Chronicles from Parchman #9: Glimmers of Hope

"'It' makes you look deeper within yourself, and even though you don’t know how to fight, you still fight with the little you do know and have until you can gain more ways to fight for yourself."

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 little plant on Unsplash

I turn a light on inside my mind. It’s way too dark in here, yet when the light pops on, my eyes begin to water from the brightness. I understand now that in order for me to regain my freedom and save my own life I need to wake up! Not wake up from the dream I had a few hours ago, but from the thought that I must depend on attorneys and investigators to do this. I must do this myself, and help my allies so that they can better serve and help me. But I must also help the any men who are trapped within the same and similar predicaments. In other words, I must regain the hope that I lost and use that hope to put glimmers of light into the lives around me so that the stars of my night can shine just a little brighter.

It’s 8:40 am, and I am pretty tired today. It’s a mental thing, based on my life here and the guys I am talking to. Yet, it has to be done, and I know this because I went through it myself. “It” is that thing that makes you do one of two things when you’re fighting for your life and freedom. “It” makes you so numb that you just lay around or sit around doing mindless things because you need to escape the reality of not knowing how to go about fighting, so you do nothing and hope your attorney saves you in the courts while you fade away inside a cell. “It” makes you look deeper within yourself, and even though you don’t know how to fight, you still fight with the little you do know and have until you can gain more ways to fight for yourself.

When I first got a filing that was more than twenty pages, I would freeze. I would doubt whether I could even read it, much less understand it, and even if I did understand it, I would doubt if I could give a comprehensive response to what was being done and said in the filing. I guess “fear” best describes that. “It” paralyzes you, and doubt takes flight. This takes many forms, and in this context, I have learned to master my case, and now I need to put “it” to better use and give what I’ve learned to the people around me who need and deserve to know that they, too, can do “it.” Now, I’m not exactly sure if that made much sense when I try explaining what “it” is, but everyone I’ve come to know on death row has dealt with “it” this way, in some form and fashion.

Over the past months, on weekends, I’ve gathered my legal filings from the post-conviction successive petition that I did in the Mississippi State Supreme Court, and the second amended writ of habeas corpus petition I filed in the Southern District Federal Court, and I’ve sat at the table downstairs, the one closest to the stairs, facing the door. I sit on the stool, an iron seat, with one stool across from me that’s empty, and two on the sides of me. Pitts sits to my left, I think it’s time I tell him what stages in the appeal process that he is about to go through.

Today Pitts showed me a court document where Hattiesburg (the place he was tried, convicted, and sentenced) was ordered to pay the court cost for the post-conviction petition process that he had recently been denied on, and in this document, the Mississippi State Supreme Court also advised Hattiesburg judicial (legal) officials that they can go forward and set an execution date for Pitts. Now, maybe for you this is easily understood, and yet it’s more complicated than you might think, because there are three separate concerns at play with Pitts.

First, he’s had one or two strokes, and maybe three more mini-strokes some years ago that have left him impaired physically to where he either has to use a walker or a cane to move around here, and anywhere he goes, and he’s constantly in pain. That’s because Mississippi Department of Corrections medical staff failed him in his recovery. Nurses discouraged him from doing physical therapy early on in his recovery, and they never changed his food diet to coincide with this type of recovery. All they did was test one medication after the other over a ten-year span, raising the dose levels without considering anything Pitts had to say about the pain he was experiencing, as though the “burning sensations” and sharp pains in his legs, back, and arms were some figment of his imagination. No consultations or examinations. Hmm.

How do I know this? Because I was the one early on in his recovery that went outside in freezing weather or sweltering heat and helped him, exercising alongside him. I am in one yard pen, and he’s in another, side by side. It was me that encouraged him to do this, because that was EXACTLY what he needed.

Understand. Back in 1991, I went to school, a community college, and I went through nurses’ training for some time in Dallas, Texas, so that I could be a caretaker for my dad, who was a paraplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. So I had to learn quite a few things, as it’s demanding work, especially if and when my dad would seize up or catch a coughing fit. So physical therapy was mandatory. A special diet was a must, as food was just as important as working out his limbs so that atrophy didn’t set in. Also, my great grandmother Hattie was paralyzed on her right side due to strokes years before my dad, and I used to help her get around, go places, etc. So I guess you can say I knew a few things, and the most important thing was that the patient needed physical exercise if they were going to recover to some degree and regain balance as well as motion. When Pitts came along after several strokes, I knew he needed these things, yet MDOC was not providing them. So I only did what I thought came naturally. I helped him.

