Journey to Death Row

I stood waiting for the gate behind me to slam shut before the one in front of me would open. Once it did, I walked between a high fence topped with razor wire, into a building where I would be searched and escorted to the visitation room of Florida's Death Row. I was here to visit my beloved ninteen year old nephew. What had gone wrong? What could I have done to ensure that things would have been different in his life?

David had always been my favorite of all my neices and nephews. I don't know why we shared such a special bond but he was the one who grabbed my heart and held it when Rick and I first married. He was five years old and the most friendly, loving child I had ever been around. When we would visit his family he would run into my arms and give me hugs and kisses. Then he would stay by my side the whole time we were there. That all changed when he was about eight years old. He became withdrawn and didn't like affection. I just attributed it to growing up but I found out years later that he was carrying a dark secret in his life.

As David grew older he began getting in trouble with, not only his parents, but also with the law. Each time he was arrested, his punishment was a slap on the wrist. He grew more and more bold in his illegal actions and yet the court system seemed to let him off with a warning. I believe that contributed to the crime that he committed that landed him on death row at age nineteen.

During much of his growing up years, his mother, step-father, father, and step-mother were involved in drug and/ or alcohol abuse. David was taken on drug deals by his father. He was left to his own devices by his mother. He did better when he was living with his mother and step-father, while his older brother seemed to do well living with his dad. His dad, however, refused to seperate the boys. If one was going to live with him, so was the other.

David spent several days with us after one of his many arrests. We had such a good visit and David told me he wanted to be an architect one day. He said his dad told him he would never be able to do that and he would never amount to anything. I remember telling David that anyone who thought that way was full of shit. He was shocked that I had cussed. It just made me so angry that his father had said that to him. We took David to church with us where he was introduced to a man who had spent a lot of time in prison. He also met Matt, our youth pastor. Matt spent quite a while talking to David and seemed to make quite an impression on him. David went back home wanting to go to chruch every week.

A couple of years later we got a phone call informing us that David had been arrested for murder. I was so shocked and saddened. I wouldn't have been surprised if David's older brother had done something like this but David had always had such a tender heart I couldn't imagine him killing someone. It turned out he had been hired to kill a man for a thousand dollars. I was asked to testify at David's Spencer hearing. This was a time when the defense talked about the mitigating factors and people were allowed to testify to David's character. The prosecution was also able to call witnesses on the victim's behalf. We had hoped that due to David's age, he was 17 when he committed the murder, and the fact that he had been sexually abused (that was why he pulled away from me when he was younger) that he would be given some leniency. But the jury came back within less than an hour with a recommendation of death.

So, now I found myself at Starke prison waiting to enter the area for those visiting death row inmates. I was led into a room with several tables. Each table had four seats with one specific seat assigned to the inmate. I sat at the table I was told to sit at and waited for David to be led in. I felt scared and nervous being around all these guys dressed in orange shirts knowing that they had committed murder, some of them brutally. I looked over and saw Danny Rollins, the man responsible for the Gainesville murders was sitting at the table next to me. He saw me lookk at him and he winked. I felt a chill run up my spine. This guy was really creepy. David was led into the room and after giving me a hug he sat in the seat assigned to him. Unfortunately, to look at David while we talked I was also looking over his shoulder and seeing Danny Rollins. Whenever I looked up at Danny, he would smile at me. It really freaked me out. I would later tell David about this in a letter. The next time I went to visit and was seated near Rollins David told the guard what had happened and he was allowed to sit in a seat that had me facing away from Rollins, which I was very grateful for.

We had a good visit. David was able to get some decent food from the vending machines. He said it beat what they served them on a day to day basis. We talked some about what he had done and his remorse for it. He talked a lot about his last visit with us and how he wished he could have stayed with us. Maybe his life would have been different. I realized that in spite of all that David had done wrong, he was still the nephew who held my heart. My love for him had not changed.

When it was time to leave I hugged David, and found myself wondering if I would see him again. I was so afraid of what would happen to him in prison. I sat in my car and cried for awhile. And then, as I drove away I wondered what it was going to be like on the day he was executed. Would I be one of those there to see him take his last breath? How would I stay strong as his mother watched her son die? How would this affect his brothers? So many questions.

I am happy to say that David's sentence has been commuted to Life in Prison since that day of my first visit to him on death row. I have seen him several times since then, though not often enough. He has been moved to a prison that is more than 5 hours from our home (almost a 10 hour drive for his mother). He has a young son who he sees about once a year. I have been there when he visits with his son and I see what a good and loving father he is. He is very attuned to his son's attitudes and actions. Picking up on little things that I don't even see. The man who hired David was finally captured in England after he killed a police officer. He will serve Life in Prison in England without ever being brought to trial here in the states for hiring my young nephew to do his dirty work. The man who was the middle man in the whole deal, was released from prison in 2005 and will be on probation until 2015. Both men were older than my nephew and in my opinion took advantage of his youth and vulnerability. I am not making excuses for what David did, nor would he want me to. He takes full responsibility for his actions. David is active in telling other inmates his story and has become strong in his faith in Christ. He shares that with everyone he can. My hope is that one day David will be transferred to Sumter C.I. where they have an architectural program and he may be able to do what he wanted to do when he was 15 years old listening to his dad tell him he would never amount to anything.