Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

When he had been found guilty of the charges filed against him, he almost decided to end everything right then. He was not going to give the state of California the satisfaction of executing him for a crime he hadn’t committed. If he had to die, he was going to rob the state, and everyone else, of their pleasure in executing him. He would drink a cup of coffee, and that would be that—he would die on his own terms.

But, suicide was morally and spiritually repugnant to him. In his mind, committing suicide was almost as bad as taking another’s life! So instead, he promised himself that he’d give his attorneys and the good Lord a chance to prove his innocence. He could always kill himself—there was no need to be hasty. Maybe there was still a chance to get out of this mess, for the truth to be revealed and set him free.

After he finished eating and the trash was picked up, Lee laid back down. He had nothing to read, no writing supplies to write letters with, nothing at all to occupy his time. Lee decided to go back to sleep. Time would pass much faster that way. But it wasn’t easy to go to sleep here. The noise coming from the other cells was deafening. One inmate was hollering to another as loud as he could in Spanish. Others were yelling back and forth to each other in English and Spanish. Further down the row, it sounded like another inmate was yelling at the top of his lungs for his mother. Those cries for his mother were heart-rending and interspersed with heart-felt sobs. They made Lee feel like crying himself. But not for his mother. He felt like it was for too many other reasons to list. Among those reasons, however, was the loss of his daughter, wife and friends, not to mention the loss of his freedom.

Over the following three weeks, with the exception of two days, his routine didn’t change. Those two days, he was taken out of his cell and brought before the Inmate Classification Committee. His assigned counselor told him that he should only be in the Adjustment Center for about a week. It actually proved to be over two weeks before he left that building for good. He was asked a series of questions: Did he use drugs, alcohol, smoke? Was he ever under psychiatric care or prescribed mood altering medication? The counselor actually seemed disappointed when all of his questions were answered in the negative.

“You don’t seem to fit any of the normal profiles of a condemned prisoner,” he said.

“Maybe,” Lee responded rather sarcastically, “it’s because I’m not one of your normal condemned prisoners. Maybe I was actually wrongly convicted!”

The counselor scoffed and answered “Yeah! Sure, and so is everyone else in here.” He spoke as if the judicial system would never make a mistake.

When he was seen by the Classification Committee, he was told that none of the paperwork pertaining to his case or time in the county jail had been received. The only reason the prison had accepted him was because the court paperwork committing him to prison had come up with him in the transportation car. Because of the lack of paperwork, he could count on staying in the Adjustment Center for another two weeks. He told them about all of the death threats he had received and requested protective custody status. He was refused and assigned to an integrated exercise yard. They told him that he would have to identify the persons that were threatening him before they could act on it. Lee thought to himself ‘Guess I’ll have to have a knife in my gut before they believe me!’

During his second week in the A/C, he began to hear his name spoken by some of the other inmates on the floor. They were speaking Spanish and he was able to pick up the word “muerte”. He had taken a year of Spanish in high school. He didn’t know a lot of Spanish, but he knew that word! Requesting to see his counselor again, he related the new threats to his life and renewed his request for protective custody status,

“You know,” his counselor said, “once you’re assigned to the PC yard, no change in status will ever be allowed,”

Lee looked directly into his eyes and spoke softly, “If it’s a choice between spending the rest of my time here on a PC exercise yard or going to an integrated yard and having my throat cut, it’s not a hard choice for me to make!”

The next day, he saw the committee again and his request for protective custody was finally granted. He was then told that his paperwork still hadn’t arrived, but that it was no reason that he should be punished by being forced to remain in the A/C. He was told that he would be transferred to the condemned row building later that morning. At 11:30, he was told to pack up his gear… it was moving time.

Once again he was handcuffed, his arms behind his back, and escorted out of the building by two officers. As they exited the building, Lee saw several inmates wearing blue working on the surrounding grounds. As the escort officers and he walked out of the gated door, one of the officers yelled out “Escort!” Immediately, all of the nearby inmates arose from their tasks and walked a short distance in the opposite direction, away from the escorts. Lee was then led out of the building, around a security checkpoint, and along a paved walkway. After the walkway, they exited onto a large, paved yard. There were more inmates all over the yard dressed in orange jumpsuits. Walking around the circumference of the yard, Lee felt the scrutiny of many of the inmates around the area. Fingers were pointed at him and secretive nods made in his Direction. These indications of identification only served to make him uneasy. The two escort officers seemed to take no notice of the other inmates. Their main function seemed to be only to walk him to the East Block Condemned Row, hollering out ‘Escort!’ every dozen strides or so. They passed the prison kitchen and chow hall. The smells of cooking food assailed his senses. Then the prison canteen (store) was passed. Two officers and an inmate stood nearby, talking. Their voices carried to him easily in the pre-noon air.

“Is that him?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“That’s one son-of-a-bitch that needs his throat cut as soon as possible!”

Finally, they arrived at two huge doors. As one of the officers opened a small door set in the huge ones, he again yelled out “Escort!” Inside, Lee heard a bustle of quick movements. When he walked through the door, a blast of air hit him. He almost dropped to the floor, but then recognized it as an insect guard attached above the doorway. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the interior of the building, he noticed several inmates moving around huge laundry machines. They were moving away from him, but kept their eyes focused on him. He was then walked through a gate, another gate, and then placed in a small holding cage. There, he was once again told to go through the strip down routine, then told to get dressed again. He was brought several sheets of paper, told to sign some of them and then was once again handcuffed. Then he was escorted up the four flights of stairs to the fifth level tier and locked into a cell a little more than half way down the tier.

This new cell was even smaller than the one he had just left. This cell was 10 feet long by four and a half feet wide. Three solid walls, the fourth being a wall of bars and small-grade mesh wire. As he looked around this new home, the tears began to fall. Despair overwhelmed him and his body began to shake with the sobs that erupted from the very depths of his soul. The circumstances of what the prosecution and prosecution witnesses had done to him with their lies and innuendoes was completely overwhelming him.

Through the tears that were obstructing his vision, he made up his bed. When that was done, he put away the other items he had been given: a new toothbrush, tooth powder, a bar of soap, laundry soap, a comb, a mirror, extra sets of under and outer-clothing, and a plastic spoon and fork. While doing this, the tier officer came by with a sack lunch. Lee didn’t have an appetite, so he set the lunch aside and finished trying to straighten up his cell After that, he laid down and immediately lapsed into the unconsciousness of sleep. He was now sleeping much more than he ever used to, but he didn’t care. The losses he had suffered were just too great to bear. By escaping into the realm of sleep, he didn’t have to face those losses.