Remembering Dobie

Dobie Gillis Williams was born to Zino and Betty J. Williams at General Number One Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, on December 14, 1960, and departed this life on January 8, 1999, at 6:48 P.M.

—From the memorial booklet for the funeral of Dobie Gillis Williams

Night either comes very early or very late when you’re on death row, depending on how you look at it. At 2:30 in the morning, it can very easily seem like 4:30 in the afternoon.

When I was one of the inmate legal counsel-substitutes assigned to work on Louisiana’s death row, my days usually started very early and ended very late. Our small office was always hectic—for condemned prisoners, every legal snarl or tangle seems critical. We could never find anything reliable to set our watches by, so we just worked from one crisis to the next. It seemed much easier that way, more palatable.

On Friday, January 8, 1999, I watched every single minute tick by. That was the day they killed Dobie. The day started early enough. I was up and out of bed in my dormitory at 3:30 a.m.; I had a promise to keep. I had promised Dobie on Thursday night that I would eat breakfast with him on what would be his last day on Earth. I made a lukewarm cup of instant coffee, staggered sleepily through the morning ritual of teeth-brushing and face-washing, and made my way from the dorm to death row. I walked through thirteen gates and sets of bars, only three of them manned by officers, before I could stand in front of Dobie’s cell and keep my promise.

We had shit-on-the-shingle (a.k.a. chipped beef on toast), grits, and ten-ton biscuits for breakfast. Dobie had about three or four bites and spent most of his energy just pushing the food around on his tray with a plastic spoon. At 9:30 the night before, Dobie and I had talked to one of his attorneys, Paula Montoya, on the phone. I guess for strength or reassurance, Dobie kept squeezing my hand through the bars as he talked. He had severe arthritis, and his hands were in a constant cramped position so that holding his hand was like shaking hands with a lobster. The arthritic pain extended to his knees so that he walked like a little roly-poly man.

Paula told me on the phone that it was all over, that there was nothing left to be done and nowhere left to turn. She cursed Don Burkett bitterly. Burkett, the district attorney of rural Sabine Parish, Louisiana, had spent a substantial amount of time and taxpayer money grinding at the gears of the machine that would eventually kill Dobie.

This was my first experience at passing the final hours of a condemned man’s life, and I stumbled through it like a helpless blind man. Do you act cheerful and try to make them laugh about something? Try to find humor and lighten the air? Or do you try to dwell on more serious and grave things, preparing their mind and soul to cross that chasm that neither they nor you can begin to understand? Do you share their fear and let it show, or do you hide it behind some resolute mask of being strong for them?

Not knowing what to do or how to act, I just was there with him. What he chose to do was to hold my hand through the bars while he talked to Paula and together they cursed Burkett. I didn’t know what else to do with this new experience of helping a man die with grace. Paula had been through this many times before, and Dobie had lived with it for fourteen years. It wasn’t new to them, only to me, and I had never felt more like a stranger, wandering through a strange land.

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Dobie had had more highs and lows in the prior six months than any man should have to endure. In June 1998 he had come within an hour of execution when, at the last minute, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued a stay order.

Then again in November, he had been down to an hour before fate had stepped in to batter him yet again. It felt like “last meals” were becoming a regular staple of his diet. I remember that night, November 11, 1998, I sat in my small, cluttered office on death row and thought about what was happening. A stream of prison officials kept crossing the lobby. It seemed to me that, despite their business-as-usual appearance, they were all obviously unsettled by the coming events. I had never seen that many high-ranking officials at death row in all the time I had worked there.

I watched as, around 7:30 p.m., two nurses came from the Robert E. Barrow Treatment Center (the infirmary for Louisiana State Penitentiary, the prison better known as Angola). Along with three security officers, the nurses escorted Dobie into the office across the lobby from me. There, they photographed a smiling Dobie holding a number board in front of his chest, placed him on a standing scale and noted his height and weight, and fingerprinted him. They had to make sure they killed the right man. Through it all, Dobie chatted it up with the nurses.

Seeing him so full of life only magnified to me just how close he was to this horrible death, and how much life I still had stretching out before me. I was one of the 85 percent of Angola’s prisoners who would grow old and die there, rotting away in loneliness and isolation.

Dobie, on the other hand, was a young man, though he’d grown frighteningly old inside just waiting to die. At least I had the luxury of being able to wonder each and every morning if this would be the day I “went home”; Dobie knew every day for fourteen years that he would be killed, that one day he would “go home.” I doubt that he ever even thought about getting a pardon or even asking for one. Pardons and clemency just weren’t in the cards for him—or anybody else in Angola, it seemed. Governor Mike Foster, a firm and conservative Republican, had not granted an act of clemency to a single prisoner since he took office.

On that night, it had seemed so important to me that I hold on to some hope that Foster would soon commute someone’s sentence, that he would send a signal of hope to me and all the rest of Angola’s lifers. Instead, Dobie’s scheduled November 1998 execution led to the most surprising gubernatorial intervention in recent Louisiana political history: less than an hour before Dobie was to be strapped to the gurney, Governor Foster unexpectedly halted the execution at the request of, surprisingly, Burkett.

