Chronicles from Parchman #10: Less Than a Chicken
Incarcerated writer L. Patri weighs the price of seeking exoneration on Mississippi's death row
This is the latest installment in the Chronicles from Parchman series, a monthly column by writer, L. Patri, who has been incarcerated on Parchman’s death row for over thirty years. This week, Mr. Patri and I were able to record him reading his essay. Click “Listen to Post” if you want the audio experience.
You can go into Popeye’s and buy two pieces of chicken and a buttermilk biscuit for $2.99, and you’ll pretty much have a fulfilling meal. Right? So picture this if you will.
As I sit here on the bottom bunk’s black steel slat, cushioned by a thin layer of cotton, my back is to the yellow wall that faces the cater-corner left side of Unit 29-J building. This allows me to look at the unit’s courtyard, with its gated fencing and several basketball courts with a guard tower in the center. From there, the on-duty officer can survey all movement and operations of opening and closing the many sectional gates. I have a blanket over the pillow that props up my knees into a writer’s lap position with my feet dangling inches off the floor. This is comfortable for me. I have the cell door open with the industrial fan facing in the opposite direction. I just want the noise it’s making to drown out the other noises, like guys talking loudly during the Olympics events, or playing—nope, wrong wording—trying to learn how to play guitars and organs and sing. Shit! As if I am not tortured enough—shrugs shoulders—but listen.
I have on the new state-issue clothing: white t-shirt (thin, really nice—I never imagined complimenting MDOC, fuck. I must really be losing it. Shit gets worse then, because the sheets they gave us—man! Damn near had a wet dream I slept so fucking good). I have on long pants, all red, no socks, no shoes, and am pretty much relaxing as I was saying, and then it hits me that I want to talk on something that needs addressing.
In the early years of us, death row, moving to Unit 29-J building, six men were murdered by the state of Mississippi: one man each week for three weeks and in two months time. Media ran coverage of those executions on local stations in the Delta. More recently, Mississippi has murdered two men: one in November 2021 and the other in December 2022. Local media covered those some, too. Between the years of 2017 to 2021, four or three men have had their convictions overturned and been exonerated. Yet local media hasn’t done any coverage on the innocent men who could very well be dead.
Our state is quick and bloodthirsty to murder the people on its death row, and our statesmen and justices applaud these state-sanctioned lynchings.
To this date, Mississippi still has not awarded one of these exonerees any form of compensation for the more than twenty-five years he spent on death row. Mississippi media does not confront the operations within our state’s political, religious, and judicial systems when it comes to spending as much time rebuilding these innocent men’s lives as they did destroying their lives all those decades gone by. Our state is quick and bloodthirsty to murder the people on its death row, and our statesmen and justices applaud these state-sanctioned lynchings. Leaders did correctly in the city of Jackson for once when they mandated that one of those methods to kill is hanging. Yep, that’s good ole fashioned lynching.
And when some poor, undereducated, unemployed man fights to win inside of this labyrinth to save his life and gain his deserved freedom, our statesmen and justices—hell, our teachers and preachers, too—rant about the unfairness and technicalities. Because now they think the victim did not, and the victim’s family did not, receive justice for the death and loss they suffered. They do not pause to consider that these men were wrongly charged, tried, and convicted because law enforcement prosecutors cut corners, planted evidence, forged documents, and straight-out lied about these men’s involvement in these murders. And after decades of being held in a cage under the daily threat of state-sanctioned murdering, these men have finally proven their innocence and that they were just as much a victim.
I mean, that is some sick, twisted shit. With thoughts such as that, how do I survive these decades it may still take to get out of here? I am at thirty-three years inside now, and there are men around the country who have done 35/45/40 years, you know, but shit, I wonder if I can last another ten or seven years. I made my final filing for habeas corpus two Februarys ago and now it’s March, so for more than a year, give or take, I’ve been expecting a ruling. Depending on how this ruling goes when they get back to me, I’ll be alive and free or I’ll be dead. When all of this is happening at the same time that most people in this country can get a chicken for under three dollars to make them happy, you better goddamn believe this shit is stressful.
Right on cue. Today is chicken day, which only comes on Wednesday at lunch. I see the tierman now, bringing in the lunch trays in stacks of nine carrying runt-sized, anemic leg quarters. I think I’ll stop here and get up to wash my hands, because I am goddamn starving.
L. Patri is of Black and Natchez Indian descent, and he is the father of one daughter and a grandfather of five grandchildren. He was born on the river in Natchez, Mississippi, and for the past three decades, he has been challenging his wrongful conviction of capital murder. He writes in multiple and hybrid genres, including thought pieces, journalism, short fiction, letters, and memoir.
Read more from L. Patri
Chronicles from Parchman #5: There are More
"Because they put me on the tier with the state inmates, I thought there was no one on death row. I believed they were all executed because they had to be, as I only had thirty days before my execution."
Chronicles from Parchman #6: Silence Learned
"At its center, the bridge’s height is maybe three or four stories up from the river waters, and to prove ourselves to the gang, we had to stand on the railing and then jump into the river. I was aware that rivers had whirlpools that could suck you under and drown you, but I was so young and so stupid, that I jumped."
Your descriptions are vivid and haunting, Mr. Patri. I'm glad you included a photo of yourself writing!