Chronicles from Parchman #9: Birds of a Feather

Incarcerated writer L. Patri on deciphering a 167-page court decision and trying to stay one step ahead of Mississippi's bigotry-laced justice system.

This is the latest installment in the Chronicles from Parchman series, a monthly column by the talented and prolific writer, L. Patri, who has been fighting his wrongful incarceration on Parchman’s death row for over thirty years. Read L. Patri’s interview in Rooted from November 2024.

Photo by Sebastian Pichler on Unsplash

I took last night, and pretty much all day yesterday to read the 167-page decision that the Mississippi State court handed down when it denied Pitts 7-2 on rehearing. Pitts came to Mississippi’s death row over twenty years ago, accused and convicted of murdering a white female in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the state’s most openly racist place that I’ve read about in these men’s cases, even more so than Natchez. I say this because…well, you will see.

About seventeen years ago, Pitts had a major stroke that was followed by three mini strokes, and then another stroke. Sometimes I’m amazed he survived, but I think I know why. For one, Pitts was an avid exerciser. He was very active and healthy every day, and he maintained his body as well as his mind before the strokes. He’s about 50 years of age now, and as I told you last time, he suffers from an aneurysm and a pronounced limp from the strokes. He’s a quiet guy, very much into religion, and very sensitive as far as dealing with people goes. Unless someone constantly pushes his buttons to aggravate him, he will accept almost any abuse. He’s the type that will allow his attorneys to dictate his case pleadings to a point that it very much pisses me off, because I think he should be more voiceful and forceful in how he tells them to work on his case. It’s his life they are dealing with, so they should follow his instructions.

But as I’ve said, this isn’t Pitts’s nature. These days, he mostly gets up every day and is always cleaning. First he scrubs the cell walls, bed, and floor that he’s in, and then he goes outside on the back end of 29 J-Bldg, gets on his hands and knees, takes a scrub brush, and cleans up birdshit from the day before. He then cleans himself up, and either sits inside at one of four tables with headphones in or talks to me or one of several other men about religion. Or he’s back outside in one of the basketball yard pens tossing bean bags in a game called cornhole. You really don’t want to play him in that game. I learned first hand, after he beat me five straight games going on to seven wins. I still haven’t gotten over that loss.

Pitts’s about 5’9”, I think, and these days, he stutters a lot as he tries to talk to people, because his mind doesn’t grasp exactly what it is he’s going to say, so it takes him several tries to get you to understand. More often than not, you will have to get it before he’s actually able to say it, so that you can help him along in what he’s saying. But then you’ll have to repeat it a couple more times, because he will have forgotten what it is just that fast.

I guess what I’m saying is that Pitts is a really nice man, who is akin to your most severely mentally disabled person, who can possibly die at any time if that aneurysm pops inside his head. So he’s constantly in a state of worry and panic because he knows he’s innocent, yet he doesn’t know enough to be able to help himself survive Mississippi’s blood-lust agenda to kill him.

I had never seen a 167-page rehearing decision like this before. Mine was forty-six pages, and I even asked Hammer and Tony B the same. Hammer has been on death row since maybe a few months before I arrived. He comes from one of those little Delta towns; I think Ruleville, but I’m not sure. He and his brother were on the row together, but his brother’s sentence was reversed and he’s now serving life in prison, whereas Hammer has four life sentences and the death sentence. He’s fifty-four years of age, maybe 5’8”, and Muslim. An avid believer from what I’ve noticed. He’s very much into the law and legal workings dealing with a capital case, as he’s filed most of his petitions “pro’se” meaning on his own behalf. So his advice has been very crucial in a lot of the filings I’ve done on my own case.

Tony B is about sixty years of age, and one of the men that I try to help most with his case, because he too comes from that same area that Pitts comes from and has many fucked up issues. Tony B’s a Christian, so much so that I find him frustrating in his belief. I think he should know better. I say that because Tony B, like Hammer, is a member of the Organization that I was a part of most of my life as a Black Gangster Disciple, and the part that Tony B dealt with the most had a religious aspect, which made him an Imperial Disciple.

Very religious people, Tony B and Hammer. Anyway, I value their opinion because they’ve always been open in how they respond, whether I want to hear it or not. So I asked them the same about their rehearing ruling, as mine was forty-six pages and they say theirs was about the same as mine.

Wow! They agree this state court has lost its mind when it goes into this wonderland shit regarding Pitts’s case. We sit on the long black steel benches in the day room area, next to the television hanging on the side of the guard tower’s wall, to discuss. We have been noticing a trend with the Mississippi State Court. We’re not so blind or stupid as to miss how this court has been going out of its way to either not say anything in certain cases, so that men can’t have something they can argue against in the next court, or saying so much so that the next court is supposed to just get tired of reading repetitive shit and overlook vital things that may benefit us. The Mississippi State court judges have decided they will help prosecutors this way, and when it comes to people like Pitts, this is detrimental, because of his mental capacity caused by those strokes.

Just recently, the district court had stayed Pitts’s case in habeas so he could exhaust juror claims, because the judge had made “specific” language about at least five jurors who sat on Pitts’s trial. One, who I’ll call B, played golf, and hung out with D.A. H (according to H himself), which he stated during voir dire (the choosing of a jury). H stated: “Let me make a disclosure. We do play golf together, and stuff like that. We might as well go ahead and address that.” Rather than Pitts’s trial judge dismissing B, the judge asks: “Is that going to be a problem for you?” B responded: “No sir.” Later during questioning of jurors’ relationship with case participants B said: “I play golf with Bob.”

Like I said, I had a long-ass night reading that decision, when what I should have done was learned from how this Mississippi state court did me in 2020 on a 9-0 vote to deny my successive petition. These judges don’t even try to correct this issue for Pitts. Instead, they “reach” for garbage answers they think satisfy their responsibilities and duties.

They KNOW there are five people on this man’s jury who had no business anywhere near a jury room in this case. The district judge made a factual point of pointing out this miscarriage of justice. He went so far as to name these people and express his grave concerns about them. Damn! There just isn’t any humanity or goodness in these people in our cases. Around page 78, I was brain-dead on this shit. So I leaned my back against the cool wall, and I closed my eyes to ease my tension. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the American courtrooms of the 1920s and 30s where the lawyer, prosecutor, and judge were just “passing time” bullshitting, before they took the negro out and to hang him as entertainment for the blood thirsty people who brought their children and picnic baskets because this was FUN, yay!

As they say, “birds of a feather, flock together,” and these Mississippi crows are cawing their bigotry, racism, prejudices, and all shit negative in their ruling decisions. One day I plan to tell people about these devils in black robes with their powdered wigs and lily-white faces and manicured hands peeking out as they spout ungodly rulings with obscene sentences attached to their maddening banging on the gavels while they sit behind benches to hide their gleefully-patting feet and twinkling toes of gloat.

Their faces show red anger as if we are the ones filled with darkness, yet their eyes dance with the thoughts they will tell each other as they sit around the table swapping stories to see who has the best tale of misery heaped upon our backs and souls under their rulings. I tell you. The raven and crow have no cunning within them that can match this evil of white superiority born out of sin and nurtured through hatred, because these birds have an unlimited imagination as to what kind of devastation they can cause and get away with when it’s inflicted on Black and Brown people.

Maybe something will change. Until then, I’ll continue to counsel guys around me that they should continue to be forceful in their arguments because the pot can’t call the kettle black when both asses are burnt by the same fire, and dressing up as a swan with rich finery doesn’t stop a bird from being the goose that it really is. A duck in disguise, slicker than owlshit, but only to those with closed eyes. Call a spade a spade even if that tool looks like a club, you understand.

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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.

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