It has been my experience that because of institutional and individual racism

Man of Steel
My keepers believe I’m the man of steel,
Ripping and running, in and out of my life,
As if this shit ain’t real.
They frame me for murder—and when their conspiracy
is exposed, and they are all deposed, the judge
declares—case closed.
Equal access to Justice, equal access to rule,
Doctrines never meant for the man of Steel but to
terminate 40 years of his indomitable will.
Maybe my soul is that of concrete
Maybe it is that of the wind
Maybe it is that of fire
Maybe it is the spirit of the people—the spirit of my ancestors,
Whatever my keepers wish my soul to be,
The man of steel is always free.

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Chapter 31
Contact Visit
In 1986, 14 years after I was locked down in CCR, prison authorities moved
everyone from CCR and Death Row to Camp J cellblocks so they could make
repairs and renovations to the old building. We were all put in Gar Unit at
Camp J, the punishment camp, where King had been sent for two years in the
late seventies for protesting strip searches. Camp J prisoners had fewer
privileges than we had at CCR—no store, for example, less food at
mealtimes, no salt or pepper, fewer books. While being housed at Camp J,
CCR prisoners were supposed to be able to live by the same rules and
regulations that we had at CCR—and not the Camp J rules—but there was
always a tug-of-war. The Camp J major wanted things his way. We went on
hunger strikes or would refuse to go into our cells when they tried to impose
Camp J rules on us and gradually we won back privileges. Some things we
couldn’t change: The cells were much smaller. When we went to the shower
we were locked in. We had a lot of arguments with security around that. Most
of us only needed 10 or 15 minutes in the shower. Once we were locked in
we had to wait until the guard came to unlock the door before we could get
out, so we might have to spend 30 or 45 minutes or more in the shower. That
would cut into our hour outside the cell.
Our “yard” time took place in small pens. There was no way to run, we
could only jog or walk in circles. The windows were frosted so we couldn’t
see out of them. I filed an ARP about the frosted windows when I got there. I
researched the statutes that described how much sunlight prisoners were
supposed to get. (Even at Camp J prisoners were allowed to take law books
out of the library because it was required by law.) I won that because there
was established law supporting me. They had to swap the frosted glass for
glass we could see through.
They did install black-and-white TVs for us at Camp J and, for the first

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time ever, we got to see cable TV stations while we were there. We had
petitioned for cable long before we were sent to Camp J. The main prison had
already had access to cable TV for years. We found out it came through for
us when an inmate counsel visited after talking to the warden. “Say, man,” he
said, “they granted you cable here now. Y’all just got to go to channel 5 for
Cinemax.” I’ll never forget, the World Series was on TV, we changed the
channel to 5, and the first thing we saw was a naked woman walking on the
beach from some foreign movie. That was the end of the baseball. A couple
of the guys were really into sports and complained. There was some back-
and-forth on the subject but since we lived by a majority-rule policy that was
a short vote. I think it was something like 12 to 3 for the foreign movie.
At Camp J visiting was worse than it was at CCR. We had to wear
restraints during the noncontact visit. The screens were so dark that in order
for visitors and prisoners to see one another’s form we had to stand back
from the screen. At CCR Herman, King, and I could be in the visiting room
at the same time if our families came together, and we encouraged them to do
that. We wouldn’t be able to see one another—we’d be brought to the visiting
booths one at a time—but we could talk to one another, even though there
were dividers between us. Our families laughed about how we’d be able to
conduct full conversations with each other looking straight ahead. On the
other side of the screen our families pushed their chairs back against the wall,
which allowed us to see all of them and talk together. This was a ray of
humanity for us. At Camp J, however, we were locked in individual visiting
sheds, alone with whoever was visiting us, so we couldn’t talk to one another
on visits, and our families couldn’t visit us together.
While we were housed at Camp J the prison started a bullshit work line
for CCR prisoners that lasted a few months. We’d be allowed out of our cells
for a few hours a day—either morning or afternoon—to work in the fields.
There were two shifts for each time period—they kept me, Herman, and King
on separate shifts. We were fed all our meals locked in our cells.
One day I became ill out in the field. I tried to keep working but when I
felt the energy drain out of me I sat down on the ground. I had no strength
whatsoever. Sergeant David Ross rode over on his horse and told me to get
up and start working. I told him I couldn’t work anymore, I needed to go to
the hospital. He told me he wasn’t calling the EMTs, and to get back to work.
He rode away. When he came back I told him I needed to see a doctor
because I was very sick. He said he wasn’t calling an ambulance and told me