The delay was only a temporary reprieve, meant to allow the defense time and opportunity to conduct DNA testing on a curtain taken from the bathroom of the house where Sonja Merritt Knippers had been brutally slain in 1984. DNA testing was not widely practiced at the time of Dobie’s trial, and the blood-stained curtain had never been subjected to DNA analysis. The fifteen-day reprieve granted by Foster meant at least another forty-five days for Dobie, since Louisiana law requires a minimum of thirty days following the last and most recent execution date before a new date could be set.

As far as Louisiana politics go, this was seen by those of us on the inside as a strategic ploy. Postponing Dobie’s date with the executioner presented the perfect win-win, no-lose situation, an opportunity for Foster and Burkett to score points politically. They were being merciful when the courts had not been; they were providing a chance for justice and the system to work. If science proved Dobie’s innocence, then the governor would come across as a savior, a deliverer, a hero. If the same science proved his guilt, then they had been merciful, compassionate, fair and just, and the system could kill Dobie with a firm hand and a clean conscience.

Dobie came back from the Death House that night, only hours after the governor’s announcement, and returned to his cell on the row. He was quiet, subdued, somber. He watched the news every time it came on the TV but hid his thoughts as he listened to the newscasters speak—the talking heads who themselves seemed surprised at the reprieve.

For several days there was intense speculation about two things: whether the DNA results would positively establish Dobie as the killer, and what the new execution date would be. It was rumored that a pool had been established, that there were wagers on the DNA test results, that both guards and inmates were betting.

Within a week there was a published report in which Burkett announced that analysis of Knipper’s bathroom curtain had positively established that the blood belonged to Dobie. His lawyers were ominously silent. Soon thereafter, Burkett filed a motion with the Eleventh Judicial District Court to set a new execution date: January 8, 1999. Dobie would see one more Christmas, one more celebration of the life of another man who, though a great bit holier, had also been executed.

Thanksgiving came and went, unimportant and unnoticed. It seemed like such an insignificant affair. I found myself spending more time with Dobie, and he was quicker to stop me for conversation in the mornings when I made daily rounds on the tiers. He would never ask for anything, and it only cost a few moments of my time. Looking back, I guess he was trying to hang on, and I was afraid to let go. I know now that friendship can be like that.

In the coming weeks, Sister Helen Prejean, Dobie’s spiritual adviser, visited him and helped him deal with his fear. Dobie had a “Fear Not” hat that he wore constantly for the last three weeks of his life. It symbolized his fight to control the greatest enemy he had. In Isaiah 41:10, he was exhorted:

“Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

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Fear, it seems, is the constant companion of death row inmates. I suppose it stayed with Dobie until the end, after his call with Paula had ended and I’d left him to fight it alone through the rest of his last night on Earth. But he was calm when I next saw him, early the following the morning.

Having kept my promise to have breakfast with Dobie, I watched six security officers restrain and chain him, then walk him to the elevator for his short ride to Camp F and the Death House. This time I knew it was the last time I would ever see him alive, and I marveled at how his painful shuffle seemed to be carried off with such grace. They cleared the halls of all traffic as they proceeded. He smiled at me through my office window as he passed and tried to wave his shackled hand.

After, Warden Burl Cain, accompanied by his most loyal of underlings, made an entrance.

Some months before, I had been involved in a dispute between one of the guys who worked for me and the A Building security officer. She did not like this inmate and harassed him at every opportunity. The inmate counsel’s office was entitled to a coffee distribution every month, and the day in question he just happened to be bringing the supplies to our office. She saw her opportunity and grabbed him and began questioning him: what he was carrying, had he stolen it, where did it come from, and on and on. She tore open the obviously unbroken plastic bag sheltering the Styrofoam cups and separated them, looking into each one. Finally, disappointed that she had found nothing to charge him with, she handed everything back. Disgusted, he grabbed all the cups and threw them in a nearby trash can.

This enraged the officer. She screamed at him, wanting to know why he had thrown all the cups away if they were so important. He simply told her, “I’m not going to give those cups to anybody to drink out of since you’ve had your hands on every one of them.” She wrote him up for “Disrespect” and “Defiance” and proceeded to call for an escort to carry him to administrative segregation.

It was at this moment that I entered and saw what was going on. I hurriedly attempted to intervene with the officer and explained very calmly that he was merely delivering supplies to my office and meant no disrespect by disposing of the cups. The situation deescalated somewhat, and she canceled the trip to segregation. The next day, I had a talk with Warden Cain and explained what had happened. Warden Cain handled it as Solomon-like as possible; he simply instructed one of his deputy wardens to buy my office a coffeepot and coffee and cups and all the trimmings. Problem solved!

