Chapter 5

By this stage in his life, Dominique was even finding ways to have an impact on lives outside the prison. When Andy Loft-house's oldest and best friend, a young journalist named Timothy Krahl, was killed in a snowboarding accident in Montana, where he had attended college, Andy, by his own account, “pretty much withdrew from everything for a while” and stopped visiting Dominique. Dominique, who would never go snowboarding, never attend college, never see Montana, could have been expected to view the accident as something with little relevance to him, even as an incident in a life he could only envy from afar. Rather, as Andy relates, “he sent me this card that said, ‘I face death every day but it's nothing compared to losing someone who helps you appreciate life. Yet despite all the pain and suffering, you have something most people never will: wonderful, magical, and who knows how mischievous, memories. Those are the things that keep us alive in each other's hearts and can never die. Stay strong, my friend. Dominique Green.’” Andy was comforted and a little amazed by Dominique's words.

And Dominique succeeded in bringing the world into the prison. Not only did he now have international organizations working on behalf of himself and other inmates, he fiddled with an old radio till it brought in the sounds of major television stations, television itself being forbidden. By sharing this guerrilla technology with others, he was able to increase the inmates’ understanding of the wider world. Nonetheless, as he admitted to Andy, “Mine gets more channels than anybody else's.” Why, asked Andy, don't you just listen to the radio? “Man,” replied Dominique, “with all the hillbilly shit they got around here? I can't listen to that!” There were limits to even Dominique's multicultural tolerance.

I have a letter from one of Dominique's fellow inmates, Ivan Cantu, a Mexican American confined for a while in the cell next to Dominique, that relates more exactly Dominique's effect on other prisoners. “His life,” writes Ivan, “was like an open book and he never tried to hide anything. He just called it as he saw it, and this is why I think we got along so well. He shared stories of his good friend Sheila Murphy, his brother Hollingsworth, and his faith. One thing about Dominique is that he was respected by all who knew him. In prison, inmates tend to lean towards certain groups but not Stump, he did his own thing while always making sure people were cared for.”

In Ivan's description we meet the achieved Dominique, Dominique the mature adult, Dominique the man he had always wanted to become. “I hope you don't mind,” continues Ivan, “that I call him Stump, but really that's the name I knew him by. Actually it was Stumpa, but most called him Stump for short. He was always so kind, and if he couldn't actually help an inmate himself, he'd contact a friend or someone he knew who could help. Most of the time he kept his good deeds to himself, but one time another inmate needed a Hot Pot, and since Stump couldn't purchase it from his account”—an account to which outsiders may make donations for small purchases is maintained for each prisoner—“he asked a friend [on the outside] to assist with getting the inmate one. Obviously, Stump didn't have to do this, but he hated to see anyone suffer or do without. That's just the kind of person he was: he made sure people had what they needed or the right information to fight their case.”

Glued to his radio during broadcasts of 60 Minutes, Face the Nation, or his usual favorite, Meet the Press with Tim Russert, Dominique encouraged others to listen, too. For fellow prisoners, he served as a model of engagement with the world: “One thing I'll always remember is that he had a way with words, and he always tried to better himself—writing professors, studying law books, writing articles, studying vocabulary, even just spending time in prayer,” writes Ivan. “He was truly a shining light to everyone he met. Inmates would actually forfeit their daily shower to recreate in his dayroom, so they could pick his brain.”^∗

Ivan leaves us with this indelible picture of Dominique: “Even when his world was crashing, he always remained cool. And really, I don't think he was trying to be cool. He was just at peace.” And like the peaceful Jesus of the gospels, Dominique was on the verge of an experience of transfiguration that would help carry him to his end.

“The most unlikely person, the most improbable situation— these are all ‘transfigurable—they can be turned into their glorious opposites.” These are the words of Desmond Tutu, archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his many years of sublimely courageous work in the struggle against the apartheid of his then white-ruled homeland. A few months after I first went to Livingston, Tutu was about to visit Dominique, a visit that would be surrounded by as much hubbub and media attention as Dominique could ever have hoped for.

“The Arch,” as Tutu is called by many of his many friends, was coming to the United States on a speaking tour in March 2004. I had been his publisher at Doubleday during the previous decade, and over the course of that time he and I had become friends. I was also a friend of his literary agent, Lynn Franklin, a woman of considerable sympathy for others. She shared with me the details of the schedule for Tutu's speaking tour. He had one day off during his tour, March 24. Even more serendipitous, on March 23 he would speak in Oklahoma City; on March 25 he was due in Dallas. So—at least theoretically—it would be possible for him to fly from Oklahoma City to Houston on March 24, meet with Dominique, and then fly on to his appointment in Dallas.

The obstacles to such a plan were considerable: in order to keep him on schedule, I would need to arrange for private planes and chauffeured cars. And somehow I would have to get him to agree to go far out of his way to meet a man he'd never heard of, causing considerable disruption to his schedule. I would also need to secure the cooperation of his lecture agency, a brusquely efficient organization not especially known for its devotion to causes unconnected to their bottom line.

But the most daunting objection to this emerging scheme lay in my knowledge of Desmond Tutu's delicate health: he had prostate cancer and had recently undergone treatments that left him less vigorous than usual; moreover, he had struggled his whole life against the effects on his body of diseases he had contracted in childhood, tuberculosis and polio. The polio, in particular, had left his right side weak, to such an extent that he had a soft handshake and, when tired, a pronounced limp. He would soon turn seventy-three. As if all this did not speak against my plan, there was the archbishop himself, a man who craves the oasis of silence, meditation, and prayer the way others crave human society. I knew he would be depending on the one day he had off to restore his spiritual equilibrium.

Well, I reasoned, if anyone I know is a grown-up, capable of making his own decisions and saying no to what he knows is beyond his strength, it is Desmond Tutu. So I would send him an e-mail message, telling him of Dominique's situation and Dominique's love of his writings, particularly No Future Without Forgiveness, and of the effect of that book—through Dominique's instrumentality—on the inhabitants of Texas Death Row. It would then be up to the man himself to decide whether or not to attempt a visit.