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to get up. Then everything went white. I must have lain down. Sergeant Ross
finally called the EMT. When he arrived he couldn’t get a blood pressure
reading so they transported me to the hospital. They treated me at the hospital
but later the medical staff denied it, covering for the guard. The doctor said
nothing was wrong with me and filed a disciplinary report against me, saying
that I was malingering.
I filed a civil suit against Sergeant Ross, the doctor, and the EMT,
alleging they’d violated my 8th Amendment right under the Constitution to
be free of cruel and unusual punishment, as well as my 14th Amendment
rights, because Ross denied me equal treatment and protection under the law
by ignoring statutory law, rules, and regulations governing the treatment of
prisoners.
During the discovery phase I obtained medical records from the hospital
that showed I’d been treated for heatstroke even though the doctor said there
was nothing wrong with me. The medical records showed that when they
brought me in the doctor examined me, then placed me in an air-conditioned
room and gave me water to drink. At trial, I referred to those medical records
when the doctor, attempting to cover up for Sergeant Ross, testified that he
didn’t treat me. The EMT said the reason he couldn’t get a blood pressure
reading from me that morning was that his gauge malfunctioned. On cross-
examination, I asked him if he wrote an incident report on the broken blood
pressure gauge and he said no, so I asked him if he was working every day
with a broken blood pressure gauge and he said no, he turned it in to the
hospital. I asked him how he could turn in a broken blood pressure gauge
without filing an incident report on it, therefore jeopardizing the lives of
prisoners by leaving in service a blood pressure gauge that either
malfunctioned or was broken.
In the end, the judge gutted the suit, dismissing the part of the case that
had all my evidence against the doctor and the EMT. He said I hadn’t shown
“deliberate indifference” on the part of the medical staff, so the jury could not
take under consideration all of the medical proof that showed a cover-up. The
only part of the suit the jury could consider was whether or not Sergeant Ross
deliberately violated my 8th Amendment and 14th Amendment rights. The
day of my trial, one of the two prisoner witnesses who worked in the field
line with me and saw and heard everything that happened refused to testify.
The other had amnesia on the witness stand and therefore gave misleading
testimony. Given the fact the judge dismissed the part of the case that

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contained most of the evidence, all that was left for the jury to consider was
my testimony and the testimony of Sergeant Ross. Based upon my experience
in dealing with the court system and the fact that during my testimony the
state brought up my previous arrests and convictions—the most recent being
my conviction for the murder of prison guard Brent Miller—I felt there was
no way that the jury would rule in my favor. I was right.
In 1987, I was working on a different case in my cell and asked the library to
send me a copy of the Hayes Williams consent decree from 1975 for
background research. When I started reading it I realized I’d never seen the
full document before. The consent decree we were given in the seventies had
been edited; I now saw that agreements in the consent decree that would have
benefited CCR prisoners—like having contact visits—had been redacted by
officials who didn’t want us to have any knowledge of our rights under the
consent decree. I immediately wrote notes to King and Herman and filed an
ARP on it. Hilton Butler, the former captain who had gassed us repeatedly in
the seventies, was the warden of Angola at that time. He was now forced to
grant us contact visits. CCR had never had them before; now CCR prisoners
were allowed to have one contact visit a month.
The contact visit was completely different from sitting behind a steel
mesh screen. We were taken to an open room with tables and chairs. They
removed our handcuffs and leg irons. My first contact visit in 15 years was
around Christmas that year. My mom came with my brother Michael, my
sister Violetta, and her oldest daughter, Nelyauna. There was no natural flow
at first. I didn’t feel comfortable. I had forgotten what it felt like to be
physically close to people. I was used to talking with the partition between
us. There was no hugging with the screen between you and a visitor. You
couldn’t even really see the eyes of the person across from you clearly.
It was a strain for me to stay within the flow of my first contact visit.
When my mom put her hand on my leg it brought back a flood of memories. I
became a kid again. I had to fight off crying. When they were getting ready to
leave I had an intense wave of longing that went through me, a desire to leave
with them. Everyone started to hug me and I didn’t know what to do. I’d
always been able to kiss my mom through the screen, touch fingers with
Michael and everybody, but hugging, for the first time in 15 years, was
totally foreign to me. (Later, King would say he felt the same. “It felt totally,
absolutely strange,” he said. “I didn’t know how to hug. It was sadder than

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sad. I realized how much I’d missed.”) It took me months to really enjoy
contact visits.
We were at Camp J for more than two years, long after the renovations in
the old building were complete. During my civil trial against David Ross,
testimony came out that CCR and Death Row inmates had been moved to
Camp J in violation of the consent decree. After state officials got involved
we were moved back to CCR in 1989.

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