Saturday, June 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
A Love Story in 3 Pictures
My friend Jenee sent me the following email this morning. Because I'm not a fan of the mass forward, I figured I'd post it on my blog. It's simply too funny not to share.
p.s. I know my blogging commitment has been pretty awful as of late. But, please cut me some slack for the next few weeks. I've made a firm commitment to my studies this semester. It may be a little late, but I'm finally plugged into school, and it feels pretty good.
p.s. I know my blogging commitment has been pretty awful as of late. But, please cut me some slack for the next few weeks. I've made a firm commitment to my studies this semester. It may be a little late, but I'm finally plugged into school, and it feels pretty good.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Cutie Pie
There may not be a picture that better captures the essence of Austin, my nephew. The helmet is superhero tough guy gear. But notice, he's also holding a rolling pin. The relevance? Well, Austin is the spitting image of my father. My dad beams every time Austin enters the room. They share killer baby blues, and long, curly eyelashes. My father would love nothing more than for Austin to share his passion for hunting. Were it not for loud protests from my mother and I, he would have given Austin a gun for his 4th birthday. Unfortunately, I'm not kidding.
Much to my father's dismay, Austin has an amazingly tender heart. Instead of a desire to harm animals, he is routinely fascinated by their beauty. I hope societal pressure doesn't convince Austin to drop his rolling pen in exchange for more "manly" pursuits, unless of course, that is what he truly desires.
Monday, February 19, 2007
The Mind
Since I started therapy eight months ago, I intended to file a claim with BlueCross in the hopes of having them foot the bill. My policy doesn't cover mental health, but I figure it was worth a shot. Yesterday, I finally emailed my therapist to inquire about the proper procedures. She, of course, was willing to help me fill out the forms and also indicated I would need the following information: her license number, cpt code, diagnosis code, etc.
Diagnosis code? The thought made me chuckle a bit. I remember a similar occasion that occurred with my first therapist. I'm not sure how the subject came up. Perhaps I asked what the hell was in the huge file he lugged to every session, or maybe we were simply discussing trivial insurance matters. The only thing I'm certain of is how my chest tightened at the mention of "my diagnosis." For several seconds, I sat there speechless.
At age 20, the thought of being a little crazy slightly appealed to me. I was still reeling from two awful relationships and several bad decisions that left me alienated from my family. Although I had emerged from the worst of it, I still carried my armor wherever I went. I was tough. I was impenetrable. At least that's what I told myself. If I were officially deemed crazy this would supply yet another mask to don, another layer of protection. Yet, at that moment the label terrified me. As my therapist explained the need for a diagnosis in every case in order to satisfy the insurance companies, my anxiety began to dissipate. Not surprisingly, I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder.
I was reminded yesterday of not only my past fears and emotions, but also our society's unhealthy attitudes towards mental illness. It is the pariah of the medical profession and the dark secret of many families. I have numerous friends who refuse to either take anti-depressants or see a therapist, while others speak of their practices only furtively. I, on the other hand, have always candidly discussed therapy and the instances when I've taken anti-depressants. Therapy is not an easy process. It takes a lot of courage. I believe wholeheartedly that my willingness to genuinely self-reflect makes me stronger than most folks. So why, yesterday, did those two words - diagnosis code - pique my interest? If I went to a physician because I felt a little ill, would it matter if he deemed it a mild case of influenza or a common cold?
Played out in the real world, society's view of mental defects may result in pernicious consequences. One example is a typical scenario capital defenders face when their clients are mentally retarded. In 2002 the Supreme Court, in Atkins v. Virgina, finally declared the execution of mentally retarded offenders was unconstitutuional. I've heard more the one attorney recount instances wherein they explained to a mentally retarded client, in painstaking detail, that this fact alone would save their life. However, the attorney's efforts are often met with great disdain due to the shame associated with mental deficiencies. Clients often refuse to allow their lawyers to publicly mention the words mental retardation, even if it means death. One woman told me the only tactic that worked with her client was to tell him that they were only pretending he was retarded. With only an IQ of 60, he went right along with the plan.
I know this post was a little disjointed, but what do you guys think about mental illness? Is it different from other illnesses? If so, why? If not, why do we as a society approach it differently?
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Gary Tyler
In 1974, Gary Tyler was sentenced to death for a murder he didn't commit. I met Gary two years ago at LongTermer's Day at Angola. He is an amazing man - very sincere and very jovial. Gary's case is a perfect example of the legal lynching I described in my earlier post, Strange Fruit.
The NY Times recently ran three editorials on the Tyler case: A Death in Destrahan, Gary Tyler's Lost Decades, and today's piece They Beat Gary So Bad. I'll defer to the pros and allow the Times to tell the story. Since the articles were published in the NY Times Select, they may not be accessible to everyone, so I've copied and pasted them below.
