Chronicles from Parchman #3: Mind Games

An essay by incarcerated writer L. Patri on whether psychological evaluations can save you from being sentenced to death

Editor’s note: This is the third installment in the “Chronicles from Parchman” series, a monthly column by the talented and prolific writer, L. Patri, who has been incarcerated on Parchman’s Death Row for over thirty years. He writes and edits all his work by hand in some of the most extreme conditions imaginable. I recommend reading L. Patri’s other essays, “Living Nightmares: A Chronicle from Parchman” and “I Got White Friends, Too (Until the State Kills Them).” If you leave a comment on this piece, I will make sure to share it with the author. —Lauren

Photo by FÍA YANG on Unsplash

In death penalty, capital cases, there are two parts. First, the guilt phase, where you are tried and convicted by a jury as they “consider” and “weigh” the evidence against you at trial. Second, the sentencing phase, where you are examined (supposedly) by doctors for evidence of mental psychosis at the time the crime occurred. This “examination” encompasses childhood rearing, schooling, etc. The idea is that you could show that your past “traumatic” experiences should save you from being voted to death. Doctors might suggest that you have redeemable qualities so others may vote to give you life in prison.

So, in 1994, I go to Whitfield Mental State Hospital.

Two deputies, who I can only call White + Black, have the honor of driving me. Black is pushing the better parts of 95/88 mph doing his damndest to get me there. Yeah, shit seems surreal to me at times too, and I’m living this shit. Anyway, this is maybe a month before my trial, and I am being evaluated for my mental state back in August 1992 when the crime took place. This makes this evaluation pointless, as I am not of the same mind in March 1994 that I was in 1992. A lot happened in 1993.

On this day, the turn-key comes to the A-block cell door, made of crossed-crissed steel bar rods and tells me to get ready to go to the state hospital. This is around 9:30/9 a.m. He soon comes back with the block door key and opens the metal casing on his left. He uses the control panel to close and lock the cell door. I am in, #1. Yep, first cell. Yay.

Listen, I already knew this day was coming, so I had a book, Animal Farm, pen, and paper, because I’ve been in hospitals before and I expected I’d have to wait on these doctors. As I’ve said, this is 1994, a month before my trial. So I’m prepared to take my notes and discuss this case history, maybe see some files about the case. None of the guys in the county jail knew anything about Whitfield, the state psychiatric facility. I knew I wasn’t crazy, so what is it they might want to talk about? The little I did learn about the second phase, the mitigation, sentencing part, did not impress me. Back then, those doctors were all about abuse, childhood trauma, bad upbringing, poor, shoeless, and shit like that. Nope. That was not my life, even though I’d taken many ass whippings that most parents would get twenty years in prison for today. I wasn’t about to cause my family to be perceived as abusive, neglectful, and what-not.

So it’s maybe ten a.m. when the turn-key unlocks the cell block gate door, and we walk to the elevator around the corner on the second floor. We step in, and he pushes the downward button, which takes us to ground level, where I see Black + White sitting inside the control room. Up to this point, I wasn’t handcuffed or in waist chains or in any restraints, but as soon as that negro Black saw my hands and feet not in irons, he almost passed out, like somebody was shot. 

Now, I got a history with these Black + White motherfuckers because in June of 1993, I escaped for a little bit, a story I’ll tell you about another time. This escape kinda got under their skin and it got me tied to the bed for a week or so. But it was after that little incident where Black told me to take a good look around because I’d never be back. But here I am, back, and looking at this Black motherfucker again. 

Needless to say, I am placed in irons—legs, waist, and hands—and we walk to the waiting patrol car in the sally port area. Once I’m inside, I twist long ways out and prop my feet on the back seat. Then I lean my back against the door and pull out my book.

They ask me several times to put my feet on the floor, to which I respond that there isn’t enough space for that. Eventually, they leave me alone. There is a Bessie Smith blues song playing. Old, old blues from the 1930s/1920s, you know. Opening my book, I begin reading as we depart the jail, heading towards 61 North. I’m thinking that I will be back at the jail around four/three p.m. So it’s back to the animals taking over the farm.

Pretty soon, I am not reading or listening to music but concentrating on the sound of the car tires as they roll along. I guess that lulls me to sleep, because it was the car motion of going forward—stop—going forward—stop—that type of thing, so I figured we’d hit traffic and maybe we were close to Whitfield. Sitting up straighter, I wipe sleep from my eyes, look around, and sure enough, we’ve made it to Whitfield. I recognize the women’s state prison across the way. Up close, Whitfield doesn’t look like much, just some run-down place, if I’m being honest.

When the car finally stops, I think maybe we are at the side entrance/back entrance type door, as there is a landing made up of seven to six steps that leads you up to it. I know it’s not the front entrance, and I am cool with that because I didn’t need people gawking at me with all those damn chains rattling like a broken coin machine.

Serious shit, and all the way up here, I had been somewhat nervous, trying not to show it. Most people I knew growing up knew some Whitfield story. We heard them as children. Doctors electrocuting patients in something called shock treatment, where they shock patients with high volts and then heavily medicate them. The yelling, beating, and things. I had no firsthand knowledge, so I was not only nervous, now I was spooked.

Going through this side entrance doesn’t help much either. I step into a small foyer with a desk in a corner, no other obvious furniture. And then it is just complete emptiness. No sounds of yelling or beating. I can hear the air ventilation system clearly; it sounds loud, and when someone walks down this hallway, it’s super loud! Clip, clop, clip, clop. Black+ White are crowding my space, so I am trying to move past these two bozo cops, but they are not trusting me. I can’t blame them. I can hardly trust myself, and running is never far from my thoughts.

