Experiences Watching Deadline - Part One
Here is an email we received about the film from Charlie, who watched the film in prison. He originally wrote this email to Katy's mother. Charlie is a PEN Prison Writing Award Winner. His work can be found in Doing Time.
The choices at 8 o'clock were "Joan of Arcadia," "George Lopez," "Bernie Mac," "Magnum P.I.," or "Amish in the City." "Dateline NBC" wasn't even in the running. I rounded up six convicted murderers, including one ex-death row, & we took over the TV room at 7:55. It was a bloodless coup. My very large, muscle-bound, shining black bowling-ball headed friend told the assembled crackheads & dope fiends, "We watchin' this," & that's all it took. Sorry Bernie Mac, see ya next week."
We got the first seven minutes in, but we couldn't get around "count time," so we missed almost half an hour. But by 8:35 P.M. we were back out & ensconced in "Deadline." Within ten minutes the TV room was full, & the clowns at the back who were yapping & playing at their chain gang mating rituals were quickly ushered out. More & more men came in to see what everyone was so quiet about. A couple of men from the Chicago South Side vouched for the brutal police tactics mentioned. I am probably more familiar with the issues & the people in the documentary than anyone else here, & during the frequent commercials, men asked me questions, & I filled them in. I read a book, The Last Face You'll Ever See, which had a lot about the Mississippi gas chamber & that warden they featured. I was moved by the powerful oratory of Larry Marshall - just talking he seems more laid-back.
The men were impressed when I pointed out "Katy Chevigny" in the credits & told them I knew her mother, a very smart & talented literary friend of mine in NYC, who put me on to her daughter's documentary. "Cool." We had our little informed chain gang discussion group afterward during the ten o'clock "master count," locked in our cells, yelling out comments down the hall after the guards passed by. It had a profound effect on some of the men, especially the families of murder victims who spoke out against the death penalty, & the people pleading & crying for their loved one at the hearings. Made it personal. Katy & her friend are very talented. I was greatly impressed by every aspect of the powerful & moving story. I thought the photography was excellent, how so many shots were edited so well, the former death row prisoners talking with the snips of the world around him, the house, yard, the town, the people, the closeup of his fingers moving nervously while he was talking. It put me right there & made it real. So well thought out, cogent.
As I watched Scott Turow, I thought, "I wish I could talk with that guy." I've read all his books & passed them around. I wanted to talk to a number of those people, tell them yes, you're right, it's wrong, but there is so much more. It is wrong to kill those people, whatever the ritual justification. George W. Bush gags me. Two of my close personal Christian prison ministry friends spent years befriending the women on Texas' death row, & sent me a number of photos of them, including Karla Faye Tucker, the woman Bush executed. They told me the women had it much worse than the men on death row in Texas. There were only a few of them, & they are in their own little isolated unit. As bad as it is, those women were paradigms of hope & faith. The prison just brings their food to them, & they cook it themselves. When my Christian friends visited them there in their unit (faith-based George Bush allowed them the run of Texas prisons), they were so thrilled & happy to have guests among them. They proudly cooked & prepared & served, & my friends shared some powerful spiritual moments with them. They sent me letters that Karla Faye wrote, which I shared with others, & sent them letters in return. My friend, Ron, was there when they killed Karla Faye, & it terribly affected him. What sharpened my teeth was what Bush said after he killed her. Other friends were in his circle, & he joked about Karla Faye's clemency appeal for mercy. In a squeaky, falsetto voice, he did his own sick impersonation of Karla Faye's appeal, whining, "Please don't kill me, please don't kill me," & laughing uproariously with his friends about it. When they told me that story, a very cold feeling passed through me.
What I wanted to tell those people in the film was that "life in prison" is also death, albeit slower, but just as sure as that chemical cocktail they inject, or the 2500 volts they use to fry people's brains. Once the death sentence is off, it's like there's no more sense of urgency, there's no rush, don't sweat it, it's okay, they got life, it's all right. I'm telling you it is NOT all right. It's bad. I've got 27 years in prison, & every day it gets worse. Every day I get older. I see old men - sixty, seventy, eighty - who've been in prison 30-40-50 years, white-haired, crippled, palsied, blind, helpless, alone, depending on other prisoners to push their wheelchairs, feed them, wipe their asses, bathe them. To a man they'd rather have died than live in this limbo-land of purgatory between life & death. They have outlived their loved ones, & have no one. One old man I know has a grand-daughter come visit him every few months, but he can't see her & can barely talk. Now they're taking the "elderly" prisoners, 50 & older, & sending them to prisons that are little more than concentration camps, fenced- in cow pastures with no amenities or facilities for education or for real recreation, putting them "out to pasture" for real, waiting till they die. So far, I've missed that - there are about 8,000 prisoners over 50 in Florida, & they've been taking the worst health first. I'll be 55 in September, but I am fit & healthy, through hard work, avoidance of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, prison sex, & by the grace of God. But I am subject to being loaded up on the prison train to one of those camps at any time. And my case has all those elements - wrongful conviction, prosecutor misconduct, lying cops, withheld evidence, perjured witnesses. No big deal, I avoided the death penalty, through no lack of trying on the prosecutor's part. I hope "Deadline" gets good ratings, a lot of people saw it & were affected by it. I've been trying my hardest to get people to listen for all these years, but it seems like one of those bad dreams where you scream & scream for help, the people are right there, but they can't hear you, like no sounds are coming out of your mouth. If you want to forward this to anyone, let them read it, fine. I welcome any comments, & need all the help I can get. Tell Katy & her friend: dynamite !
Best regards,
Charlie
Posted by Angela at 12:29 PM
