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

be the class snitch while she was gone, and whoever she chose got to sit at the teacher’s desk like a god and look out over everyone else sprawled facedown on the floor. The chosen person was always a girl—never a boy.
    So one day after lunch I was on the floor as usual, breathing dust and hoping for no spiders. The teacher came back half an hour later and asked the girl at her desk for the daily report—who had and had not been sleeping. The girl pointed straight at me and said, “His eyes were open.”
    I had not stirred from my mat or made a sound, yet this teacher made me stand before the class as she hit my hands with a ruler. It hurt my hands, true enough, and then there was the shame of having this done in front of the entire class, but the most frightening and traumatic part was the vengeance and hatred with which she carried it out. She was wild and furious, gritting her teeth and grunting with each smack of the accursed ruler. The one other time she noticed me I can’t remember what, if anything, I had done wrong. I do remember the punishment, though, and this time I was not alone. Once again I had to stand before the entire class, this time along with two other boys, and hold a stack of books over my head for half an hour. All three of us stood with our arms straight up in the air, shaking with effort as we held a stack of books aloft. During the entire punishment she howled at us in a rage, saying things like “You’re going to learn that I’m not playing a game with you!”
    So much for kindergarten.
    *  *  *
    A couple of strange incidents occurred during this period of my life, both of which I remember vividly, but neither of which I can explain. The first happened while I was still living in the Mayfair apartments.
    One evening as dusk approached, my mother told me not to leave the walkway right in front of our apartment door. Being the undisciplined heathen that I was, I beat a hasty departure the moment she was out of sight. I ran around to the very back of the complex, where a huge mound of sand was located, and proceeded to dig a hole with my bare hands. This was one of my favorite activities, in which I invested a huge amount of time as a child. I would get out of bed in the morning, have a bowl of cereal for breakfast, lick the spoon clean, and carry it outside with me. I spent the day digging, nonstop. The front yard looked like a nightmare, and my mother would always step out on the front porch and screech, “Boy, you fill in them holes ’fore somebody breaks an ankle.”
    I looked up from my digging that evening only to realize it had become completely dark. I could see the streetlights on in the distance, and the night was deathly silent. No crickets chirping, people talking, or cars driving by. Nothing but the silence that comes once the movie is over and the screen goes blank. Knowing that I was now officially in trouble, I dusted myself off and started to make my way back to our apartment.
    As I walked home I had to pass a place where two sections of the building came together to form a corner. The last time I had noticed this corner the apartment there was empty. Now it was dark, but the front door was open.
    The inside of the apartment was as void of illumination as some sort of vacuum. Standing in the doorway, propped against the frame with his arms folded across his chest, was a man in black pants and no shirt. He had black shoulder-length hair and wore a shit-eating grin. His eyes followed my progress as I passed, until I stood right in front of him. “Where you goin’, boy?” he asked in a way that said he was amused, but didn’t really expect an answer. I said nothing, just stood looking up at him. “Your mamma’s looking for you. You know you’re going to get a whipping.”
    After a moment I continued on my way. When I encountered my mother, she had a switch in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I did indeed receive a whipping.
    I didn’t think about this incident again until a day or so before I was arrested and put on trial for murder. I was eighteen years old, and the cops had been harassing me nonstop for weeks. My mother asked me one day after lunch, “Why don’t you take your shirt off and go in the backyard so I can take pictures? That way, if the cops beat you we’ll have some before-and-after photos.” Nodding my head, I made a trip to the bathroom, where I took my shirt off. When I looked in the mirror over the sink, it hit me that I looked