I sent my e-mail. Lynn Franklin kindly sent another, supporting mine. We each received an identical return e-mail from the Arch, which began: “I don't know why I ever allowed myself to get mixed up with people like you.” Reading that first sentence, I knew he would come.

I will not bore you with the obstacles that had to be overcome to make the hoped-for visit a reality. Sheila Murphy and I pulled out all the stops and called in all our chits. One by one, obstacles fell away not least the recalcitrance of the lecture agency when my contact there realized that her cherished godmother and I were old friends. On the dismal gray morning of March 24, I found myself in a chauffeur-driven limo, approaching a tiny airstrip in the middle of the Texas woods, where a private plane, belonging to the wealthy friends of a New Hampshire lawyer, was soon to land, disgorging the Most Reverend Desmond M. Tutu in his battered old cap and undistinguished traveling costume.

As we sped through those woods on our way to Livingston, the archbishop silently reciting his morning prayers and working his way through the long list of those he prays for daily, I was aware of our vulnerability. For weeks beforehand, the impending visit was news in all the Texas papers. Here we were—Desmond Tutu and his iconoclastic assistant Travis, the driver and I—traveling through this lonely forest, a second long black limo behind us, easy targets for assassination by any hothead, racist, or wacko who wished to take a shot at us. Though I had formally requested protection, I had been sent a message by the local police that they were simply too busy to provide any.

Now that Tutu had landed, I had another request to make of him. After he visited Dominique, there was to be a press conference, to which he had already given his approval. It would be hosted by St. Luke's, the small Episcopal church in Livingston. The congregants, extremely excited that such a famous Anglican churchman was to grace them with his presence (the Episcopal Church being the U.S. province of the worldwide Anglican Communion), were planning an elaborate welcome. The ladies of the church, who had been cooking up a storm, would graciously provide lunch not only for the archbishop but for all the local, national, and international press. I had told the church representatives that, as we were in the midst of Lent, the archbishop would not be taking lunch but would be fasting. No matter, they were forging ahead with their culinary plans.

The rector and the warden of the church would be there to greet the archbishop on his arrival and would press him to celebrate eucharist after the press conference. I had hoped, rather, that my friend would have some time to rest once the press conference was over. But I had been unable to dissuade the churchpeople from their resolve to invite him to preside at their eucharist before returning to the airstrip and the private plane that would be waiting for him. Knowing that they would ask him, I thought it best to warn him of their intention and thus give him time to compose his regrets. Of course, he replied, he would accept their invitation to preside at the eucharist. And that was that.

We arrived at the prison without incident and were ushered into the office of the prison warden, where we were greeted with exaggerated courtesy by the prison's officials and the archbishop somehow managed to take an interest in each person he was introduced to. Then, at last, he and I were waiting while Dominique was brought in shackles from his cell to the visitors’ gallery. As I described in the Prologue, the visitor waits in a tiny cubicle facing a window of thick double glass. On his side is a telephone receiver. On the other side of the double glass is an answering receiver. Through these handsets, visitor and prisoner converse with each other. The prisoner's shackles binding his wrists behind his back are unlocked only after he is seated on his side of the glass, the door behind him has been bolted, and he has put his hands and wrists through a slot in the door, where a guard with a key is waiting. The shackles on his ankles are not removed. Everything seems done for maximum awkwardness and humiliation.^∗

While setting up the terms of this visit, I had begged the prison authorities to allow a sacramental visit. What is that, they wanted to know. The archbishop, I replied, would like to bless the prisoner. To do this in the most effective way, he wishes to place his hands on the prisoner's head. To be truthful, I was not so much interested in achieving this result for the sake of the blessing itself. After all, a priest (or anyone, for that matter) can bless another through two sheets of glass— or across half a world, if necessary. It is the intention, not the proximity, that makes the blessing.

Dominique, like all Death Row prisoners of the State of Texas, was kept in solitary confinement and never touched by anyone. How horrible, I often thought, to be so confined as never to feel a human touch, except by way of coercion or humiliation. But the prison authorities would make no allowance for a sacramental visit, not even by a religious figure as famous and revered as Desmond Tutu. What if a prisoner wished to be baptized, I asked. Would you deny him that? No, came the even response, we do allow that—on the night before execution.

Since it is impossible to shake hands through panes of glass, the custom is for the prisoner to place his right hand, palm out, on his side of the glass, while his visitor, mimicking the prisoner's action, places his own right hand against the glass on his side—as close as the two can come to touching, though each touches only the cold rigidity of glass. As Dominique positioned his fire-scarred right hand against the glass, Desmond Tutu raised his own polio-weakened hand in response.

I left them to have their own private meeting, which was no doubt exceedingly sacramental and full of blessings. Sheila Murphy and I waited in an adjoining room, where after the first few minutes we could hear repeated peals of laughter from both men. As their visit proceeded through its hour and a half, joy continued to break out, sometimes uproariously. They were getting along just fine, as I knew they would, if more hilariously than anyone could have anticipated.

In the end, Tutu gave Dominique an inscribed copy of An African Prayer Book, the archbishop's own anthology of intensely beautiful African prayers from pharaonic times to the present, collected from virtually every African religious tradition, a project I had suggested to him. Published by Double-day in 1995, it has remained in print ever since. I mention it here because I believe its texts give off sparks of the eclectic, playful, and profound humanity of the conversation that took place that day. For those who would come closer to the deep meaning of this encounter between a monumental man and a Death Row inmate, the spirit of that day may still be sought in the pages of An African Prayer Book.

Like Jesus in his transfiguration, his secret encounter on the mountain with Moses and Elijah, those great figures of ancient Hebrew tradition, witnessed dimly by three of his earthbound disciples, Dominique in his meeting with Desmond found confirmation and exaltation—and strength to move forward to his appointed end.