On the day of Dobie’s execution, Warden Cain came into my office and sat down while his underlings made their rounds on the tiers. I offered him a cup of coffee. He accepted, and I poured. He started in by telling me about his experiences of the night before, when a young man had come to his house and joined him and his wife for dinner. The man was a new employee of the parish coroner’s office and would be called upon in several hours to pronounce Dobie dead. Warden Cain said the young man had told him that he was unsure of the process and how he would perform his duties.

Cain’s response had been clear and concise. He said he thought he could best put the man at ease by explaining exactly what would happen. He’d told the young man: “Four big, strong, healthy officers will enter Dobie’s cell and place wrist and leg restraints on him, then escort him the hundred feet from his holding cell to the execution chamber. If Dobie isn’t willing to go peacefully, they’ll each grab an arm or leg and carry him into the chamber, place him on the gurney, strap him to the table, and we’ll kill him. It’ll be over with pretty quickly, and then we’ll call you in and let you pronounce him.”

I was horrified on the inside, but Cain was so calm and relaxed on the outside. After a bit of small talk, he excused himself and joined the others outside for a trip to Dobie’s cell. I found out later that he had gone to deliver a new “Stone Cold” Steve Austin T-shirt to him. Austin was Dobie’s favorite wrestler, and he had asked one of the wardens if he could have one. Pretty obviously, this was a going-away gift—even if a rather awkward one.

I left the office early and spent the day doing everything I could to ignore what I knew was happening on the other side of the vast, 18,000-acre expanse of the Louisiana State Penitentiary grounds. I went to the A Building at 5:00 that evening to attend a Latin American Cultural Brotherhood meeting. My closest friend, Ron, and I sat there quietly at a table in the corner. I had one eye on the meeting’s activity and the other on my watch. To this day, I can’t recall what the meeting was about.

Shortly after dusk at 7:00, through the A Building windows, I saw an ambulance drive up to the back doors of the treatment center. I watched the EMTs unload the gurney from the back of the ambulance. I sat there in the A Building’s gloomy shadows and let the tears stream down my face while the meeting went on and others got on with their lives. Though it could have been anything else—perhaps there’d been a minor emergency on the prison farm, or maybe an overdose—I knew in my heart that I was saying goodbye to Dobie. I knew he had finally gone home.

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Late that night, back in the dorm, Ron and I lay in bed talking across the aisle to each other. He knew I had to talk about it, had to get it out and look at it, and he let me. My voice started cracking and the tears came again, this time flowing like they would never quit, my lungs sucking in gasps of air and choking them back. I cried for my friend, for his fear, for the great pains they had put him through, for God not saving him, for us not doing enough to stop it.

Two days later, I got a copy of Sister Helen’s email. She always posts a message following an execution, and I think it serves as a catharsis for her as much as it does an eye-opener for the reader. This one was especially poignant.

She talked about the great grace and dignity with which Dobie had left this world. About how he had laughed while he ate his last meal of ice cream and chocolate bars and washed it down with cold soda. About how the Minnesota law firm that had struggled for eleven years to save his life finally told him, in the end, that it had been an honor to work on his behalf.

She talked about how she had been anxious when it came time for him to speak his last words—anxious because she hadn’t talked to him about this. Knowing how crucial this was for him, for the victims of this horrible crime, for the people who were resolutely killing him. Knowing that this would be what he left behind. About how she shouldn’t have worried, because he had spoken after only the briefest hesitation.

He had faced the gallery of witnesses from the execution chamber, thought a moment, then said, quietly: “I just want to say I don’t have any hard feelings toward anyone. God bless everyone. God bless.” He was already turning toward the gurney as he said it, toward his fate. He climbed up onto the gurney on his own; he didn’t want, need, or accept the help of his executioners.

The fear he had lived with for so long, that he had fought with his “Fear Not” cap, that he had learned to control with Sister Helen’s guidance and counsel, had evaporated. The fear had been replaced with the great and overpowering strength and grace of God’s love and the simple gesture of forgiveness that he extended even to those who killed him.

Sister Helen talked about all those things, and about how Dobie fit so perfectly into the death row mold. The pattern is so common here. Dobie was a thirty-eight-year-old Black man. He was poor, from a small, rural area of a Deep South state where representation by an ill-qualified and questionable, if not actively crooked, defense counsel—Dobie’s lawyer was later disbarred due to repeated misconduct—is often the best such a capital defendant might hope for.

He was held accountable for the tragic death of a white woman in a small, country-backwoods Louisiana town. His guilt was decided by an all-white jury. Everyone in the courtroom was white. He had a warm body for a lawyer standing beside him throughout the trial. The prosecution held the winning hand all the way through. The State of Louisiana, after fourteen years of unrelenting effort and untold expense, finally killed Dobie Gillis Williams, just three weeks after his thirty-eighth birthday.

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On Thursday, January 14, 1999, Dobie was buried at King’s Chapel Cemetery in Many, Louisiana. The ceremony, billed as a “homegoing service,” was standing-room only. The little country church had doubtless never seen the likes of such a day. There was perhaps more love in that little church on that one day than in all the rest of the world put together.