Side note: Gary's attorney, Mary Howell is one of the finest people I've met in the legal world. I hope to be like her when I grow up. She's truly learned to balance life with her passion for the law. And balance, my dear friends, has never been my forte.
Feburary 1, 2007
A Death In Destrehan
By BOB HERBERT
On the afternoon of Oct. 7, 1974, a mob of 200 enraged whites, many of them students, closed in on a bus filled with black students that was trying to pull away from the local high school. The people in the mob were in a high-pitched frenzy. They screamed racial epithets and bombarded the bus with rocks and bottles. The students on the bus were terrified.
When a shot was heard, the kids on the bus dived for cover. But it was a 13-year-old white boy standing near the bus, not far from his mother, who toppled to the ground with a bullet wound in his head. The boy, a freshman named Timothy Weber, died a few hours later.
That single shot in this rural town about 25 miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans set in motion a tale of appalling injustice that has lasted to the present day.
Destrehan was in turmoil in 1974 over school integration. The Supreme Court's historic desegregation ruling was already 20 years old -- time enough, the courts said, for Destrehan and the surrounding area to comply. But the Ku Klux Klan was still welcome in Destrehan in those days, and David Duke, its one-time imperial wizard, was an admired figure. White families in the region wanted no part of integration.
When black students were admitted to Destrehan High, they were greeted with taunts, various forms of humiliation and violence. Some of the black students fought back, and in the period leading up to the shooting there had been racial fights at a football game and inside the school.
While the Weber boy was being taken to a hospital, authorities ordered the black students off the bus and searched each one. The bus was also thoroughly searched. No weapon was found, and there was no evidence to indicate that the shot had come from the bus. The bus driver insisted it had not come from the bus, but from someone firing at the bus.
One of the black youngsters, a 16-year-old named Gary Tyler, was arrested for disturbing the peace after he talked back to a sheriff's deputy -- one of the few deputies in St. Charles Parish who was black. It may have been young Tyler's impudence that doomed him. He was branded on the spot as the designated killer.
(Later, at a trial, the deputy, Nelson Coleman, was asked whose peace had been disturbed by Mr. Tyler's comments. ''Mine,'' he replied.)
Matters moved amazingly fast after the shooting. Racial tension gave way to racial hysteria. A white boy had been killed and some black had to pay. Mr. Tyler, as good a black as any, was taken to a sheriff's substation where he was beaten unmercifully amid shouted commands that he confess. He would not.
It didn't matter. In just a little over a year he would be tried, convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death by electrocution.
The efficiency of the process was chilling. Evidence began to miraculously appear. Investigators ''found'' a .45-caliber pistol. Never mind that there were no fingerprints on it and it turned out to have been stolen from a firing range used by the sheriff's deputies. (Or that it subsequently disappeared as conveniently as it was found.) The authorities said they found the gun on the bus, despite the fact that the initial search had turned up nothing.
The authorities found witnesses who said that Mr. Tyler had been the gunman. Never mind that the main witness, a former girlfriend of Mr. Tyler's, was a troubled youngster who had been under the care of a psychiatrist and had a history of reporting phony crimes to the police, including a false report of a kidnapping. She and every other witness who fingered Mr. Tyler would later recant, charging that they had been terrorized into testifying falsely by the police.
A sworn affidavit from Larry Dabney, who was seated by Mr. Tyler on the bus, was typical. He said his treatment by the police was the ''scariest thing'' he'd ever experienced. ''They didn't even ask me what I saw,'' he said. ''They told me flat out that I was going to be their key witness. They told me I was going to testify that I saw Gary with a gun right after I heard the shot and that a few minutes later I had seen him hide it in a slit in the seat. That was not true. I didn't see Gary or anybody else in that bus with a gun.''
Mr. Tyler was spared electrocution when the Supreme Court declared Louisiana's death penalty unconstitutional. But in many ways he has in fact paid with his life. He'll turn 50 this year in the state penitentiary at Angola, where he is serving out his sentence of life without parole for the murder of Timothy Weber.
February 5, 2007
Gary Tyler’s Lost Decades
By BOB HERBERT
Destrehan, La.
The term “time warp” could have been coined for this rural town of 11,000 residents that sits beside, and just a little below, the Mississippi River. A remnant of the sugar-plantation era, the region’s racially troubled past is always here, seldom spoken about but inescapable, like the murk in the air of a perpetually stalled weather front.
The Harry Hurst Middle School is on the site of the old Destrehan High School, which was the scene of violent protests during the integration period of the 1970s. Local residents have tried to blot out the murder case that made Destrehan High notorious three decades ago, but there’s a big problem with that collective effort to forget. The black teenager who was railroaded into prison (and almost into the electric chair) for the murder of a white student in 1974 is still in prison all these many years later. He’s middle-aged now, still suffering through a life sentence without any chance for parole in the notorious state penitentiary at Angola.
There is no longer any doubt that the case against the teenager, Gary Tyler, was a travesty. A federal appeals court ruled unequivocally that he did not receive a fair trial. The Louisiana Board of Pardons issued rulings on three occasions that would have allowed Mr. Tyler to be freed.
But this is the South and Mr. Tyler was a black person convicted of killing a white. It didn’t matter that the case was built on bogus evidence and coerced witnesses, or that the trial was, in the words of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, “fundamentally unfair.” Mr. Tyler was never given a new trial and the pardon board recommendations were rejected by two governors.
(Lurking in the background as the case unfolded was David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who was very active politically in Louisiana and always ready to inject his poison into the public issues of the day. If you drive around Destrehan and nearby communities today you will still see some of the old blue-and-white campaign signs for Duke.)
Mr. Tyler, a sophomore at Destrehan High, was on a bus filled with black students that was attacked on Oct. 7, 1974, by a white mob enraged over school integration. A shot was fired and a 13-year-old white boy standing outside the bus collapsed, mortally wounded. Mr. Tyler was arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace after he talked back to a sheriff’s deputy.
Although the bus and its passengers were searched and no weapon was found, Mr. Tyler was taken into custody, savagely beaten and accused of committing the murder. A gun was “found” during a subsequent search of the bus and witnesses were rounded up to testify against Mr. Tyler. It turned out that the gun (which has since disappeared) had been stolen from a firing range used by officers of the sheriff’s department. All of the witnesses who fingered Mr. Tyler would eventually recant, saying they had been terrorized into testifying falsely by the authorities.
Mr. Tyler was represented at trial by a white sole practitioner who had never handled a murder case, much less a death penalty case. He kept his meetings with his client to a minimum and would later complain about the money he was paid.
The outcome was predictable. Mr. Tyler was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair by an all-white jury. At 17, he was the youngest prisoner on death row in the country. He almost certainly would have been executed if the U.S. Supreme Court had not ruled the Louisiana death penalty unconstitutional.
The Fifth Circuit ruling in 1981 said that an improper charge to the jury had denied Mr. Tyler the presumption of innocence at his trial. “It is folly,” the court said, “to argue that the erroneous charge did not affect the central determination of guilt or innocence.”
What was folly was any expectation that Mr. Tyler would be treated fairly at any point. Despite the appeals court ruling, he was denied a new trial on a technicality.
Now consider this, because it will tell you all you need to know about racial justice in the South. A 19-year-old black man named Richard Dunn was shotgunned to death as he was heading home from a benefit dance in support of Mr. Tyler at Southern University in New Orleans in 1976. A white man, Anthony Mart, was arrested and convicted of shooting Mr. Dunn from a passing car.
Gary Tyler’s current attorney, Mary Howell, ruefully explained what happened to Mr. Mart for the cold-blooded killing of a black stranger: He was sent to prison for life but was pardoned and freed after serving about 10 years.
February 8, 2007
‘They Beat Gary So Bad’
By BOB HERBERT
ST. ROSE, La.
Juanita Tyler lives in a neat one-story house that sits behind a glistening magnolia tree that dominates the small front lawn.
She is 74 now and unfailingly gracious, but she admits to being tired from a lifetime of hard work and trouble. I went to see her to talk about her son, Gary.
The Tylers are black. In 1974, when Gary was 16, he was accused of murdering a 13-year-old white boy outside the high school that they attended in nearby Destrehan. The boy was shot to death in the midst of turmoil over school integration, which the local whites were resisting violently.
The case against young Tyler — who was on a bus with other black students that was attacked by about 200 whites — was built on bogus evidence and coerced testimony. But that was enough to get him convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to die in the electric chair. His life was spared when the Louisiana death penalty was ruled unconstitutional, but he is serving out a life sentence with no chance of parole in the state penitentiary at Angola.
Ms. Tyler’s sharpest memory of the day Gary was arrested was of sitting in a room at a sheriff’s station, listening to deputies in the next room savagely beating her son.
“They beat Gary so bad,” she said. “My poor child. I couldn’t do nothing. They wouldn’t let me in there. I saw who went in there. They were like older men. They didn’t care that I was there. They didn’t care who was there. They beat Gary something awful, and I could hear him hollering and moaning. All I could say was, ‘Oh Jesus, have mercy.’
“One of the deputies had a strap and they whipped him with that. It was terrible. Finally, when they let me go in there, Gary was just trembling. He was frightened to death. He was trembling and rocking back and forth. They had kicked him all in his privates. He said, ‘Mama, they kicked me. One kicked me in the front and one kicked in the back.’ He said that over and over.
“I couldn’t believe what they had done to my baby.”
The deputies had tried to get Gary to confess, but he wouldn’t. Ms. Tyler (like so many people who have looked closely at this case) was scornful of the evidence the authorities came up with.
“It was ridiculous,” she said. “Where was he gonna get that big ol’ police gun they said he used? It was a great big ol’ gun. And he had on those tight-fitting clothes and nobody saw it?”
The gun that investigators produced as the murder weapon was indeed a large, heavy weapon — a government-issued Colt .45 that had been stolen from a firing range used by the sheriff’s department. Deputies who saw Gary before the shooting and those who searched him (and the rest of the black students on the bus) immediately afterward did not see any gun.
“I don’t know where the police got that gun from,” said Ms. Tyler. “But they didn’t get it from my son, that’s for sure.”
Ms. Tyler worked for many years as a domestic while raising 11 children. Her husband, Uylos, a maintenance worker who often held three jobs at a time, died in 1989. “He had a bad heart,” Ms. Tyler said.
She shifted in her chair in the living room of the small house, and was quiet for several minutes. Then she asked, “Do you know what it’s like to lose a child?”
I shook my head.
“I always felt sorry for that woman whose son was killed,” she said. “That was a terrible time. I remember it clear, like it was yesterday. But what happened was wrong. The white people, they didn’t want no black children in that school. So there was a lot of tension. And my son has paid a terrible price for that.
“They didn’t have no kind of proof against him, but they beat him bad anyway, and then they sentenced him to the electric chair.”
Ms. Tyler visits Gary at Angola regularly, the last time a few weeks ago. “He’s doing well,” she said. “And I’m glad that he’s able to cope. He tries to help the young ones out when they come in there. He always tells me, ‘My dear, you have to stay strong so I can stay strong.’ So then I just try to hold my head up and keep on going.”
She looked for a moment as if she was going to cry, but she didn’t.
“It’s just sad,” she said. “I wonder if he’ll ever be able to come out. I wonder will I live long enough to see him out.”
The NY Times recently ran three editorials on the Tyler case: A Death in Destrahan, Gary Tyler's Lost Decades, and today's piece They Beat Gary So Bad. I'll defer to the pros and allow the Times to tell the story. Since the articles were published in the NY Times Select, they may not be accessible to everyone, so I've copied and pasted them below.
Side note: Gary's attorney, Mary Howell is one of the finest people I've met in the legal world. I hope to be like her when I grow up. She's truly learned to balance life with her passion for the law. And balance, my dear friends, has never been my forte.
Feburary 1, 2007
A Death In Destrehan
By BOB HERBERT
On the afternoon of Oct. 7, 1974, a mob of 200 enraged whites, many of them students, closed in on a bus filled with black students that was trying to pull away from the local high school. The people in the mob were in a high-pitched frenzy. They screamed racial epithets and bombarded the bus with rocks and bottles. The students on the bus were terrified.
When a shot was heard, the kids on the bus dived for cover. But it was a 13-year-old white boy standing near the bus, not far from his mother, who toppled to the ground with a bullet wound in his head. The boy, a freshman named Timothy Weber, died a few hours later.
That single shot in this rural town about 25 miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans set in motion a tale of appalling injustice that has lasted to the present day.
Destrehan was in turmoil in 1974 over school integration. The Supreme Court's historic desegregation ruling was already 20 years old -- time enough, the courts said, for Destrehan and the surrounding area to comply. But the Ku Klux Klan was still welcome in Destrehan in those days, and David Duke, its one-time imperial wizard, was an admired figure. White families in the region wanted no part of integration.
When black students were admitted to Destrehan High, they were greeted with taunts, various forms of humiliation and violence. Some of the black students fought back, and in the period leading up to the shooting there had been racial fights at a football game and inside the school.
While the Weber boy was being taken to a hospital, authorities ordered the black students off the bus and searched each one. The bus was also thoroughly searched. No weapon was found, and there was no evidence to indicate that the shot had come from the bus. The bus driver insisted it had not come from the bus, but from someone firing at the bus.
One of the black youngsters, a 16-year-old named Gary Tyler, was arrested for disturbing the peace after he talked back to a sheriff's deputy -- one of the few deputies in St. Charles Parish who was black. It may have been young Tyler's impudence that doomed him. He was branded on the spot as the designated killer.
(Later, at a trial, the deputy, Nelson Coleman, was asked whose peace had been disturbed by Mr. Tyler's comments. ''Mine,'' he replied.)
