Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

tampering with confiscated evidence, and the last thing they needed was the entire world watching them as they bumbled around ineptly, pretending to conduct an investigation. They needed to solve this case quickly, and we were the easy solution. As one of the cops told Jason, “You’re just white trash. We could kill you and dump your body in the Mississippi, and no one would care.” We were disposable, subhuman. Feed us into the meat grinder, and the problem goes away. It’s not like we were ever going to amount to anything anyway.
    After I read the script/confession, I was taken back into the courtroom. The judge was rambling again, and I was on the verge of collapse. Suddenly everyone sprang to life as an overweight man with bad skin jumped from his seat and tried to run down the aisle. He was screaming something incoherently as the cops tackled him and I was hustled from the room. I later found out that he was the father of one of the murdered children. I couldn’t really blame him. I have a son of my own now, and I might have done the same thing if I thought I was looking at the man who had harmed him. He just needed someone to blame, to take his grief out on. He wasn’t interested in facts or evidence.
    Once I was back in the dark and dingy part of the building, they began putting chains on me—around my waist, my hands, my feet, and anywhere else they could think to attach them. I saw Jason a few feet ahead of me, and they were doing the same to him. He was also wearing one of the old, ragged police uniforms. In front of him was Jessie Misskelley. He, too, was shackled, but he wore his own clothes. Perhaps this was another small way of punishing Jason and me for not giving them the confession they wanted.
    They rushed Jessie through a door, and outside I saw sunlight and heard the roar of a crowd. It sounded like a referee had made a really bad call at the Super Bowl. Next they walked Jason and me out the doors at the same time. There was a circle of cops around me, all trying to drag me. I would have had to run to keep up with them, but there were chains on my legs and I had no shoes on. They dragged me across the concrete, ripping off two of my toenails and a fair amount of skin. The crowd went into a frenzy at the sight of us. It looked as though the entire city had turned out to see us, and they were all screaming, yelling, and throwing things. They wanted to crucify us right then and there. I imagine that was the closest a modern man could come to knowing what it was like in the Roman Colosseum.
    I was tossed into the back of a car and told to stay down. There were two cops in the front seat, both fat and wearing the standard mustaches. They could have passed for brothers. The one behind the wheel quickly started driving at a high rate of speed. I was curled into the fetal position on the backseat, vomiting and dry-heaving. One cop looked back at me, cursing and swearing. In disgust, he spit, “That’s just fucking great.” No one said another word to me for the rest of the trip. I had no idea where I was being taken.
    When we finally came to a stop sometime later in the afternoon, it was at a small white building with several cop cars parked outside. A few old, crusty-looking men with a hose were halfheartedly spraying the cop cars. As I was being escorted inside, I heard the cops tell them to wash out the backseat where I had gotten sick.
    Once inside the Monroe County jail, the chains were removed and I was told to strip. I stood naked while one cop sprayed my entire body with some sort of lice repellent. Four or five other cops looked on while conversing nonchalantly. This was nothing new to them. Soon enough I myself would begin to view such events as nothing out of the ordinary. After my flea dip, I was given a pair of white pants and a white shirt to put on. One of the old car-washers from out front handed me a towel, a blanket, and a mat like preschoolers sleep on. The induction ceremony being complete, I was pushed into a cell that would be my home for most of the next year.

Twenty
    T he cell I was confined to on June 4 had four concrete slabs that served as beds. There was a small metal table bolted to the floor, a shower stall, and a television suspended high in one corner that picked up two channels. For the first week or so there was only one other person in the cell with me. His name was Chad, a white guy with a terrible case of acne and unwashed curly hair. He was there on a