CHUCK: Part I, Working for a Living

"God's work tells us that if you’re a ditch digger, be the best ditch digger you can be; if you’re a doctor, be the best doctor you can be. I’m a prisoner—I’m gonna be the best prisoner I can be."

This is the first in a series of five posts from Charles Ray Crawford, who goes by Chuck. Chuck was born and raised in Mississippi and is scheduled to be executed by that state on October 15. In this series, he reflects on his childhood, his faith that has gotten him through more than thirty years on death row, some of the evidence in his case that troubles the prosecutors’ narrative, and his experiences trying to convince his lawyers to pay attention to that evidence. You can also read these posts on The GOAT PoL and Humans Remain.

To sign a petition to stop Chuck’s execution and give him the chance to have a fair trial, visit the death penalty action website, here.

Photo by Leslie Saunders on Unsplash

When the Superintendent came to tell me that my execution date had been set, I asked for three things:

Don’t lock me down;

Don’t move me to another cell;

Don’t take my job.

The date they’ve set is October 15th. Normally when it gets close like this, they put you in an observation cell. If you’re not already in one, they’ll put you in front of the tower. Watching you. And they basically lock you down.

I’ll be seeing the Superintendent and the Deputy Superintendent numerous times between now and the 15th. They have to notify me of the means of execution I’m going to go through. Friday they had to bring the death warrant. They’ve got to do it. I understand it’s part of the law. I’m just thankful to God it’s this superintendent. As soon as I walked into the office he stood up, hugged me, told me he loved me, and said we’ll get through all of this together. The man has a good heart. He cares. I don’t think he’s putting on an act. When you go from someone who’s hateful and wants to make you suffer every day of your life to a man like this running this prison—you can’t imagine what a big change that is. This superintendent and the people working closest to him, they treat us like human beings.

When my sister found out about my date, she asked if I was scared. Anyone who goes through this and says they aren’t scared, they’re lying. But after I close my eyes for the last time, when I open them again, I know where I’m gonna be—in heaven. I’ve known that for a long time. But that doesn’t mean I’m not angry.

***

God’s work tells us that if you’re a ditch digger, be the best ditch digger you can be; if you’re a doctor, be the best doctor you can be. I’m a prisoner, and I’m gonna be the best prisoner I can be.

Every day, I work with my very close friend James Hutto to clean the sidewalks and mow the lawns around the unit. Sometimes people throw trash on the ground, so we pick that up, too. We started out just cutting the grass around J building, where we have lived for about fifteen years, but then about three months ago, they came and said they needed help cutting all the yards in the unit—that’s four other yards. We use a big industrial lawnmower, self-propelled, that you can walk behind and control with levers. I’ll cut one lawn, Jamie cuts the next one, we repeat, and then we split the fifth yard between us. It generally takes between two and a half and three hours to do it. Sometimes we get out there at 7:30, sometimes 8:30. We’ve been out there in 115 degrees, walking back and forth moving the hoses, probably walking three or four miles. Every year you have to get acclimated to that heat. The main thing is drinking plenty of water. We’ve also been out there in twenty-four degrees. I’d rather not be that cold, but for some reason it cleans up better when it’s cold like that—when there’s heat, it kind of bakes in the bird crap. Besides mowing the lawns, we clean the bird crap off the sidewalks with a pressure hose. Thousands of birds are out there every night.

I’ve always worked. I was raised to work from the time I was a little boy. My grandfather, my mother’s father, made his living off his farm. He would get us up, we’d eat breakfast, feed cows and hogs, go to pulp, and then grandfather would take us to school. Pulp wood is basically a six-and-a-half foot stick off a tree, and they use it for products that they make out of that length. When I was nine or ten, we used two chainsaws; I would carry the second chainsaw while my grandfather used the other. I would also tote the gas and oil, and when he was done with one saw, I would oil and gas up that one while he used the other. We had measuring sticks to know the lengths to cut the tree, and my other job was to hold that measuring pole up for him while he made the cut.

When I was twelve or thirteen, I would “limb and top” going around cutting off the limbs around the trees he had cut. By the time I was fourteen, I was doing all of it: limb and topping and cutting felled trees into sections. A lot of times when you cut a tree, it will “hang up”, meaning get caught in other trees on its way down. Numerous times I had to climb up to cut away the branches when that happened. You’ve got to cut some of them away, but not too many. Then when you climb down, you might cut down another tree to fall on top of it. What you do is you cut it across the top and it breaks and falls to the ground. I’ve got a scar on my right leg just above my knee that runs the whole side of my leg; when I was fourteen years old, one hung up like that, but it wasn’t a high hang up, I could reach it with the saw. When I was undercutting (which is when you take the saw and cut under the tree to let it drop), I didn’t pull the saw back quick enough: the tree dropped and hit the saw, knocking it into my leg.

Once when I was seventeen years old and cutting timber, I had a partner cutting with me who lost track of me and a tree fell down on me. It hit me at a glancing blow at the top of the head and right on the shoulder, slapping me on the ground. Accidents happen in that occupation; if you’re not careful, you can get killed real easily. This partner who let the tree fall on me was my brother from another mother; my son is named after him.

My sister and I lived back and forth between our two grandparents and our mom. My grandfather on my father’s side was an avid hunter. In the wintertime, I would always rabbit hunt, squirrel hunt, and deer hunt. That’s part of the country life. We had two freezers in our house: one was for what we grew in our garden, and there was a meat freezer for the game I would kill. We would fish catfish and brim, but mainly catfish because it’s so good when you fry it. We had a gristmill: you put dry corn in it, and it makes corn meal. We slaughtered our own pigs and had milk cows. It was just part of country life when I was real young. We did not completely live off the land but that was how we supplemented our groceries.

After I was old enough to work and get out on my own, I never went two or three weeks without a job. Building houses, framing houses, painting houses, making concrete forms, pouring the concrete, nailing the two-by-fours and raising up walls. Just whatever I could find. I got paid to cut the grass in a couple of cemeteries every other week, just extra money. In the cemetery, sometimes the graves, they’ll sink; so I would take my truck out there with dirt and fill them in. Some people might find that gruesome, but when you’re in the construction business, you need every opportunity. I worked in a mobile home factory for about a year. My stepfather was working there at the time and got me the job. I worked there and then it got ready to shut down and I went back to construction work. Right after my son was born, I worked in a furniture factory. I worked there about two and a half years. You know the exposed wood on couches and chairs? I stained those and put the shellac on. After I worked there for a while I was a swing man: I’d do my job, and when I got ahead of production, I’d get on a forklift and load and unload trucks—I’d help anywhere that needed it. Every day was different, I wasn’t stuck in the monotony. That’s why I like building houses: you build one spot and move on.

I want to keep living and working like I’ve been living and working.