Chronicles from Parchman #7: Better off Executed than Educated

"No lawyer has been or is more invested than I am." L. Patri writes about the importance of self-education in his pursuit of justice.

This is the seventh 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. This week, Mr. Patri and I were able to record him reading his essay. Click “Listen to Post” if you want the audio experience.

Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash

For twenty-two years, all of my lawyers were white people. I always had a feeling that they did not understand, comprehend, and really did not give me their all in my fight for my life and freedom. I couldn’t relate to them wholeheartedly because I had it in my mind that they really were just white Mississippi people going through the motions to make it “look good.” After all, I was on death row for the killing of a white woman, so they secretly wanted me dead, too. But they could not just outright fuck over my case.

An attorney and client must have a clear and full understanding of what they are saying to each other. Cultural inflections in our tones of speech can cause some attorneys to lose the true meaning of what is being said. People like to think, and in many ways it’s true, that we are all American people. But Blacks and whites are two separate people inside America. That’s why you often hear the word “Ebonics” as a language. I speak fluent English, and if I choose, I speak proper English. You understand. “Cheerio,” “ole chap,” or “just shut it, fellow.”

But in the language I speak now, from deep in the southern states of Mississippi and Louisiana, I can tell you this line, “Ima be there no,” when you ask me if I’m coming somewhere with you. When you hear “No, I’m not going to be there,” I’m actually saying, “Yes, I will be there.” The “no” and “yes” are switched depending on who you’re talking to. Then there is the drawl we have where one word sounds like another, such as in a recent interview I did on a recording where I said “the NPD framed me for this crime…” but when they transcribed it, they wrote “EMPD.” So. People will get lost in the translation. When it comes to this legal language, I had to learn how to talk totally different so a lawyer didn’t miss what I was saying, and vice versa.

When I did get Black people to be my lawyers in 2016, it was by chance. JH, another man on death row and two cells away from me at the time, was also from Natchez, Mississippi. He had the same two white lawyers in federal district habeas corpus as I had, so they were back in Natchez on this guy’s case. Prosecutors were saying if they could do that for JH, then I didn’t need new lawyers for my state petition because these lawyers could do that for me, too. Lucky for me, the special judge I had saw it differently. That’s how I got two female Black lawyers. Even luckier for me, the entire team, including investigators and mitigation experts, were also Black!

I knew I had to go all out and break my silence if I was to survive this. The team knew my cultural upbringing. So they understood not just what I told them, but how I told it to them. The Black lawyer and the Black investigator had similar life experiences as myself, and I was able to grasp the language and catch the nuances.

The first truth and the hardest lesson that I learned about the U.S. judicial system when dealing with death row case appeals is this:

Truth: Justice is not equal or fair when it comes to the uneducated, mentally challenged, and poor.

Lesson: Those of us who are poor must depend on ourselves to seek out evidence to fight for our own justice. The rich can afford ignorance; the poor cannot.

Over 85% of the men I’ve come to know on death row are either borderline or below mental comprehension for basic reading and writing. I was lucky in this regard. Even though I didn’t finish 12th grade, I continued to learn. Even though I ran the streets and stayed in trouble, jail, and prison, I did have some level of quality education so that I could read, understand, and comprehend what I read.

One man, SP, has no ability to properly read and understand the legal paperwork that he receives. Only three days ago, I was coming downstairs from the top tier after getting ready to go outside and play “shoot-around” basketball, which is just a game of me moving from one spot to another spot, after each made shot, when someone told me that SP was looking for me. Because of his medical condition, SP doesn’t walk up and down the stairs from the bottom tier to the top tier, which is why he probably didn’t know I was inside my cell.

Anyway, I go outside, and I see him down on the far end of the yard, sitting at the picnic table that sits close to the wire fencing that separates J-Bldg from L-Bldg, and he’s reading papers. I can tell this stack is huge, about as thick as War and Peace. So I walk to him and he tells me, “I just got this in, and will you go over it for me.” Of course I agree, but I sit down and thumb through it, just to give him some idea what it might be saying. The 176 pages was my first telling that this ruling would be straight garbage and nonsense, so there’s no way SP would understand any of this.