It’s kind of cold in this place, making me wish I had my pullover on. Some middle-aged nurse comes to where we are and starts asking vital health questions. Whether I’ve ever been on psych care? No. How am I feeling today? Can’t say, don’t know, it’s too early to call. After determining I am not allergic to any meds, she has us follow her down the hallway, and on the right, she opens a door for me to walk through. It’s a sterile room: one table, two chairs, a fake plant, two wall mirrors, water cooler in the corner, paper drinking cups on the table. The light is super bright to me, and I keep shielding my eyes, until I can get used to the glare. (Now, almost thirty years later, I see this is just one more thing Mississippi has to fuck me over with. Damn eyesight is shitty! I’ll add that to my list of complaints.)

It’s just me and Black + White in the room. Me sitting, chained up, with them standing in a separate corner to watch me, when Dr. L and Dr. McM walk in. Two quacks, in my opinion. They talk to me all of fifteen minutes after I’ve waited damn near one hour to see them. They show me ink cards and ask what I see. I’m like, what the fuck, I see ink blots on a card. It’s like some child’s game, unreal. And very disappointing that we don’t discuss anything about the crime or my alibi. Even though I don’t know a lot, I do know that this evaluation should have been my mental state surrounding the events in August 1992. But this shit with ink blots and puzzle squares/circles is not what I had in mind. I’m done. Close to a full day has gone. It’s around two p.m., and I am starving and ready to go. So I ask Black + White could I leave, and they say yes. As I try to get out of there, my chains rattle like a broken-down tin roof house in a storm.

Man, this day is fucked up. A month before trial began, and these quacks want me to see shit in blobs of ink and play with puzzles.

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Psychological evaluation matters in capital cases because the second phase of a capital trial deals with mitigation. The mitigations phase can possibly offset the jury from sentencing you to death. Maybe your upbringing was so horrible with abuse and neglect, or maybe you had mental disorders to begin with that contributed to your guilt. Throughout the appeal process of a capital case, psych issues come up, as the laws don’t allow the execution of mentally incapable people.

For me, though. The psych hearing I had in 2004—ten years after the psych exam, which was itself two years after the events—had to take place without a psych report. No report was generated after that visit in 1994 to be used at my sentencing (mitigation) phase, even though this is mandatory in every death case.

Throughout my more than three decades of living on death row, I have known several men who took these psychological exams. This was during the years after the courts ruled that mentally challenged people can no longer be executed. These things stand out to me. The state had, for decades, doped these men on psych drugs, but now they began force-medicating the ones who had refused to take the meds so that they could now appear mentally capable. “Competent” is the word they use. One guy thought he could get high on many different pills, oxycontin, neurontin, benadryl, and stay up three or two days before taking the exam to appear mentally unstable. Some other man told him that would help him fail the test. True. He was high as fuck and talking all kinds of off the wall crazy shit, seeing shit, hearing shit telling him to do this or that. Didn’t help him. He was executed.

Another guy purposely fell on his way out of the shower. Bust his head and shit because men were saying how a head injury makes you qualify for the new law to not execute mentally disabled people. Didn’t help him. He was executed.

I’ve learned over the decades that for many of these men, the psych exams are a life jacket, because Mississippi went on a killing spree. Listen, at one time, Mississippi murdered six men in two months. Three each month, one every week. So, like I was saying, men were desperate to do what they believed could help them pass the exam. Now, there were some men who didn’t deserve the death sentence to begin with because they were never what the state would call “competent” in the first place. They were just not competent for any such trial. One man, for example, couldn’t even spell his own name much less prepare for his trial. He can’t participate in daily functions, he has to be guided to eat, shower, clean up, all kinds of shit in terms of daily activities. What the fuck could he understand about his capital case when he can’t even spell his own name? Letters need to be written, calls need to be made. When he went to his mental exam, the doctors determined this guy competent for trial, which sent him to death row. Of all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never known one person to be found incompetent to stand trial.

For me, this exam can do nothing. I am “competent,” which left me the option of selling out my own childhood. Lawyers and prisoners on the row are of the thought that a horrible childhood—say your uncle or someone sexually abused you, or say your parents beat the hell out of you as well as each other and neglected you, no food, shelter, clothing—can help you “fail” the psych exam. Or is it “passing,” because this could help you live for longer inside prison? Say your living environment was filled with people killing, fighting, pushing drugs, and pimping women, these things can help you “pass” because they can sway the jury. The idea is that the jury will feel empathy, sympathy, and say, “Well, we ought not kill him.” So, you’ve passed because they’ve spared your life. But you’ve also failed, because you might be a twenty-three-year-old kid who’s spending the rest of his life in the penitentiary.

Me, personally. I am not about to bullshit my upbringing with that nonsense in my case, as my upbringing was damn good. I was damn bad, you understand. True, my parents fought like crazy, and they whipped my ass with extension cords and what-not. But neglect and abuse? Nah. That shit doesn’t hold water, in my opinion. I am from a very close-knit sibling family. Listen, I know men here whose family hasn’t mailed them a letter or card, even on holidays. No contact. As for mine, my sisters have been with me every day since I’ve set foot inside that county jail, and believe me, I can be a pain in the ass, you hear me.Knowing the things I know now, I think back to my car ride after the Whitfield visit in 1994, a damn month before my trial began, and I think maybe it should have been Black + White in need of that exam.

When you’re on death row and every day people are devising ways to make it easier to kill you, you must take advantage of any and all ways and means to survive. I can’t degrade these men’s means of claiming mental illness and say they are wrong as they believe it’s right. That’s their choice to make. Prosecutors have every possible aid and funding that Mississippi has to offer—unlimited you hear me—while others like me have practically non-existent aid and funding. I must grasp at any, practically every, hand out and opportunity. It’s like I’m scratching in rocky, broken, dried out soil, searching for some potato spud to eat because I’m damn starved to death.

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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.