As we exited the prison, Desmond, Sheila, and I were confronted by interviewers and camera crews from local television stations. When we reached St. Luke's, we found hundreds of reporters, as well as many church members, waiting for us. Somehow, the police who could not protect the archbishop earlier managed to be on hand for crowd control. What the archbishop had to say of Dominique was simple and eloquent. Over and over he repeated—on this day and in the days to come—that Dominique “is a remarkable advertisement for God.” Privately he reassured me that I had not been “hyperbolic” in my description of Dominique and that he had been “greatly enriched” by the encounter.

“I was very humbled to be in his presence,” said Tutu at the news conference in that sweet, hushed, but commanding voice of his, “because I felt I was in the presence of God. This is not the monster that many would expect or think, but a human being, a human being who has grown. He's like a flower opening and you see the petals come up, particularly when you see him speaking about his concern for others. He wasn't self-pitying. I'm glad I came. I come away deeply enriched from my encounter with an extraordinary man. He is a remarkable young man and it would be one of the greatest tragedies if someone like Dominique were executed.” He made a point of describing the rosary Dominique wears around his neck and its meaning. Many reporters found this particularly fascinating and used it in their stories.

Of the death penalty he said that it is “not a deterrent. I think it is an obscenity that brutalizes. As a believer, [I find it] the ultimate giving up, because our faith is a faith of ever-new beginnings. [If] you execute them, you say, ‘I close the possibility of them ever being able to repent and to change.’”

Of the prison he said, “Dominique spends twenty-three hours of a day in solitary confinement, with one hour for exercise, alone. Now that is torture. The punishment begins the moment you come into Death Row. The deprivation—can you imagine not being able to be touched? We did a high-five through the glass as it was, anyway.”

Of the prison guards and officials he said, “They were some lovely people, but I just wonder what effect working in that environment can have on people. It's so destroying—for everyone there.”

He spoke of his conversation with Bernatte Lastrapes, the widow of the victim: “She said she is pissed off Those are her lady-like words. She is pissed off because the white accomplice got off scot-free. That really has riled her and she thinks the other three should have the opportunity to begin again. She doesn't want Dominique Green executed. I hope we can correct what has been a gross miscarriage of justice.”

He spoke of the paradox of the American character: “You are a very generous people, Americans, and it is very difficult to square with your remarkable vindictiveness, which doesn't square with your remarkable generosity. [Dominique] has already been in jail eleven years. That's a huge slice of someone's life. I hope the attention will make other people involved so that it becomes a groundswell and people know this is not what we should be doing. Don't dehumanize yourselves as a society by carrying out the death penalty!”

Having done all he could do with words, Desmond Tutu turned to sacrament. He celebrated mass in a packed church, choosing in his sermon not to dwell on the subject of the press conference but on the feast of the day, Annunciation Eve, celebrating the encounter of Mary of Nazareth with Gabriel, the messenger from God who invited her to become the mother of Jesus Christ. He imagined Mary saying no: “‘What? Me!! In this village you can't even scratch yourself without everybody knowing about it! You want me to be an unmarried mother? I'm a decent girl, you know. Sorry, try next door.’

“If she had said that, we would have been up a creek. Mercifully, marvelously, Mary said, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word,’ and the universe breathed a cosmic sigh of relief, because she made it possible for our Savior to be born.

“Mary was a poor teenage girl in Galilee and reminds us that transfiguration of our world comes from even the most unlikely places and people. You, the people of Livingston, Texas, are the indispensable agents of change. You should not be daunted by the magnitude of the task before you. Your contribution can inspire others, embolden others who are timid, to stand up for the truth in the midst of a welter of distortion, propaganda, and deceit; stand up for human rights where these are being violated with impunity; stand up for justice, freedom, and love where they are trampled underfoot by injustice, oppression, hatred, and harsh cruelty; stand up for human dignity and decency at times when these are in desperately short supply. God calls on us to be his partners to work for a new kind of society where people count.”

When mass was ended, Desmond Tutu stood at the church door and greeted each worshipper individually, shaking hands, embracing, somehow finding the right word for each of these encounters with strangers. By now, I could see, he was exhausted and his right hand and right side were giving him trouble. After he had unvested and resumed his street clothes, I was determined to get him into that limo and on his way as fast as possible.

He emerged from the sacristy and took in the scene, refusing to be hurried toward his car. There, beyond the crowds of people who could not bring themselves to leave, beyond the rolling lawn of the church's property was a ring of uniformed police, beefy white men with crossed arms and reflective sunglasses, the only people Desmond Tutu had not yet greeted. With his customary smile hiding his grim determination, he forced himself to limp down the driveway to the edge of the road, where the cops stood, towering over his tiny figure. Though only five feet four inches tall, Tutu seemed at that moment to be shrinking to an even more diminutive size. Nevertheless, he shook the hand of each astonished policeman and thanked them, every one. Then he was ready to go.

After the limo had taken off, Dave Atwood of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty murmured to no one in particular, perhaps to the now bright air in the glow of the afternoon sun, “Livingston will never be the same.” The visit suffused Dominique and his fellow Death Row prisoners with fresh optimism. They knew perfectly well that all the forces that were ranged against them were still in place, but they now had the best champion they could ever have conjured up and he had brought the world to Livingston as witness to their pain. One prisoner, Kenneth Foster Jr.,^∗ expressed his enthusiasm in a poem entitled “The Anointing”:

Three cheers for Tutu,

the Catholic Zulu,

our black pope,

who smiled upon Death Row

and left tears as

spiritual libation

for dried souls to grow on.

Go on wit’ yo’ bad self, Desmond,

testing the morals of South Africa and

the dirty south,

trekking through the paths of

Black Death,

breathing

Green Life

for all willing

to be blessed with a

Holy Kiss

by lips that know how to speak a

Peace Beyond Understanding.

We stood hand in hand with you,

and still do,

hoping to remain the prayer in your heart

that asks for forgiveness of our souls

in a land barren of mercy,

bearing our crosses,

buried in the steel of

Texas Death Row!

Despite the buoyant optimism we all felt that day, the possibility of success against the machinery of Texas “justice” remained minuscule. The story of Desmond Tutu's visit was picked up by media throughout the country and beyond, but it was all a momentary wonder; within a day or two, the country and the world had many other things to think about. In a foreshadowing of what was to come, I noted that not a few published reports were garbled, incomplete, even malicious. Tutu had talked at length about his telephone conversation with the widow of the victim, though, as he explained, he had been unable to meet with her because she had just been hospitalized. There was no report of this in the Houston Chronicle, however, merely a quote from Diane Clements, president of an organization called Justice for All. “I guess Desmond Tutu forgot to visit the family of Andrew Lastrapes,” asserted Clements ignorantly. Later, I learned that the reporter had included an account of Tutu's conversation with Bernatte Lastrapes in her story but that it had been excised by an editorial pencil and the quote from Clements set in its place. In other press accounts, Clements and others dismissed Tutu's visit to Livingston by claiming it was only in aid of his promoting his latest book, God Has a Dream—which he may have promoted on his speaking tour but which was never mentioned the entire time he spent in Livingston.

In fact, prior to the archbishop's visit Sheila Murphy and Dave Atwood had been trying for some time to locate Bernatte Lastrapes. Once they had found her and were able to connect her with Tutu, they were also able to make contact with her sons. Two of these, Andrew and Andre, who had been twelve and ten respectively when their father was killed, began to visit Dominique. Soon the three men, all of the same generation, all black Houstonians who had grown up in straitened circumstances, were fast friends. But Dominique could no longer wear his rosary when he met visitors. A new rule just happened to forbid the wearing of rosaries, which were now seen as “security threats.” In a letter to me, Dominique wondered, “Are they actually labeling God as a security threat?”

In my response, I took some time to give Dominique a sense of who I believed he was and at the same time to offer him the sort of literary discourse I knew he craved:

You have, I'm sure, had to put up with petty harassments of this sort for years. When people have unlimited power over others, we know they will be tempted to abuse that power. Some men and women are even drawn to professions that will give them such power: there are not a few teachers, clergy, nurses, police, prosecutors, who take the jobs they take because of the enormous license these jobs give them to abuse other human beings. And if such is true of these common professions, how much truer it must be of the unusual profession of prison guard. Psychology of course tells us that it is the abused who end up as abusers, it is those who have been beaten who wish to beat, those who have been belittled who wish to belittle, those whose souls have been destroyed who need to destroy the souls of others. You must have figured this out a long time ago; and I'm sure you know that these psychological traits are not so fated or predetermined that the afflicted person can do nothing to change himself. The abused does not have to become an abuser. He can reflect on his history, come to see it for what it is, and make the decision not to repeat history, not to do to others what was done to him. That is always an immensely courageous decision, one that requires the bravery to look squarely at one's own history and name it accurately, then the courage to rein in one's own evil tendencies. It takes a mind and a heart working together—rather than rigidly separated from each other, even unknown to each other as so many people's minds and hearts are.

No one survives childhood without some such scars. The English poet Philip Larkin has a funny poem on the subject, called “This Be the Verse”:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

For my money the poem misses greatness because in the last stanza the poet loses his nerve. Yes, he makes us laugh, but he also wants us to despair as he despairs—to agree with him that our condition is so hopeless that the obliteration of the human race would be preferable to the continued reproduction of new human beings—that this would be the best outcome we could “hope” for, which would actually entail the death of any kind of real hope. This is true cynicism, which I'm sure you have had to endure a great deal of.

I prefer the solution of a poet like the nineteenth-century priest Gerard Manley Hopkins, who is sensitive to the terrible tragedies that human beings inflict on one another, so sympathetic that his pain on behalf of others is sometimes the realest, most physical element in his poems. He has a poem called “Brothers” in which he sits watching a school play. Next to him is a boy whose younger brother is acting in the play and Hopkins feels all the older brother's anxiety on behalf of his younger sibling, his hope for his brother. He doesn't bother to tell us whether the younger boy performed well or not. His only point is the older brother's sympathetic suffering. The poem ends:

      Ah Nature, framed in fault,

There's comfort then, there's salt;

Nature, bad, base, and blind,

Dearly thou canst be kind;

There dearly then, dearly

I'll cry thou canst be kind.

It's almost an answer to Larkin, even though it was written a century earlier. Hopkins doesn't deny how horrible human beings can be to one another; in fact, he acknowledges it (“bad, base, and blind”). But he points out another phenomenon, the reality of human sympathy, which in the end is the only thing that can redeem us from Larkin's (or anyone else's) despair.

To be hopeful is to be courageous. You certainly can't be hopeful without courage because each day is fraught with examples of what Larkin is talking about. To be hopeful is to steel ourselves against all the obvious and easy reasons to despair and, instead, to choose to hope.

I hope none of this sounds like I'm lecturing you. I'm just trying to give you some idea of who I think you are and why I have such admiration for you. The easy thing (always, everywhere) is to despair, to give up; the hard thing, the thing that takes interior, invisible strength, is to hope. In this business, I'm sure you could teach me much more than I could teach you….

As I say to my own children (who are at such a distance, one in California, the other in the Czech Republic, both about your age): a big hug.

                    Love,

                    Tom

In a letter of mid-April to Marco Gnavi, the Sant'Egidio priest, Dominique, despite the misgivings that he kept mostly to himself, continued to express high hopes for a positive outcome to his case: “Tomorrow some reporter from South Africa is coming over to see me. Who knows just what all this will grow into? My hope is that the attention will continue to increase until enough is generated that I will have a platform to save my life.” But Texas was deaf to any music but its own; and Sheila Murphy's legal advocacy had begun too late to have any but a marginal effect on Dominique's chances.

Dominique's legal team had filed a second habeas corpus petition, this one in federal court, but in February 2002, the U.S. District Court dismissed it and denied a certificate of appealability. In October 2003, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Dominique's request to appeal the U.S. District Court's denial of the federal habeas petition. In February 2004, Dominique petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for the second time for a writ of certiorari, which, if granted, would initiate a Supreme Court review of the lower court's decision in Dominique's case. That June, however, at a hearing in the Harris County Courthouse, Dominique was given his death date—October 26—even though the Supreme Court had yet to rule. (Sheila and many others suspected that Harris County officials were determined to execute him prior to election day 2004, because the Harris County district attorney, Chuck Rosenthal, was running for reelection against a quasi-anti-death-penalty black candidate and the insiders didn't want Rosenthal's run clouded by this unresolved case.)

This was the one time that Sheila was able to touch Dominique because his guards allowed her to meet with him briefly at the courthouse after he was given his date. She put her arm around him with the easy familiarity she would display toward one of her own adult children. But when the Supreme Court denied Dominique's petition on October 4, 2004, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, Dominique's fate was sealed.

A tremendous amount of work had gone into these petitions on the part of Sheila and other lawyers she had managed to attract to Dominique's cause. And like the good mother she is, Sheila was not giving up. She sent out pleas to all the members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, she got others to do likewise, she sent a plea to Governor Rick Perry and got others to do so as well. (Among the many letter writers were a number of distinguished American jurists, Archbishop Tutu, and Joseph Fiorenza, the Roman Catholic bishop, soon to be archbishop, of Galveston-Houston.) She helped organize a press conference, featuring the Lastrapes brothers, who issued a public plea that Dominique's life be spared. In the end, it was all for naught.

Though one member of the Board of Pardons and Paroles actually voted to commute Dominique's sentence, it was hardly enough; and it is doubtful that his fellow members even took the time to examine the wealth of materials that Sheila sent them, which included a video of Bernatte Lastrapes begging for Dominique's life. “All of us,” said Bernatte, “have forgiven Dominique for what happened and want to give him another chance at life. Everyone deserves another chance.” Countering this impressive plea, state prosecutors informed the board members that Dominique had killed two white men, something entirely fictional. Sheila could not persuade Dominique's principal attorneys to contradict this fiction or to request that the board members visit Dominique, something only lawyers licensed in Texas were in a position to do.

It was well known that Perry, who had succeeded George W. Bush as governor, meant to end his tenure with more executions to his name than the amazing number racked up by his predecessor. He has more or less succeeded: whereas Bush presided over 152 executions in six years, Perry will have presided over at least 186 by the end of 2008, though he still lags somewhat behind Bush's numbers on a per-year basis.

With enviable confidence in his own righteousness and that of his state (and startling contempt for the judgment of others), Perry, through a spokesman, has recently responded to the appeal of the European Union that Texas enact a moratorium on the death penalty: “230 years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. Texans long ago decided that the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens. While we respect our friends in Europe, welcome their investment in our state and appreciate their interest in our laws, Texans are doing just fine governing Texas.” No country may join the European Union if it countenances the death penalty, and more and more countries beyond Europe have been abandoning the practice. The United States consistently ranks fourth among countries still employing the practice, outranked in the number of executions only by China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, those bastions of antimonarchical freedom.

The proximity of the execution date began to weigh on Dominique with such force that he was no longer able to collect his thoughts or maintain his usual cool, any more than Jesus could while contemplating his approaching death in the garden of Gethsemane. As Dominique wrote to Archbishop Tutu in early September:

I am doing as well as one probably could expect, thanks largely to the overwhelming abundance of love and support heaped upon me in massive amounts these past few weeks. Strong-willed and thick-skinned as I may be, things have been a lot harder on me than I imagined. Because aside from having to face an execution date myself, I am having to endure it with some close and dear friends.

On August the 26th, I lost one of them. His name was James Vernon Allridge III. I had known him for the past 8 years. He was a model prisoner. A positive influence. And one of the few perfect examples found here of what it means—meant—to be rehabilitated. Sadly, none of that was allowed to matter, despite all that he'd done, accomplished and achieved.

It had been a while since someone that I was close to was executed. So his execution crushed me a little bit. For the past 2½ weeks my concentration hasn't been the same. It's been extremely difficult for me to find my focus and undertake even some of the smallest things.

I have been trying to write this letter to you for the last week and a half. Usually at times like this (when I am going through a lot) I find a way to excel. But after losing James and facing the upcoming execution date (October 5th) of the best friend life could ever give me—a person I've known since I was fourteen—who in coming here not only grew up with me but helped to change the entire dynamics of Texas Death Row, named Edward Green III [no relative], my nerves have been stripped raw and, contrary to my outward appearance, I am walking the line of breaking down and mentally, physically, and spiritually crumbling.

Dominique was dealing with a syndrome that has often been noted by sympathetic observers: each fresh execution engenders traumatic distress in the remaining inhabitants of Death Row.

As the steps toward his own execution moved inexorably forward, Sheila Murphy kept up her drumbeat of interventions. I was not in Texas but in Europe, on a long planned trip to visit my son in Prague, after which I was to do some necessary research in Italy, Germany, France, and England for a book on the Middle Ages that I was writing. I remained in regular contact with Sheila's Chicago office and with Sheila's wonderful assistant, Kathryn Gough. I knew of Sheila's hopes for a last-minute reprieve, and I was more aware than I wished to be of their unlikelihood. In Prague I decided that I must send Dominique a letter. But what kind of letter do you write to someone about to die?

Dearest Dominique,

I'm so sorry to be traveling this week so far from you, but it could not be helped. I have no crystal ball and have no better idea of what will happen next than anyone else. But I am full of pain on your behalf. If all goes well (or at least as well as we could possibly hope), I will greatly look forward to seeing you after I return from Europe. If all goes as badly as possible … I will look forward to seeing you when we all meet merrily in heaven. What is important about a life is not its length but its intensity and direction. Yours is full of intensity, and your direction is so admirable that few could equal you, certainly not I.

Here is a prayer from the Book of Wisdom, which was written in Greek by an unknown writer who lived in North Africa in the century before Jesus. It is usually translated a little stiffly, so I have made my own translation. I hope it may be a help to you, whatever the outcome may be.

The souls of the just are in the hands of God,

And the torments wrought by evildoers

Can never touch them again.

It is true that they appeared to die—

But only in the eyes of people who cannot see

And who imagined that their passing away was a defeat,

That their leaving us was an annihilation.

No, they are at peace.

If, as it seemed to us, they suffered punishment,

their hope was rich with immortality;

slight was their correction, great will their blessings be.

God was putting them to the test,

And has proved them worthy to be with him;

He has tested them like gold in a crucible,

And accepted them as a perfect holocaust.

In the hour of judgment they will shine in glory,

And will sweep over the world like sparks through stubble.

They will judge nations, rule over peoples,

And the Lord will be their king forever.

Those who trust in him will come to understand the truth,

Those who are faithful will live with him in love.

Only grace and mercy await them—

All those whom God, in his compassion, has called to

      himself.

Thank you for your gracious friendship, Dominique. I think of you often, pray for you always, and will never forget you.

                    Much love,

                    Tom

Sheila Murphy was able to read this to Dominique on the day before his execution. He asked her to read it through a second time; and then he took it with him to his cell for a third reading, so I believe I did manage—typing in my son's studio in faraway Prague—to find the right words, however cold the comfort such a belief confers.

Dominique's last day was filled with drama. Almost at the last moment, Sheila and Andy Lofthouse were able to locate Jessica Tanksley, who happened to be visiting her family in Houston. Still startlingly beautiful (as Andy in particular could not help but notice), Jessica was now a self-possessed, much traveled, multilingual young woman soon to be awarded her medical degree from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Though she and Dominique had been out of touch for years, she came immediately to the prison, still unmarried, still (as was patently obvious to all) in love with Dominique. By then, Dominique's mother, Stephanie, was there as well. Dominique had asked Sheila to leave Stephanie out of the loop so that she could not disrupt things and draw all attention to herself, as he was sure she would attempt to do. But Sheila decided to disregard Dominique's wishes in this one matter, “because,” she said later, “if there's one moment tomorrow that he wishes his mother were here, then I've blown it.”

So Dominique had a final meeting with his mother, but one that also involved Sheila: “He motioned for me to come over and he said, ‘Sheila, would you sit with my mom and me for just a few minutes? It's really important to me because she and I have had very poor parenting and she doesn't know how. Would you help her learn to pattern as a parent should, teach her how to do it?’ And I said, ‘Well, how would I do that?’ And he said, ‘Well, just talk to me like you always do. We'll just talk, and you listen, Mom. So you can do it with my brothers.’ And so we talked like we always did, you know, we joked and all.”

Then Sheila told Stephanie that Jessica was waiting her turn. “You were once young,” said Sheila, “and so was I, and we can remember how we loved seeing the person we loved when we were young, and Jessica is here and Dominique hasn't had much time with her these last ten years, so why don't we give our place to Jessica?” Miraculously, Stephanie agreed. The two older women moved off and allowed Jessica to speak privately with Dominique.

Jessica saw that the discreet beauty she had recognized long ago in her first meeting with Dominique had blossomed exponentially. His was now a presence that overcame any other energy in the room. She promised him that she would always, always remember him, and he said that for him that would be enough.

Later, when only the law team remained, Dominique began to call Sheila “Mom.” It wasn't a slip of the tongue, as Sheila realized: the first time he did it, he winked at her. Andy also had a last conversation with his friend, who had refused to order a last meal. Like his model Desmond Tutu, he was fasting. What, Andy asked, would you eat if you decided to have a last meal? “Jessica,” came the smiling reply. It seemed as if, on this last day, Dominique had worked his way free of the spiritual crumbling he had written about to Archbishop Tutu. He was back in his usual groove, calling the shots and playfully pushing these final encounters to heightened significance.

But now it was almost time for Dominique to be taken from the Livingston prison to the Huntsville Death House. Dominique spent his last few minutes in his cell dividing up his meager possessions for his friends. Andy got all his legal notes. In the weeks ahead, as Andy read through the notes, he came to the firm conclusion that Dominique had trained himself like a law student in every legal subtlety and strategy and had succeeded in being the best lawyer of them all. To the Lastrapes brothers, Dominique gave his inscribed copy of An African Prayer Book and his rosary. He also directed that the payment from National Catholic Reporter for his essay on his rosary, the only legitimate earnings he had ever made, be given to the Lastrapes family. Everyone received an appropriate gift.

Two guards arrived to take Dominique, but deferred their mission for a few minutes at Sheila's urging, so that everyone, especially Jessica, could say a last good-bye. Sheila could see the pain in the eyes of the guards and recalled the archbishop's speculation about what this business did to the spirits of those whose work is death. Then, as the guards escorted Dominique along a glass-enclosed corridor, Sheila and Andre Lastrapes were able to accompany him for some distance on the other side of the glass. Soon enough, the two parties—Dominique and his guards, Sheila and the other friends of Dominique— were on their way in separate vehicles through the pretty Texas countryside to Huntsville.

Huntsville, a cheerful, outwardly gracious community, has to be one of the strangest human settlements on the surface of the earth, a town organized around its Death House. So many in the town work for the Huntsville prison or for one of the six other prisons in the area; and so many who do not work for the prisons work to supply the wants of those who do. The hillside above the town contains the graves of those who have been executed, many thousands of gray tombstones erected over many acres of ground, each stone engraved with the number of a prisoner, seldom with his name, the single letter “X” for executed, and the date of execution. As one approaches the town, one notes a huge signboard high above the local McDonald's franchise, welcoming visitors to “the home of Old Sparky”—that is, the electric chair that was used for decades and which is now enshrined as the central exhibit of the Texas Prison Museum of Huntsville.