And do you know what? He began to get better movement when he tried to walk, and he could stand on his damn feet for a limited time. Oh, but those grimy ass medical nurses and doctors saw this and began threatening him with taking his wheelchair and lying to him about discontinuing his medications if he continued to do physical therapy. I told those low-down ass people exactly what I thought about them then, as I do now. I mean, you have to be some evil-minded, despicable, dastardly people to do this when you KNOW this man has an aneurysm in his head that can burst at any time, something that every neurosurgeon is afraid to operate on because the risks are so damn high.

I couldn’t believe this shit, and I kept seeing my mom, over and over and over, and practically begged Pitts not to listen to these devils, because he was doing GREAT. He was improving and everyone was noticing this, but I warned him that if he stopped, he ran the risk of atrophy setting in and taking form to where he may be in that wheelchair forever or using a walking cane because his limp would be to a point that balance would be impossible without one. I can never forget that! For weeks after, Pitts did what they said and stopped the exercises, I couldn’t stand to go outside for that one-hour call in the single-man dog pens. I was sick to my stomach and my mind was fucked up.

But I learned a lesson from these low down people, and that is that I would NEVER trust MDOC medical staff, and I would need to be sick, damn near dead, before I risked my health with them. And for over twenty years, I have only gone to the medical clinic once every seven to five years and I have to be SICK, you understand.

Second. Because of these strokes and the aneurysm, Pitts suffered psychological setbacks to the point that his memory is very faulty. He can not remember much about his past life, which is cloudy, so that he’s unable to visualize his current predicament and have meaningful back-and-forth relationships with his lawyers. He can’t fully comprehend or appreciate this process, because he’s unable to elucidate exactly what it is he’s hearing from them or trying to express to them. He becomes stuck at the simplest things and must be told a thing many times, and even then, he won’t recall, which causes him to go from one guy to the next guy, constantly asking each the same question. Mere note-taking will not eliminate or alleviate his condition.

MDOC hasn’t gotten Pitts the real treatment he needs, because MDOC has always had this thought when it comes to medically ill men on death row: “Mississippi will kill them, so why waste any money on them.” Dumbass thinking, I know, but the bottom line is that Pitts is not alone in this condition and situation. I could give you names of half a dozen others, and probably many more, who are in need of care such as operations on backs, shoulders, knees, and most definitely, the mind.

Third. We return to Hattiesburg, where seven months ago (at the time of this writing), approximately, the Mississippi State Supreme Court made an order in Pitts’s favor, and all state agencies involved in Pitts’s investigation, trial, and conviction were told to turn over to Pitts’s legal team all DNA and other documented evidence they had withheld, hid, and lied about. To this date, the state prosecution agencies have done NONE of that, and Pitts’s lawyer hasn’t explained to him the next steps.

So I am telling him, because the implications can very well get him killed by the State of Mississippi. He should get these documents and evidence before filing his federal habeas corpus petition or risk losing any chance of ever getting it, understand. As for what he’s about to do before federal habeas corpus, he’s going to file for “cert,” certiorari, with the United States Supreme Court. 98% of the time, these judges don’t even consider reading these filings and dismiss them “out-of-hand.” I used to wonder if it’s even worth the time filing, and I learned that the short answer is yes, because if Pitts goes to Unit 17 after the people in Hattiesburg set an execution date, then essentially that highlights the death penalty workings in the judicial system. If he gets the certificate, he goes through this hearing, and it’s like he’s standing in the sunshine. It’s beautiful, everything is good. It’s a bright sunny day, which doesn’t happen that often. So he feels great about it. And everyone around him also gets that feeling, because if he gets the sun on this, we get it, too.

It’s like a rainbow from a waterfall, it looks like magic. But it’s not really magic, it’s just the way that light reflects from falling water.

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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.

Read more from L. Patri: