’t, she threatened to leave.

Over time, she and Renee replaced the television, radio, and guitar.

In September 1988, a lawyer from Norman by the name of Mark Barrett drove to McAlester to meet his new client. Mark was one of four lawyers who handled the appeals for indigent defendants in capital cases. The Williamson case had been assigned to him. Barney Ward was out of the picture.

Appeals are automatic in capital cases. The necessary notices had been filed, the slow process was under way. Mark explained this to Ron Williamson and listened to his lengthy proclamations of innocence. He was not surprised to hear such talk, and he had not yet studied the transcript of the trial.

To assist his new lawyer, Ron handed over a list of all the witnesses who had lied at his trial, then, in minute detail, described to Mark Barrett the nature and extent of their lies.

Mark found Ron to be intelligent, rational, clearly
aware of his predicament and surroundings. He was articulate and spoke at length and in great detail about the lies the police and prosecution had used against him. He was a little panicky, but that was to be expected. Mark had no idea of Ron’s medical history.

Mark’s father was a minister in the Disciples of Christ denomination, and this bit of background prompted Ron into a long discussion about religion. He wanted Mark to know that he was a devout Christian, had been raised in the church by God-fearing parents, and read his Bible often. He quoted many verses of Scripture and Mark was impressed. One in particular was troubling him, and he asked Mark for his interpretation. They discussed it thoroughly. It was important for Ron to understand the verse, and he was clearly frustrated by his inability to grasp its meaning. Attorney visits had no time limits, and the clients were anxious to stay out of their cells. They talked for over an hour.

Mark Barrett’s first impression was that Ron was a fundamentalist, an easy talker, perhaps a bit too slick. As always, he was skeptical of his client’s claims of innocence, though his mind was far from closed. He was also handling the appeals for Greg Wilhoit, and he was thoroughly convinced Greg did not kill his wife.

Mark knew there were innocent men on death row, and the more he learned about Ron’s case, the more he believed him.

C H A P T E R  11

T
hough Dennis Fritz didn’t realize it, twelve months in the dungeon of the county jail had helped prepare him for the severe conditions of prison life.

He arrived at the Conner Correctional Center in June, in the rear of a van loaded with other new inmates, still dazed and in denial and terrified. It was important to look and act confident, and he worked hard at it. Conner had the reputation as the “dump site” of medium security prisons. It was a tough place, tougher than most, and Dennis asked himself over and over how and why he had been randomly assigned to the place.

He was herded through the admissions procedures and given the standard lectures about rules and regulations, then assigned to a two-man cell with bunk beds and a window through which he could see the outdoors. Like Ron, he was thankful for the window. He’d gone for weeks in Ada without seeing sunshine.

His roommate was a Mexican who spoke little
English, and that was fine with Dennis. He spoke no Spanish and wasn’t in the mood to learn. The first overwhelming challenge was how to find brief moments of privacy with another human always within arm’s reach.

Dennis vowed to spend every possible moment working to free himself from his sentence. It would have been easy to give up. The system was so heavily weighted against the inmates, but he was determined to prevail.

Conner was overcrowded and known for its violence. There were gangs, killings, beatings, rapes, drugs everywhere, and guards on the take. He quickly found the safer areas and avoided men he thought were trouble. He treated fear as an asset. After a few months most prisoners unwittingly fell into the routine of the prison and became institutionalized. They lowered their guard, took chances, took safety for granted.

It was a good way to get hurt, and Dennis vowed that he would never forget to be afraid.

The prisoners were awake by 7:00 A.M. and all cell doors were opened. They ate in a large cafeteria and could sit anywhere they wished. The whites took one side, the blacks the other, and the Indians and Hispanics were caught in the middle but leaned toward the darker section. The food for breakfast was not bad—eggs, grits, bacon. Conversation was lively—the men were relieved to have contact with others.

Most wanted to work; anything to stay out of the unit where the cells were. Because Dennis had once taught, he was recruited to teach other inmates in the General Equivalency Diploma program. After breakfast he went to the classroom and taught until noon. His salary was $7.20 a month.

His mother and aunt began sending $50 a month,
money they barely scraped together but made a priority. He spent it in the canteen on tobacco, canned tuna, crackers, and cookies. Virtually every inmate smoked and the great currency was cigarettes. A pack of Marlboros was like a pocketful of cash.

Dennis soon found the law library and was pleased to learn that he could study there every day from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., without interruption. He had never picked up a law book, but he was determined to master the research. A couple of the law clerks—other inmates who fancied themselves jailhouse lawyers and were quite knowledgeable—befriended him and taught him how to move through the thick treatises and digests. As always, they charged for their advice. The fees were paid in cigarettes.

He began his legal education by reading hundreds of Oklahoma cases, looking for similarities and potential mistakes made during his trial. His appeals would soon start, and he wanted to know as much as his lawyer. He discovered the federal digests and took notes on thousands of cases from throughout the country.

Lockdown was from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.; heads were counted, reports made. Dinner was over at 7:30, and from then until the next lockdown at 10:15 the inmates were free to roam around the unit, exercise, play cards or dominoes or basketball. Many chose to just hang out, to sit in groups and talk and smoke and kill time.

Dennis went back to the law library.

His daughter, Elizabeth, was fifteen, and they maintained a lively correspondence. She was being raised by her maternal grandmother in a stable home with plenty of attention. She believed her father to be innocent, but Dennis always suspected she had some doubt. They swapped letters and talked on the phone at least once a week. Dennis
would not allow her to visit him, though. He did not want his daughter near the prison. She would not see him dressed like a convict and living behind razor wire.

Wanda Fritz, his mother, traveled to Conner soon after Dennis arrived. Visitation was on Sunday, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., in a room with rows of folding tables and chairs. It was a zoo. Twenty or so inmates were admitted at once, and their families were waiting—wives, children, mothers, and fathers. Emotions were high. The children were often rowdy and loud. The men were not handcuffed and contact was allowed.

Contact was exactly what the men wanted, though excessive kissing and groping were prohibited. The trick was to get a fellow inmate to “jigger,” or sidetrack, a guard for a few seconds while rabid sex was accomplished. It was not unusual to see a couple slide between two soft drink machines and somehow copulate. Wives sitting placidly at a table often disappeared quickly, ducking under the table for a quick round of oral sex.

Fortunately, Dennis was able to hold his mother’s attention in the midst of such frenzied activity, but the visit was the most stressful time of the week. He discouraged her from returning.

Ron soon began pacing and yelling in his cell. If you weren’t crazy when you got to The Row, it didn’t take long to lose your mind after you arrived. He stood at his door and screamed, “I am innocent! I am innocent!” for hours, until he became hoarse. With practice, though, his voice strengthened, and he could shout for longer periods of time. “I did not kill Debbie Carter! I did not kill Debbie Carter!”

He memorized the entire transcript of the Ricky Joe Simmons confession, every word, and delivered it at full volume for the benefit of his guards and neighbors. He could also go for hours reciting his trial transcript, pages and pages of the testimony that had sent him to death row. The other inmates wanted to choke him, but at the same time they marveled at his memory.

But they were not impressed at two in the morning.

Renee received a strange letter from another inmate. It read, in part:

Dear Renee:

Praise the Lord! This is Jay Neill, #141128. I am writing this on behalf, and at the request of your brother Ron. Ron lives caddycorner to my cell. At times Ron goes through very difficult stages on a daily basis. I am under the impression that he is on some form of medication to attempt to stabilize and modify his behavior. At best though, the limitation of the types of medication they will distribute here only works in a marginal capacity at best. Ron’s biggest defeat is his low self-esteem. And I believe the people here at O.S.P. tell him he is below par in an I.Q. Scale. His worst times come between 12 am and 4 am.

At times, spaced periodically he screams different things at the top of his lungs. This has disturbed many convicts in the vicinity. At first they tried to reason with him, then to tolerate. But even that has worn thin with many around him. (Due to the sleepless nights for sure.)

I am a Christian and I pray daily for Ron. I talk to him and listen to him. He loves both you and Annette
very much. I am his friend. I have acted in the capacity of a buffer between Ron and the people his yelling bothers by getting up and talking to him until he is calm.

God bless you and your family.

Sincerely, Jay Neill

Neill’s friendship with anyone on The Row was always doubtful, and his conversion to Christianity was often the topic of conversation. His “friends” were skeptical. Before prison, he and his boyfriend longed to move to San Francisco to enjoy a more open lifestyle. Since they had no money, they decided to rob a bank, an undertaking with which they had no experience. They picked one in the town of Geronimo, and after they entered it loudly and announced their intentions, things fell apart. In the chaos of the robbery, Neill and his partner fatally stabbed three bank tellers, shot one customer to death, and wounded three others. In the midst of the bloodbath, Neill ran out of bullets, something he realized as he put his revolver to the head of a small child and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened—the child was unharmed, at least physically. The two killers escaped with about $20,000 in cash and were soon in San Francisco, where they went on a shopping spree—full-length mink coats, lovely scarves, and such. They threw money around in gay bars and had a decadent time for slightly more than twenty-four hours. Then they were hauled back to Oklahoma, where Neill was eventually executed.

On The Row, Neill liked to quote Scripture and deliver mini-sermons, but few listened.

On death row, medical attention was not a priority. Every inmate said that the first thing you lose is your health, then your sanity. Ron was seen by a prison doctor who had the benefit of his previous prison records and mental health history. It was noted that he had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse, certainly not a surprise on F Cellhouse. He suffered from depression and had been bipolar for at least ten years. There was some schizophrenia and personality disorder.

He was prescribed Mellaril again, and it settled him down.

Most of the other inmates thought Ron was simply “playing the nut role,” pretending to be crazy in hopes of somehow walking away from The Row.

Two doors down from Greg Wilhoit lived an old inmate named Sonny Hays. No one was certain how long Sonny had been waiting, but he had arrived there before anyone else. He was pushing seventy, in terrible health, and refused to see or speak to anyone. He covered his cell door with newspapers and blankets, kept his lights off, ate only enough to stay alive, never showered, shaved, or cut his hair, never had visitors, and refused to meet with his lawyers. He neither sent nor received mail, made no phone calls, bought nothing from the canteen, ignored his laundry, and had no television or radio. He never left his dark, little dungeon, and days could pass with no sound from within.

Sonny was completely insane, and since a mentally incompetent person cannot be executed, he was simply rotting away and dying on his own terms. Now there was a new crazy man on The Row, though Ron had a hard time convincing others. He was just playing the nut role.

One episode, though, got their attention. Ron
managed to clog his toilet and flood his cell with two inches of water. He stripped naked and began doing belly flops into the pool from his top bunk, yelling incoherently as he did so. The guards finally managed to secure and sedate him.

Although there was no air-conditioning on F Cellhouse, there was a heating system, and winter brought the reasonable expectation of having warm air pumped through the ancient vents. It didn’t happen. The cells were frigid. Ice often formed on the inside of the windows during the night, and the heavily bundled inmates stayed in bed as long as possible.

The only way to sleep was to layer on all available clothing—both sets of socks, boxers, T-shirts, khakis, work shirts, and anything else a prisoner might be able to afford from the canteen. Extra blankets were luxuries and were not furnished by the state. The food, which was cold in the summertime, was barely edible in winter.