As there is an unvarying procedure for carrying out executions, there is an unvarying procedure for those who have come to stand in solidarity with the condemned. The family and friends of the man (or woman) to be executed must wait in a hospice run by the Southern Baptists. They are given no choice in this matter, for the mixture of government and religion in Texas is pervasive—and not just religion as a category, nor even Christianity as a category, but a peculiar version of extreme Calvinism, full of self-justification, retribution, and even cruelty. The hospice is decorated throughout with gory scenes of Jesus's passion and death, painted by those about to be executed, often with accompanying notes from the condemned confessing that they are paying their just dues for their sins. This is the ambience that the family and friends of the condemned must endure while they wait to speak one last time with the condemned by telephone.

While Sheila and the others waited, they were assailed by a particularly antipathetic chaplain, a Catholic, who rattled on about what an awful sin murder is and that murder by abortion is the worst of all. Dominique had refused a chaplain, saying that they were all compromised. If they didn't go along with the system, they wouldn't have been named chaplains here.

Sheila, her cell phone clutched in her hand, was still hoping for a last-minute miracle because that very morning U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas had issued a stay of execution on the grounds that ballistics evidence used to convict Dominique may have been inaccurate. Some 280 boxes of improperly stored and cataloged evidence, involving some eight thousand cases, covering more than two decades, and kept by the Houston Police Department crime lab, had recently been discovered and could contain information relevant to the case. Harold Hurtt, the Houston police chief, had called for a moratorium on executions in cases like Dominique's, where the lab was involved. A second petition, using the same argument, was before the Supreme Court. The chaplain, claiming that it would be a felony to bring a cell phone into the prison itself, tried to wrestle Sheila's from her. She refused to let go of it, shouting at him that he was interfering with her legal rights and those of Dominique. She won the tussle.

But the call that finally came through advised her that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals had done what it normally does: it had overturned the stay of execution in response to the objection of Texas's attorney general. There was still the U.S. Supreme Court to be heard from. Meanwhile, the chaplain— “a total ass,” as Sheila labeled him—was keeping up his steady babble, apparently believing that the silence everybody desperately wished for would be inappropriate.

The phone conversations with Dominique, when they occurred at last, were so brief as to be all but undetectable. But Sheila was to have some final communications with Dominique after she entered the Walls Unit itself, the section of the prison where executions are carried out, where she was shocked to see that in an interior courtyard a garden had been planted. “He's like a flower opening,” she recalled the archbishop's words. Then, once again she was talking to Dominique with a glass barrier between them: “There is Dominique standing up by himself in the cell, and other people, the guards, were close by. We talked very quietly, and I told him that we hadn't heard from the Supreme Court yet and that every moment that went by was good for us. And he said, ‘I'm going to be O.K.’ He was reassuring me. He was unbelievable. And it was all about making sure to thank everybody. Thank you for being my family, for Patrick coming to see me. I had such a good time with him that day. And thank Andy. And thank Tom. And thank Sant'Egidio: where would I ever have been without them? I would never have met you. And to think Archbishop Tutu came here. Nobody thinks we're anything but he came from South Africa. And on and on. He said, ‘You've done so much in such a short time. If I had had you from the beginning, I'd never be here. So know that. If you'd been my lawyer at the trial, they would have listened to you.’ Then they came and got me and I had to go back and then I said I gotta talk to him one more time, I have to talk to Dominique one more time, there is something I have to tell him. So they let me.”

By this point Sheila was on the verge of hysteria, weeping into the phone to Dominique: “I just want you to know that here I am in my sixties, if anyone's life should be taken it should be mine, because I've had a life. I'm a mother and a grandmother and a wife. All the things you haven't had a chance to do I've had a chance to do.” To which Dominique replied, “Sheila, you stop talking like that. You know you're just being silly. You stop that. Where I'm going I'm going to take care of everybody, and you're going to keep up the struggle. You have to stay here and keep up the struggle.”

“I'll do the best I can,” said Sheila, dripping tears.

Andy got on the phone with Dominique and they joked together as they always had, though by this point Andy was probably more of a wreck inside than Sheila. Then the news came through of the Supreme Court's refusal. Sheila took the phone once more to tell Dominique. Then she said, “I will be with you tonight and I will be with you every minute.”

“And I thought,” said Sheila recently, as if these things had happened only yesterday, “I've just got to get in there and be as close to him as I can and never take my eyes off him. Never. And that's what I did.”

Facing the execution room are two other rooms, one for reporters and for supporters of the condemned man, explicitly invited by him, the other set aside by law for the family of the victim. Both rooms are shielded from the execution room only by panes of glass, so that the viewers may have unobstructed views of the progress of the execution. On this night the second room was empty. No member of the dissenting Lastrapes family had been invited to attend the execution.

The witnesses Dominique had invited were Sheila, Andy, Dave Atwood, and two women who had had lengthy correspondences with him—Barbara Bacci, a Roman woman who collaborated with Sant'Egidio, and Lorna Kelly, a Sant'Egidio member from New York. Each of their names was called out by a prison official, and they were told to proceed to the room from which they would view the execution. Dominique did not invite his mother because he was afraid she would make a scene; he did not invite Jessica because he believed it would be impossible for her to bear. But the first person called as a witness that evening was Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Dominique knew the archbishop could not be there, but forcing the prison officials to call out his name and acknowledge him was a final demonstration by Dominique of his sense of his own dignity and self-worth.

When the witnesses file into the room, they see the condemned already strapped down on a cross-shaped gurney, his arms outstretched, the intravenous tubes by which the chemicals will travel already implanted in his veins. “When we came in,” said Sheila, “he looked at me—I think the whole time. I never took my eyes off him and he never took his eyes off me.”

An official placed a microphone near Dominique's mouth. Sheila thought his face looked swollen and wondered if he had been already given some sort of medication. His last words, a bit rambling and primitive, suggest that she was right. His initial comment about the number of people present even suggests he may have seen people who weren't there. Certainly, he knew there were thousands praying for him at that moment at an all-night vigil in the Basilica of Santa Maria.