Matters moved amazingly fast after the shooting. Racial tension gave way to racial hysteria. A white boy had been killed and some black had to pay. Mr. Tyler, as good a black as any, was taken to a sheriff's substation where he was beaten unmercifully amid shouted commands that he confess. He would not.
It didn't matter. In just a little over a year he would be tried, convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death by electrocution.
The efficiency of the process was chilling. Evidence began to miraculously appear. Investigators ''found'' a .45-caliber pistol. Never mind that there were no fingerprints on it and it turned out to have been stolen from a firing range used by the sheriff's deputies. (Or that it subsequently disappeared as conveniently as it was found.) The authorities said they found the gun on the bus, despite the fact that the initial search had turned up nothing.
The authorities found witnesses who said that Mr. Tyler had been the gunman. Never mind that the main witness, a former girlfriend of Mr. Tyler's, was a troubled youngster who had been under the care of a psychiatrist and had a history of reporting phony crimes to the police, including a false report of a kidnapping. She and every other witness who fingered Mr. Tyler would later recant, charging that they had been terrorized into testifying falsely by the police.
A sworn affidavit from Larry Dabney, who was seated by Mr. Tyler on the bus, was typical. He said his treatment by the police was the ''scariest thing'' he'd ever experienced. ''They didn't even ask me what I saw,'' he said. ''They told me flat out that I was going to be their key witness. They told me I was going to testify that I saw Gary with a gun right after I heard the shot and that a few minutes later I had seen him hide it in a slit in the seat. That was not true. I didn't see Gary or anybody else in that bus with a gun.''
Mr. Tyler was spared electrocution when the Supreme Court declared Louisiana's death penalty unconstitutional. But in many ways he has in fact paid with his life. He'll turn 50 this year in the state penitentiary at Angola, where he is serving out his sentence of life without parole for the murder of Timothy Weber.
February 5, 2007
Gary Tyler’s Lost Decades
By BOB HERBERT
Destrehan, La.
The term “time warp” could have been coined for this rural town of 11,000 residents that sits beside, and just a little below, the Mississippi River. A remnant of the sugar-plantation era, the region’s racially troubled past is always here, seldom spoken about but inescapable, like the murk in the air of a perpetually stalled weather front.
The Harry Hurst Middle School is on the site of the old Destrehan High School, which was the scene of violent protests during the integration period of the 1970s. Local residents have tried to blot out the murder case that made Destrehan High notorious three decades ago, but there’s a big problem with that collective effort to forget. The black teenager who was railroaded into prison (and almost into the electric chair) for the murder of a white student in 1974 is still in prison all these many years later. He’s middle-aged now, still suffering through a life sentence without any chance for parole in the notorious state penitentiary at Angola.
There is no longer any doubt that the case against the teenager, Gary Tyler, was a travesty. A federal appeals court ruled unequivocally that he did not receive a fair trial. The Louisiana Board of Pardons issued rulings on three occasions that would have allowed Mr. Tyler to be freed.
But this is the South and Mr. Tyler was a black person convicted of killing a white. It didn’t matter that the case was built on bogus evidence and coerced witnesses, or that the trial was, in the words of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, “fundamentally unfair.” Mr. Tyler was never given a new trial and the pardon board recommendations were rejected by two governors.
(Lurking in the background as the case unfolded was David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who was very active politically in Louisiana and always ready to inject his poison into the public issues of the day. If you drive around Destrehan and nearby communities today you will still see some of the old blue-and-white campaign signs for Duke.)
Mr. Tyler, a sophomore at Destrehan High, was on a bus filled with black students that was attacked on Oct. 7, 1974, by a white mob enraged over school integration. A shot was fired and a 13-year-old white boy standing outside the bus collapsed, mortally wounded. Mr. Tyler was arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace after he talked back to a sheriff’s deputy.
Although the bus and its passengers were searched and no weapon was found, Mr. Tyler was taken into custody, savagely beaten and accused of committing the murder. A gun was “found” during a subsequent search of the bus and witnesses were rounded up to testify against Mr. Tyler. It turned out that the gun (which has since disappeared) had been stolen from a firing range used by officers of the sheriff’s department. All of the witnesses who fingered Mr. Tyler would eventually recant, saying they had been terrorized into testifying falsely by the authorities.
Mr. Tyler was represented at trial by a white sole practitioner who had never handled a murder case, much less a death penalty case. He kept his meetings with his client to a minimum and would later complain about the money he was paid.
The outcome was predictable. Mr. Tyler was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair by an all-white jury. At 17, he was the youngest prisoner on death row in the country. He almost certainly would have been executed if the U.S. Supreme Court had not ruled the Louisiana death penalty unconstitutional.