This isn’t my first, third, or fifth time helping him with this type of reading, but I know each time that he’s grateful because I’m the first person he seeks out to help him, and that means a lot to me. Maybe as much as it does to him. So rather than put him to the side and play ball, I sit down and read parts to him that stand out to me, because I know he’s been wanting to know why state prosecutors haven’t turned over the DNA evidence they withheld, which the court ordered them to turn over about four months ago. After some time, and repeating myself over and over and over again to make sure he understands what I’m telling him, I tell him that I will read through everything tonight and sit with him again tomorrow. He agrees. I roll up his papers, intending to go play my game, but end up going back inside to start talking to other guys about the 176 pages of legalese, because I’d never gotten such a ruling, or knew of anyone else with a 176 page ruling. Hell. Maybe eighty pages, but this shit was crazy, so I knew I wanted to begin reading it as soon as I could. If I didn’t take this time to help and explain, then SP wouldn’t have anyone to help who he thinks has his best interest at heart.

SP and those like him—JB, DW, and TB and many more—wouldn’t stand a chance against the people in the prosecution offices who are trying to murder them. Yes they have lawyers, but speaking from experience, these lawyers do a half-ass job in explaining things clearly to these men.

Another example: today, DB asked me about SP’s paperwork because a lawyer tried to explain some “wording” the court had ruled on inside SP’s ruling. The court had said they changed “competent” to “incompetent” in a certain section, but that change had not been made. Had it been made, then SP’s mental state would have changed from the state being able to kill him to where they can’t kill him. Mississippi can no longer kill people who are mentally challenged (incompetent). These two little letters—“in”—make a huge difference. SP did not understand that, so he did not grasp the importance of telling his lawyers to make sure the court corrected that mistake.

Or take DW, who, in my opinion, has the mindset of a child, unable to write to people and family, and is in desperate need of help. This man for years hobbled around death row with a bad toe on one foot and couldn’t properly take care of it, couldn’t understand that it was a serious condition, that it could have cost him not only the toe, but the foot and the leg, because gangrene started to set in. His mind was such that he would constantly pick at the sore, making it worse, totally unaware of the danger to his health and well-being.

Most of the men on death row dumbed ourselves down before we got here to work menial jobs that pay poor wages, and when we got trapped by an unjust system, we didn’t have the intelligence to fight, or the money to fight for the decades that that system keeps us locked in cages. Our education in school was stunted or/and discontinued for one reason or the other. Our minds mentally retarded to one degree or the other. Our income levels were such that we were forced to forego education in order to feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves. Our families. Whatever the circumstance, a combination of one or two (and in some cases three) of these factors led them to death row, in direct conflict with the American judicial system, a system that ignores these factors when it makes the decision that we are better off executed than educated.

The hard truth is that once I was in the system and on death row, the troubles and impairments I had to begin with have only doubled. Essentially, I am trapped within a system without a viable way to fight against that system. This judicial system severely limits any possibility that I can 1) pay for representation to help my fight, as I can’t work and earn money, and 2) take care of my needs so I can communicate with people in society for quality help or learning.

When this system traps us, it doesn’t give us viable tools and opportunities to fight against it, which is why we become dependent on guards for shit paper, toothpaste, soap, etc, and if and when this system does what it did, such as cut out the legal libraries, dependence really comes in when we interact with our lawyers. Laws are fluid, ever-changing, and if I am not up to date, not just on laws but rules, procedures, in-state and federal, I’m dead!

I am lucky that my parents made sure I had quality education, even if I chose not to get that full education, understand. I have met many people in recent years who are young men, aged seventeen to twenty-four, who can’t write correctly or can barely spell. If these men were to ever find themselves trapped in the way that I am, any court filing that they’d have to do on their own wouldn’t get past the clerk’s desk to be filed because words are everything in this fight. A word spelled wrong can be interpreted differently in these courts. Such as: I always filed for “discovery” and they always denied me. I counseled SP to file for “disclosure,” which in many ways is discovery, and they granted it to him.

This brings me back to lawyers. On death row, we have to learn our cases better than our lawyers. Every aspect. I may never learn all the rules and laws and procedures. I have a lawyer, who should know them, and I know how to apply them accordingly to the facts that I give them. Lawyers and courts will come and go, and I understand that I am the constant. It is imperative that I learn my case and what it entails, so that I am able to find the correct paths towards my freedom. It helps me to better interact with people who could help explain my case, and how I should go about applying this or that rule.

No lawyer has been or is more invested than I am. So I make my desires and wishes known and become an active participant in saving my life and regaining my freedom. I’ve known many lawyers who gladly accept that their clients play no role in their cases, or who do not accept calls or even visit their clients. I’ve known many men who did not know if their lawyer was Black or white until it was close to an execution date being set. Then it becomes clear that the lawyer hasn’t done any work to help your case. He just sat and got a paycheck on your dime. But I wasn’t going to sit quietly by. I was going to have input. I formed a partnership of trust and understanding with my post-conviction attorneys. Otherwise I would be executed by now.

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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.