Death Row Breakout Read Online Free PDF

stretched his cracked rib. The swelling of his eye went down somewhat. Sometimes he prayed, sometimes he sang all the songs to which he knew the words. More than once he wanted to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
    Through the walls he could hear ringing bells, and the rattle of gates before they slammed shut.
    On the seventh day, the door opened. Four deputies told him to come out. As he stood up and took a step, he reeled and nearly went down. He struggled to gather himself; he didn’t want them to see any weakness. They threw him a bundle of clothes and, when he was dressed, they handcuffed him and led him through the jail to the court line. As he passed the tanks, sometimes he was recognized. Men crowded to the bars to get a look. The brawl with the deputies was already the stuff of jail legend, and the first chapter in the legend of Booker Johnson. In later years, the story was that he knocked deputies down as fast as they came through the door.
    All the tanks were segregated. Then they passed one where Booker had to take a second look. Here the races were all mixed together, but half of those he saw wore homemade makeup and had their shirts tied into blouses in a gross parody of femininity. “I ne’er seen nuttin’ like that in Tennessee.”
    The deputies took him to a floor divided into many cages, each holding prisoners going to a particular courtroom. Instead of putting him in a bullpen with others, they locked him in a small room with a solid steel door.
    Late in the morning, they took him to a courtroom for a preliminary hearing. In some jurisdictions, the preliminary hearing served the function of the grand jury, establishing that a crime had been committed, and there was sufficient cause to hold the accused for trial. The prosecutor put on three witnesses. The car owner testified that he owned the car and had never given Booker Johnson permission to drive it. His boss, who would not look at him, next testified that he’d never authorized Booker Johnson to remove the car from the gas station garage. Finally, the police officer told how he had found Booker Johnson with the automobile at the intersection of Washington and Broadway.
    The preliminary hearing took less than an hour. The Judge found probable cause to bind the defendant for trial in the Superior Court.
    Back in the jail, they moved him from “The Hole” to “Siberia,” which was a row of regular cells, the occupants of which were locked up twenty-four hours a day without privileges. Booker stayed in Siberia for the rest of his sojourn in the LA County Jail.
    A few days before his next court appearance, he was taken from Siberia to the Attorney Room to see a Deputy Public Defender. Surrounded by three escorts, he attracted looks as he was marched past the tanks. Someone recognized him and the word spread like wildfire. Soon the bars were lined with prisoners cheering and applauding – and the escort deputies seethed.
    The public defender had eleven men to see that morning. All he knew of any of them was what he found in the thin folders given him before he left the office. He found Booker’s and scanned it for a minute. The case seemed simple and relatively minor. “Did it happen like they testified?” he asked.
    Booker nodded.
    “Nobody told you it was okay to take the car?”
    “No. I mean… I didn’t think… anything… would happen. I just… uh… borrowed it, y’know what I mean?”
    “Yeah, I know… but you got caught. It isn’t the crime of the century. You don’t have a record?”
    Booker shook his head.
    “Never been arrested as a juvenile?”
    “No.”
    “You’ll get probation and time served.” The public defender believed what he said; it was what he saw from a superficial examination of the facts. He was seeing eleven men that morning, and eight more that afternoon. How could he be anything but superficial? Whatever idealism he’d possessed when graduating from law school had been worn away