The Fifth Circuit ruling in 1981 said that an improper charge to the jury had denied Mr. Tyler the presumption of innocence at his trial. “It is folly,” the court said, “to argue that the erroneous charge did not affect the central determination of guilt or innocence.”
What was folly was any expectation that Mr. Tyler would be treated fairly at any point. Despite the appeals court ruling, he was denied a new trial on a technicality.
Now consider this, because it will tell you all you need to know about racial justice in the South. A 19-year-old black man named Richard Dunn was shotgunned to death as he was heading home from a benefit dance in support of Mr. Tyler at Southern University in New Orleans in 1976. A white man, Anthony Mart, was arrested and convicted of shooting Mr. Dunn from a passing car.
Gary Tyler’s current attorney, Mary Howell, ruefully explained what happened to Mr. Mart for the cold-blooded killing of a black stranger: He was sent to prison for life but was pardoned and freed after serving about 10 years.
February 8, 2007
‘They Beat Gary So Bad’
By BOB HERBERT
ST. ROSE, La.
Juanita Tyler lives in a neat one-story house that sits behind a glistening magnolia tree that dominates the small front lawn.
She is 74 now and unfailingly gracious, but she admits to being tired from a lifetime of hard work and trouble. I went to see her to talk about her son, Gary.
The Tylers are black. In 1974, when Gary was 16, he was accused of murdering a 13-year-old white boy outside the high school that they attended in nearby Destrehan. The boy was shot to death in the midst of turmoil over school integration, which the local whites were resisting violently.
The case against young Tyler — who was on a bus with other black students that was attacked by about 200 whites — was built on bogus evidence and coerced testimony. But that was enough to get him convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to die in the electric chair. His life was spared when the Louisiana death penalty was ruled unconstitutional, but he is serving out a life sentence with no chance of parole in the state penitentiary at Angola.
Ms. Tyler’s sharpest memory of the day Gary was arrested was of sitting in a room at a sheriff’s station, listening to deputies in the next room savagely beating her son.
“They beat Gary so bad,” she said. “My poor child. I couldn’t do nothing. They wouldn’t let me in there. I saw who went in there. They were like older men. They didn’t care that I was there. They didn’t care who was there. They beat Gary something awful, and I could hear him hollering and moaning. All I could say was, ‘Oh Jesus, have mercy.’
“One of the deputies had a strap and they whipped him with that. It was terrible. Finally, when they let me go in there, Gary was just trembling. He was frightened to death. He was trembling and rocking back and forth. They had kicked him all in his privates. He said, ‘Mama, they kicked me. One kicked me in the front and one kicked in the back.’ He said that over and over.
“I couldn’t believe what they had done to my baby.”
The deputies had tried to get Gary to confess, but he wouldn’t. Ms. Tyler (like so many people who have looked closely at this case) was scornful of the evidence the authorities came up with.
“It was ridiculous,” she said. “Where was he gonna get that big ol’ police gun they said he used? It was a great big ol’ gun. And he had on those tight-fitting clothes and nobody saw it?”
The gun that investigators produced as the murder weapon was indeed a large, heavy weapon — a government-issued Colt .45 that had been stolen from a firing range used by the sheriff’s department. Deputies who saw Gary before the shooting and those who searched him (and the rest of the black students on the bus) immediately afterward did not see any gun.
“I don’t know where the police got that gun from,” said Ms. Tyler. “But they didn’t get it from my son, that’s for sure.”
Ms. Tyler worked for many years as a domestic while raising 11 children. Her husband, Uylos, a maintenance worker who often held three jobs at a time, died in 1989. “He had a bad heart,” Ms. Tyler said.
She shifted in her chair in the living room of the small house, and was quiet for several minutes. Then she asked, “Do you know what it’s like to lose a child?”
I shook my head.
“I always felt sorry for that woman whose son was killed,” she said. “That was a terrible time. I remember it clear, like it was yesterday. But what happened was wrong. The white people, they didn’t want no black children in that school. So there was a lot of tension. And my son has paid a terrible price for that.
“They didn’t have no kind of proof against him, but they beat him bad anyway, and then they sentenced him to the electric chair.”
Ms. Tyler visits Gary at Angola regularly, the last time a few weeks ago. “He’s doing well,” she said. “And I’m glad that he’s able to cope. He tries to help the young ones out when they come in there. He always tells me, ‘My dear, you have to stay strong so I can stay strong.’ So then I just try to hold my head up and keep on going.”
She looked for a moment as if she was going to cry, but she didn’t.
“It’s just sad,” she said. “I wonder if he’ll ever be able to come out. I wonder will I live long enough to see him out.”
Saturday, February 03, 2007
This one's for CJ.