“Yes,” he began. “Man, there is a lot of people there. There was a lot of people that got me to this point, and I can't thank them all. But thank you for your love and support. They have allowed me to do a lot more than I could have done on my own. Sheila, I wish I would have met you seven years ago; it would have been a lot easier. But I have overcome a lot. I am not angry but I am disappointed that I was denied justice. But I am happy that I was afforded you all as family and friends. You all have been there for me; it's a miracle. I love you. And I have to tell Jessica I am sorry. I never knew it would come to this. Lorna, you know you have to keep my struggle going. I know you just lost your baby, but you have to keep running. Dave, keep the struggle going. Andy, I love you, man. Tell Andre and them that I didn't get a chance to reach my full potential, but you can help them reach theirs. You needed me, but I just did not know how to be there for them. There is so much I have to say, but I just can't say it all. I love you all. Please just keep the struggle going. If you turn your back on me, you turn your back on them. I love you all and I'll miss you all. Thanks for allowing me to touch so many hearts. I never knew I could do it, but you made it possible. I am just sorry. And I am not as strong as I thought I was going to be. But I guess it only hurts for a little while. You all are my family. Please keep my memory alive.”

Though the Houston Police Department may keep flawed records and the entire justice establishment of Texas may be astonishingly barbaric in its operations, the records kept of Huntsville executions are exceedingly exact:

OFFENDER:	Green Dominique #999068
EXECUTION DATE:	October 26, 2004
TAKEN FROM HOLDING CELL:	7:37 TIME
STRAPPED TO GURNEY:	7:39 TIME
SOLUTION FLOWING:	7:40 RIGHT ARM
	7:41 LEFT ARM
LAST STATEMENT:	7:47 TIME
LETHAL DOSE BEGAN:	7:50 TIME
LETHAL DOSE COMPLETED:	7:54 TIME
PRONOUNCED DEAD:	7:59 TIME

So seven minutes before he began speaking his last words, a tranquilizing drug was already being pumped into him, followed by a paralyzing drug, followed by heart-stopping poison.

Outside the prison at just about 8 P.M., the many protesters gathered there witnessed their own epiphany. The night sky was rent by a dramatic crack of lightning, though the sky was clear and the moon full. Jessica, sure of what the lightning meant, collapsed, falling into the arms of the Lastrapes brothers.

Andre Lastrapes showed his anger to reporters: “I felt it was dirty, and the state will have their chance to face a higher authority—that is, God. The hell with Texas and the justice system. They were full of shit, and I am speaking from my heart. I really mean that. I mean, Andrew Lastrapes was my daddy in the first place, and I forgave Dominique. I know God has a place for Dominique in heaven. The person I met doesn't deserve to die. He became close to me, and I pray that he goes to heaven.”

Andy Lofthouse, a witness to the execution, found he could not face the actual moment and turned his back to Dominique. Sheila, exhausted by her tears, was pretty much cried out, but Andy, determined not to give Texas the satisfaction of tears, was lacerated by invisible wounds and had to get himself out of there. He drove off as soon as he could, not realizing he had Jessica's car keys—which left her stranded. She and the Lastrapes brothers rode back to Houston that night with Sheila and her husband, Patrick Racey, who had stood in the parking lot with the other protesters when they beheld with awe the great crack of lightning in the sky.

I had asked Sheila's assistant, Kathryn, who had my detailed itinerary, to phone me at any hour of the day or night with any news. She reached me a little after 2 A.M. continental European time in the German city of Trier to tell me Dominique was dead. Good-hearted Kathryn, who had come to know Dominique well over the course of many phone conversations and to love him, was immensely sad but strangely peaceful, believing as she did—with impressive firmness— that Dominique had “escaped” to God. “He got away, as the Irish say.”

My hotel faced the extensive ruins of the Porta Nigra, an elaborate gate built by the empire-building Romans about A.D. 180 and intended to call attention to the importance of Trier, “Roma Secunda” as the Romans called it, the first city to be founded in Roman-occupied Germany. After I had said good-bye to Kathryn, I looked out across the well-lit night to the huge stone blocks, some weighing as much as six metric tons, assembled more than eighteen centuries before. Most of the stones are still in place, cut and laid there without mortar by slaves.

The Romans were intensely proud of their accomplishments, and they built the longest-lasting empire the world has ever known. They were also insanely cruel, crucifying anyone who got in their way, delighting in the many grisly deaths and the constant flow of human blood that filled their arenas. Though they knew they were great, they didn't know they were cruel. That was something they kept carefully hidden from themselves.

∗ In addition to the Death Row prisoners’ methods of communicating and sharing that I declined to describe in the Prologue, there is a further possibility occasionally open to them. Twice weekly each inmate who is deemed to be cooperative and deferential is permitted his hour of exercise “outside”—that is, in a small dayroom or recreation yard composed of cement walls, a cement floor, and a ceiling made of bars. The spaces between the bars of this ceiling, however, are open to the outside, which means that the prisoner can “feel the sun and on occasion feel the breeze if one happens to come through that particular day,” as Ivan Cantu has described it to me. Running the length of the room is a divider made of bars and mesh. One prisoner exercises on one side of this divider, a second prisoner on the other side. This arrangement allows some communication between two prisoners, but arranging to meet a particular prisoner in this way requires considerable prior planning and the cooperation of a guard. Normally, a prisoner is allowed to “go outside” only with another prisoner housed in the same section. But arranging to exercise with a particular prisoner is sometimes possible if one can bribe a guard by forfeiting something else, such as a shower—a principal daily pleasure. Though each Death Row prisoner has the right to a daily shower, this can be taken only in the presence of a guard, and the guards are particularly averse to spending their time in this way.

∗ Sheila Murphy has taken particular note of these circumstances as they affect the children of Death Row inmates: “No place for children to play, no books, no coloring books. They just have to sit and wait while their mother talks on the phone to their father. They just look on with eyes so sad—such inhumanity to innocent children under color of law.”

∗ Kenneth Foster was on Death Row when he wrote his poem. He had been sentenced under Texas's infamous “law of parties” for innocently driving a car from which a man disembarked and killed another man. Thanks to the heroic efforts of the appellate lawyer Keith Hampton, Sheila Murphy, and Andrew Lofthouse, his sentence has recently been commuted to life in prison.