Last week two men were executed in two different southern states. One, Troy Davis, was believed by many to be innocent of the crime he was punished for. The other , Laurence Brewer, confessed openly to his participation in one of the most heinous murders in recent memory. For Davis there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from the usual quarters of death penalty opponents, putting forth the argument that every life is sacred and of equal moral consideration. In Brewer’s case there was no such display of moral outrage, no cries for mercy, nothing at all. Just a few small articles that disappeared from the media sphere as quickly as they arrived. I too oppose the death penalty for various reasons but the hypocrisy of it’s most vocal critics doesn’t escape me. It’s apparent that in their moral calculus, the life of Troy Davis had far more value than that of Laurence Brewer. The death of an innocent is indeed tragic, but no more so than the death of the thousands of civilians lost, inevitable collateral damage in the two wars we’ve been waging in the middle east. Then again there is the life that Brewer took, James Byrd Jr., dragged to death behind a pickup truck on a lonely logging road in east Texas. I too struggle with the moral calculus of the constantly overlapping tragedies of this world and the balancing of justice’s scales.
Brewer’s execution opened up a more personal connection for me. One that was not directly related to the death penalty. It brought back memories of my visit to Jasper Texas. Jasper is a small community in east Texas where the murder of James Byrd occurred. It was also Laurence Brewer’s home town. I went there on a contract job a few years after the infamous murder occurred and the memory was still fresh in every ones mind. East Texas is a beautiful region of rolling hills, pine forests and massive lakes and wetlands. Although rich in natural beauty, the region is also economically barren. Most communities there are among the poorest in Texas. Because of the lack of opportunity many communities have opted to allow the state to build prisons in the area in order to create more jobs. One such facility is near Jasper. It was in this prison that Brewer met his two future partners in murder. Although I have encountered overt racism in east Texas I never saw it in Jasper. By east Texas standards it is a progressive community when it comes to race relations. Jasper is also a community of contrasts. Just outside of town lies Sam Rayburn lake and hundreds of acres of old growth pine forests. The natural beauty of the lake has attracted developers and there are a number of upscale neighborhoods that cater to wealthy retirees and vacationers. Many members of the Jasper community have become wealthy due to this development boom. In the midst of this the majority of residents still suffer from the grinding poverty that plagues the region. This economic malaise effects the majority black population most, but there are many whites whose prospects are hardly better. I had a direct encounter with the reality of poverty in Jasper. I was camped at the time in an RV at one of the parks located in the deep piney woods near the lake. It was the perfect place to cook on an open fire so I decided to pick up a good steak at the local grocery. An occasional treat for me but not a rarity. At the checkout a young black man, about nineteen years old, was bagging my purchase. He was a huge strapping fellow but he had an open face and a quiet gentle manner to his voice. He asked what kind of steak I was purchasing and I told him “It’s a T-bone”. He then explained that he had only had steak once in his life and wasn’t familiar with the various cuts. I asked him further about his one time experience and a story emerged. “My family took me to the city when I graduated from high school and we gots to eat at Golden Corral, since I is the first one that ever finished high school.” Given my background, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of dining at a budget friendly family restaurant as a once in a life time peak experience, but that was this young mans reality.
It’s a reality that Laurence Brewer and James Byrd also shared. They where both kindred souls in that sense. Both grew up in grinding poverty, both received a sub standard public education, and both faced a future with no prospects for a better life. Laurence became a petty thief and drug dealer ultimately ending up in the Jasper prison. James worked odd jobs and manual labor until disability forced him to live on the $800/month or so that SSI provides only as long as you own no significant assets. That’s why a car less Byrd accepted a ride from Brewer and his companions the day he was killed. As it happens I was working with another young man in Jasper who also had a connection to an east Texas prison. He was previously employed as a guard at Huntsville, a notoriously violent prison located in nearby Huntsville Texas. One day during a break from work he related a recent experience he had while driving in Houston traffic. Someone cut him off and he pulled out his service handgun from under the seat, cocked it, and pointed it at the other driver. It was only in the moment before pulling the trigger that he became conscious of what he was about to do and stopped himself. He went on to explain that the only way to survive in a prison environment was to assume that an inmate was about to kill you at any opportunity. You have to be prepared to meet violence with violence at every turn without hesitation. After a time it becomes instinctive. My coworker was suffering from the same kind of PTSD that soldiers often succumb to. He had been so damaged by his prison experience that he had to get rid of his gun for fear of killing an innocent bystander by mistake.
If the prison experience produces violent side effects in guards the impact on inmates is orders of magnitude greater. When Laurence Brewer entered prison, he entered a world where lethal violence is a daily fact of life. The only way to survive in such a place is to align yourself with a prison gang and he quickly aligned himself with a white supremacist group. Gangs in prison generally divide along racial lines and the racist hatred cuts in all directions, white-black, black-Latino, etc. By all accounts Brewer was a petty criminal when he entered the Jasper prison, but as often happens, he emerged a violent criminal that placed no value on human life. This shouldn’t come as any surprise. A life of poverty tells an individual that the society at large places no value on your life. If it did, it would correct the social deficiencies that keep you poor. When society places no value on a person that individual soon stops valuing his own life and often engages in deviant behaviors as a result. If you place that same person in prison he will cross the final Rubicon and reach the state where human life is valueless in general. For such a one cruelty and murder come easily. And what about our role in these stories? Are we culpable for allowing the conditions that lead to these tragedies? Make no mistake this not a story about Jasper Texas. It’s a narrative that plays itself out over and over in every community of our nation. Often in our own back yards and worse, it usually it doesn’t even garner our attention. The sad truth is that the lives of both Brewer and Byrd where discarded by us long before their deaths attracted media attention. Jasper will always serve me as a reminder that the moral calculus of justice is difficult to solve.