If you've missed it, Ms. CJ has been demanding another post. I took this picture last month, the day she and her new gf were coming into town. This car happened to be parked next to me at the grocery. As CJ mentioned in the comments to this post, she's been through a lot recently. Her visit to Baton Rouge that weekend was a homecoming of sorts. In that context, how perfect is this picture? I meant to show it to her during our visit. But with a little assistance from my friend ADHD, of course I forgot.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Strange Fruit
Last weekend I attended a showing of Strange Fruit at the Jewish Film Festival in Baton Rouge. I love jazz and Billie Holliday. Not surprisingly, after I read a synopsis of the film, particularly how it delved into the history of the song's lyrics and the civil rights movement, I was sold.
Strange Fruit's eerie and pointed lyrics unabashedly describe the racist practice of lynching in the South. The song was penned by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish school teacher. The story behind both the song and its author mimicked the lyrics in many ways; each turn revealed an unexpected twist that left me stunned.
The documentary was brillantly put together. The film maker, Joel Katz, was also on hand to answer questions after the viewing. My only issue, one I didn't have the nerve to articulate, was an inference that state sanctioned killings are a thing of the past. In reality, lynching is so closely tied to the death penalty that capital defense lawyers and scholars refer to the penalty as legal lynching. Stephen Bright, Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, and one of our nation's leading capital defense attorneys recently responded to the following question:
You’ve written extensively about race, class, and the death penalty. What are the connections between them?
Bright: "The death penalty is a direct descendent of slavery, lynching, and racial oppression that has been going on in this country since it was founded.
When the South was getting bad press for lynching people in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, the perfunctory death penalty trial became a way of accomplishing the same thing. There are many examples where the authorities told the mob, "Let the courts take care of it." The understood message was that the person would be given a quick trial, appointed some incompetent lawyer and, after a perfunctory trial, sentenced to death and then hung, shot or electrocuted.
Race continues to be a major factor in determining who is sentenced to death, in part because of this history and in part because the courts are the part of society least affected by the civil rights movement. People of color are largely excluded from participating in the system as judges, jurors, prosecutors, and lawyers.
The two most important decisions in every death penalty case are made by the prosecutor. First, the prosecutor decides whether to seek the death penalty. The prosecutor always has discretion to seek or not to seek the death penalty. She is never required to seek death. Second, the prosecutor has complete discretion in deciding whether to offer a sentence less than death in exchange for a defendant’s guilty plea. The overwhelming majority of all criminal cases, including capital cases, are resolved not by trials, but by plea bargains. In the 38 states that have the death penalty, 97.5 percent of chief prosecutors are white. In 18 of the states, all of the prosecutors are white.
The primary connection between class and the death penalty is that those who cannot afford lawyers are often assigned lawyers who lack the skills, resources and often even the inclination to defend a death case.
The courts have held that the lawyer assigned to defend a poor person, even in a capital case, need not be aware of the governing law, be sober or even be awake. In Houston, three people have been sentenced to death at trials in which the defense lawyer fell asleep from time to time. A woman was sentenced to death in Alabama at a trial where her lawyer was so drunk that the trial had to be suspended for a day so the lawyer could sober up.
Beyond that, the death penalty is imposed mostly on people who grew up in debilitating poverty--who survived the most horrendous physical, emotional and sexual abuse during nightmarish childhoods that most people cannot even imagine. The death penalty has become the ultimate weapon in class warfare that is being fought top down against the poorest and the most powerless people in our society."
Katz didn't deny the presence of racism and xenophobia in the United States. However, the harsh realities of lynching, along with its public nature, renders any attempted juxtaposition to today's penalty to appear misplaced. We are able to gawk, without appropriate guilt, at pictures of lynched human beings. In fact an exhibit, Without Sanctuary, recently allowed folks to do just that.
It's easy to believe our internal dialogue: "We wouldn't be so barbaric today." However, the only real change is that we've altered the means by which we mete out the punishment; we presently resort to ways which allow us, not the person we are killing, to be more comfortable. The electric chair made that which was once public, private; it hid from our collective conscience the penalty's grave injustices. Yet still over time, the smell of burnt flesh when bodies accidently caught on fire became unbearable to the individuals whom were forced, or chose, to witness. Enter lethal injection to save the day. It seems so, well, medical. The gurney and the doctor presiding over the affair make the "procedure" appear legit.
More than ever, it is easier to disengage and pretend like our silence isn't a form of acquiescence. This is precisely what I did after I was diagnosed with kidney disease. In spite of entering law school with the clear goal of practicing public interest law, I began to look into other areas - like estate planning or tax. Captial defense, I reasoned, was too stressful. I needed to take care of myself. What I really needed was a wake-up call. Thankfully, that came last Sunday.
