Looking out: To death
By Brandon Astor Jones
"At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death." — Algernon Charles Swinburn
On August 13, at 10:01 am, I folded a piece of art paper into a makeshift greeting card. On the inner left side I quoted the English poet, whose words appear above. I felt that they were appropriate in light of the news that Sergeant Wyatt had died the day before.
Sergeant Wyatt was, in the collective opinion of those of us here on Georgia's death row, one of the good officers.
Wait a minute, before I go on I'd better clarify what a good officer is. In the eyes of most men here, a good officer is: a person who will/would not go out of his or her way to make a death row prisoner's day any worse than it already is; a person who treats/treated all human beings — prisoners and colleagues alike — with the dignity and respect we deserve; a person who never imposes his or her power and authority upon prisoners needlessly; and a person we are inclined to respect.
Needless to say, good officers are in the minority here, no matter what rank or colour.
Getting back to the card ... I made an envelope and on the front of it I wrote, "TO: SERGEANT WYATT'S FAMILY". On the right side of the card I wrote:
"Please accept this condolence. I, too, feel your loss. Sergeant Wyatt was a real man; and he always recognized real men here, no matter what uniform. His memory will always command my respect because he always gave me his, very often when some of his colleagues thought respect was a contagious disease."
A lot of my fellow prisoners felt the need to sign the card as well.
Afterwards, I took the card to the counsellor, Mrs Teal. I asked her if she could get the unsealed card to "Sergeant Wyatt's family". She indicated that she would try to honour our request.
About an hour later, Mrs Teal asked to speak with me. I went to the barred cell-block gate where she was waiting. She handed me the card and said, "Jones, I checked [with an administrative higher authority] and was told that 'it would be inappropriate to do it'".
I took the card back to the cell block and told my fellow prisoner what she had said. One of them suggested that I "send [the card] to the newspaper"!
Having done that, it is my hope that someone will see this column and somehow let the Wyatt family know that we tried to send them our condolences, but the prison administration would not allow it. Alas, we know that the prison's administrative-heart is an evil-baron waste land in which humane acts are not only rejected but resented with vigour and political purpose.
This seemingly insignificant incident within the Georgia prison system, and death row specifically, speaks volumes to us all about what capital punishment really is, and its heartless proliferation throughout the world.
Swinburn was absolutely right. There are indeed "worse things waiting for men than death".
I have little doubt that at least one of those things awaits all political and administrative bodies that pretend to cherish life so much that they kill, at every opportunity, the human spirit that so naturally and divinely inclines even condemned men on death row to offer condolences to this (or any) group in the human family which suffers the loss of a member.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]