More than ever, it is easier to disengage and pretend like our silence isn't a form of acquiescence. This is precisely what I did after I was diagnosed with kidney disease. In spite of entering law school with the clear goal of practicing public interest law, I began to look into other areas - like estate planning or tax. Captial defense, I reasoned, was too stressful. I needed to take care of myself. What I really needed was a wake-up call. Thankfully, that came last Sunday.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Friday Romp
After two weeks of awful, depressing weather, the pups finally got reprieve from the indoors. The biggest casualty of their imprisonment was a checkbook Jacques decided to devour. I guess he too, knew, it was basically worthless.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Dog
After reading this post today, I was reminded of a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem, "Dog." On this 14th consecutive day of Seattle-like weather, I thought why not go a little West Coast.
Dog
The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in the doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn’t hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit's Tower
and past Congressman Doyle of the Unamerican Committee
He’s afraid of Coit’s Tower
but he’s not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog’s life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live
barking
Dog
The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in the doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn’t hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit's Tower
and past Congressman Doyle of the Unamerican Committee
He’s afraid of Coit’s Tower
but he’s not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog’s life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live
barking
democratic dog
engaged in real
engaged in real
free enterprise
with something to say
about reality
and how to see it
and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways
at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have
his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for
His Master’s Voice
and looking
like a living questionmark
into the
great gramophone
of puzzling existence
with its wondrous hollow horn
which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer
to everything
with something to say
about reality
and how to see it
and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways
at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have
his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for
His Master’s Voice
and looking
like a living questionmark
into the
great gramophone
of puzzling existence
with its wondrous hollow horn
which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer
to everything
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Monday, January 15, 2007
The City's Got Spirit
Over the break I attended my friend Betsy's wedding. It was in New Orleans, where both she and her husband have lived the majority of their lives. It was beautiful, very warm, and very intimate. Really, it was very New Orleans.
Betsy's husband, Chris, is a musician. So the music, of course, was fantastic. They hired The Hot Club of New Orleans, a popular local Jazz group. My favorite part of the evening was when they performed "Bourbon Street Parade." Up to that point, the dance floor had been more or less avoided by all. However, when the first note rang out, nearly every native New Orleanian left their seats, folded their napkins in half, and began marching around the room, violently waving their arms and napkins in the air. It moved me to tears.
You Either Love It or You Hate It
My first memory of New Orleans is of a Paul Young concert my parents and I attended in 1985. "Everytime You Go" was wildly popular. Young's gesture of pointing towards himself, and then towards the crowd in sychrony with the lyrics, was unforgettable. After the concert, we walked down Bourbon street. At age seven, I was mildly confused and immensely intrigued by the sites we encountered. As I curiously peered into one of the strip joints, a doorman warned, "Don't look in here girl; it'll make your eyes pop out!" It didn't, of course. Although I was shocked at the time, the City has since shown me far worse. Still, I'm smitten.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
I suck
The first week of school is over. I'll be back tomorrow with a vengeance. Cut me some slack or cuss me in the comments. Your choice.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Free-thinking kitty
Meet Jezebel, my free-thinking cat who loves to shit outside of the box.
During the last 8 years, I've grown accustomed to finding an occasional a turd or two lying near the litter box. To combat the problem, I searched the Internet for articles, read each of them several times, and tried every suggested tactic to curb her fowl habit. Nothing worked. Instead, Jezebel's diversified her pooping habits; at this point any old spot will do.
The experts claim cats don't act out. If your kitty is missing the box, anxiety or heath issues are usually to blaim. But when it comes to Jezebel, I'm simply not buying it. I doubt it is a coincidence that fresh piles of cat crap usually appear when I choose to spend the night away from home. After all, this is the same cat who once snuck into the room and bit an ex of mine on the neck when we were doing the deed. She's not right, but neither was the ex. Perhaps Jezebel was trying to warn me. Someone needed to, however, that's a story for another day.
During the last 8 years, I've grown accustomed to finding an occasional a turd or two lying near the litter box. To combat the problem, I searched the Internet for articles, read each of them several times, and tried every suggested tactic to curb her fowl habit. Nothing worked. Instead, Jezebel's diversified her pooping habits; at this point any old spot will do.
The experts claim cats don't act out. If your kitty is missing the box, anxiety or heath issues are usually to blaim. But when it comes to Jezebel, I'm simply not buying it. I doubt it is a coincidence that fresh piles of cat crap usually appear when I choose to spend the night away from home. After all, this is the same cat who once snuck into the room and bit an ex of mine on the neck when we were doing the deed. She's not right, but neither was the ex. Perhaps Jezebel was trying to warn me. Someone needed to, however, that's a story for another day.
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